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ZestyAI Strengthens Leadership Team to Accelerate Next Phase of Growth

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David Friend joins as CFO and John Ross as SVP of Client Development as the company scales its AI platform across the P&C industry

SAN FRANCISCO, June 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ – ZestyAI, the Risk Decision Intelligence Platform for the insurance industry, today announced the appointments of David Friend as Chief Financial Officer and John Ross as Senior Vice President of Client Development. Both executives bring decades of experience across insurance and enterprise technology and join ZestyAI as insurers increasingly adopt the company’s AI-powered platform for underwriting, pricing, and portfolio management.

The hires come as ZestyAI turns cash flow positive, more than doubles product usage, surpasses 200 regulatory approvals, and adds 26 new carrier customers.

Friend brings more than two decades of experience scaling high-growth enterprise software companies. He most recently served as CFO of Quantum Metric for five years as it scaled through the $100M annual recurring revenue milestone. Earlier, as an investor at Bain Capital Ventures, he partnered with founders building category-defining enterprise software companies. At ZestyAI, he leads finance, accounting, and corporate development.

Ross brings nearly two decades of P&C insurance experience across carriers, insurtech, and data and analytics providers, with a track record of leading teams that drive growth through a relentless focus on customer service. He joins ZestyAI from LexisNexis Risk Solutions, where he ran the Auto and Home portfolio and led the industry’s largest commercial relationships across personal lines insurers. At ZestyAI, he leads client development, ensuring customers realize measurable value through precision underwriting, improved rate segmentation, and enhanced access to reinsurance capital.

“David and John are exactly the leaders we need at this stage,” said Attila Toth, Founder and CEO of ZestyAI. “David has built and scaled the financial foundation of high-growth enterprise software companies, and John has spent his career inside the P&C insurance market helping carriers turn data into better underwriting and portfolio decisions. They strengthen how we operate as a company and how we partner with customers as AI becomes core decision infrastructure across the insurance enterprise.”

“ZestyAI is operating at the intersection of two major shifts in enterprise software — the move to AI-native platforms and the transition from systems of record to systems of intelligence,” said David Friend. “The carriers pulling ahead are using property intelligence and agentic AI to underwrite more accurately, deploy capital more efficiently, and respond to risk faster. ZestyAI is built to give them that edge. I’m looking forward to helping more carriers put it to work.”

“What drew me to ZestyAI is a rare combination: a company with the technology to genuinely change this market for the better, and the opportunity to do it in partnership with carriers, reinsurers, and ultimately the consumers they serve,” said John Ross. “I’ve spent my career helping insurers turn data into better decisions in challenging markets and move beyond the inertia that too often defines the industry,” said John Ross. “ZestyAI combines property intelligence, predictive modeling, and agentic AI to give carriers a precise view of risk across their portfolio and materially improve how they manage it.”

A Year of Momentum

In the past year, ZestyAI has:

Turned cash flow positive while more than doubling product usage across underwriting, rating, and reinsurance workflowsAdded 26 new clients, including Applied Underwriters, California Casualty, Lemonade, and MarshExpanded commercial relationships with 12 existing enterprise customers through new agreements, including Berkshire Hathaway, the California FAIR Plan, and CSAASurpassed 200 regulatory approvals nationwide, spanning multiple products and perilsLaunched ZORRO, its agentic AI platform, and ZORRO Discover™ — which reduces manual regulatory and market research by 95% for underwriters, product leaders, and executivesLaunched Z-SPARK™, a property-level fire risk model grounded in modern fire science with 30× greater accuracy than traditional methodsWelcomed Scott Stephenson, former Chairman, President, and CEO of Verisk Analytics, to its Board of Directors

Building on its continued leadership in wildfire risk analytics, in 2025 ZestyAI significantly expanded the adoption of its severe convective storm, wind, hail, and non-weather water suite of models, reinforcing its evolution into a multi-peril decision intelligence platform. That precision gives carriers something rare in catastrophe-exposed markets: the confidence to grow. Insurers using ZestyAI are writing policies they otherwise couldn’t have priced — expanding their books while maintaining underwriting discipline. In 2025 alone, that translated into coverage for nearly one million families and businesses previously considered difficult or uneconomical to insure.

