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National STEM Festival® Brings Together America’s Brightest Young Innovators and Industry Leaders to Celebrate the Future of STEM

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Third annual festival welcomed 52 National STEM Champions, featured leaders from across government and industry, and opened I Street to the public for a day of hands-on STEM experiences

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The third annual National STEM Festival®, powered by EXPLR, concluded Saturday after bringing together the nation’s brightest young innovators, industry leaders, educators, policymakers and families for three days celebrating American ingenuity as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary. The event drew nearly 2,900 visitors from 45 states and territories, featuring 45 speakers and mentors, 52 student exhibitors, 22 organization exhibitors, and 29 live sessions.

AI-powered surgical systems, energy transition, cancer diagnostics and more
The festival featured 52 National STEM Champions representing 40 states and four U.S. territories, selected from thousands of applicants with an acceptance rate of 5%. More than 60 percent of this year’s champions are young women. Students in grades 7–12 showcased PhD-level research, patent-pending inventions, and advanced prototypes addressing some of today’s most pressing challenges, including artificial intelligence, healthcare, aerospace, manufacturing, sustainability and energy.

Throughout the festival, student Champions presented their work to hundreds of attendees, including leaders from business, government, academia and the scientific community during the festival’s VIP & Media Showcase, participated in podcasts paired with industry experts, and shared their projects with the public during Open Build Day.

“This year’s National STEM Festival demonstrated what’s possible when young innovators are given the opportunity to share their ideas with the people shaping the future of science, technology and industry,” said Jenny Buccos, co-founder and CEO of EXPLR and co-director, National STEM Festival. “These students aren’t imagining tomorrow – they’re building it now.”

Live Q&A broadcast from the International Space Station
One of the festival’s signature moments was a live question-and-answer session with astronaut Chris Williams, who spoke with students directly from the International Space Station during a live broadcast, giving students the opportunity to discuss space exploration and STEM careers with an astronaut currently in orbit.

The festival also featured keynote conversations, demonstrations and remarks from leaders across government and industry, including executive leadership from Boeing, IBM, COSI, Dell Technologies, OPSWAT, Qualcomm, Roblox, Siemens USA, Waymo, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and other organizations advancing STEM education and innovation nationwide.

Open Build Day hosted families for hands-on fun
The festival concluded Saturday with Open Build Day, a free public expo that transformed The Square and I Street into an interactive STEM showcase for visitors of all ages. Families participated in more than 20 hands-on experiences led by industry and community partners, including:

The Curiosity Cube™, where visitors conducted synthetic biology experiments alongside MilliporeSigma scientists.The ACE Mobile Lab, featuring advanced manufacturing technologies including CNC machining and composites.The Future of Making, On Wheels featured a traveling lab packed with the real machines shaping advanced manufacturing.Waymo, where attendees explored a fully autonomous vehicle and learned how self-driving technology works.

The National STEM Festival is an official programming partner of America250, joining organizations advancing innovation and STEM education as the nation marks 250 years. The Festival is made possible by a coalition of organizations across industry, government, and academia investing in the next generation of talent. See the full list of supporters and partners on the festival website.

Press interested in post-event coverage can access a recap video, image selects and more in the folder here.

About EXPLR
EXPLR builds the future-ready talent pipeline by connecting curiosity to career. Students aged 13-19 engage in real-world, career-connected learning through digital content, industry-validated credentials, and live events. The ecosystem includes the National STEM Festival, EXPLR Edge® digital credentials, and programs that enable employers to discover, connect with, and invest in emerging talent. Visit EXPLR.com.

Media Contact
Actum for EXPLR / National STEM Festival
teamexplr@actumllc.com

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RedThread Study Reveals People Analytics Tech Market Reached $12.2B in 2025 as Growth Cools, Contracts Unbundle, and Vendors Reconsider their Customer Support

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WOODSIDE, Calif., June 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A new study from RedThread Research finds that the people analytics technology (PAT) market reached an estimated $12.2 billion at the end of 2025—up from $9.7 billion in 2024—but its 26% year-over-year growth rate signals a market settling into a slower, more mature phase, well off its 2022 peak of 50%. The report, People Analytics Tech Market Trends 2026: Old Market, New Pressures, finds an industry reshaped by unbundled contracts, a sharp rebound in M&A, near-universal AI adoption that rarely moves past “assist” mode, and a widening gap between how vendors govern their own data and the support they extend to customers.

