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Linux Foundation Announces Intent to Launch Open Health Stack Software Foundation to Advance Open Source Digital Health Innovation

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Google, WHO and a global coalition support new Foundation designed to close health equity gaps through open, AI-ready infrastructure

Summary

The Linux Foundation announced its intent to launch the Open Health Stack Software Foundation, the neutrally governed home for open source software used to build AI-enabled digital health applications.Google will contribute the Open Health Stack project, including all code and assets, to the new Foundation as well as a $3 million grant from Google.org.More than 20 organizations across enterprise tech, nonprofit, healthcare, and research verticals expressed support for the Foundation and its goal to enable developers worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries, to build interoperable, AI-ready health systems.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced its intent to launch the Open Health Stack Software Foundation (OHS-SF). The new Foundation will provide a vendor-neutral, community-led home for the open source software tools developers use to build AI-enabled digital health solutions.

Digital health infrastructure remains fragmented, creating barriers to interoperability and limiting adoption of emerging technologies across health systems. OHS-SF is designed to address this challenge by providing developers with standards-based, community-governed tools needed to build interoperable health applications, drive local innovation and help close health equity gaps – particularly in resource-constrained areas.

“Open source has already transformed enterprise software, cloud computing, and AI, and it will do the same for how the world delivers care,” said Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation. “The Open Health Stack Software Foundation brings together the global community of developers, health organizations, and implementers under a vendor-neutral, community-governed home, ensuring that the tools powering tomorrow’s AI-enabled health systems are built in the open, for everyone.”

Grounded in global open standards, the Foundation will support three primary technical pillars: 1) core HL7 FHIR foundations; 2) the “OHS Player,” a multiplatform reference toolkit for local deployments; and 3) AI Commons, a neutral, model-agnostic space for enabling safe, effective and verifiable AI in global health co-developed with the World Health Organization (WHO).

Launched in 2023 with Google, the Open Health Stack project now includes a global ecosystem of developers and implementers. Google will contribute the project to the Foundation, including the code and underlying Open Health Stack assets. To support the Foundation, Google.org is providing a $3 million grant, helping drive long-term growth and implementation.

“We built Open Health Stack because we wanted to put the developers and community health care workers serving people on the edges of care back at the center of development and give them access to world-class tools for building next-gen digital health solutions,” said Kat Chou, Vice President at Google Research. “Contributing OHS to the Linux Foundation, with the support of WHO and a growing global community, ensures these building blocks will continue to evolve – now extending into AI for Global Digital Health – under governance that reflects the diversity of the communities they serve. OHS-SF makes it easier for developers everywhere to innovate on the next generation of digital health applications, and we’re proud to support its long-term success.”

Organizations that have expressed initial support for the Foundation include (in alphabetical order): Argusoft, Anthropic, Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN), the Center for Global Digital Health Innovation at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Clinton Health Access Initiative, Endless Health, Google, HELINA, IntelliSOFT Consulting Limited, IPRD Solutions, Jacaranda Health, Khushi Baby, Medtronic Labs, Madiro, Microsoft, Nawi Tech, Ona, OpenMRS, PATH, The Agency Fund, The Summit Institute for Development, and the World Health Organization, as well as advisory support from UNICEF.

To ensure developers from low- and middle-income countries can participate directly in governance, OHS-SF is introducing an Implementer Program. This initiative allows small businesses, local consulting firms, and pre-revenue startups to join and shape the project direction without financial barriers.

OHS-SF is now open for participation. Learn more at ohs.foundation, and explore the project repositories at github.com/ohs-foundation. Reach out at membership@ohs.foundation to become a member and help shape the future of open digital health infrastructure.