About ZestyAI

ZestyAI is the Risk Decision Intelligence Platform for the insurance industry. Trusted by Property & Casualty carriers, reinsurers, brokers, and regulators across the United States, ZestyAI helps insurers make better decisions faster and with greater confidence. The platform unifies property-level data, predictive AI models, and agentic AI automation to transform how insurers see, price, and manage risk. Through machine learning, computer vision, and regulatory-grade transparency, ZestyAI delivers precision and performance across underwriting, rating, reinsurance, and regulatory workflows. Validated by climate science and historical loss data, ZestyAI’s models cover major perils including wildfire, severe convective storm, and non-weather water. From improving pricing accuracy to strengthening reinsurance outcomes, ZestyAI brings trusted AI to every insurance decision—helping the industry operate with speed, accuracy, and resilience.

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SOURCE ZestyAI

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Times of India Launches Inaugural ‘TOI AI Quotient Awards’ to Celebrate Pioneers in AI Innovation

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June 18, 2026

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In collaboration with Knowledge Partner Adrosonic, the premier nomination-led platform will honor excellence, scalability, and measurable impact across India’s AI ecosystem.

NEW DELHI, June 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Times of India has announced the launch of the inaugural edition of the TOI AI Quotient Awards—India’s most credible, nomination-led recognition platform celebrating excellence in artificial intelligence adoption, innovation, and impact.

Organized in collaboration with Adrosonic as the official Knowledge Partner, the awards will bring together pioneering enterprises, technology leaders, startups, innovators, and institutions that are harnessing the power of AI to drive business transformation, optimize decision-making, and enhance customer experiences.

As AI becomes a core driver of competitiveness and productivity, this initiative marks the beginning of a prestigious annual celebration. The awards aim to spotlight those leveraging AI to solve complex challenges, unlock new opportunities, and deliver meaningful, scalable outcomes across sectors.

Leadership Insights

“The conversation around AI has rapidly moved from experimentation to execution. For modern brands, a high AI Quotient is now a boardroom priority. The TOI AI Quotient Awards will serve as India’s most credible validation platform, spotlighting the enterprises that are successfully navigating this transition to drive real business outcomes and stronger governance. We look forward to uncovering the incredible stories of human-machine collaboration that are redefining the future of Indian industry.”
— Prasad Sanyal, Group Business Head – TOI, IndiaTimes, WhatsHot

“AI will not replace human intelligence, it will amplify it. The organisations that succeed with AI will be those that combine technology with human judgement, domain expertise and a clear focus on business outcomes. The true measure of AI success is not how much AI is deployed, but how effectively it improves decision making and delivers measurable value. Achieving this requires clear objectives, strong governance and responsible guardrails. The TOI AI Quotient Awards celebrate organisations turning AI potential into meaningful business impact.”
— Mayank, Founder & CEO, Adrosonic

Award Tracks & Categories

The initiative features 25+ awards distributed across 4 distinct tracks: Industry, Functional AI, Maturity-based, and Special Jury Awards. Key categories include:

Sector Excellence: BFSI, Retail & Commerce, Healthcare & Wellness, Travel & Hospitality, Media & Content.Functional & Strategic AI: Customer Experience, HR & Talent, Risk & Compliance.Enterprise & Impact: Social Impact, Women in AI, Legacy to AI Transformation, and Native Enterprise.

To ensure absolute credibility, the evaluation matrix leverages Adrosonic’s deep technical consulting frameworks for an objective initial screening. Following a preliminary audit by the expert TOI Editorial Board, the final winners will be selected by an esteemed, independent jury comprising leading AI experts, technology pioneers, industry veterans, and business visionaries.

