Connect with us

Technology

CDP Announces Transformative Investment to Accelerate Environmental Transparency Worldwide

Published

on

CDP to become two separate organisations – CDP, a commercial entity backed by Permira, and CDP Foundation, a non-profit, charitable organisation focused on pioneering science*.CDP Foundation will remain a shareholder in CDP, with board representation.Both organisations will remain united in a shared ambition to support trusted, science-led environmental disclosure.

LONDON, June 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CDP, the global environmental disclosure system, announced today that it will be transforming into two separate organisations: CDP, a commercial entity backed by global investment firm Permira, which will continue to provide environmental data and disclosure services to companies worldwide; and CDP Foundation, a charitable organisation that will drive the strategic principles for disclosure based on the latest environmental science.

Both organisations will be united in a shared ambition: to surface new information, enabling Earth-positive decisions to protect future generations.

For 25 years, CDP has been at the forefront of environmental disclosure, transforming it from the sidelines to the centre of decision-making. To meet the scale and speed of today’s environmental challenges and market expectations, CDP is sharpening its focus, enabling stronger science-led disclosure and greater investment in technology to simplify the disclosure experience and deliver more decision-useful insights.

For disclosers and data users, this means a more focused CDP with greater capacity to invest in the tools, data services and insights they rely on to assess risk, build resilience and inform sustainability strategy.

The CDP Foundation, which will remain a shareholder in CDP with board representation, will lead on translating frontier science into action-ready disclosure methods, informing the evolution of CDP’s question bank. CDP will focus on deploying the world’s most comprehensive disclosure system, surfacing Earth-positive information to drive tomorrow’s economy.

The CDP Foundation will look beyond standard market practice, harnessing frontier environmental indicators aligned to planetary health, to drive impact. This new model provides the Foundation with the agency to focus on the needs of the planet, channelling them through the world’s most comprehensive and pioneering disclosure system.

Transforming into two distinct but symbiotic organisations will enable both the CDP Foundation and CDP to remain as purpose-driven, pioneering, and ambitious as CDP was when it was founded. It will enable both organisations to advance their ambition of using critical data to inform Earth-positive decision-making and for CDP Foundation to continue to advance its charitable purposes.

CDP’s products, services and 2026 disclosure cycle will continue as planned during the transition.

Sherry Madera, Chief Executive Officer of CDP, said: “This is a transformative moment, marking the next chapter of CDP’s evolution in service of global markets. We are deepening our priorities – enabling CDP to deliver stronger science-led, disclosure and leverage new technologies to simplify the disclosure experience.”

“CDP and CDP Foundation will be united in shared ambition. Together they will uphold a pioneering disclosure system that will help unlock greater decision-useful insights to shape an Earth-positive economy. This partnership with Permira will chart a clear path for the future, enabling CDP’s environmental data and insights to deliver greater value to disclosers, companies, financial institutions and wider CDP data users, accelerating meaningful, real-world impact.”

Katherine Garrett-Cox, Chair, CDP Board of Trustees, added: “Innovation and science have been at the heart of CDP since its founding, and it will continue to guide our work – through both the CDP Foundation and CDP. As we embark on this next chapter, alongside our long-standing supporters and new partners, this new model will enable CDP to enhance the vital role its data plays in the world: to drive impact, advance sustainable markets, and protect future generations.” 

Permira, the global investment firm, brings significant experience in supporting data-led organisations to innovate and grow, and will support CDP through its strategic transformation with increased investment in people, technology and product development.

This partnership, which will see CDP Foundation remain a shareholder in CDP, with board representation, will strengthen CDP’s ability to deliver for its customers at scale, significantly improving the disclosure experience and data insights for corporates and financial institutions globally.

Permira has a longstanding commitment to sustainability. The firm has established a dedicated Energy Transition investment strategy focused on backing and scaling leaders in this space through bringing deep expertise in building global technology, data and services platforms.

Anish Patel, Partner and Co-Head, and Gabriel Andrews, Managing Director – Energy Transition, at Permira, said: “As environmental risk reshapes global supply chains and investment decisions, the need for trusted data has never been greater, and CDP fulfils that role. As Permira’s first Energy Transition investment, this partnership will strengthen CDP’s ability to support better environmental decision-making at scale, while helping provide a strong platform for the Foundation’s continued work. Permira has a strong track record of backing world-class management teams and organisations, helping them advance their missions and expand their impact. We look forward to partnering with Sherry and the CDP team as they enter this next chapter, and are grateful for their trust.”

Bates Wells and Baker & McKenzie LLP served as legal counsel to the charitable organisation CDP, CDP North America and CDP Japan. Rothschild & Co and Alvarez & Marshal served as financial advisors to the charitable organisation, CDP.

*Completion is subject to receiving regulatory approvals, including from the Charity Commission, and satisfying certain closing conditions. Completion is anticipated in the next six months.

About Permira

Permira is a global investment firm that backs successful businesses with growth ambitions. Founded in 1985, the firm advises funds across two core asset classes, private equity and credit, with total committed capital of approximately €90bn.

