Connect with us

Technology

YunoJuno Releases 2026 Contractor Rates Report: AI, Product, and Technology Skills Continue to Drive Contractor Market Growth

Published

on

New data from YunoJuno reveals how AI, cloud-native skills, and direct sourcing are transforming the global contractor market in 2026.

NEW YORK and LONDON, June 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — YunoJuno, the leading end-to-end Freelancer Management System (FMS), today released its 2026 Contractor and Freelancer Rates Report, providing the most comprehensive global analysis of contractor rates, workforce trends, sourcing behavior, and AI adoption to date across technology, business, and creative disciplines.

Drawing on more than 182,000 workforce data points from the YunoJuno platform from 2024 and 2025 the report offers organizations and independent professionals an authoritative benchmark across global markets.

Technology and infrastructure skills command top rates globally

The report findings reflect a contractor market increasingly shaped by the demand for deep specialist expertise, particularly across AI adoption, cloud infrastructure investment, and software engineering. Technology disciplines continue to command the highest premiums globally, with Cloud & Infrastructure contractors reaching average rates of $93/hr (US) and £566/day (UK) – among the highest of any discipline tracked.

Across all disciplines, average contractor rates reached $68/hr (US) and £410/day (UK), with Software Engineering ($88/hr | £533/day), Product Management ($86/hr | £521/day), and Strategy ($85/hr | £518/day) all sitting well above the market average.

AI skills reshaping delivery, roles and rates

One of the report’s most significant findings is how AI is being adopted. Rather than creating a distinct new skills category, AI is becoming an embedded capability layer across existing disciplines – most prominently in Data & Analytics with 26%+ AI-related skills concentration.

“While much of the conversation around AI has focused on disruption, the reality is more nuanced,” said Runar Reistrup, CEO at YunoJuno. “AI is not creating an entirely separate category for specialism, but instead an embedded layer, reshaping how work is being delivered. The contractors creating the most value are those combining deep domain expertise with AI-enabled execution.”

At an overall level, AI skills are associated with a modest rate uplift indicating that adoption alone is not yet driving significant pricing differences across the market. However, this varies meaningfully by discipline with Software Engineering showing a strong rate uplift (+26%), reflecting the high value of AI integration within engineering workflows. Project Management follows (+17%) where AI is directly impacting delivery speed and operational efficiency.

Direct sourcing dominates

The report also reveals a meaningful shift in how enterprises are accessing contractors and freelancers. More than four in five contractor bookings (over 80%) were made through clients’ own direct contractor networks, underscoring the growing strategic importance of Freelancer Management Systems (FMSs) in helping organizations build, manage, and redeploy trusted talent pools at scale.

Direct bookings have grown year-over-year, pointing to a more selective and operationally mature sourcing model, with organizations using external channels to solve capability gaps and delivery complexity. At the same time, the speed advantage of contractor hiring remains a critical driver – with onboarding taking place within hours compared to permanent hiring lead times of three to six months.

Access the 2026 report

YunoJuno’s 2026 Contractor and Freelancer Rates Report is available to access and download at www.yunojuno.com/freelancer-rates-report, with benchmarks spanning AI & Automation, Cloud & Infrastructure, Data & Analytics, Product Management, Software Engineering, Marketing & Communications, Strategy, UX, Creative, Design, and broader Business Operations disciplines.

About YunoJuno
YunoJuno is the leading global end-to-end Freelancer Management System (FMS) that helps enterprises source, onboard, manage, and pay contractors globally with complete compliance and transparency. YunoJuno’s AI-powered technology streamlines the entire contractor engagement process while mitigating compliance risks, currently serving 12,000 businesses and hundreds of thousands of independent contractors and freelancers worldwide.

For more information, visit www.yunojuno.com

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2249760/6001722/YunoJuno_Logo.jpg

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/yunojuno-releases-2026-contractor-rates-report-ai-product-and-technology-skills-continue-to-drive-contractor-market-growth-302790336.html

SOURCE YunoJuno

Continue Reading

Technology

TacnIQ.ai raises US$1.5 million from In Group Holdings to scale tactile AI

Published

on

By

Part of a US$3 million pre-seed round, the funding will accelerate the physical AI start-up’s tactile foundation model, engineering team and commercial deployments across five key industries

SINGAPORE, Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — TacnIQ.ai, a physical AI startup building technology that enables machines and robots to interpret touch, has secured US$1.5 million from lead investor In Group Holdings as part of a US$3 million pre-seed round. The funding will support the development of TacnIQ.ai’s  tactile AI foundation models, expansion of its engineering team, and scaling of commercial deployments.