Now in its seventh year, the annual study draws on survey data from 47 vendor solutions and maps a broader market of 163 PAT solutions. It tracks year-over-year shifts in market size, vendor strategy, pricing, AI investment, and data ethics.

Growth is moderating, and the market is diversifying. The share of vendors expecting high growth (over 31%) has fallen from 56% in 2022 to 37% in 2026, while those expecting only 1–10% revenue growth has climbed from 3% to 17% over the same period. Financial services remains the largest customer sector at 51%, but healthcare and manufacturing are emerging as fast-growing segments as vendors broaden their reach to hit revenue goals.

“The PAT market isn’t shrinking—it’s maturing, and that changes the rules for buyers,” said Stacia Garr, Co-founder and Principal Analyst at RedThread Research. “The era when a subscription came with consulting, implementation, and a partner invested in your success is ending. Buyers now have to be far more deliberate about what they’re actually getting for the price they are paying vendors – and what else they might need to buy to make the tech work.”

PAT contracts look fundamentally different from what they were two years ago. Two years ago, 53% of vendors bundled consulting and 69% bundled implementation into their technology subscriptions. Today, fewer than a quarter include consulting and only about a third include implementation—an average 20-point drop in just 12 months. Nearly 90% of vendors changed their pricing model in 2026, up from 58% in 2024. AI agents are emerging as a new, separately priced line item, with no industry standard yet: 40% of vendors charge per seat, 26% by data volume, and 17% by compute or token consumption.

M&A has rebounded after four years of decline. M&A activity quadrupled in 2025, rising from 9% of vendors in 2024 to 36%, even as external investment fell to a historic low of 11% (down from 48% in 2021). The activity is concentrated among HCM, HRIS, and talent management vendors—86% of which underwent M&A—as well-capitalized platforms acquire point solutions to fill capability gaps. Increasingly, what was once a standalone purchase is becoming a module within a larger suite.

Everyone has AI, but few have moved beyond assist mode. The share of vendors offering both traditional machine learning and Gen AI has grown from 64% to 89% in two years, making AI table stakes. But most of the build has gone into copilots and assistants—70% of vendors built new copilots for 2026—while only 16% have built agents that automate complex workflows or function as digital workers. The language of “agents” is now nearly universal even though most offerings remain assistants.

Vendors are strengthening internal ethics while customer support erodes. Nearly all vendors (94%) now have an internal code of conduct, up from 79% last year, and almost 80% provide employee training. Yet customer-facing support has fallen sharply: vendor education for customers on data ethics dropped from 62% in 2024 to 26% in 2026—the steepest decline of any metric in the study—and vendor recommendations to customers on data security and ethics fell from 87% to 74%.

“Vendors have put real effort into getting their own AI and ethics houses in order, but they’re pulling back on the guidance that helps customers do the same,” said Priyanka Mehrotra, Senior Analyst at RedThread Research. “That’s a risky trade. As the market gets more transactional, the burden of doing this work responsibly is shifting onto the buyer.”

Join the public webinar on July 29: RedThread Research will host a free, public webinar—sponsored by the RedThread Tech Consortium—on July 29, 2026, to walk through the report’s key findings and what they mean for buyers. Reserve your seat at https://landing.redthreadresearch.com/pat-market-trends-2026.

Access the research: The full report—including in-depth analysis of vendor strategies, pricing shifts, AI maturity, and buyer guidance—is available to paid RedThread Research members. A free executive summary of the findings is available to anyone who joins RedThread’s free starter membership. Sign up at https://members.redthreadresearch.com/plans/1522898 or email hello@redthreadresearch.com for more information.

