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Visit Baltimore and GuideGeek Launch “Chessie,” an AI Travel Assistant for Charm City

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BALTIMORE, July 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Baltimore visitors have a new navigational tool to chart their course through Charm City. Visit Baltimore has launched “Chessie,” an AI travel assistant powered by Matador Network’s industry-leading GuideGeek AI platform, designed to help travelers easily explore everything the city has to offer.

Chessie is named after a bit of Baltimore folklore, a legendary sea monster said to lurk in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. With an engaging persona that exemplifies the city’s friendliness, the new AI is available via an icon in the bottom-right corner of baltimore.org. Chessie is ready to plan full itineraries or provide information about neighborhoods, culture, dining, events, only-in-Baltimore experiences and more.

Visit Baltimore is meeting the rising expectations of visitors who increasingly rely on AI to shape their vacations. Chessie provides personalized responses and adapts to visitor preferences on desktop or mobile, all without requiring travelers to login or download an app.

“Visitors now expect instant, personalized guidance. Chessie provides that while showcasing the depth and character of everything our city has to offer, optimizing our team’s authentic, firsthand expertise,” said Visit Baltimore President & CEO Kireem Swinton. “We want Baltimore to be a city that’s easy to discover and impossible to forget, and giving visitors a smart, friendly tool to plan their journey is one more way we’re investing in that experience.”

Baltimore joins other destinations that have launched GuideGeek-powered AI assistants, including New Zealand, Greece and New York City. Consumers trust AI for travel planning more than any other task and Chessie brings unique Baltimore flair to that experience, building personalized travel plans and making it easier than ever to discover an exceptional destination.

Travelers can ask Chessie highly specific or vague questions such as, “What are the best attractions in Baltimore?” or “We’re a family of 5 with kids ages 4-9 traveling across the East Coast this summer. Can you please plan us a 4-day itinerary in Baltimore?”

Baltimore highlights travelers may want to discuss with Chessie:

Historic sites, like Fort McHenry, the USS Constellation, and the Washington MonumentWorld-class attractions like the National Aquarium, B&O Railroad Museum, and Baltimore Museum of IndustryMust-see art exhibits at the Baltimore Museum of Art, American Visionary Art Museum, and The Walters Art MuseumCultural centers, like the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, and the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park MuseumRestaurants that serve up the best local cuisine, including crab cakesA seven-mile waterfront promenade passing through multiple neighborhoodsMore than 250 distinct neighborhoods, such as historic Fell’s Point, eclectic Hampden, and charming Mount VernonEvents happening year round throughout the city

“Travelers are increasingly turning to AI as their first stop when planning a trip, and destinations that embrace this shift are the ones that will win visitors,” says Matador Network CEO Ross Borden. “Chessie gives anyone curious about Baltimore an instant, personalized way to explore everything the city has to offer, from its iconic landmarks to its eclectic neighborhoods.”

About Visit Baltimore

Visit Baltimore is the official sales and marketing arm for the City of Baltimore. The 501(c)(6) nonprofit organization generates economic benefits for Baltimore and its residents through the attraction of convention, group and leisure visitors. In 2025, 28.7 million people visited Baltimore for overnight and day trips, generating $4.3 billion for the city’s economy. For more information, please visit baltimore.org.

About Matador Network

Matador Network is the world’s No. 1 media brand for modern adventurers and the creator of GuideGeek, the award-winning AI travel genius. With more than 15 million followers across social media, Matador became a leading travel brand through its production of feature articles, city guides, creator-first content and original streaming shows. Matador’s videos generate over 140M monthly views and its content distribution deals with major airlines, airports, gas stations and ride sharing companies reach travelers throughout their journey. The GuideGeek AI platform has over 1M consumer users and powers custom conversational AI for dozens of travel brands and destinations. matadornetwork.com | guidegeek.com

Media Contact:
Jason Simms
860.526.1555
418242@email4pr.com

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SOURCE Matador Network

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Andy Hock Joins Accrete as Strategic Advisor

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Andy Hock, who serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Cerebras Systems, joins Accrete’s Advisory Board to help guide the company’s growth as enterprises adopt agentic AI.

