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Fastino Launches Pioneer, the First Agent for Fine-tuning and Inference of LLMs

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Pioneer turns language model development and fine-tuning from a months-long, expert-driven workflow into a single prompt and introduces adaptive inference, a new category in model serving where deployed models continuously improve on live production data, without human intervention.

PALO ALTO, Calif., Apr. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Fastino Labs, the applied AI research lab behind the widely adopted open source GLiNER model family, today announced the launch of Pioneer, a state-of-the-art language model fine-tuning agent and adaptive inference platform for open source small language models. With Pioneer, any developer can fine-tune and deploy production-ready models like Qwen, Gemma, Llama, Nemotron, and GLiNER with a single prompt.

Pioneer is the first platform to bring adaptive inference to production: a new approach to model serving in which deployed models are continuously and autonomously retrained on their own live inference data, with improved checkpoints automatically validated and promoted over time. The era of “deploy and forget” for language models has arrived.

“We believe that the future will not just be a few large models, but billions of small models working together. However, in reality, building language models today is extremely difficult,” said Ash Lewis, CEO and co-founder of Fastino. “Pioneer collapses that into a prompt. And once your model is deployed, it keeps getting better on its own. For the first time, the model you ship on day one is the worst model you’ll ever use.”

“Frontier model token costs haven’t dropped as expected, making accurate, task-specifc open source models the most important tools in the AI stack.”

Small models, built agentically

Frontier large language models have pushed the boundaries of AI, but most production workloads only need a fraction of their parameters and compute. Fine-tuned small language models consistently match or exceed frontier model accuracy on specific tasks at a fraction of the latency and cost. Fastino believes specialized small models will be the primary building blocks of agentic AI, and that the tooling to build them should be accessible to every developer.

Pioneer delivers this through two agentic modes:

Agent Mode lets users fine-tune and deploy a model in minutes through a simple chat interface. The agent handles synthetic data generation, hyperparameter selection, evaluation, and deployment with no code required.

Deep Research Mode is a fully autonomous fine-tuning agent with web browsing access. Given only a natural-language task description, it discovers training data, runs multiple experiments in parallel, recovers from failed runs, and iteratively improves the model until it reaches an optimal configuration.

Introducing adaptive inference

Pioneer is also the first platform to offer adaptive inference for all deployed models. Pioneer’s agent continuously monitors deployed models through their inference traces, identifies failure patterns, and automatically trains and deploys improved checkpoints.

Across seven benchmark scenarios designed to simulate real-world deployment drift, Pioneer maintained monotonic improvement while naive retraining approaches degraded, with final performance gaps of up to 43 percentage points. To support this research, Fastino is also introducing AdaptFT-Bench, a new benchmark for evaluating autonomous model improvement under realistic production conditions.

“Adaptive inference will soon be a standard feature in model serving,” said George Hurn-Maloney, COO and co-founder of Fastino. “Your production data is the most valuable training signal you have. Pioneer is the first tool actually using it to make your models better, automatically.”

Breakthrough Benchmark Results & Technical Report

Alongside the Pioneer launch, Fastino is publishing a detailed technical report documenting the unprecedented performance gains achieved by its fine-tuning agent, results that redefine what is possible in automated model development. Across a wide range of academic benchmarks, Pioneer’s Research Mode improved accuracy by as much as 83.8 percentage points over base models, with end-to-end runs completing in a matter of hours at a cost measured in tens of dollars. The report also covers the methodology behind the platform’s fine-tuning and adaptive inference systems, and introduces AdaptFT-Bench, a new benchmark for evaluating autonomous model improvement under realistic production conditions.