Research Sponsored by the RedThread Tech Consortium

This research report was made possible by the RedThread Research Tech Consortium, a growing community that remains focused on underwriting high-quality, unbiased market research. Consortium member organizations collaborate with RedThread to push the boundaries of people analytics technology and contribute to cutting-edge research. Current Tech Consortium members include: Absorb, Betterworks, ClearCompany, Cornerstone, Culture Amp, Docebo, Eightfold, HiBob, HRBench, Ingentis, Lightcast, Lytiqs, Medallia, OpenSesame, Perceptyx, QuestionPro, Revelio Labs, TechWolf, Tekstac, UKG, Visier, Workday, and Workera.

About RedThread Research

At RedThread Research, we get it.

Sure, we’re experts in performance, people analytics, learning, and D&I – and we’re well-versed in the technologies that support them. But we’re also truth-seekers and storytellers in an industry often short on substance, and too full of #!%. Our mission (indeed, our very reason for existing) is to cut through the noise, and amplify what’s good. We look for the connections (or red threads) between people, data, and ideas – even among seemingly unrelated concepts. The result is high-quality, unbiased, transformative foresight that helps you build a stronger business.

To learn more, visit www.redthreadresearch.com.

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Jake Brander & Escrow.com Dive into the $15 Billion IPv4 Address Trade

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The global secondary market for IPv4 addresses is now worth an estimated $15 billion. Until recently, there was no public pricing index, no meaningful transaction data, and very little mainstream reporting. Buyers and sellers relied on technical expertise, registry records, and relationships built over decades to value an asset every connected business depends on.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., June 30, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — For years, the technology world obsessed over cryptocurrencies, NFTs, SPACs, and AI startups raising hundreds of millions of dollars before shipping a product. Meanwhile, one of the largest infrastructure markets on the internet quietly matured with almost no public attention.

Matt Barrie aptly described Jake Brander and IPv4 Brokers as the “Indiana Jones of the internet.”

The global secondary market for IPv4 addresses is now worth an estimated $15 billion. Until recently, there was no public pricing index, no meaningful transaction data, and very little mainstream reporting. Buyers and sellers relied on technical expertise, registry records, and relationships built over decades to value an asset every connected business depends on.

IPv4 addresses became valuable for one simple reason: there won’t ever be more of them. The global pool was exhausted in 2011, forcing every organization that needs additional address space to acquire it from an existing owner. Despite billions of dollars changing hands over the last decade, the market remained largely invisible until Escrow.com recently published one of the first comprehensive public looks at the industry. The companies that recognized this early built an extraordinary advantage.

Amazon Web Services is estimated to have acquired roughly 191 million IPv4 addresses since 2011, an inventory now worth between $7 and $8 billion at current market prices. Those addresses support AWS’s global cloud platform while generating recurring revenue every time customers deploy public IPv4 resources. As cloud environments expand, those addresses become permanently embedded in customer infrastructure rather than returning to the market, steadily reducing the amount of available inventory.

That buying strategy helped drive IPv4 prices above $50 per address before AWS shifted its acquisition strategy after introducing public IPv4 charges in 2023. Prices corrected sharply, leading many analysts to conclude demand had collapsed. The market told a different story. Demand didn’t disappear. It broadened.

Instead of a handful of hyperscalers dominating purchases, buyers now include cloud providers, ISPs, hosting companies, AI platforms, broadband operators, and enterprise networks. They aren’t acquiring IPv4 as a speculative investment. They need it to deploy infrastructure. Finding that infrastructure is often harder than selling it.

Every IPv4 transaction begins by locating address space that already exists but is no longer being fully utilized. Brokers spend years tracing mergers, bankruptcies, university allocations, and decades-old corporate records to recover address blocks that owners frequently don’t realize still have substantial value. Escrow.com CEO Matt Barrie aptly described them as the “Indiana Joneses of the internet.”

When Jake Brander founded Brander Group in 2016, the challenge wasn’t simply finding IPv4 inventory. It was creating a process buyers could trust.

Today, Brander Group facilitates between 50 and 80 IPv4 transfers each month across ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, and LACNIC. The company has worked with more than 3,000 organizations in over 60 countries, is approaching $1 billion in cumulative IPv4 transaction volume, and completed a single transaction valued at approximately $89 million for a multinational cloud provider.

