Technology

SIGGRAPH 2026 Introduces the Games Summit, a New One-Day Home for Game Developers

Published

2 months ago

July 8, 2026

The 53rd annual conference debuts a curated day of games programming on Sunday, 19 July, spanning accessibility, audio, performance capture, and the economics of modern games development, with games content running all week

LOS ANGELES, July 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — SIGGRAPH 2026, taking place 19–23 July 2026 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, will open with the Games Summit, a new one-day track dedicated to game developers and enthusiasts. Held on Sunday, 19 July, the Games Summit brings together leading studios and indies for a day of talks and networking focused on how games are made and where the medium is headed.

The Games Summit is a deliberate widening of the lens. Alongside the technical, real-time rendering-focused conversations SIGGRAPH is known for, it makes room for the broader questions facing game teams today.

“SIGGRAPH is renowned for deep technical insights, and that isn’t going anywhere. This year’s games programming expands the scope with broader topics game developers are wrestling with right now,” said Emily Hsu, SIGGRAPH 2026 Games Chair. She notes that SIGGRAPH is known as the world’s premier conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, a category games squarely occupy.

A Full Day, From Comfort to Cinematics
The Games Summit runs from morning to evening on opening day and covers a deliberately broad range of topics, including accessibility, audio, visual effects, performance capture, pipelines, and the overall state of gaming.

The day opens with “Beyond the Dot: New Ways to Reduce Motion Sickness in Gaming”, from Adrian Ledda, Magalie Rosseeuw, and Ewa Trusz with Activision, which reframes motion comfort as an accessibility issue affecting up to a third of players and embeds inclusive design directly into gameplay systems.

A session on game audio follows, exploring how sound and music are layered into games. From there, the Battlefield 6 team at Electronic Arts presents “How We Brought the Franchise Vision to Life With Our Destruction System Debut”, treating destruction as a tactical gameplay ecosystem rather than visual spectacle. A Computer Animation Festival Animation Theater session midday spotlights games and cinematics work, before “Performance Capture at Scale: Building a Pipeline for Battlefield 6 Cinematics”, in which Pasha Sol from Electronic Arts details how EA Create Capture adapted film-grade virtual production to the pace and scale of AAA development.

The Economics of Building Games
One of the day’s marquee conversations is “Forging the Glacier at IO Interactive: Fireside Chat with Henrik Schlichter (Technical Director)”, joined by John Canning of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), on what it takes to build and scale utilizing the studio’s in-house proprietary game engine, Glacier. As the industry grapples with rising costs, shifting platforms, and an explosion of available tools, the question of how studios build their games has never been more consequential. Schlichter sits down to discuss, debate, and unpack the realities of modern game development: what it takes to build a custom engine, innovate at scale, and make games cheaper, faster, and better without sacrificing quality. Equal parts technical deep dive and industry reality check, the session takes on a pressure point the field rarely discusses openly.

“It’s not enough just to make great games. They also have to be economically sound,” Hsu explained. “If you’re trying to move faster and do it at a higher quality while still saving money, the only way is better tooling, better pipelines, and rethinking the technology behind it.”

Where Film and Games Meet
The convergence of film and games runs throughout the Games Summit, from performance capture to shared file formats.

The day’s closing “The OpenUSD Roundtable: Using an Open Source File Format in Film and Game Dev Pipelines” makes that convergence literal, seating film and game developers at the same table to work through a file format that now moves across both pipelines, while “Performance Capture at Scale: Building a Pipeline for Battlefield 6 Cinematics” shows EA Create Capture carrying film-grade virtual production techniques onto a AAA game stage for Battlefield 6 cinematics.

“We’re already seeing game cinematic pipelines leaning heavily on filmmaking techniques, and film pipelines being built on game engines so the lines aren’t blurred. They’re gone,” Hsu said. “What matters now is hybrid fluency in both. Those who have it can expand their toolkit and build the right pipeline for the project in front of them.”

Hsu continues, “That’s the spirit of SIGGRAPH. There are no wins from hoarding information or existing in an an echo chamber of a single way of working. We advance across industries and as studios if we’re actually sharing, cross-pollinating, and learning from each other.”

