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Shae and Barry Sims of Athletic Republic West Jordan and Park City Utah Awarded Franchisee of the Year by the International Franchise Association

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PHOENIX, Feb. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — The International Franchise Association (IFA) today named Shae and Barry Sims, owners of Athletic Republic West Jordan and Park City, Utah, as 2023 Franchisee of the Year. The Sims were honored at the 64th IFA Annual Convention in Phoenix, AZ, for being outstanding franchise establishment owner-operators.

“Franchisees of the Year exemplify what franchising is all about – providing opportunity, serving others, and fulfilling the American Dream,” said Matthew Haller, President and CEO of the International Franchise Association. “We are proud to recognize the Sims with the highest honor IFA awards to individual franchisees, and I have no doubt their work is changing lives and making a lasting community impact.”

The Franchisee of the Year Award recognizes leading franchise owners from IFA member brands whose outstanding performance and contributions help protect, enhance, and promote the franchise business model. Nominated by their parent company, individuals are selected for their involvement in their communities, embodying the entrepreneurial spirit, fostering a strong and healthy culture with their workforce, and assisting their fellow franchisees when called upon. This is Athletic Republic’s second Franchisee of the Year win in consecutive years and is the only performance fitness franchise to win the award for 2023.

Athletic Republic is the world’s premier destination for individualized, science-based training. With technologically advanced equipment, Athletic Republic tracks and showcases the improvements an athlete experiences through their training regimen. The brand is the nation’s leading sports performance franchisor, with over 80 training centers and over two million athletes trained in the program. It is the top-tier place for data-backed training for athletes of all ages and abilities who seek to improve their speed, power, agility, strength, and stamina. Shae and Barry Sims represent the entire AR family and their commitment to providing youth athletes with the best training possible. The couple is honored and humbled to accept this award which solidifies the fact that the environment that they have cultivated is something entirely unique, special, and loved by their community.

“I am beyond proud of Shae and Barry Sims for their amazing accomplishment,” said Charlie Graves, Chief Executive Officer of Athletic Republic. “The two embody everything that Athletic Republic stands for and our commitment to providing world-class training to youth athletes and are changing lives. Athletic Republic continues to be committed to developing better athletes, so their coaches can turn them into better players.”

Athletic Republic West Jordan and Park City, owned and operated by Shae and Barry Sims, set out to introduce a concept that would positively impact the athletic development of their children and countless other athletes in the greater Salt Lake City area. As a female entrepreneur, Shae has faced many challenges along the way and her success has not gone unnoticed. She is a true trailblazer in the world of female entrepreneurship, and her success is a testament to the power of hard work and determination. Barry Sims has transitioned from a 12-year professional NFL career into a career fulfilling his lifelong passion helping young athletes with their development. Together, they believe in the mission of Athletic Republic, which is to tip the scales of sport in your favor. What matters most to the Sims is providing opportunities for youth athletes and adults to continue to better themselves every day.

“It’s an incredible honor for us to be recognized by the IFA as 2023 Franchisees of the Year,” said Shae Sims. “This recognition not only reflects our dedication to our business but also underscores the commitment we have to our community and the athletes we serve. We are grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the success of Athletic Republic and to make a positive impact in the lives of our clients,” said Barry Sims. “This recognition motivates us to continue striving for excellence and innovation in everything we do.”

There are over 800,000 franchised businesses across the U.S., providing over 8.7 million direct jobs and generating over $850 billion in economic output. According to Oxford Economics, franchising on average provides higher wages and better benefits than non-franchised businesses, as well as greater entrepreneurial opportunities to minorities, women, veterans, and other underrepresented communities. 

About the International Franchise Association:
Celebrating over 60 years of excellence, education, and advocacy, the International Franchise Association (IFA) is the world’s oldest and largest organization representing franchising worldwide. IFA works through its government relations and public policy, media relations, and educational programs to protect, enhance, and promote franchising and the approximately 806,270 franchise establishments that support nearly 8.7 million direct jobs, $858.5 billion of economic output for the U.S. economy, and almost 3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). IFA members include franchise companies in over 300 different business format categories, individual franchisees, and companies that support the industry in marketing, law, technology, and business development.

About Athletic Republic:
Athletic Republic is the nation’s premier destination for individualized, science-based training. With technologically advanced equipment, Athletic Republic tracks and showcases the improvements an athlete experiences through their training regimen. The brand is the nation’s leading sports performance franchisor, with over 80 training centers and over two million athletes trained in the program. It is the top-tier place for data-backed training for athletes of all ages and abilities who seek to improve their speed, power, strength, agility, stamina, and game-day performance. For more information, visit www.athleticrepublic.com.