Why Nominate Your Organization?

The TOI AI Quotient Awards offer more than just recognition—they provide a premier platform for national visibility and industry-wide alignment:

National Recognition: Showcase your AI-led innovations and business impact before a distinguished audience of industry leaders and decision-makers.Credible Validation: Gain elite positioning backed by TOI’s powerful media reach and Adrosonic’s technical validation frameworks.Industry Benchmarking: Measure your achievements against the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem to strengthen your market leadership.

How to Participate

Is your organization setting new benchmarks in AI adoption and implementation? Do you know an enterprise driving measurable transformation through artificial intelligence?

Nominate your organization or a deserving industry leader today to secure your place among India’s most forward-thinking, AI-driven enterprises.

Learn more and submit your nomination here: toievents.indiatimes.com/ai-quotient-awards

 

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Saturn Cloud and Spectro Cloud Partner to Bring Production-Ready AI to Palette-Managed Kubernetes

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June 18, 2026

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Organizations running Spectro Cloud Palette can now deploy Saturn Cloud’s managed AI platform directly onto their existing Kubernetes infrastructure, from data center to edge, including FIPS 140-3 validated environments.

NEW YORK, June 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Saturn Cloud, the AI token factory platform for GPU clouds, AI Factory operators, and enterprises, today announced an integration with Spectro Cloud, the Kubernetes management platform trusted by enterprises and government agencies worldwide. The integration allows organizations already running Spectro Cloud Palette to add Saturn Cloud as a managed AI layer on their existing clusters, giving engineers self-service access to Jupyter, VS Code, RStudio, SSH, distributed training, and model deployments without requiring changes to the underlying infrastructure.

This integration meets platform teams where they already are: on managed Kubernetes. Palette handles cluster lifecycle management, GPU operator deployment, compliance profiles, and infrastructure governance. Saturn Cloud delivers the AI experience on top. The result is a complete AI platform that inherits the operational model and governance controls established by the platform team.

A Managed AI Layer on Palette-Managed Clusters

Platform engineering teams at large enterprises, government agencies, and regulated industries have already invested in Kubernetes and standardized on Spectro Cloud Palette to manage clusters across data centers, cloud environments, and edge locations. What they lack is a way to deliver AI capabilities to their engineering teams without spinning up a parallel stack or compromising the controls they have spent years building.

Saturn Cloud fits into the Palette-managed environment as a workload layer. Engineers get distributed multi-GPU training with automatic retry and logging, one-click model deployments with autoscaling, experiment tracking across training runs, and pre-configured development environments, all deployed through the same Palette cluster profiles and governance policies that manage the rest of the organization’s infrastructure. Palette’s GPU Operator Packs handle driver installation, device plugins, and monitoring automatically across the cluster, so there is no additional GPU lifecycle overhead. Engineers write standard PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX code and ship to production with no Kubernetes expertise required on the practitioner side.

“Most enterprise AI teams already have Kubernetes. What they don’t have is a way to give engineers a self-service AI experience on top of it without months of internal platform work. With Spectro Cloud, we eliminate that gap,” said Sebastian Metti, Founder, Saturn Cloud.

Why This Matters for Regulated Industries

For organizations in defense, healthcare, financial services, and other regulated sectors, the integration extends to Spectro Cloud’s Palette VerteX edition. VerteX is the only multi-environment Kubernetes management platform to have achieved FIPS 140-3 validation and is in progress for FedRAMP Moderate authorization (Army-sponsored). Saturn Cloud running on VerteX-managed clusters inherits the cryptographic assurance that agencies and compliance-driven enterprises require, including air-gapped and tactical edge deployments.

This is a meaningful distinction from public cloud AI services that cannot operate in disconnected or classified environments.