The TacnIQ.ai platform enables machines to interpret signals generated through physical contact so they can understand and respond more reliably to real-world interactions. TacnIQ.ai has deployed a scalable, commercially validated and field-tested model with paying customers across five key industries: logistics, construction, e-commerce, hospitality, and healthcare. These deployments, which gather signals through sensor-based data collection nodes, deliver real-world value by improving workplace safety and ergonomics, while giving TacnIQ.ai the raw sensor data it needs to build a robust, reliable, and commercially ready foundation model.

“Our mission is to build AI models that deliver real-world impact today and transform how engineers design and develop hardware,” said Aashish Mehta, Co-founder and CEO of TacnIQ.ai. “We are grateful to In Group Holdings for backing that mission. Securing this investment is an important milestone and will enable us to hire talented engineers, build advanced tactile models, and to fully develop the technology into practical, scalable industry applications.”

To date, TacnIQ.ai has built one of the world’s largest tactile datasets with more than 5,000 hours of interactions collected from both controlled experiments and commercial deployments. The company is developing additional sensor nodes to capture a wide range of physical signals, which will broaden the multimodal data available to train its models.

While many tactile AI systems are trained on laboratory data or built for specific applications, TacnIQ.ai uses its proprietary dataset to train its model across different industries, tasks and operating conditions. This enables its model to generalize across industries and physical tasks, perform more reliably in complex environments, and reduce the need for application-specific training.

Liu Song, CEO of In Group Holdings, said: “Physical AI is emerging as one of the next major frontiers in artificial intelligence. TacnIQ.ai is building a critical intelligence layer for the physical world, underpinned by proprietary tactile data and real-world commercial deployments. We believe this combination of data, technology and practical applications strongly differentiates the company, and we are excited to lead this funding round and support the team as it scales.”

TacnIQ.ai is working with Synaptics to close the gap between research and commercially ready tactile applications. Commenting on the investment, Mahesh Srinivasan, Vice President & GM, Touch & Display at Synaptics, said: “We are delighted to partner with the TacnIQ.ai team in unlocking the potential of touch-based AI. For physical AI to move beyond the lab, systems must be able to interpret complex physical signals reliably and in real time. TacnIQ.ai is tackling that challenge by turning tactile intelligence into robust, commercially ready hardware.”

TacnIQ.ai is hiring across AI, software engineering and business development. Interested candidates can explore opportunities to help build the foundation model for physical interaction at https://www.tacniq.ai/careers#open-positions.

About TacnIQ.ai

TacnIQ.ai is a physical AI startup building foundational sensor models for physical interaction, starting with tactile. Backy, its tactile wearable data node, is deployed across logistics, construction, e-commerce, hospitality, and healthcare environments, delivering real-world impact while serving as the company’s testing ground for a robust, reliable tactile model. Additional data nodes are in development to capture physics primitives and support generalization across applications. TacnIQ.ai’s mission is to bridge AI and the physical world by building the foundation model for physical interaction. For more information, visit https://www.tacniq.ai/.

About In Group Holdings

In Group Holdings is a Singapore-based investment firm focused on backing high-growth companies across artificial intelligence, deep technology, healthcare, climate technology, semiconductors, robotics, quantum technologies, and other frontier sectors. The firm partners with visionary founders to accelerate commercialization, scale globally, and create long-term value through strategic capital, active governance, and access to its extensive network of industry partners, customers, and co-investors. For more information, visit https://ingroupholdings.com/

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/tacniqai-raises-us1-5-million-from-in-group-holdings-to-scale-tactile-ai-302885436.html

SOURCE TacnIQ.ai

Continue Reading

Technology

FXT Unveils FXT AI: A Multi-Agent Trading Co-Pilot for Market Insight, Risk Awareness and Trader Development.

Published

on

By

SYDNEY, Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — FXT today announced the launch of FXT AI, an advanced AI trading co-pilot integrated directly into the FXT trading platform. Designed to give traders an immediate edge. FXT AI acts as a dedicated partner that continuously watches the market, reviews trading history, and monitors risk.