Supporting Quotes
“Open, interoperable and locally adaptable digital infrastructure is essential for building sustainable health systems at scale. Through MEDPlat, our open source digital health platform, Argusoft has supported the implementation of standards-based health solutions across diverse and resource-constrained settings. This experience has shown us how shared standards, reusable technology and strong implementer communities can accelerate innovation while strengthening local ownership. Argusoft is proud to support the Open Health Stack Software Foundation and contribute towards an open, community-governed ecosystem that enables countries and developers to build trusted, AI-ready digital health solutions.”
– Sethuraman Venkatraman, President of HealthTech, Argusoft

“Interoperability has always been the bridge between innovation and impact in health systems. The launch of the Open Health Stack Software Foundation is a milestone for our region, as AeHIN has long championed open standards and community-owned digital health solutions to close equity gaps across Asia. A vendor-neutral, standards-based home for tools built on HL7 FHIR – and one that brings AI into the fold responsibly through AI Commons – speaks directly to what AeHIN has been advocating: interoperable, locally adaptable systems that put people, not platforms, at the center of care. This also reflects what we’ve been working on through our capacity-building, technical assistance efforts and digital health convergence workshops — local ownership over the tools and standards that power national health systems. We look forward to engaging with this Foundation.”
– Jai Ganesh Udayasankaran, Executive Director, Asia eHealth Information Network

“Standards-based, modular open architecture is what allows countries to own and operate their digital health stack end-to-end, without depending on external systems they can’t easily adapt or maintain. That technical autonomy shortens the runway from prototype to clinical and public health deployment. It lowers the risk of implementation failure, derisking donor and government investment, while opening the door for local private sector engagement by shortening the pathway to market. As AI becomes the next layer of this stack, these principles become more essential..”
– Smisha Agarwal, Director, Center for Global Digital Health Innovation at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

“The OHS-SF is coming at the right time, bringing together key partners, from leading technology companies to the World Health Organization, to build the open source, community-managed tools we need for AI in global health to succeed. This initiative is directly in line with the AI Commons for Global Health initiative that CHAI is helping to steward and we look forward to close collaborations.”
– Ben Brockman, Senior Director of AI, Clinton Health Access Initiative

“The scale and impact of AI in health will ultimately be limited not by compute, but by the quality of our shared knowledge infrastructure. The Open Health Stack Software Foundation could provide exactly the kind of shared space and infrastructure the field needs – open enough for any developer to contribute to and for any health system to build on, and governed collectively so that it can be trusted. Endless Health is proud to support the creation of this important foundational infrastructure for global digital health.”
– Rubayat Khan, Director, Endless Health

“Productive utilization of digital health engineering competencies requires thoughtfully designed, fit-for-purpose tools. The OHS Software Foundation pragmatically enables HELINA to support open, standards-based innovation and more effective capacity building in Africa.”
– Steven Wanyee, Chair, HELINA Advisory Council

“At Summit Institute for Development, we have successfully implemented Open Health Stack tools to enable OpenSRP 2 functioning within Indonesia’s national and regional health system, achieving interoperability that is now locally adopted and financed by government resources for a population of 2.9 million, with potential scaling to 514 districts nationwide. This milestone demonstrates sustainability and ownership at the subnational level, while laying the foundation for national and global scaling. With AI-enabled capabilities being integrated, OHS is proving to be a transformative, vendor-neutral platform that empowers frontline health workers, strengthens continuity of care, and ensures equity in digital health.”
– Yuni Dwi Setiyawati, CEO, Summit Institute for Development

“Open Health Stack, as a Digital Public Good, helps countries access digital health ecosystems that are more accessible, safer and more inclusive. Every year millions of children remain invisible to the health systems meant to serve them, not because the tools do not exist, but because the conditions for those tools to scale and be sustained do not. UNICEF’s unique role of helping governments translate global standards into digitally-enabled health services at primary care and community level hinges on countries’ ability to access and deploy open, interoperable, digital solutions, from the point-of-care to the Health Information Exchange architecture. The Open Health Stack Software Foundation puts those foundations under community governance as digital public goods, lowering the barrier for every country to access and build digital ecosystems that find, reach and follow every child, including the most marginalized.”
– Sean Blaschke, Senior Adviser, Health, UNICEF

