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Optty names veterans payment leader Steven Ritchie as Acting CEO during strategic leadership transition

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SINGAPORE, March 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Optty™, leading global payments technology company headquartered in Singapore is excited to announce its plans to build out its executive leadership team as it continues to deliver on its significant global partnerships.

Given its significant near term pipeline growth and new launches, Optty’s Board of Directors and Founder have determined that as Optty enters this hyper-scaling phase, the time is right to transition from a founder-led business to a professional management team structure.

Following in the well-trodden pathway of many great start-ups, Optty’s Founder Natasha Zurnamer will be stepping down from her role as CEO and into an advisory, strategic and Board Director role. While Natasha will no longer hold a day-to-day executive position in Optty, she remains a significant shareholder and advocate in the business she helped build. The Optty family is eternally grateful for her contributions in shaping their strong vision, forging transformational partnerships, and helping to build the exciting platform they have today.

Optty’s entire senior leadership team remains in place, ensuring continuity in all their operations and service delivery. The Board, Natasha and Optty’s lead investors remain fully committed to Optty’s growth trajectory, ensuring the business is well-capitalised to capture the significant opportunities ahead.

Optty’s new CEO and leadership team will bring capabilities to lead Optty through its next phase of hyper-growth and Optty expects to announce these appointments soon. In the meantime, current CPIO, Steven Ritchie, will be acting in an interim CEO role until the new leadership structure is implemented. Steve is a longtime Optty executive team member, has the full backing of the Board of Directors. Natasha will continue to provide support to the team while Optty establishes this new management structure.

Alan Miltz, Chairman of Optty would like to celebrate Nastasha’s achievements and contributions; “Natasha has done an amazing job of taking an idea to reality and establishing a business that will change the global payment infrastructure. Her superhuman energy and infectious enthusiasm will be sorely missed by the team. However, as we move into a more operational and project management phase of the business – Natasha will be able to deliver even greater value to Optty by stepping away from this onboarding phase, to give her the bandwidth to continue to support Optty’s strategy, vision and ambition as an advisor and board member. We are more excited than ever about our shared future and the value we can create together.”

Natasha Zurnamer, Founder of Optty says “It is incredible as a founder to have the support of shareholders who believed in Optty from the very beginning—when it was just a vision that I knew in my heart would be a global game-changer. It is their willingness to see the future that has brought us here, and I cannot thank them enough for their trust. The hard work and passion from our team, investors, Board of Directors and partners have been, and will continue to be, the alchemy that propels Optty to the next level. As a fintech innovator and leader in payments, Optty’s ambition now goes beyond what we ever imagined. I am incredibly excited to support our next CEO in scaling this vision and continuing to be the silent hero powering giants.”

This transition represents a natural evolution for Optty as we position ourselves for the next phase of growth. We look forward to continuing to working with our partners and changing the game providing unrivaled choice, limitless payment possibilities and complimentary services, unified through a single seamless API integration.

Natasha will join industry leaders David Budzevski, Vice President Revenue & Sales Operations Enterprise Gateway Solutions Mastercard, Scott A Przybyla, SVP Payment Sales, Kount and Equifax Co, Steffen Vollert CEO Volt, Oli Cook, CEO & Co-Founder at Ekko, Gregory Simon, Director Data Science& Global merchant product at Afterpay and Rob Sangha – Sales Director, Open Banking Mastercard as Facilitator on thought provoking panels topics discussing The rise of Super Regional Payments Hubs and the Power of Data at Pay360 in London on the 25th and 26th of March 2025.

Alan Miltz
Chair, Board of Directors
Optty Pte Ltd.

About Optty: Optty is a single integration to 145+ payment partners in 140 countries and 120 currencies and growing. Supporting; BNPL, digital wallets, credit/debit, gift cards/virtual cards, crypto, pay with points, open banking, P2P and payouts as well as ancillary services in ESG, Fraud Prevention and Tokenization. Optty’s simplified API integration, requires no further development for any payment methods to connect unlike competitors in the market saving thousands of development hours for partners. This enables a complete enablement to any merchant in under a minute. Its built-in and flexible hierarchy distinguishes it in payment orchestration, with control flowing from Scheme partners to Acquirers/Gateways and Merchants. Optty is connected finance reimagined.

www.optty.com

Inquiries: Media@optty.com

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JAMS Launches AI for Enterprise Job Scheduling: JAX and JAMS MCP, on the Model You Choose

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A new AI agent and an open-standard connector let IT teams query, diagnose, and manage automation in plain language, on the model they choose, with operational data staying inside their own network

LONDON, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — JAMS Software, an orchestration solution for scheduled and event-driven automation, today announced the general availability of two AI capabilities for enterprise job scheduling: JAX, an AI agent built into the JAMS Web Client, and JAMS MCP, a connector built on the open Model Context Protocol standard that brings JAMS into external AI coding tools. Both capabilities ship at no additional cost as part of JAMS Web.