Traders often struggle to make sense of overwhelming market data while managing risk exposure. FXT AI solves this by operating as three specialist agents working together seamlessly within a trader’s existing account. There is no new app to download. Traders simply open their dashboard to get instant, actionable insights, asking questions to dig deeper into market movements and personal performance.

Three Specialist Agents

Market Reader: Reads the market around the clock and explains what matters and why.
Traders can ask about specific instrument movements.

Trade Mentor: Turns a trader’s history into their next advantage. It breaks down trade history,
flags costly habits and compares win rates.

Risk Monitor: Explains the risk in open positions in plain terms, offering stop-loss suggestions and leverage exposure insights.

Unlike generic market signals, FXT AI is built on the trader’s actual account activity. Every insight is transparent and explainable. FXT AI informs the strategy, but the trader always decides and executes the trades.

“We built FXT AI to give traders a partner that understands their habits and the wider market,” said Adam Phillips, Chief Executive Officer at FXT. “It turns complexity into clear, personalised insight, helping clients recognise opportunities, strengthen their process and make confident decisions.”

FXT AI runs directly on the FXT platform across web, desktop, and mobile devices, alongside third-party MetaQuotes platforms such as MT4 and MT5. Additional specialist agents are currently in development as FXT continues to expand the platform’s capabilities.

About FXT

FXT is part of the Gleneagle Group being a leader in the evolution of financial markets offering corporate advisory, funds management, institutional dealing, broking and trading platform services. It has an Australian Financial Services license and the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC) Financial License. FXT is a multi-asset CFD trading platform offering access to 200+ instruments across FX, indices, commodities and shares from a single account.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/fxt-unveils-fxt-ai-a-multi-agent-trading-co-pilot-for-market-insight-risk-awareness-and-trader-development-302886755.html

Continue Reading

Technology

Accels has been serving customers in recent years. The company’s plans extend far beyond routing

Published

on

By

Token Is Becoming a Managed Asset.

The Economics of AI Are Entering a New Phase.

SINGAPORE, Sept. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Enterprise spending on AI tokens is growing faster than the systems designed to track it. A McKinsey study found that enterprise LLM spending tripled in twelve months, even as the cost per token fell sharply — because companies are running more complex workloads across more workflows. Goldman Sachs projects token consumption will increase 24-fold by 2030. And yet, for most companies, token spending remains a black box: unpredictable, difficult to forecast, and impossible to finance.

Token consumption is already one of the fastest-growing costs on the enterprise P&L,” said Raymond, CEO of Accels. “But it is still managed with spreadsheets and manual reconciliation. There is no infrastructure for treating token usage the way finance teams treat any other material input — something to be measured, optimized, and financed.”

One company that has been operating in this space is Accels, whose routing product, Accels Router, has been serving customers in recent years. The platform provides reliable, low-latency access to a wide range of large language models, and is now being upgraded and expanded to cover 15 leading model providers and more than 150 AI models through a single API.

The team behind Accels has spent the past several years researching and building at the intersection of AI infrastructure and financial services. That experience shaped a key design principle: routing data, billing data, and credit assessment should operate as a single system, rather than separate products stitched together. The goal is that a company’s actual token consumption patterns — how much it uses, how predictably, at what cost — will inform its credit profile and financing terms.

The company’s plans extend far beyond routing. Accels is exploring a broader set of capabilities designed for how AI agents actually operate, spend, and grow — with the intention of helping businesses manage token consumption as both an operational input and a financial resource.

“The companies that will win in AI are not just the ones with the best models,” said Raymond. “They are the ones that can manage the economics of running agents at scale. That requires infrastructure that understands tokens as both an operational input and a financial resource.”

About Accels

Accels is headquartered in Singapore and is dedicated to building AI infrastructure for the agentic economy. Combining deep experience in financial services with a growing AI infrastructure business, Accels aims to launch inclusive, accessible financial products that help businesses and developers participate in — and benefit from — the growth of AI agents and the token economy that powers them.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/accels-has-been-serving-customers-in-recent-years-the-companys-plans-extend-far-beyond-routing-302886009.html

SOURCE Accels

Continue Reading

Trending