“WHO’s normative work, from SMART Guidelines to the WHO-ITU Reference Architecture for Digital Public Infrastructure, is built on the conviction that robust code and open interoperability standards like HL7 FHIR and ICD are not technical preferences but the precondition for health equity at scale. The Open Health Stack Software Foundation operationalizes that conviction in code. By providing community-maintained, standards-conformant libraries and toolkits, it lowers the cost of doing the right thing for every developer building health solutions, and it signals to countries and development partners that sustainable and interoperable digital health infrastructure is achievable today, and primed for the next wave of verifiable AI for health sector goals.”
– Alain Labrique, Director, World Health Organization Department of Data, Digital Health, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenChain, OpenSearch, OpenSSF, OpenStack, PyTorch, Ray, RISC-V, SPDX and Zephyr, provide the foundation for global infrastructure. The Linux Foundation is focused on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of the Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Media Contact
The Linux Foundation
pr@linuxfoundation.org

 

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AvePoint Set to Join S&P SmallCap 600

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51 minutes ago

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October 27, 2026

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NEW YORK, Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — AvePoint Inc. (NASD: AVPT) will replace LXP Industrial Trust (NYSE: LXP) in the S&P SmallCap 600 effective prior to the opening of trading on Monday, November 2. Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are acquiring LXP Industrial Trust in a deal expected to close soon, pending final closing conditions.

Following is a summary of the changes that will take place prior to the open of trading on the effective date:

Effective Date

Index Name

Action

Company Name

Ticker

GICS Sector

Nov 2, 2026

S&P SmallCap 600

Addition

AvePoint

AVPT

Information Technology

Nov 2, 2026

S&P SmallCap 600

Deletion

LXP Industrial Trust

LXP

Real Estate

ABOUT S&P DOW JONES INDICES

S&P Dow Jones Indices is the largest global resource for essential index-based concepts, data and research, and home to iconic financial market indicators, such as the S&P 500® and the Dow Jones Industrial Average®. More assets are invested in products based on our indices than products based on indices from any other provider in the world. Since Charles Dow invented the first index in 1884, S&P DJI has been innovating and developing indices across the spectrum of asset classes helping to define the way investors measure and trade the markets.

S&P Dow Jones Indices is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), which provides essential intelligence for individuals, companies, and governments to make decisions with confidence. For more information, visit www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

S&P Dow Jones Indices
index_services@spglobal.com

Media Inquiries
spdji.comms@spglobal.com

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Archera Surpasses $5.6 Billion in Cloud and AI Spend Under Management, Closes Series C Led by Pivot Investment Partners, and Expands Insurance-Backed Cloud Commitments

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51 minutes ago

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October 27, 2026

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The round will help Archera expand its guaranteed cloud commitments, bringing insurance-backed financial protection to companies navigating unpredictable AI and cloud spending. The company has delivered more than $700 million in customer savings and now manages approximately $5.6 billion in annual cloud and AI spend.

BELLEVUE, Wash., Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — As artificial intelligence makes cloud spending harder to predict, companies face an increasingly expensive choice: commit to long-term cloud and AI contracts to unlock significant discounts or preserve flexibility and leave savings on the table. Archera has raised a $15 million Series C to expand its Guaranteed Commitments and change that equation.

The cloud economics company today announced it closed its Series C funding round, led by Pivot Investment Partners, with participation from existing investors including HighSage Ventures. The financing brings Archera’s total funding to $38.3 million. It will support the expansion of Archera’s Guaranteed Commitments and its suite of free cloud cost tools, including its FinOps Agent and MCP.

Insurance-backed financial protection is central to Archera’s next phase of growth. Archera purchased a policy on a surplus lines basis from Crum & Forster Specialty Insurance Company to back its guarantee. This model helps businesses pursue cloud commitment savings while managing the financial risk of usage changes.

The company has delivered more than $700 million in savings to over 2,200 organizations, including PubNub, Art.com, and Astronomer. The thesis behind Archera is simple: companies shouldn’t have to predict AI’s future to commit and save money on today’s infrastructure.