NEW YORK, July 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Accrete, the cognitive infrastructure company building Knowledge Engines for autonomous work, today announced that Andy Hock, PhD, who serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Cerebras Systems, has joined Accrete’s Advisory Board to support the company’s continued product and commercial growth.

For more than a decade, AI has flourished on data, models, and compute–the raw ingredients of intelligence. As those ingredients become more abundant, another constraint emerges: the structure, context, and history of an organization’s knowledge. Legacy data organization is suitable, but not optimized for AI.

In the emergent era of agent-based AI, autonomous systems can reason, but they don’t inherit an organization’s hard-won experience, or keep it current, secure, and evolving. Encoding organizational knowledge to enable optimized agent workflows with judgement is exactly the problem that Accrete has solved since 2017.

Few people understand the frontier possibilities and constraints of AI scale better than Hock. At Cerebras, he leads product strategy behind the company’s revolutionary wafer-scale supercomputers that are breaking the speed limits of AI inference and training. Before joining Cerebras in 2017, he built AI data platforms at Google following its acquisition of Skybox Imaging, where he served as Senior Director of Advanced Technologies. He holds a PhD from UCLA.

According to Hock, “AI has moved from an emerging technology to a business imperative. As frontier compute and models become more accessible, enterprises need better ways to organize and operationalize institutional knowledge for agentic workflows, knowledge retention, learning, and AI-enabled decision-making. I’ve been impressed by what the Accrete team has quietly solved in the most demanding environments, and I’m excited to help the team deepen these capabilities for enterprise customers.”

“Andy helped build one of the industry’s leading AI infrastructure companies and brings deep experience in scaling advanced technologies from innovation to enterprise adoption,” said Prashant Bhuyan, Founder, CEO & Chairman of Accrete. “He gets what we’ve proven where the stakes are highest, in government, critical infrastructure, and highly regulated industries: expert judgement is what makes autonomous systems trustworthy, cost-efficient, and secure inside the customer’s trust boundary.”

As an advisor, Hock will counsel Accrete on product strategy, scalable autonomous systems, and go-to-market strategy required to move enterprises from copilots that assist people to autopilots that deliver the finished work.

About Andy Hock
Andy Hock, PhD, is Chief Strategy Officer at Cerebras Systems, where he leads product strategy, partnerships, and sovereign programs. He has more than 20 years of experience at the intersection of advanced algorithms, systems, and applied AI. Before Cerebras, he led AI data and geospatial products at Google following its acquisition of Skybox Imaging. He holds a PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA.

About Accrete
Accrete builds cognitive infrastructure for government and enterprise customers. Founded in 2017, Accrete’s Knowledge Engine Platform unifies fragmented systems, siloed data, tacit knowledge, and decision-making into a continuously learning universal system of intelligence. Knowledge Engines give agents the shared context to reason, collaborate, decide, and act across the full complexity of an organization. As AI makes intelligence abundant, judgement is the scarce resource, and Accrete’s Knowledge Engines encode the expert judgement organizations accumulate over decades so agents can be trusted with consequential decisions. Accrete’s customers span Fortune 500 enterprises as well as U.S. defense and national security agencies. From commercial operations to national security missions, Accrete’s platform enables expert agents that deliver superintelligence purpose-built for high-stakes environments. Accrete AI Government LLC, based in Alexandria, VA, is the federal subsidiary of New York-based Accrete, Inc.

Media Contact
Dennis Yuscavitch
dennis.yuscavitch@accrete.ai
+1917-667-2523

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SOURCE Accrete

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Mr. Smokestack Joins Endura Services

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KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Endura Services announced today that Mr. Smokestack Chimney Service has joined Endura’s growing organization of chimney and hearth service companies.