On a wide variety of academic benchmarks, Pioneer delivered substantial accuracy gains across every base model tested, including a 19.0 percentage point improvement on IFEval with NVIDIA-Nemotron-3B, a 21.4 percentage point improvement on HumanEval with Qwen 8B, a 67.3 percentage point improvement on ARC-Challenge with Llama 3.2-3B, and an 83.8 percentage point improvement on SMS Spam with GLiNER2. End-to-end agent runs completed in an average of 6 hours at a cost of around $35, a fraction of what a senior machine learning engineer would spend on the same workflow.

Backed by leading investors

Pioneer is the latest product from Fastino Labs, which has raised $25 million in total funding across its pre-seed and seed rounds, led by Khosla Ventures and Insight Partners, with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund), NEA, Valor Equity Partners, and angels including GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, former Docker CEO Scott Johnston, and Weights & Biases CEO Lukas Biewald.

Fastino’s open source GLiNER model family has been downloaded more than 6 million times and is used in production by teams at leading Fortune 500 companies.

Availability

Pioneer is available to developers starting today. To learn more or start fine-tuning a model from a single prompt, visit pioneer.ai.

Fastino Labs is an applied AI research lab building small open source models and the infrastructure to make them continuously better in production. Founded in 2024 and based in Palo Alto, California, Fastino is the creator of the GLiNER open source model family and Pioneer, the first agentic fine-tuning and adaptive inference platform. The company is backed by Khosla Ventures, Insight Partners, M12, NEA, and others. Learn more at fastino.ai.

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SOURCE Fastino Labs

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Bill Faust Named Consulting Magazine Top Consultant of the Year in Industry Specialization

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Impact Advisors Leader Recognized for Expertise in Healthcare IT Implementation

CHICAGO, April 22, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Impact Advisors, a leading healthcare management consulting firm, is proud to announce that Bill Faust, Managing Director, has been named a Top Consultant of the Year by Consulting Magazine in the category of Industry Specialization. This prestigious award honors consultants who demonstrate deep domain expertise and deliver exceptional value to clients within their field.

“Bill’s recognition as a Top Consultant of the Year is a testament to his deep industry expertise and unwavering commitment to client success.” -Andy Smith, managing partner and co-founder of Impact Advisors

Faust brings more than 28 years of healthcare IT experience, with a distinguished track record leading large-scale, complex implementations for both ambulatory and acute care organizations. Over the past 25 years, he has held progressive leadership roles supporting major Epic and Oracle initiatives, helping healthcare systems successfully navigate digital transformation and achieve measurable outcomes.

In his role at Impact Advisors, Faust leads the firm’s EHR Implementation & Support practice, where he is responsible for driving strategy, delivery excellence, and client success across some of the most complex healthcare IT programs in the country. His ability to combine deep technical knowledge with strong executive communication has enabled him to build trusted relationships with clients and vendor partners alike.

“Bill’s recognition as a Top Consultant of the Year is a testament to his deep industry expertise and unwavering commitment to client success,” said Andy Smith, managing partner and co-founder of Impact Advisors. “He consistently delivers high-impact results for our clients while helping advance the healthcare industry through his thoughtful, strategic leadership. Bill joined our team as our ninth colleague, and we’re fortunate to have had his guidance for all these years.”

Consulting Magazine’s Top Consultants awards recognize outstanding professionals who have made significant contributions to the consulting profession and their clients. The Industry Specialization category specifically highlights consultants who have demonstrated exceptional depth of knowledge and impact within a defined sector.

Faust’s recognition underscores Impact Advisors’ continued leadership in healthcare consulting and its commitment to delivering innovative, high-quality solutions that improve patient care and operational performance.

About Impact Advisors

Impact Advisors is a leading healthcare management consulting firm offering a comprehensive suite of technology-enabled performance improvement solutions that deliver measurable and sustainable value for clients. Our commitment to excellence has earned Best in KLAS® recognition for 19 consecutive years, and our distinctive culture has been named a “Best Place to Work” by Modern Healthcare for 16 years. Learn more at www.impact-advisors.com.

