The GRC platform trusted by more than half of the Fortune 500, arrives in Asia Pacific, introducing the region’s first fully automated controls testing.

SINGAPORE, June 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Optro (formerly AuditBoard), the leading AI-powered GRC platform empowering enterprises to transform risk into opportunity, today announced its expansion into Singapore, the company’s newest regional center and a major step forward in serving global GRC teams and providing localised support for its rapidly growing customer base in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. The announcement took place at The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) International Conference 2026 in Singapore.

The move comes as organisations across the region navigate increasingly complex risk environments shaped by artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity threats, regulatory scrutiny, and accelerating digital transformation. According to the Internal Audit Foundation’s Risk in Focus 2026: APAC report, 39 percent of organisations identify digital disruption, including AI, among their most significant business risks, while 58 percent rank regulatory change among their highest audit priorities.

Singapore’s position as a regional financial centre, digital innovation hub, and leader in responsible AI development has made it a strategic base for companies supporting the next phase of enterprise risk management. As organisations across APAC face rising regulatory expectations, expanding digital risk surfaces and growing pressure to govern AI responsibly, demand is increasing for more connected approaches to audit, risk, compliance, and infosec.

Optro’s presence in Singapore is designed to meet that demand, providing audit, risk, compliance, and infosec practitioners in APAC access to the latest AI-powered technologies needed to stay agile in today’s demanding and ever-evolving regulatory environment. The company’s robust alliance network also pairs Optro’s best-in-class GRC capabilities with the subject-matter expertise of the world’s leading consulting firms, adding enhanced value for teams across the region.

“Global risk teams today are being asked to do more than ever before,” said Raul Villar Jr., Chief Executive Officer at Optro. “By bringing our innovative platform and expansive partner network to the heart of APAC, we’re providing the agentic tools and on-the-ground expertise to help our customers in the region navigate increasing risk and compliance complexity while adding strategic value to their organisations.”

“The localised support from a global GRC platform leader like Optro will strategically elevate its presence in the region and is expected to drive significant value for its customers,” said Rolando Caraig, Internal Audit Head at Fuse Financing Inc. and Former CAE at GCash. “Their shift toward agentic GRC marks a tipping point, enabling organisations to keep pace with today’s changing regulations and complex risk landscape.” 

“We are excited to have partnered with Optro,” said Harry Lim, Head, Group Audit at OCBC Bank. “At OCBC, we continuously enhance our audit capabilities to support the bank’s Next Frontier Strategy. Leveraging platforms like Optro allows us to sharpen our focus on what matters most and ensures consistent, high-quality audit delivery across the organisation. This partnership advances our broader goal of modernising the internal audit function, maintaining robust governance, and staying agile in an increasingly dynamic business environment.”

“Organisations across APAC are operating in an increasingly complex risk and regulatory environment, where speed, insight, and adaptability are critical,” said Gordon Tucker, Regional Managing Director for APAC, Protiviti. “Optro’s expansion into Singapore and its continued innovation in agentic GRC bring a powerful combination of technology and local proximity. Together, we are helping clients modernise internal audit and risk functions, automate routine work, and elevate their focus on strategic, forward-looking risk.”

This announcement follows Optro’s recent acquisition of Midship, the premier AI-native autonomous controls testing solution — a milestone that brings the first and only agentic system of action for GRC to market. Together, they automate up to 87 percent of controls management, giving auditors back the time to focus on strategic risk.

Optro’s continued momentum is also reflected across a string of recent industry recognition: a Leader designation in the The Forrester Wave™: Governance, Risk, And Compliance Platforms, Q2 2026 Report and the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Tools, Assurance Leaders, Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2026, G2’s 2026 Best Software Awards for Best GRC Software, and the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ for the seventh year in a row.

To learn more about how Optro is transforming risk into opportunity for companies around the world, stop by Optro’s booth (#C01) at the IIA International Conference in Singapore, or visit Optro.ai.

About Optro

Optro (formerly AuditBoard) helps enterprises transform risk into opportunity, redefining GRC through an agentic system of action. More than 50% of the Fortune 500 trust Optro to elevate audit, risk, and compliance in addressing a new era of risk. Optro is top-rated by customers on G2 and was named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Tools, Assurance Leaders. To learn more, visit: optro.ai.

Contact:
Laura Groshans
press@optro.ai

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SINGAPORE, June 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — GoVeda today announced that it has secured Seed funding to accelerate the development of its AI-native intellectual property platform, designed to turn IP into a revenue and margin engine for every business function.

In the AI era, IP becomes the core revenue and growth engine. Headquartered in Singapore, GoVeda brings AI-native IP capabilities to enterprises, researchers, and emerging technology companies, making IP accessible to every business function, from Product and R&D to Sales and Finance, delivering stronger protection, faster innovation, at a fraction of the cost.

“Our mission is to build an AI-native platform that puts IP in the hands of every team. For Product, it means faster time to market, knowing where the landscape is open before committing the roadmap. For R&D, never losing an invention and investing research budget where it builds real advantage. IP should be a growth engine for every function,” said Dr. Tai Cheng, CEO of GoVeda.

The new funding will support continued platform development, including advanced AI capabilities for patent discovery, strategic filing analysis, and portfolio intelligence. GoVeda aims to create a unified system that connects patent offices, enterprises, and innovators through transparent, data-driven insights.