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SOURCE Athletic Republic

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/C O R R E C T I O N — Applied Intuition, Inc./

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In the news release, Applied Intuition Collaborates with Heidelberg Materials to Advance Innovation in Quarry Operations with Autonomous Haulage Fleets, issued 30-Apr-2026 by Applied Intuition, Inc. over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that changes have been made. The complete, corrected release follows, with additional details at the end:

Applied Intuition Collaborates with Heidelberg Materials to Advance Innovation in Quarry Operations with Autonomous Haulage Fleets

Deployment brings intelligent, vehicle-based autonomy to Australia, establishing a new operating model for construction and mining environments.

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 30, 2026 /CNW/ — Applied Intuition, Inc., a leader in physical AI, today announced its collaboration with Heidelberg Materials, one of the world’s largest integrated manufacturers of building materials and solutions, to deploy autonomous haulage systems for Heidelberg Materials’ quarry operations, starting at a site in Australia.

Applied Intuition will provide its Self-Driving System (SDS) for Construction to support autonomous haulage operations within Heidelberg Materials’ fleet of construction and mining vehicles in Australia. The deployment marks the next real-world application of Applied Intuition’s autonomy platform in industrial environments. Upon successful completion, it will support the expansion of autonomous operations within Heidelberg Materials’ broader Australian network.

The collaboration also challenges the standard industry model. While autonomy solutions traditionally target the largest quarry sites, this system is designed for smaller operations, including those running just two 40-ton trucks, making it deployable across quarry sites of varying size worldwide.

“No two quarry or construction sites operate the same way, with different layouts, constraints and economics,” said Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition. “We’ve built our platform to adapt to that reality. This partnership shows we can take the same core system used in large mining operations and apply it to smaller, infrastructure-constrained quarry sites, scaling it across hundreds of unique locations.”

For Heidelberg Materials, the partnership is aimed at enhancing safety and operational performance. It also reflects the need for an autonomy solution that can operate at large sites and smaller ones too, whereas traditional autonomous haulage systems are often too infrastructure-heavy or costly to scale. For Applied Intuition, it serves as a proof point that its autonomy platform is designed not just for one-off deployments, but for global scale across construction, quarry and mining environments of any size.

Applied Intuition’s system runs directly on the vehicle, with integrated perception, decision-making and safety systems onboard, enabling reliable operation without constant connectivity or heavy site infrastructure.

The collaboration builds on Applied Intuition’s growing presence in construction and mining autonomy and reinforces its broader physical AI strategy. The same core platform has already been deployed in other industries, including trucking and defense, with learnings from each domain contributing to continuous system improvements. Applied Intuition’s SDS platform strategy also enables the company to bring technologies proven in other domains into construction and mining, helping accelerate development and deployment.

Through this project, Applied Intuition demonstrates the range of its autonomy platform, from some of the largest mining trucks in the world to smaller quarry vehicles operating in constrained, lower-infrastructure environments. Together, these deployments highlight the company’s approach to building scalable autonomy for construction and mining from the ground up.

To learn more about how Applied Intuition is building the future of construction autonomy, visit applied.co.

About Applied Intuition
Applied Intuition, Inc. is powering the future of physical AI. Founded in 2017 and now valued at $15 billion, the Silicon Valley company is creating the digital infrastructure needed to bring intelligence to every moving machine on the planet. Applied Intuition services the automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining and agriculture industries in three core areas: tools and infrastructure, operating systems and autonomy. Eighteen of the top 20 global automakers, as well as the United States military and its allies, trust the company’s solutions to deliver physical intelligence. Applied Intuition is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices in Washington, D.C.; San Diego; Ft. Walton Beach, Florida; Ann Arbor, Michigan; London; Stuttgart; Munich; Stockholm; Gothenburg, Sweden; Bangalore; Seoul; and Tokyo. Learn more at applied.co.

Correction: An earlier version of this release incorrectly stated the location of the site noted in the first paragraph.

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SOURCE Applied Intuition, Inc.

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MOREH Demonstrates Production-Ready LLM Inference on Tenstorrent Galaxy, Achieving DGX A100-Class Performance with Improved Cost Efficiency

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Reduces HBM Costs with GPU–Tenstorrent Heterogeneous Distributed Serving
First unveiled at Tenstorrent’s launch event, TT-Deploy, in San Francisco on May 1

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Moreh, an AI infrastructure software company, led by CEO Gangwon Jo, announced that it has successfully validated LLM inference performance on the Tenstorrent Galaxy Wormhole system using its proprietary ‘MoAI Inference Framework.’