Why Cloud and AI Commitments Need to Change

Cloud providers reward customers who commit to spending over one- to three-year periods with substantial discounts and access to capacity. Historically, those commitments have helped businesses reduce infrastructure costs. But AI is changing the risk and economics of that decision.

A new model launch can multiply GPU spending in months. A more efficient model, a shift in architecture, or a move to a different service can reduce it just as quickly. Long-term commitments that once looked financially sound can become expensive liabilities.

Companies are left choosing between overcommitting and risking unused spend, or undercommitting and missing out on available discounts. Many choose the latter, sacrificing potential savings to preserve flexibility.

Archera believes that the trade-off is unnecessary. Its Guaranteed Commitments provide resource-level cloud and AI discounts with terms as short as 30 days. If usage declines and a covered commitment goes unused, Archera covers the cost under the terms of its guarantee.

The result is a different way to approach cloud purchasing. Businesses can pursue deeper discounts and unlock capacity otherwise gated behind a commitment, without bearing the entire financial consequence when actual usage diverges from forecasts.

Turning Cloud Optimization Into a Financial Product

Traditional cloud cost management tools provide visibility, recommendations, automation, and forecasting, but they can’t eliminate the financial risk of unused commitments. Archera combines its free FinOps platform and Agent with a financial guarantee that addresses inaccurate forecasts.

“Every tool in this market is trying to forecast your cloud usage a little better. We think that’s the wrong bet,” said Aran Khanna, co-founder and CEO of Archera. “Nobody can forecast AI demand, not the customer, not the cloud provider. So instead of predicting it, we guarantee it, and we have purchased an insurance policy to back that guarantee. If covered usage drops, we address the unused commitment cost under the terms of our guarantee. That’s a new way to purchase cloud, not another dashboard, and it’s why we’ve been able to return $700 million to our customers.”

The approach positions cloud commitments as a financial risk decision, helping finance and engineering leaders manage budgets while adapting to changing technology.

Built for CFOs, CTOs, and the Teams Managing AI Costs

The approach addresses a growing challenge across finance and engineering: how to control infrastructure costs without constraining the business.

For CFOs: Capture commitment-level discounts while reducing exposure to eligible unused spend under the guarantee.For CTOs and engineering leaders: Preserve flexibility to adopt new AI models, change architectures, and scale workloads without letting past commitments dictate future decisions.For FinOps teams: Increase commitment coverage with a financial backstop when usage changes, without more back-and-forth with engineering teams to get perfect forecasts.For cloud partners and resellers: Give customers a differentiated way to pursue cloud savings that can be reinvested in new cloud services while managing commitment risk.

Archera’s platform connects to AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud billing data in read-only mode and analyzes actual usage. It then recommends and automates the purchasing of both native commitments and Archera Guaranteed Commitments.

Customers can evaluate their potential savings before making any purchasing decision. Commitments remain in the customer’s own cloud account, preserving end-to-end control over cloud purchasing strategy.

Archera earns when customers save through its guaranteed commitments, aligning its commercial model with the outcomes customers seek.

Customers Are Rethinking the Commitment Model

For organizations accustomed to treating cloud commitments as a single, high-stakes decision, Archera offers a more flexible approach.

“Working with Archera meant rethinking commitments as a spectrum rather than a single, high-stakes decision,” said James Hamilton, VP of Operations and Controller at PubNub. “This was a big mind shift for us. We needed to think about how our commitments could be broken up into a spectrum of purchases versus a single one-time buy.”

That flexibility is particularly valuable as companies adopt AI workloads, where technology choices and resource requirements can shift faster than traditional budgeting cycles.

Instead of making one large bet on future usage, businesses can take a more measured approach while still securing meaningful discounts.

A Series C to Expand Insurance-Backed Cloud Purchasing

Archera has been operating profitably at scale. It raised a Series C to support larger guarantees, expand its reach, serve more customers, and upgrade the insurance policies backing its guarantee to serve larger global clients.