A critical part of that growth has been Brander Group’s partnership with Escrow.com. Secure escrow gave buyers and sellers around the world confidence to complete increasingly complex, high-value IPv4 transactions, helping transform what was once an informal niche into a mature global marketplace.The next phase of the market is already taking shape.

Artificial intelligence, cloud expansion, and federally funded broadband projects are introducing new buyers into an ecosystem where supply can never increase. Companies such as Oracle, BytePlus, Hostinger, Hetzner, Zscaler, and other infrastructure providers continue acquiring IPv4 because public internet connectivity remains essential to their services.

The market is no longer being driven by a few dominant hyperscalers. It’s being supported by thousands of organizations building the next generation of internet infrastructure. That may prove to be the healthiest signal of all.

The companies that viewed IPv4 as strategic infrastructure years ago are now benefiting from decisions made when few people were paying attention. As awareness grows and competition for quality address space intensifies, the market is becoming less of an industry secret and more of a recognized digital asset class.

Media Contact

Brander Group Press, Escrow.com & Brander Group, 1 7025605616, info@brandergroup.net, Brander Group

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JAMIS Software Corporation Announces General Availability of JAMIS Prime 9.0 Update 5, Advancing Project Workforce Management and Real-Time Project Control

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BOULDER, Colo., June 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — JAMIS Software Corporation, a leading provider of ERP solutions purpose-built for government contractors, today announced the general availability of JAMIS Prime 9.0 Update 5, the latest evolution of the JAMIS Prime platform.

This release introduces significant enhancements designed to help organizations improve resource planning, project visibility, and operational control – enabling teams to plan more accurately, execute more efficiently, and make better decisions in real time.

Connecting Planning, Staffing, and Performance

Government contractors operate in complex environments where workforce availability, contract requirements, cost, and project performance are tightly interconnected. However, many organizations continue to manage these functions across disconnected systems and manual processes.

JAMIS Prime 9.0 Update 5 addresses this challenge by strengthening Project Workforce Management, delivering a more connected operational model that brings together planning, staffing, execution, and financial performance into a unified system.

Key Enhancements in JAMIS Prime 9.0 Update 5

Resource Planning Now Generally Available

The release marks the general availability of enhanced Resource Planning capabilities, allowing organizations to:

Align workforce demand with financial planningIncorporate real-world availability, including approved time off, into forecastsImprove staffing accuracy and utilization visibility

Real-Time Project Intelligence

All-new enhanced Project Status Reporting provides fast, multi-project financial visibility designed for use during execution. It creates a consistent financial management framework across projects, reducing reporting variation, improving comparability, and strengthening accountability across the portfolio. It includes:

Real-time, multi-project financial visibilityInsight into budgets, actuals, forecasts, and performanceFaster, more actionable reporting for project managers and finance teams

Platform and Integration Enhancements

Update 5 also delivers usability and integration improvements, including enhancements to external file storage and SharePoint integration, supporting more streamlined workflows and collaboration.

A More Practical Approach to Project Control

“Government contractors don’t need more disconnected tools – they need systems that work the way their business actually operates,” said Dave Sample, Senior Vice President of Product Management at JAMIS Software Corporation.

“With Prime 9.0 Update 5, we are helping organizations connect planning, staffing, and financial performance into a single operational model that improves visibility, strengthens decision-making, and drives better project outcomes.”

Driving Better Outcomes for Government Contractors

JAMIS Prime 9.0 Update 5 enables organizations to:

Improve forecast accuracy and workforce utilizationGain real-time insight into project performanceStrengthen operational control and complianceReduce reliance on manual processes and spreadsheets

By connecting these capabilities within a unified ERP platform, JAMIS Prime empowers teams to identify issues earlier, respond faster, and manage projects proactively rather than reactively.

Availability

JAMIS Prime 9.0 Update 5 is now generally available to customers and partners.

To learn more about the release or schedule a demonstration, visit https://jamis.com/prime905/.

About JAMIS Software Corporation

JAMIS Software Corporation is a leading provider of ERP software solutions designed specifically for government contractors, nonprofits, and project-focused organizations. JAMIS Prime ERP helps organizations manage their finances, projects, people, and compliance requirements in one integrated cloud-based platform.

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