Automation environments grow faster than the teams that run them. Jobs multiply across SQL Server, Azure Data Factory, Airflow, SAP, JDE, and Banner, and when one fails, finding the root cause often means searching several consoles at once, frequently outside business hours. At the same time, IT leaders carry pressure to adopt AI while staying accountable for where operational data goes. JAX and JAMS MCP close both gaps together.

Full details on how JAX and JAMS MCP work, including the control model behind every action, are available at jamsscheduler.com/product/ai.

JAX is an AI agent that runs inside the JAMS Web Client. It finds jobs, troubleshoots failures, and answers how-to questions in plain language, with each response grounded in the JAMS user guide and checked against a built-in glossary. JAX acts only when a user asks it to. Reads flow freely, and every write action pauses for the user’s explicit approval before it runs. JAX does not learn between sessions, and conversations are not retained on the server.

JAMS MCP is a connector, built on the open Model Context Protocol standard, that brings JAMS into the AI tools engineering teams already use, including Cursor, VS Code with Copilot, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Codex. Users query jobs, investigate failures, and manage runs in plain language without leaving their tool.

Both capabilities run inside the customer’s own network and act as the signed-in user, with that user’s exact JAMS permissions. There is no elevated AI account: whatever a user cannot do in the JAMS interface, JAX and JAMS MCP cannot do on that user’s behalf. Every JAX and MCP operation is recorded in its own dedicated log, and changes made through the JAMS API land in the JAMS audit trail like any other change. Customers choose their own AI model, whether a commercial provider such as OpenAI or Anthropic or a model running entirely on their own hardware, and JAMS never trains on customer data. In the current release, neither feature edits or deletes a job, folder, schedule, or agent definition. For teams that must keep operational data within a defined boundary, JAX runs on a local model entirely inside the customer’s own network, so nothing leaves at all.

“Adopting AI usually means giving something up, most often visibility into where your data goes,” said Pete Hegland, Chief Executive Officer of JAMS Software. “We built JAX and JAMS MCP so that trade does not have to happen. Every action runs as the signed-in user, every change waits for approval, and the model itself can run entirely inside your own network.”

“IT teams across the United Kingdom and EMEA tell us the same thing: they want the benefit of AI without losing sight of where their data goes,” said Greg McLaughlin, Account Executive for EMEA at JAMS Software. “JAX and JAMS MCP let them keep operational data inside their own network and still get answers in plain language. That combination is what makes this practical for the teams I work with.”

JAX and JAMS MCP are available now to all JAMS Web customers across the United Kingdom and EMEA, with no separate licence, SKU, or additional cost. AI-assisted creation of new jobs and workflows from a plain-language description is on the roadmap for a future release, gated by the same approvals and permissions as every other action.

Learn how JAX and JAMS MCP work at https://jamsscheduler.com/product/ai.

Fast facts

JAX is an AI agent built into the JAMS Web Client for job scheduling and workflow automation.JAMS MCP is a connector built on the open Model Context Protocol standard, for Cursor, VS Code with Copilot, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Codex.Both act as the signed-in user, with that user’s exact JAMS permissions, and there is no elevated AI account.Customers choose the AI model, including a local model that runs entirely inside their own network.JAMS never trains on customer data.Both are available now at no additional cost as part of JAMS Web.

About JAMS Software

Founded in 1987, JAMS Software is an orchestration solution that helps IT teams centralize, automate, and manage scheduled and event-driven jobs across complex, hybrid environments. Over 850 customers rely on JAMS to run their automated workloads. JAMS Software, LLC is headquartered at 108 Patriot Drive, Suite A, Middletown, DE 19709.