Games Content All Week
Games programming does not end when the Games Summit does. Throughout the week, games content appears across Talks, Courses, Production Sessions, Appy Hour, and Real-Time Live!. The flagship is “Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games”, the long-running course presented in two parts on Tuesday, 21 July, which brings production-proven rendering techniques to the stage from Natalya Tatarchuk of Activision alongside lecturers from EA SEED, Sony Interactive Entertainment, IO Interactive, and Roblox. Attendees can find it all when filtering by “Games” on the SIGGRAPH 2026 full schedule.

For Hsu, the goal is straightforward. “My hope is that game devs leave Sunday’s Games Summit feeling like they’ve already made great connections and experienced something worthwhile — and then realize the conference week is just getting started. The Games Summit stands on its own, but it is also part of a larger conference that brings together researchers, artists, and technologists who solve problems in ways that might surprise them. For those who can make the week of it, there’s a lot more where that came from.”

The Games Summit is open to Full Conference, Full Conference Supporter, and Experience badge holders. Games content in other programs may carry different registration access, so attendees should check each program’s page for details.

Together, the Games Summit and games programming across the week demonstrate how SIGGRAPH continues to champion bold ideas in games while advancing the future of computer graphics and interactive techniques. To explore this year’s conference and offerings, visit the website to see where games are headed, and register now to experience everything the Games Summit has to offer at SIGGRAPH 2026.

About ACM, ACM SIGGRAPH, and SIGGRAPH 2026
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field’s challenges. ACM SIGGRAPH is a special interest group within ACM that serves as an interdisciplinary community for members in research, technology, and applications in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The SIGGRAPH conference is the world’s leading annual interdisciplinary educational experience showcasing the latest in computer graphics and interactive techniques. SIGGRAPH 2026, the 53rd annual conference hosted by ACM SIGGRAPH, will take place live 19–23 July at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

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Technology

Rocket Money’s Rowan Rewrites What AI Can Do in Personal Finance

Published

37 minutes ago

August 25, 2026

Rocket Money’s new AI financial assistant, developed with Anthropic, takes money management out of apps and dashboards and puts it into conversational texts

DETROIT, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Rocket Money, part of Rocket Companies (NYSE: RKT), today launched Rowan, an AI agent that goes beyond analysis, monitoring consumer’s finances and even acting on their behalf, all through simple text messaging.

Rocket Money’s AI financial assistant puts management into conversational texts.

Powered by Anthropic, Rowan watches spending around the clock. When it spots a way to save, it sends a text. The consumer replies in plain language and Rowan handles the rest. It can renegotiate recurring bills, cancel subscriptions and even create automated savings transfers.

Most personal finance apps are passive, showing a dashboard that leaves the real work up to the consumer. Rowan does the work for them.

“What we’ve built with Rowan wasn’t possible even 12 months ago,” said Aaron Dignan, VP of Agentic Products at Rocket Money. “It finds the money slipping through the cracks, the forgotten subscriptions, the bills that creep up, and it actually does something about them. That’s the difference between knowing and acting.”

Rowan is built on a sophisticated stack of AI agents trained with Rocket Money data. The result is something unprecedented: a system that monitors your finances, applies advanced reasoning, and proactively engages to give you knowledge and control over your personal finances. Rowan identifies opportunities and executes complex tasks in the real world based on your instructions.

Consider a client that signs up for a free month of streaming that then goes unused. Rowan doesn’t forget, three weeks later it will send a text asking the consumer if they are enjoying the service or if they would like to cancel before incurring a charge. If the member replies “cancel” Rowan contacts the service, cancels the trial and confirms when it is done. One word, no logging in, no lengthy conversations and no hold music.

Maybe someone wants to save money while still enjoying their morning coffee. They simply text Rowan: “Every time I buy a coffee, round up to the nearest dollar and put the extra change in my high-yield savings account.” Rowan sets up the process. From that moment forward, every coffee purchase triggers an automatic rounding and transfer.

That is a monumental leap from passive to proactive financial management, going from “here’s what you spent” to “here’s how I can help.”

