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Smiles SuperApp partners with Tencent Cloud to enable smarter digital commerce in the UAE

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Cloud integration will allow partner brands to seamlessly onboard as ‘mini apps’ Consumers will benefit from a plethora of services, deals and rewards across global & local brands

BARCELONA, Spain, March 6, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Smiles, e& UAE’s SuperApp, has partnered with Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of Tencent – the global technology powerhouse behind Weixin/WeChat, the world’s largest SuperApp –to enhance digital commerce in the UAE. Announced during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025 in Barcelona, this partnership reinforces Smiles’ commitment to driving customer-centric innovation.

As part of the agreement, Smiles will leverage Tencent Cloud Super App as a Service (TCSAS) solution to create an open, dynamic digital ecosystem, making it the first in the region to leverage this technology. This integration will allow partner brands to seamlessly onboard as “mini apps” within Smiles, mirroring the highly successful WeChat model. By doing so, businesses can establish a digital presence with ease, whereas consumers can choose from a broader selection of services and rewards, all within a unified SuperApp experience.

With 5.5M+ registered users Smiles is the UAE’s leading rewards-driven SuperApp, offering a vast range of deals and services across food and grocery delivery, home services, dining, retail, entertainment, travel, and more. By adopting Tencent’s proven cloud-based solution, Smiles is set to transform into a fully-fledged “Super-Mall,” allowing brands to quickly and efficiently onboard their services.

“Our partnership with Tencent marks a strategic moment in Smiles’ evolution from a rewards platform to becoming a full-scale digital commerce enabler in the UAE,” said Khaled Elkhouly, Chief Consumer Officer, e& UAE. “We’re bringing the expertise behind the world’s largest SuperApp, WeChat, to create a more accessible digital ecosystem with Smiles. This means businesses, from global brands to local merchants, can integrate faster and reach customers more effectively without heavy investment or complexity. For consumers, it’s about making everyday life simpler—whether it’s discovering great deals, completing everyday chores, accessing services, or enjoying rewards—all in one place. Ultimately, this integration is set to reshape digital commerce in the UAE, a market driven by speed and convenience, by seamlessly connecting businesses and consumers in a more frictionless economy.”

Dan Hu, Vice President of Tencent Cloud International for the Middle East, shared, “We are thrilled to partner with e& UAE to power Smiles as it is evolving into an everyday app for millions, whether it is for accessing essential services, retail, shopping or gaming entertainment. TCSAS is a proven, modular platform designed to be versatile and intuitive, supporting our partners to meet their user expectations for a seamless experience.”

TCSAS is powered by Tencent Cloud’s Mini Program framework, which has been instrumental in the success of Weixin/WeChat, one of the world’s largest digital ecosystems with over 1.1 billion monthly active users. Through this partnership, Smiles aims to replicate that success in the UAE, offering partner brands a plug-and-play solution to enhance engagement, boost customer retention, and drive higher returns on investment.

For businesses, the integration will allow brands to swiftly onboard their services into the Smiles ecosystem, driving customer engagement and revenue growth without extensive development costs.  Whereas Smiles’ consumers will have access to an even wider network of businesses – ranging from top global brands to local favorites- offering deals, services, and rewards. Whether it’s shopping, dining, entertainment, online food or grocery ordering or booking services, consumers will benefit from a seamless, all-in-one experience within the Smiles SuperApp.

With a network of 6,500 participating brands and 15,000 partner outlets, Smiles continues to evolve as the go-to SuperApp, delivering value, convenience, and rewards to millions of users.

About Tencent Cloud:

Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.

About Smiles:

Smiles is e&’s full-service lifestyle SuperApp and one of the largest one-stop shops for the everyday needs of UAE residents and visitors. With 6,500 participating brands and over 15,000 partner outlets in the UAE, Smiles offers deals and rewards on food and grocery deliveries, home services booking, e& services as well as dining, shopping, entertainment, wellness and travel benefits, making it a premier lifestyle SuperApp. Smiles is currently one of the most downloaded apps in UAE on both the playstore as well as the app store.

Smiles currently has over 5.5 million registered members and is open to all UAE citizens, residents, and visitors. New customers can download the Smiles SuperApp from the iOS app store, Android Play store, or Huawei AppGallery to enjoy great benefits immediately.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/smiles-superapp-partners-with-tencent-cloud-to-enable-smarter-digital-commerce-in-the-uae-302394279.html

SOURCE Tencent Cloud

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Air Products to Expand Industrial Gas Supply for Samsung Electronics’ Next-Generation Semiconductor Fab in South Korea

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New investment underscores the company’s long-term commitment to Korea and its leading role in the global semiconductor industry 

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Air Products (NYSE:APD), a world-leading industrial gases company and serving Samsung globally, today announced it has been selected by Samsung to supply industrial gases for its new advanced semiconductor fab in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.

Under the agreement, Air Products will build, own and operate multiple state-of-the-art production facilities and a bulk specialty gas supply system to supply nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and hydrogen for Samsung’s new semiconductor fab. The new facilities are expected to come onstream in multiple phases from 2028 through 2030.

Air Products has a long track record of executing multiple phase expansions in Pyeongtaek to support Samsung’s growing manufacturing needs. This latest project represents Air Products’ largest investment to date in the semiconductor industry and will establish Pyeongtaek as the company’s single largest operations site globally supporting the electronics industry. 

“Air Products is honored to be selected once again by Samsung and to have their continued confidence as a trusted partner supporting their strategic growth plans,” said SR Kim, President, Air Products Korea. “This significant investment reinforces Air Products’ role as a leading global supplier to the semiconductor industry and underscores our long-standing commitment to supporting our strategic customers with safety, reliability, efficiency and excellent service.”

Air Products has served the global electronics industry for more than 40 years, supplying industrial gases safely and reliably to many of the world’s leading technology companies. The company has operated in Korea for more than 50 years and has established a strong position in electronics and manufacturing sectors.

About Air Products

Air Products (NYSE: APD) is a world-leading industrial gases company in operation for over 85 years focused on serving energy, environmental, and emerging markets and generating a cleaner future. The Company supplies essential industrial gases, related equipment and applications expertise to customers in dozens of industries, including refining, chemicals, metals, electronics, manufacturing, medical and food. As the leading global supplier of hydrogen, Air Products also develops, engineers, builds, owns and operates some of the world’s largest clean hydrogen projects, supporting the transition to low- and zero-carbon energy in the industrial and heavy-duty transportation sectors. Through its sale of equipment businesses, the Company also provides turbomachinery, membrane systems and cryogenic containers globally.

Air Products had fiscal 2025 sales of $12 billion from operations in approximately 50 countries. For more information, visit airproducts.com or follow us on LinkedInXFacebook or Instagram.

This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s expectations and assumptions as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. While forward-looking statements are made in good faith and based on assumptions, expectations and projections that management believes are reasonable based on currently available information, actual performance and financial results may differ materially from projections and estimates expressed in the forward-looking statements because of many factors, including the risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 and other factors disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the assumptions, beliefs or expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any such forward-looking statements are based.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/air-products-to-expand-industrial-gas-supply-for-samsung-electronics-next-generation-semiconductor-fab-in-south-korea-302757497.html

SOURCE Air Products

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