Permira established its Energy Transition investment strategy to identify investment opportunities across the underlying value chains. The dedicated investment team will bring the full Permira platform to bear to help market-leading businesses deliver transformational growth at scale.

Permira employs over 500 people in 16 offices across Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. For more information, visit www.permira.com.

For more information, or to arrange interviews, please contact: 

CDP – Samika Meshram-Jasinski / James Steward: media@cdp.net

Headland (for Permira) – Carl Leijonhufvud / Emma Nyman / Charlie Pepper: permira@headlandconsultancy.com / +44 20 3805 4822

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cdp-announces-transformative-investment-to-accelerate-environmental-transparency-worldwide-302797348.html

SOURCE CDP

Continue Reading

Technology

uSMART Securities Singapore Marks Third Branch Opening in Bugis with Lion Dance and K-pop

Published

on

By

SINGAPORE, Nov. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — uSMART Securities Singapore officially opened its third branch at 516 North Bridge Road, #01-00, Singapore 188740 expanding its physical presence in Singapore with a new uSMART Investor Hub. The opening was marked by a private ceremony featuring a speech, a traditional lion dance and a K-pop dance performance, bringing together the uSMART team, esteemed guests and partners.

The Bugis opening marks another milestone in uSMART’s expansion in Singapore, following the launch of its first local branch at Robinson Road in July 2025 and its Somerset branch in October that year. The new branch reflects the company’s approach of combining digital trading with face-to-face support, offering clients an additional location to make enquiries, receive assistance with account opening and engage directly with the team.

Speaking at the ceremony, Mr Eng Thiam Choon (TC Eng), Chief Operating Officer of uSMART, highlighted the importance of maintaining physical branches alongside digital brokerage services. Clients may appreciate the opportunity to discuss opening their first investment account, gain a better understanding of products available on the app or receive assistance with any issues.

“Customers should have a choice in how they deal with us. If they’re comfortable doing everything on the app, that’s fine. If they’d prefer to come in and talk, we want to make that possible too,” said Mr Eng.

Drawing on its experience operating branches in Hong Kong, uSMART has tailored this approach to the Singapore market through ongoing engagement and conversations with local clients.

Mr Eng also highlighted the importance of understanding different trading rules, currency exposure and diversification as investors explore more markets. Seminars and conversations with the branch team will support these learning opportunities, equipping clients with the knowledge and information they need to make informed investment decisions.

“You don’t need to come with a decision already made. You can come with a question,” said Mr Eng.

Beyond the opening celebrations, Mr Eng highlighted the importance of consistent client service through attentive listening, clear communication and following through on commitments.

About uSMART Securities (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.

Established in March 2021, uSMART Securities (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. is the Singapore entity of uSMART Group, which holds a Capital Markets Services licence issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) (Licence No. CMS101161).

Through the uSMART platform, the company provides access to stocks across global markets, as well as ETFs, options, futures, funds, Contracts for Difference (CFDs) and forex products. Its services include digital trading tools and client account support.

In addition to its digital trading platform, uSMART offers structured investment solutions, including Fixed Coupon Notes (FCNs), catering to investors with different investment objectives and risk preferences. Through its growing network of physical branches, the company also provides face-to-face assistance, investor education and account support, complementing its digital services.

Branch Address

uSMART Securities – Bugis Branch
516 North Bridge Road, #01-00
Singapore 188740

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/usmart-securities-singapore-marks-third-branch-opening-in-bugis-with-lion-dance-and-k-pop-302939511.html

SOURCE uSMART Securities (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.

Continue Reading

Technology

Chinese Team Drops a “Game-Changer”: Motphys Launches MotrixSim 1.0, Sparking Industry Buzz

Published

on

By

BEIJING, Nov. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — If the global expansion of Chinese-made robots defined the hardware boom in the first half of the embodied AI race, the second half will be won by those that can bring down the high cost of real-world trial and error and make robot training more universal and accessible. In this underlying physics engine race long dominated by Western players, a Chinese team is now bringing a potential game-changer to the field.

Recently, Chinese company Motphys was invited to attend CoRL 2026, where it showcased its fully in-house embodied intelligence simulation engine—MotrixSim 1.0. In extreme benchmark tests against leading international physics engines, MotrixSim 1.0 demonstrates extraordinary capabilities: overwhelming established open-source engines in the contact and grasping test and vastly surpassing mainstream GPU-accelerated simulation platforms in training efficiency.

In the past, simulation was primarily used for error-proof verification at the end of the design phase. But in the era of embodied AI, AI requires massive amounts of interaction experience.

“Simulation once served to validate how machines perform. Now, it is where they learn how to perform,” said Zhang Heng, co-founder and CTO of Motphys. Simulation has evolved from a “post-design validation tool” into a “physical experience production system”. To power this system, Motphys builds its physics engine entirely in-house, developing the core from the ground up in Rust rather than building on existing open-source engines. This equips MotrixSim 1.0 with strong memory safety and computation power, enabling it to compete with established international players at the underlying architecture level.