Media Contact

Catherine Povalitis, Impact Advisors, 1 815-282-9976, cpovalitis@chartwellagency.com, https://www.impact-advisors.com/

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SOURCE Impact Advisors

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Hewlett Foundation President: Philanthropy Must Bridge AI Governance Gap Between Washington and Silicon Valley

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Amber D. Miller makes the case for philanthropy and civil society to protect critical infrastructure and deliver broad benefits.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — As conversations between Washington and Silicon Valley about AI policy grow more contentious, Hewlett Foundation President Amber D. Miller calls on philanthropy to step up. In a new op-ed published by RealClearPolicy, Miller argues that governments and industry can’t close America’s AI governance gap alone, but independent institutions and philanthropy can help bridge the divide.

Drawing on her background as a physicist, Miller advocates for a practical, non-ideological approach to AI governance focused on protecting critical infrastructure, preventing strategic technological surprise, and keeping people safe while fostering innovation.

“Much of America’s critical infrastructure is highly distributed and deeply vulnerable, and its protection is dangerously under-resourced. The Hewlett Foundation wants to maximize the public benefits of emerging technologies while proactively mitigating their risks.”

To address these challenges, the Hewlett Foundation recently announced $10 million in exploratory grants to support the security of emerging technologies, including AI, biotechnology, and quantum computing.

Major grants were awarded to Stanford University’s Hoover Institution for its Tech Futures Lab, which focuses on anticipating technological surprises and enhancing U.S. resilience and Vanderbilt University’s Institute for National Security for its Wicked Problems Lab, which is building defenses against synthetic information warfare like deepfakes.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the director of the Hoover Institution, highlighted the importance of integrating security into innovation: “Innovation is key to national security…. Innovators will have more valuable, more marketable products if they build security into it at the front end.”

Other grantees include, the AI Now Institute, Aspen Institute, Atlantic Council, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Council on Foreign Relations, Georgetown University, Global Network Initiative, Institute for Security and Technology, Observer Research Foundation America, RAND, and Sentinel Bio.

Miller calls on others to join Hewlett, writing, “America has led every major technological era of the modern age, helping usher in significant discoveries that have benefited communities both here and around the world. Whether it continues to lead will depend not only on breakthroughs in labs, but on whether innovation earns public trust and delivers broad benefits. Philanthropy, with its long-term focus and commitment to charitable good, can do much to help.”

For more, read the op-ed and grant announcement: https://hewlett.org/americas-ai-governance-gap-needs-independent-oversight/ 

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SOURCE The Hewlett Foundation

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Hyperscale Data Sees Rising Demand Across Defense Portfolio Amid Heightened Global Activity

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LAS VEGAS, April 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Hyperscale Data, Inc. (NYSE American: GPUS), an artificial intelligence (“AI”) data center company anchored by Bitcoin (“Hyperscale Data” or the “Company”), today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Gresham Worldwide, Inc., which is expected to be merged with another wholly owned subsidiary of the Company called Ballista Group, Inc., and the related party TurnOnGreen, Inc. (the “Defense Systems Group”), are actively supporting the expected increase in global defense production through its integrated portfolio of high-performance defense engineering and manufacturing subsidiaries.

The Defense Systems Group operates as an integrated engineering and manufacturing platform serving defense, aerospace, and industrial markets, delivering mission-critical electronics, radio frequency (“RF”) systems, power platforms, and advanced control technologies across the full lifecycle, from design through long-term sustainment. 

Recent global events, including but not limited to the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, have contributed to increased demand signals across defense and mission-critical infrastructure supply chains. Management of the Defense Systems Group has observed a measurable uptick in inbound inquiries, program discussions and order flow across the group’s core product lines, particularly in:

RF and microwave systems supporting radar and electronic warfare;Power systems and ruggedized electronics for defense and mobility platforms; andTest, validation, and simulation technologies for mission-critical environments.