About GoVeda

GoVeda is an AI-native intellectual property platform focused on empowering future innovators. By combining artificial intelligence with deep patent intelligence, GoVeda helps organizations make better decisions about patent filing, portfolio management, and monetization. The company is headquartered in Singapore. Learn more at www.goveda.com.

Media Contact
GoVeda Pte. Ltd.
Email: info@goveda.com
Web: www.goveda.com

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SOURCE GoVeda

Marking CEO Lewison Chen’s selection to the “36Under36” list, PhotonPay showcased its global industry influence and executive leadership at the 2026 WAVES Summit.

HONG KONG, June 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — PhotonPay, a next-generation financial operating system powered by stablecoins, achieved significant recognition at the 2026 WAVES Summit hosted by 36Kr, a pioneering platform dedicated to serving New Economy participants. PhotonPay’s Founder and CEO Lewison Chen was selected for 36Kr’s “2026 36Under36” Entrepreneurs List, while Sales VP Joey Xu joined a featured panel discussion to unpack the strategic resilience and high-conviction execution required to scale a business.

Visionary Leadership: Driving the Next-Generation Financial OS

The annual “36Under36” list recognizes 108 young leaders driving innovation across AI, deep technology, globalization, and emerging industries. This year’s cohort highlights entrepreneurs who are not simply pursuing market opportunities, but building the foundational systems that enable long-term economic transformation. For Lewison, this recognition underscores his strategic foresight in anticipating the deep structural shifts of global commerce. It validates his leadership in transitioning payments from a fragmented network of disconnected tools into an intelligent, unified operating system.

Under Lewison’s guidance, PhotonPay has established a robust global footprint, expanding to 14 strategic operational hubs across major financial jurisdictions, with a team of over 500 professional employees. Through deep technical and commercial partnerships with world-leading financial institutions, global card networks and banks, the platform now supports more than 60 major currencies, with its full product suite covering over 200 countries and regions. Today, this institutional-grade infrastructure is trusted by more than 200,000 businesses worldwide to secure, manage and optimize their cross-market financial operations.

Abstracting the friction of legacy global banking, PhotonPay operates as a unified financial operating system, which encapsulates multi-currency banking networks and stablecoin rails into a single, programmable infrastructure layer. Clients can run their capital workflows via an intuitive portal, or seamlessly extend these capabilities to their business applications via robust APIs. This modular OS coordinates the entire lifecycle of corporate capital, enabling multi-currency collections, real-time global payouts, card issuance, on/off-ramping, FX conversions and automated reconciliation within a secure and efficient ecosystem.

“Long-term infrastructure is never built on static formulas — it’s built on the conviction to turn macroeconomic uncertainty into operational certainty,” said Lewison Chen, Founder and CEO of PhotonPay.” Being recognized on the 36Under36 list reflects not just what PhotonPay has built, but what we believe the next generation of global financial infrastructure must become: programmable, adaptive, and borderless. We are investing heavily in our global network and technical architecture so that payments stop being a cost center and start being a strategic engine for growth.”

On the WAVES Stage: Redefining Capital Velocity for Global Businesses

Addressing the summit’s flagship panel, “Riding the Waves Before Anyone Believes,” PhotonPay’s Sales VP Joey Xu aligned these capabilities with real-world market execution.

“Global financial giants and legacy banks established the foundational networks of digital trade,” Joey noted during the discussion. “PhotonPay’s mission is not to disrupt this baseline, but to provide precise ecosystem adaptation. We translate complex, fragmented global banking structures into a tailor-made financial operating system optimized for the exact workflows of international businesses.”

Joey highlighted that multi-market organizations routinely drain liquidity and lose days of transaction velocity when transferring funds across disconnected collection, FX, and disbursement applications. PhotonPay resolves this by enabling businesses to retain global earnings in a multi-currency wallet, allowing balances to be instantly deployed for real-time operational expenses — such as global digital ad spends or logistics payouts. Unified approach like this has allowed PhotonPay to reduce global capital costs for its clients by more than 75% while boosting treasury operational efficiency by 60%.

When discussing long-term execution in a volatile market, Joey identified three core pillars of PhotonPay’s operational ethos:

Long Cycle: Building institutional-grade payment networks, technological foundations, and international regulatory licenses requires years of deliberate cultivation rather than reliance on short-term market trends.Granularity: Global infrastructure success depends on a meticulous focus on hyper-local compliance matrices, regional clearing frameworks, and real-time FX fluctuations.Continuous Listening: Sustainable growth relies on maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the market to capture the shifting realities of global commerce.

Moving forward, PhotonPay will continue to anchor its strategy in long-term infrastructure evolution, expanding the boundaries where payment technology intersects with core corporate operations. By pioneering the convergence of traditional finance with programmable architecture, stablecoin and agentic commerce, the company aims to deliver sustained value to the global trade ecosystem.

About PhotonPay

PhotonPay is a stablecoin-powered financial operating system built for the stablecoin era. Designed for modern enterprises, PhotonPay enables businesses to send, receive, convert, and settle funds across both fiat and stablecoin rails through a single, compliance-first integration, spanning 200+ countries and territories.

For more information, visit [www.photonpay.com].

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SOURCE PhotonPay