Based on tests across leading Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) models—including GPT-OSS, Qwen, GLM, and DeepSeek—Moreh achieved LLM inference performance on Tenstorrent Galaxy Wormhole matching or surpassing NVIDIA DGX A100-class systems, demonstrating a compelling alternative to conventional GPU-centric AI infrastructure.

Moreh also improved cost efficiency by implementing a disaggregated serving architecture that combines GPUs with Tenstorrent Wormhole chips. By utilizing Tenstorrent processors as dedicated prefill accelerators, the company reduced reliance on high-cost HBM and lowered overall infrastructure costs.

The results were first unveiled at Tenstorrent’s launch event, TT-Deploy, held on May 1 in San Francisco.

As a strategic partner of Tenstorrent and a major external contributor to Metalium, Moreh showcased a live LLM inference demo at the event. Building on its experience operating AMD GPU-based production environments in real-world data centers, the company presented its latest technical achievements in ‘Production-Ready LLM Inference on Tenstorrent Galaxy.’

MoAI Inference Framework is a disaggregated inference solution that enables unified operation of heterogeneous GPUs and NPUs—including NVIDIA, AMD, and Tenstorrent—within a single cluster. This allows enterprises to build flexible AI infrastructure strategies without vendor lock-in.

Moreh CEO Gangwon Jo stated, “Achieving production-grade LLM inference performance and stability on Tenstorrent-based systems marks a significant milestone,” and added, “We will continue to enhance performance through deeper optimization across heterogeneous architectures and closer integration with Tenstorrent NPUs.”

Moreh is developing its own core AI infrastructure engine and, through its foundation LLM subsidiary Motif Technologies, is building end-to-end capabilities spanning both infrastructure and model domains. Simultaneously, the company is making its mark in the global market through collaborations with key partners such as AMD, Tenstorrent, and SGLang.

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SOURCE Moreh

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US Startup PerZeption Inc. Announces Collaboration with Alcon Research

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BOSTON, MA, May. 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Advancements in vision correction evaluation require methods that offer both precision and efficiency in detecting clinically meaningful visual differences. Addressing this need, PerZeption is set to present new data validating its AIM+ CSF modeling technology at the Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) annual meeting.

Attendees are invited to learn more about this innovative approach during the poster session on May 4, 2026, from 11:15 AM to 1:00 PM, at posterboard #0941.

“We are very excited to collaborate with Alcon, one of the largest companies within the Ophthalmology sector worldwide. “, Dr. Jan Skerswetat said. “The results, presented by Dr Derek Nankivil, indicate that our technology enables rapid, repeatable, and highly sensitive assessment of contrast vision.”

The abstract, titled ‘AIM+ CSF modeling enables efficient detection of clinically meaningful visual differences,’ outlines how PerZeption’s technology supports sensitive, low-burden visual assessment for vision correction evaluation. Data indicates that with approximately six adaptive displays of stimuli and two repeats, studies show around 20 subjects can achieve 90% power to detect a 1 JND (Just Noticeable Difference) change in AULCSF (Area Under the Log Contrast Sensitivity Function). This research also demonstrates AIM+ CSF’s stable repeatability in less than 3 minutes, absence of bias, and robust performance, validating its role as an effective tool for objective visual performance evaluation.

This joint effort highlights a shared dedication to advancing ophthalmology research and developing precise tools for visual assessment. The ARVO annual meeting serves as the world’s foremost event for ophthalmology research, offering a vital platform for sharing scientific breakthroughs and fostering dialogue within the global vision science community.

“In addition to all the exciting research presentations that leverage PerZeption technology at this years’ ARVO meeting, we are also proud to be showcasing PerZeption’s battery of functional tests at our booth, #4027.” Dr. Skerswetat added and noted that there will be opportunities to try out our technology.

This presentation at ARVO represents a significant step in the validation and recognition of PerZeption’s contributions to advanced visual assessment technologies.

About PerZeption Inc
PerZeption delivers vision testing with a rapid, self-administered, and adaptive psychophysical platform delivered via cloud-based software on standard tablets or all-in-one computers. Our flagship platform, Angular Indication Measurement (AIM), enables testing of over 20 visual functions. Our novel approach equips researchers and clinicians with a comprehensive range of visual functions and introduces new tests for which there are no currently available devices. We reduce chairtime. Self-administered tests on a single device in combination with proprietary methods that rapidly assess vision, reduce user’s burden and require minimal training or space, unlike bulky, specialized single-use devices. Finally, cloud-based delivery supports secure in-clinic and remote testing, ensuring consistent, trackable results for clinicians and pharmaceutical companies. 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-startup-perzeption-inc-announces-collaboration-with-alcon-research-302760563.html

SOURCE PerZeption

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