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Funnel launches new standalone multifamily AI platform: Fenix, powered by Sierra

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Optional resolution-based pricing model aligns ROI with multifamily owner and manager business outcomes

TAMPA, Fla., April 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Funnel, the proven AI-infused multifamily CRM, today announced the launch of Fenix, in conjunction with selected purchased assets of LeaseHawk and powered by Sierra. Fenix will allow multifamily owners, operators and managers looking to take the first steps toward centralization and a streamlined operating model with tools formerly only available to Funnel platform customers.

Fenix is a new standalone AI product for managers and operators that has been custom-built for multifamily and will transform the entire customer journey, from prospect to resident.Funnel acquired selected LeaseHawk assets — including call center technology, voice AI, call scoring, and standalone self-service tools — and is re-platforming them within Fenix to create better, more flexible solutions for managers and operators.Sierra is a conversational AI platform that helps businesses build better, more human customer experiences, and its technology will be leveraged for the first time in multifamily to power Fenix.

A new chapter for multifamily
Funnel was introduced in 2019 as a platform to enable a new era of flexible operations powered by our renter-centric® CRM. Since then, we’ve had the privilege of working with some of the largest and most pioneering property management companies that were early adopters of centralization. Our vision then and now is that through centralization, AI, and automation, Funnel delivers three wins for everyone in our industry: millions in annual cost savings for operators, bigger and better jobs for teams, and exceptional renter experiences. LeaseHawk has a long history with AI and voice technology, including ACE Insights, which enhances the performance of leasing agents and identifies renter behaviors and trends. Combining this expertise with Funnel’s experience serving more than a million units and optimizing hundreds of millions of conversations across email, text, chat, and voice will accelerate the launch of a more adaptable, standalone AI product that better meets the needs of today’s operators. This move creates a clear runway for operators to grow with us in their centralization journey, starting with standalone AI and evolving into Funnel’s full platform.

What is Fenix and who benefits from it?
Fenix is a new flexible, standalone and scalable AI solution. Unlike AI solutions that attempt to serve multiple industries, Fenix is purpose-built for multifamily and delivers the standalone, industry-specific AI solution needed to provide the high-quality, adaptable support that renters and residents need. It enables:

Owners and managers excited by the promise of centralization, AI and automation and ready to move to this new operating model by scaling efficiencies and driving optimized renter communications. Until now, Funnel customers could not buy a standalone AI product without upgrading to multifamily’s only proven AI-infused CRM.Current (and future) Funnel customers to use agentic AI and improve every step of their leasing process — from inquiry, through application to screening, move-in, residency, and renewal.

“We are thrilled to announce our standalone AI product, Fenix,” said Tyler Christiansen, CEO, Funnel. “We’ve had a privileged seat to go all-in on empowering the new operating model with 9 of the 15 largest apartment owners and hundreds of others who ran their businesses more efficiently, created more engaging careers for their teams, and optimized their prospect and resident experiences. From its inception, Funnel believed in building software for the humans of multifamily, rather than software to replace the humans of multifamily. We are excited to offer Fenix to a new market of operators and managers and help them on their path toward centralization and the new operating model.”

Fenix is powered by Sierra
Sierra is the conversational AI platform co-founded by Bret Taylor — Chair of OpenAI, former Co-CEO of Salesforce, CTO of Meta, and co-creator of Google Maps — and Clay Bavor, an 18-year Google executive where he most recently led Google Labs. Sierra helps businesses build better, more human customer experiences with AI. Through this re-platforming, Fenix is the only company in multifamily with advanced conversational AI capable of executing process-based workflows including — renewals negotiations, mid-lease changes, adding guarantors, ID verification, and more — setting a new benchmark for AI, automation and customer engagement.

Unlike conventional AI tools that simply answer questions, Fenix AI agents — built on Sierra — take a proactive approach to resolving customer inquiries efficiently, boosting self-service resolution rates and average handle time. Fenix customers can quickly and easily adapt the tone, response cadence, and personalization of responses through a unique workflow studio.

“We are excited to partner with Fenix and Funnel to bring the best customer experience to renters and best value to owners and managers,” said Clay Bavor, co-founder of Sierra. “Our AI agents are easy to communicate with, not only understanding and answering people’s questions but also solving their problems — reducing friction, improving efficiency and enhancing the experience for both renters and multifamily operators.”

Resolution-based pricing — only pay for what’s working
AI’s capabilities have evolved beyond basic automation to delivering real resolution, and the industry deserves a pricing model that reflects that change: resolution-based pricing. Operators shouldn’t be pigeonholed into paying based on a unit count or seat basis, but rather will have the option to align on the actual results Fenix delivers or the tasks it completes. This approach ensures operators are only paying for what actually gets done and demonstrates Fenix’s ability to provide true ROI.

“As one of LeaseHawk’s earliest customers and a co-development partner, we saw firsthand how AI could transform an industry,” said Josh Gampp, SVP and Chief Technology Officer at UDR, Inc. “Funnel has a proven track record of building multifamily-specific best-in-class technology and working hand-in-hand with their partners to innovate not just their products, but the entire multifamily operating model. There’s no better company to evolve the entire industry’s adoption of the new operating model through AI and agentic automations.”

Media Contact:

Funnel 
Hannah O’Leary
Sr. Manager, Corporate Communications
hannah.oleary@funnelleasing.com

About Funnel
Funnel provides a win to three vital groups: operators looking to reduce costs and improve efficiencies; stretched-thin onsite teams who demand a better long-term career; and renters who demand a better customer experience. Funnel’s proven AI-infused CRM is the enterprise-grade solution industry leaders, owners, and operators trust to deliver a streamlined, consistent, and connected experience from first inquiry through years of renewals, while simultaneously saving operators quantifiable money through the operational flexibility only a renter-centric® platform can provide. We call it Renter Management Software; our clients call it the new operating model.

About Fenix
Fenix ushers in the next era of the new operating model and AI to multifamily. Fenix is both a standalone multifamily AI solution that goes beyond answering questions to actually solving problems and intelligently powers Funnel’s Prospect and Resident AI agentic workflows transforming the renter experience. With optional resolution-based pricing, operators only pay for real results — ensuring AI works as hard as their teams, and in partnership with their teams. Fenix is backed by Funnel, the industry leader in Renter-Centric® technology.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/funnel-launches-new-standalone-multifamily-ai-platform-fenix-powered-by-sierra-302422850.html

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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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on

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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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