The system is also constantly improving. When Rowan encounters something unexpected, such as a subscription service with an unusual cancellation flow, it learns. It diagnoses the issue, finds a solution and deploys it across the entire system. Each edge case solved becomes a permanent improvement for every consumer.

“This architecture moves us from ‘this is cool’ to ‘this is incredibly powerful and can help me maximize my money,” said Chase Adams, VP of AI Engineering at Rocket Money. “We built it with adaptable agents where you need flexibility and strict code where you need certainty, and our team is engaged throughout to provide human verification.”

Rowan is available to select Rocket Money subscribers now as part of a new Premium Plus tier, with broader availability coming later this year.

ABOUT ROCKET MONEY

Rocket Money is a personal finance app designed to help people manage their money, track spending, monitor subscriptions, build savings, and improve their overall financial health. Originally founded as Truebill and acquired by Rocket Companies in 2021, Rocket Money helps users understand where their money is going, identify opportunities to save, manage recurring expenses, track net worth and credit, and take action through features such as subscription management, budgeting, bill negotiation, automated savings, and Rowan, its AI-powered financial agent. Rocket Money is part of Rocket Companies (NYSE: RKT), a Detroit-based fintech platform company.

For more information, please visit www.rocketmoney.com.

ABOUT ROCKET COMPANIES

Founded in 1985, Rocket Companies (NYSE: RKT) is a Detroit-based fintech platform including mortgage, real estate and personal finance businesses: Rocket Mortgage, Redfin, Rocket Close, Rocket Money and Rocket Loans. With insights from more than 160 million calls with clients each year, 30 petabytes of data and a mission to Help Everyone Home, Rocket Companies is well positioned to be the destination for AI-fueled homeownership. Known for providing exceptional client experiences, J.D. Power has ranked Rocket Mortgage #1 in client satisfaction for primary mortgage origination and mortgage servicing a total of 23 times, the most of any mortgage lender.

For more information, please visit www.rocket.com.

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Technology

Veridian Credit Union launches Money Moves to help members build financial confidence, achieve goals

Published

37 minutes ago

August 25, 2026

WATERLOO, Iowa, Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Veridian Credit Union has launched Money Moves, a new financial empowerment program designed to help members build confidence, strengthen financial habits and take meaningful steps toward their financial goals.

The program combines financial education, personalized coaching and financial incentives to help participants increase savings, improve credit and reduce debt. Through one-on-one guidance and practical tools, Monday Moves helps participants create a personalized plan that works for their unique circumstances and long-term goals.

“Financial success should be within reach for everyone,” said Ana Hernandez Eveland, Veridian’s Financial Empowerment Strategist. “Money Moves is about meeting people where they are and giving them the guidance, resources and encouragement they need to move forward with confidence. Whether someone is focused on building savings, improving credit or paying down debt, we’re here to help them take the next step.”

Participants who successfully complete the program may qualify for a $250 matching incentive that can be used toward a secured credit card, starter certificate of deposit or debt repayment, helping reinforce the financial progress they make during the program.

Money Moves is free to attend, though advance registration is required. Individual sessions begin mid-September in Cedar Rapids, Waterloo and Omaha, and Oct. 1 in Des Moines. Details are available at veridiancu.org/moneymoves.

Founded in 1934, Veridian Credit Union is a member-owned financial cooperative dedicated to improving the financial well-being of its members. With 32 branches across Iowa, eastern Nebraska and the Twin Cities metro area, Veridian provides a full range of personal and business financial services desigened to help members build confidence and reach their goals. As a not-for-profit credit union, Veridian returns value to its members through competitive products, trusted guidance and a commitment to helping people ahcieve lasting financial success.

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Technology

Cresset Expands to Boca Raton, Welcomes $4 Billion Advisory Team

Published

37 minutes ago

August 25, 2026

Led by Michael Bober and Ed Ventrice, the team previously managed approximately $4 billion in client assets at UBS and has deep connections to the Boca Raton community

BOCA RATON, Fla., Aug. 25, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Cresset announced today that it is expanding to Boca Raton, Fla., with the addition of a 16-person advisory team led Michael Bober, and Ed Ventrice. The team previously managed approximately $4 billion in client assets for UBS. The team also includes Michael MacDonald, William “Billy” Marino, Sarah Ponczek, and Alex Santos.