True technical strength is proven in extreme tests.

In a “devil-level” disturbance-rejection grasping test where a Franka arm grasps objects of different shapes, MotrixSim 1.0 is the only engine to achieve a 100% pass rate at both 2 ms and 10 ms simulation step sizes. In the microscopic critical friction point test, MotrixSim exhibits hold-and-slip behavior near the critical friction consistent with Coulomb’s law, achieving 0mm slip distance.

In terms of compute and training efficiency. Through its unique pipeline supporting CPU/GPU parallel computation, MotrixSim can achieve a physics simulation throughput of millions of physics steps per second across 4,096 parallel environments. In a controlled comparison conducted on the G1 whole-body tracking task, under the same task environment configuration and the same RL algorithm, MotrixSim reaches the current tracking score in about 10.2 minutes of end-to-end time, while the Isaac Sim-based solution takes 130.8 minutes—a gap of about 12.8×.

Furthermore, for the Strandbeest complex closed-loop mechanism with 92 linkages, when traditional engines fail to maintain the stability of the mechanism at a large time step of 5ms, MotrixSim solves closed-loop constraints together with the multibody dynamics in generalized coordinates, so the mechanism maintains its assembly relationships during motion.

Beyond extreme physical conditions and compute, MotrixSim 1.0 has achieved breakthroughs in multimodal perception and developer experience: LiDAR simulation throughput reaches 124 million rays per second; visual synthesis maintains stable throughput even when resolution surges 16 times. In terms of developer experience and industrial deployment, MotrixSim 1.0 streamlines development with high-speed solving in a single line of code (98.42% success rate) and a “zero-conversion + AI auto-modeling” workflow. Forge is also launched as the industry’s first Blender-based extension tool, enabling AI Agents to automatically generate physics scenes.

Zhang Heng emphasized that the core proposition of Physical AI is to transform expensive and slow “real-world physical experience” into digital learning resources that can be generated at scale.

Motphys’s relevant research has been accepted to top international conferences such as RSS and CoRL, and the company has built a simulation and real-robot training center for embodied AI in China. Currently, the world’s leading physics engines primarily include Google’s MuJoCo and NVIDIA’s Isaac Sim.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chinese-team-drops-a-game-changer-motphys-launches-motrixsim-1-0–sparking-industry-buzz-302939513.html

SOURCE Motphys

Continue Reading

Technology

HiTHIUM Partners with the University of Cambridge to Advance International Industry-Academia Collaboration in Long-Duration Energy Storage

Published

on

By

XIAMEN, China, Nov. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On November 12, the Global Energy Storage Colloquium was held in Xiamen. During the colloquium, HiTHIUM and the University of Cambridge signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU), establishing a strategic partnership. The two parties will collaborate on frontier scientific research, key technology innovation and industrial applications in battery energy storage, bringing academic research into closer alignment with industry needs and exploring new models for international industry-academia collaboration. The partnership aims to contribute to the advancement of global energy storage technology and the industry.

The UK has a strong track record in the development of modern battery technologies and fundamental research. The University of Cambridge is one of the world’s leading universities, with internationally recognized expertise in engineering, materials science and fundamental research. As a leading global energy storage technology company, HiTHIUM has long focused on energy storage technology development and commercialization. It continues to advance integrated research and innovation across the value chain, from high-capacity energy storage cells to long-duration energy storage systems and grid integration technologies.

The collaboration is intended to bring internationally leading academic research into closer engagement with innovation across China’s energy storage industry. The University of Cambridge’s strengths in fundamental science, materials research and engineering will offer new perspectives and approaches to key scientific questions and emerging technologies in energy storage. HiTHIUM will bring its experience in long-duration energy storage (LDES), product development and large-scale deployment, connecting research with real industry needs and application scenarios, and supporting the engineering validation and commercialization of research outcomes. By drawing on the strengths of both research and industry, the partnership will strengthen the links between frontier innovation and practical applications.

Under the cooperation plan, the two parties will establish joint management and research collaboration mechanisms, bringing together academic resources and corporate R&D capabilities. They will work together to plan research projects, facilitate scientific exchange and support the translation of research outcomes, strengthening connections between fundamental research, technology development and industrial applications so that innovation in energy storage can better serve industry needs.

The partnership also marks an important step in HiTHIUM’s efforts to expand its international innovation network. Building on this collaboration with the University of Cambridge, HiTHIUM will further strengthen academic exchanges and research partnerships with leading universities and research institutions around the world. By bringing together international research resources and talent, the company aims to encourage collaboration across disciplines and technology fields, explore the development of technologies such as LDES from a global perspective, and bring technical challenges and application needs from the front lines of industry into research and innovation. This will help research and industrial practice reinforce one another.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hithium-partners-with-the-university-of-cambridge-to-advance-international-industry-academia-collaboration-in-long-duration-energy-storage-302939492.html

SOURCE HiTHIUM

Continue Reading

Trending