“These are environments where failure is not an option,” said Milton “Todd” Ault III, Executive Chairman of Hyperscale Data. He added that “The Defense Systems Group was assembled to deliver precision-engineered solutions for exactly these mission-critical applications, and we are seeing that demand accelerate in real time.” Further, Mr. Ault stated that “The group’s combination of deep engineering expertise, advanced manufacturing capabilities, and a global operational footprint provides a strong foundation to support long-term growth across defense, aerospace, and other mission-critical technology sectors.

The Defense Systems Group platform supports highly regulated and security-sensitive programs, operating under certifications including ISO, AS9100, and ITAR compliance, and serves customers across defense, aerospace, and critical infrastructure sectors globally. 

“As geopolitical conditions evolve, supply chains for advanced electronics and defense-related technologies are becoming increasingly constrained,” stated William Horne, Chief Executive Officer of Hyperscale Data. “The Defense Systems Group collectively provides a vertically integrated platform supporting advanced defense electronics, power systems, RF and microwave components, and precision-engineered subsystems, positioning the organization to support current and emerging demand across multiple strategic defense programs.”

While the Company continues to monitor global developments, management of the Defense Systems Group believes that sustained demand for mission-critical electronics, ruggedized power systems, and secure infrastructure technologies could present potential opportunities across the Defense Systems Group.

For more information on Hyperscale Data and its subsidiaries, Hyperscale Data recommends that stockholders, investors and any other interested parties read Hyperscale Data’s public filings and press releases available under the Investor Relations section at hyperscaledata.com or available at www.sec.gov.

About Hyperscale Data, Inc.

Through its wholly owned subsidiary Sentinum, Inc., Hyperscale Data owns and operates a data center at which it mines digital assets and offers colocation and hosting services for the emerging AI ecosystems and other industries. Hyperscale Data’s other wholly owned subsidiary, Ault Capital Group, Inc. (“ACG”), is a diversified holding company pursuing growth by acquiring undervalued businesses and disruptive technologies with a global impact.

Hyperscale Data currently expects the divestiture of ACG (the “Divestiture”) to occur in the second quarter of 2027. Upon the occurrence of the Divestiture, the Company would be an owner and operator of data centers to support high-performance computing services, as well as a holder of the digital assets. Until the Divestiture occurs, the Company will continue to provide, through ACG and its wholly and majority-owned subsidiaries and strategic investments, mission-critical products that support a diverse range of industries, including an AI software platform, equipment rental services, defense/aerospace, industrial, automotive, medical/biopharma and hotel operations. In addition, ACG is actively engaged in private credit and structured finance through a licensed lending subsidiary. Hyperscale Data’s headquarters are located at 11411 Southern Highlands Parkway, Suite 190, Las Vegas, NV 89141.

On December 23, 2024, the Company issued one million (1,000,000) shares of a newly designated Series F Exchangeable Preferred Stock (the “Series F Preferred Stock”) to all common stockholders and holders of the Series C Preferred Stock on an as-converted basis. The Divestiture will occur through the voluntary exchange of the Series F Preferred Stock for shares of Class A Common Stock and Class B Common Stock of ACG (collectively, the “ACG Shares”). The Company reminds its stockholders that only those holders of the Series F Preferred Stock who agree to surrender such shares, and do not properly withdraw such surrender, in the exchange offer through which the Divestiture will occur, will be entitled to receive the ACG Shares and consequently be shareholders of ACG upon the occurrence of the Divestiture.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements generally include statements that are predictive in nature and depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, and include words such as “believes,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “projects,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “strategy,” “future,” “opportunity,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “potential,” or similar expressions. Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current beliefs and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties.

Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update any of them publicly in light of new information or future events. Actual results could differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement as a result of various factors. More information, including potential risk factors, that could affect the Company’s business and financial results are included in the Company’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, the Company’s Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K. All filings are available at www.sec.gov and on the Company’s website at hyperscaledata.com.

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SOURCE Hyperscale Data Inc.

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