Where the Integration Runs

Spectro Cloud Palette manages Kubernetes across bare metal, VMware, public cloud (EKS, AKS, OCI), private data centers, and edge locations, often from a single control plane managing thousands of clusters. Saturn Cloud’s integration spans that same footprint. An organization can run AI workloads in a central GPU cluster and deploy trained models to Palette-managed edge clusters at hospital sites, retail locations, manufacturing floors, or forward-deployed military installations.

“Most organizations do not want to build a separate AI platform from scratch. They want to extend the Kubernetes operating model, governance, and security they already trust into AI development and production. Our integration with Saturn Cloud does exactly that. Together, we enable platform teams to deliver a self-service AI experience on Palette-managed infrastructure – across data center, cloud, edge, and regulated environments – without introducing a parallel stack or compromising operational control”, said Saad Malik, Spectro Cloud’s CTO and Co-Founder.

About Saturn Cloud

Saturn Cloud is the AI token factory platform for neoclouds, AI Factory operators, and enterprises. Saturn Cloud’s platform layer gives these operators a managed AI platform on top of their GPU infrastructure, including fine-tuning, model serving, per-token inference, development environments, distributed training, OpenAI-compatible model deployment, and enterprise security and governance. Saturn Cloud supports GPU architectures and deploys across public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises environments. Learn more at saturncloud.io.

About Spectro Cloud

With our Palette and PaletteAI platforms, Spectro Cloud solves how enterprises and public sector organizations manage full-stack application and AI infrastructure in any environment: from edge to cloud, and from metal to model. Using the power of cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes, we give platform engineers and operations teams flexibility to choose their perfect stack, while benefiting from complete repeatable consistency. We automate the full lifecycle of complex infrastructure at scale, for massive cost savings and better business outcomes. Learn more at spectrocloud.com.

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SOURCE Saturn Cloud

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Orion Innovation Achieves AWS Migration Competency for Cloud Transformation

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June 18, 2026

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New AWS competency empowers Orion to guide enterprises through seamless cloud migration and accelerated modernization at scale.

ISELIN, N.J., June 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Orion Innovation (“Orion”), a data and AI-enabled software engineering services partner, announced that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Migration Competency. This designation recognizes Orion’s demonstrated expertise in helping customers plan, accelerate, and execute their cloud migration and modernization journeys to AWS with a proven, outcome-driven methodology.

Achieving AWS Migration Competency differentiates Orion as an AWS Partner that delivers specialized consulting services designed to help enterprises adopt, develop, and deploy complex workloads on AWS. To earn the designation, partners must demonstrate deep technical proficiency and a strong track record of successfully delivering cloud migration solutions at scale.

The AWS Migration Competency enables Orion to offer customers the ability to participate in the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), a comprehensive and proven program based on AWS’s experience migrating thousands of enterprise customers to the cloud. Through MAP’s three-phased framework, Assess, Mobilize, and Migrate, and Modernize, Orion helps organizations reduce risk, optimize cost, and accelerate timelines as they move to the cloud.

“Earning the AWS Migration Competency reflects the depth of our cloud engineering expertise and our commitment to delivering secure, seamless migrations that create real business value for our clients,” said David Winter, EVP, Chief Cloud & Strategic Partner Officer at Orion Innovation. “This recognition strengthens our partnership with AWS and validates the proven methodology our teams use to modernize mission-critical workloads, reduce migration risk, and help our customers innovate faster on the cloud. We look forward to helping more organizations unlock the full benefits of AWS and build intelligent, future-ready enterprises.”

AWS established the AWS Competency Program to help customers identify AWS Partners with deep industry experience and proven expertise. As an AWS Partner with a proven approach to migrating applications on AWS, Orion enables organizations to move faster and create competitive business advantages.

About Orion Innovation

Orion Innovation is a data and AI-enabled software engineering services partner with deep cloud expertise, delivering digital experiences that create measurable business impact for clients.

Orion combines strategy, experience design, and engineering capabilities to help enterprises innovate, scale, and embrace future technologies.

Envision what’s next. Build what matters. For more information, visit orioninnovation.com.

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SOURCE Orion Innovation

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