The company plans to use the capital in three ways:

Accelerate go-to-market efforts.Expand its global partner network across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and Latin America.Serve more teams focused on AI-driven workloads.

“Archera has built a capital-efficient and differentiated business at the intersection of cloud infrastructure and risk management,” said Dinkar Jetley, co-founder and managing partner at Pivot Investment Partners. “The team pairs a deep understanding of the cloud ecosystem with a rigorous approach to underwriting, and the result is a compelling value proposition that a fast-growing roster of customers relies on as their cloud spend scales. We are privileged to have led this Series C round and look forward to working closely with Aran and the management team in the years ahead.”

Built by People Who Understand Cloud Infrastructure

Aran and Nikhil Khanna founded Archera in 2019. Aran previously planned capacity for Azure’s core compute and database services at Microsoft and was a founding member of AWS’s deep learning team leading launches, including SageMaker, DeepLens, and the Neuron SDK, behind Amazon’s Trainium and Inferentia AI chips.

His research on deep learning model efficiency has been cited more than 1,900 times, and he serves on the FinOps Foundation governing board.

As AI transforms infrastructure economics, Archera aims to make cloud savings more accessible without forcing businesses to assume unnecessary financial risk.

To explore potential savings, request a free assessment at Archera.ai.

Free savings assessment: https://app.archera.ai/savings-estimate?utm_source=forbes&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=series-c-2026

Name: Sarah
Email Address: shiara@archera.ai
Phone Number: +13018255007

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Creative Technology Releases Creative XF1, a Hi-Res Extreme Fidelity Speaker that Elevates Every Listening Experience

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October 27, 2026

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SYDNEY, Oct. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Creative Technology Ltd launches Creative XF1, a new Hi-Res speaker system designed for users who care about both sound quality and aesthetics, and want more vivid music, more cinematic movies, and more engaging listening. Creative XF1 offers sleek design, bi-amplified architecture, 72W RMS output, dual Hi-Res Audio certification, next-gen connectivity, and personalisation with the Creative Nexus app.

Creative XF1 brings out details in music that many compact 2.0 speakers in this price range do not reproduce, from the rasp in a voice to the rumbling bass under a game soundtrack. With a bespoke FEA-optimised 3-inch woofer, Creative XF1 adds extra punch and close-range clarity. The 72W RMS bi-amplified design delivers a clear, powerful sound that is easy on the ear.

“For many of us, the desktop has become the centre of work, entertainment and creation,” said Ernest Sim, CEO and Executive Chairman, Creative Technology Ltd. “Creative XF1 is built to deliver room-filling power with richer depth and clarity, so every note, voice and effect sounds closer, more vivid and more real at your desk.”

Besides advanced connectivity via Bluetooth® 6.0, USB audio, and AUX input, users can also connect a subwoofer for richer bass and an easy 2.1 upgrade.

Crafted by in-house audio specialists, the Creative Nexus app offers a 10-band parametric EQ and 120+ presets for different music genres and games. Users can personalise their sound for focused work, movie nights, gaming sessions, or unwinding, all from one intuitive interface.  

Pricing and availability

Creative XF1 is priced at A$339.95, and is available at creative.com.

About Creative
Since its founding in 1981, Creative Technology has been driven by a singular mission: to reimagine the way the world experiences sound. Creative introduced the groundbreaking Sound Blaster®, the invention that gave personal computers the gift of sound — and forever changed the landscape of PC multimedia.

Guided by a legacy of bold ideas and breakthrough technologies, Creative continues to lead at the intersection of engineering and imagination.

At its core, Creative remains committed to pushing the boundaries of what audio can achieve — enriching lives, elevating experiences, and defining what’s next in sound.

This announcement relates to products launched in Australia. Availability is subject to change without notice and may differ elsewhere in the world according to local factors and requirements. Creative, and the Creative logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Creative Technology Ltd in the United States and/or other countries. The Bluetooth® word mark and logo are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such marks by Creative Technology Ltd is under license. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

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SOURCE Creative Technology Ltd

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