Media Contact
Bobby Schmidt, Vice President of Marketing
press@jamssoftware.com
800.261.4267

 

 

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Video: CNPC offers green chemical answer

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BEIJING, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A news report from chinadaily.com.cn:

Located on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the Tarim 1.2 MTA Phase II Ethylene Project and its supporting green and low-carbon demonstration facility of PetroChina Dushanzi Petrochemical Company, a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation, are offering a new example of China’s low-carbon industrial transformation.

Watch the video to discover how CNPC is exploring a cleaner and more circular future for the industry.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/video-cnpc-offers-green-chemical-answer-302834036.html

SOURCE chinadaily.com.cn

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Shanghai Electric showcases embodied intelligence robot matrix and AI-native smart factory solutions at WAIC 2026

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Featuring humanoid robots with 41 degrees of freedom, pipe‑inspection robots with ±1mm positioning accuracy, and 51 industrial‑grade AI agents

SHANGHAI, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Operations in high-end equipment manufacturing often involve confined spaces, complex objects, and fine manipulation tasks that demand sustained and stable precision. At the recent 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance (WAIC 2026), Shanghai Electric (SEHK: 02727, SSE: 601727) showcased its comprehensive portfolio of embodied intelligence solutions tailored to a range of industrial scenarios.

Themed “AI for All: Smart Squad, Shining Without Limits,” Shanghai Electric highlighted its capabilities across embodied AI robots, robot core components, and AI-native smart factory solutions, demonstrating end-to-end capabilities spanning complete robot systems, critical parts, industrial software, and smart factory architecture.

“The true value of embodied intelligence lies in understanding real industrial tasks: combining the strength, precision, and stability of machines with human experience and judgment to drive a genuine paradigm of ‘machine-assisted, human-machine collaboration,'” said Wang Chunlei, deputy general manager of the Robotics Business Unit at Shanghai Electric Automation Group.

Shanghai Electric’s robotics portfolio covers five key industrial scenarios: connector insertion, electrical operations, flexible sorting, intelligent assembly, and pipe processing. Highlights include:

“SUYUAN” bipedal humanoid robot: With 41 degrees of freedom for enhanced mobility, it is equipped with a multimodal visual sensing system on the head and torso, along with a dual-battery hot-swap system. It is well-suited for inspection, material handling, and assembly tasks.”TUOYUAN” industrial wheeled humanoid robot: Powered by an embodied intelligence foundation model and force-position hybrid control, it is capable of multi-spec connector insertion, material sorting, and loading/unloading of automotive sheet metal parts.”Mermaid” bionic wheeled humanoid robot: Capable of autonomously identifying buttons, knobs, and air switches, it generates real-time operation paths.Autonomous pipe inner-wall chamfering robot: Designed for confined spaces, it can position and process thousands of hole edges with accuracy within 1 millimeter while transmitting data in real time.

Shanghai Electric also showcased its portfolio of core components ranging from power-output to end effectors. Among them, the planetary roller screw offers more than three times the load capacity of traditional ball screws, while the DexHand dexterous hand is designed to meet diverse gripping and manipulation requirements.

Shanghai Electric launched 51 AI models and agents under its “StarCloud Intelligent Manufacturing” series across three domains: R&D and design, production and manufacturing, and operations and maintenance—covering critical equipment processes such as process optimization and wind power facility maintenance.

These industrial agents are embedded in robotic decision-making systems and the operational logic of AI-native smart factories, transforming industrial expertise into digitized, reusable capabilities. They support production-line scheduling, quality inspection, and predictive maintenance, driving the evolution of manufacturing systems from experience-driven to data-driven operations.

Shanghai Electric also released the “AI-Native Smart Factory Technology White Paper,” proposing an active evolution architecture that enables real‑time, closed‑loop optimization of production data, giving the factory self‑perception, self‑decision, and self‑execution capabilities. Built on First Principles, the AI‑native smart factory vertically integrates process flows, industrial software, agents, and smart equipment to dismantle traditional hierarchies while horizontally bridging data silos. The architecture features three core layers: the AI factory brain as the “control center,” industrial agents and embodied robots as the “execution network,” and the physical twin as the “digital mirror.”

Leveraging its deep industrial expertise and comprehensive solution capabilities, Shanghai Electric will continue to drive the implementation of AI in industrial settings, tackle technical challenges facing embodied intelligence in complex scenarios, accelerate the large‑scale deployment of AI‑native smart factories, and deliver replicable solutions across diverse manufacturing environments.

SOURCE Shanghai Electric

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