Bober and Ventrice each bring more than three decades of experience advising corporate executives, business owners, high-net-worth individuals, multigenerational families, foundations and endowments, and professional athletes. Together with their team, they specialize in comprehensive wealth management, institutional consulting, business succession planning, and addressing the complex needs of families with significant wealth.

Prior to joining Cresset, Bober and Ventrice both served as Managing Directors with UBS Financial Services. Before transitioning to wealth management, each worked as a Certified Public Accountant with a national accounting firm. Their accounting backgrounds have helped shape the team’s integrated approach to wealth management and its focus on delivering coordinated advice across every aspect of a client’s financial life.

“We are excited to join Cresset and gain access to the breadth of resources and capabilities available through its independent, client- and employee-owned model. Cresset’s family office approach closely aligns with how we have always believed wealth should be managed—with a comprehensive, long-term perspective that extends well beyond investment management,” Ventrice said.

Cresset offers a comprehensive suite of family office services designed to address the interconnected needs of individuals and families with significant wealth. Its capabilities span investment management, private markets, tax preparation and planning, estate and trust services, business succession planning, property and casualty insurance advisory, and philanthropic planning for families, foundations, and endowments. Cresset also provides access to medical and travel concierge services through its expansive network, helping clients coordinate support across their financial and personal lives.

“Joining Cresset represents an exciting next chapter for our team and our clients. Cresset has built an exceptional platform around an integrated approach to wealth management, and we look forward to offering our clients those capabilities while continuing to provide the highly personal advice and service they expect,” Bober said.

“We are also proud to continue serving the Boca Raton community we know so well and to build upon the relationships we have developed here over many years,” Ventrice added.

Cresset’s open-architecture, multi-custodial model provides clients with access to leading custodians. This flexibility, combined with Cresset’s extensive wealth management and family office capabilities, allows advisory teams to deliver highly customized solutions based on each client’s specific needs.

“We are thrilled to expand our presence in South Florida to Boca Raton. Michael, Ed, and team have deep and longstanding relationships throughout the Boca Raton community, and we are honored to welcome them to Cresset and look forward to introducing more successful families to Cresset’s comprehensive family office offerings,” said Cresset CEO Susie Cranston.

About Cresset
Cresset is a firm built by clients, for clients. As an independent, award-winning* multi-family office and private investment firm, we are reimagining the way wealth is experienced. Our purpose is to help ensure that both wealth and life are fully optimized**—integrated, intentional, and aligned with each client’s vision of success.

We provide access to the caliber of talent, ideas, and investment opportunities typically available to the largest single-family offices and institutions. Our approach is personalized, entrepreneurial, and client-first.

Proudly owned by our clients and employees, Cresset was built to endure. We are creating a 100+ year firm—one focused on delivering an exceptional experience, not only for the families we serve but for the team that serves them. Recognized by Barron’s and Forbes among the nation’s top multi-family offices,* Cresset is guided by long-term relationships, shared success, and a belief that wealth should serve a life well lived.

*Disclosures related to awards, recognitions, and rankings available here. Forbes Top RIA Firms (issued 10.2025). Based on data from April of the prior year through March of the award year. Rankings are determined by SHOOK Research using a proprietary methodology that considers qualitative and quantitative factors. Barron’s Top 100 RIA Firms (issued 09.2025). Based on data from July of the prior year through June of the award year. Rankings are determined using a proprietary methodology that considers qualitative and quantitative factors. Cresset paid a licensing fee to use the Forbes and Barron’s award logos.

**Wealth Optimized, Life Elevated refers to the firm’s philosophy and process in providing advisory and planning services and is not intended to convey a guarantee of results.

Cresset refers to Cresset Capital Management, LLC and its respective direct and indirect subsidiaries and controlled affiliates. For a full list of Cresset subsidiaries and controlled affiliates, please see cressetcapital.com/disclosures/

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