Led by Jeremy Mitchell, Mr. Smokestack has built a strong reputation for quality service, customer care, and professionalism. As part of Endura, the company will continue operating with the same local team, day-to-day operations, and commitment to serving customers, while gaining access to broader support across recruiting, training, operations, marketing, technology, employee benefits, finance, safety, and growth planning.

“Jeremy and his team have built exactly the kind of company we want Endura to partner with — respected locally, serious about quality, and committed to doing right by employees and customers,” said Jerry Roche, CEO of Endura Services. “We are here to support the team and provide resources that help strong local operators continue to grow.”

“When you build and lead a business, you think about more than a transaction,” said Jeremy Mitchell. “You think about your people, your customers, your reputation, and what happens after closing. I chose Endura because their team understood that. They listened, earned my trust, and made it clear that the plan was to support Mr. Smokestack’s people and operations, not disrupt them.”

Mr. Smokestack joins other respected Endura companies, including The Mad Hatter (GA), ChimneyTek (MD), and others across the country. Each company continues to serve its local market with the benefit of additional resources, shared expertise, and a broader operating team behind it.

Endura continues to seek conversations with owners of high-quality chimney and hearth service businesses who are thinking carefully about succession, growth, and the long-term future of their teams.

About Endura Services

Formed in 2024, Endura Services is a growing chimney and hearth services organization focused on supporting strong local operating teams with the resources, systems, and professional infrastructure needed to help them grow. Endura partners with respected owners and operators who are committed to quality service, employee opportunity, customer trust, and the long-term professionalization of the chimney and hearth industry.

Contacts:

Endura Services
Joshua Isaacs
joshua.isaacs@endurapropartners.com 

Endura Services
Erik deStefanis
erik.destefanis@endurapropartners.com

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SOURCE Endura Services

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Technology

Portland DMA high schools and KOIN, more coverage than ever expected in 26-27, powered by uReport

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PORTLAND, Ore., July 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Since its recent announcement, over 60 Portland DMA schools have signed on to experience a rebirth in coverage for all school athletics and activities, with dozens more planning the onboard process. KOIN is fully funding this effort for the entire 26-27 academic year for every high school in the DMA.

“Schools will now be able to publish real-time stories about everything from marching band to all girls’ sports, to speech and debate competitions and much more. We look forward to students participating in this process and gaining incredible experiences through active journalism, media, tech and much more.” says Tom Keeler, VP & GM of KOIN Media. “All stories will be featured at KOIN.com to provide thousands more eyeballs on these great stories. A recent Seaside High School story was picked up from KOIN.com and seen on MSN, AOL and Yahoo Sports which shows the power of this partnership for schools to really shine!”

Seaside High School Golf State Champion: (Seaside Article – Featured on Yahoo

uReport has earned important recognition with 1EdTech TrustedED Apps Certification for Data Privacy. This recognition highlights uReport’s commitment to safeguarding student and educator data while providing schools with a trusted platform for storytelling, communication, and responsible AI use. This adds to uReport’s existing listing within the ISTE Learning Technology Directory (International Society for Transforming Education). 

“School leaders are paying attention to what KOIN is doing in Portland. It is special to bring back coverage to thousands of events long forgotten and to provide exposure to activities that have never experienced the limelight. Their stories need to be heard and are important to get into the community,” says Peter Fitzpatrick, CEO of DistrictWON, “The platform is best-in-class and schools can get their students involved in the coverage of everything, providing real-life experience and having lots of fun along the way. KOIN is leading the way to bring this coverage to the forefront.”

To learn more about KOIN’s plan to provide coverage see this video: KOIN – HS Coverage

School administrators can start immediately here: Easy School Account

For more information, contact uReport Director of Customer Success, Dan McGrath: 216-647-3857; dmcgrath@districtwon.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/portland-dma-high-schools-and-koin-more-coverage-than-ever-expected-in-26-27-powered-by-ureport-302819649.html

SOURCE DistrictWON

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