This month marks the tenth anniversary of SEAL Awards, an organization dedicated to recognizing corporate sustainability leadership, funding early-career environmental research, and honoring the journalists whose reporting has shaped public understanding of the climate crisis. From its initial idea of corporate sustainability recognition in September 2016, the organization has grown from a single set of business awards into a three-pillar effort spanning recognition, research, and direct action.

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Ten years ago, SEAL Awards Founder Matt Harney set out to build an organization that could champion positive corporate environmental practices. A decade later, that founding idea has expanded into three connected pillars: the Business Sustainability Awards, the Environmental Journalism Awards, and the Environmental Research Grants, alongside a series of independent environmental impact campaigns.

The SEAL Business Sustainability Awards have recognized global leaders including Cisco, Disneyland, General Electric, General Motors, Honeywell, IBM, Microsoft, Mastercard, Procter & Gamble, Salesforce, Samsung, Southwest Airlines, and Whirlpool among the world’s most sustainable. Past award winners like AiDash, Beewise, Enervee, FloWater, PATH (Pathwater), and Stasher reflect SEAL Business Sustainability Awards’ inclusion of start-ups and emerging sustainability leaders. SEAL’s ESG recognition efforts were furthered by its analytical process – merging CDP A-List data with CSA / S&P Global ESG Scores – for its SEAL Organizational Impact Award, representing the top 50 most sustainable companies in the world. Application fees from the business awards fund the organization’s research grants, environmental journalism awards and impact campaigns, tying corporate recognition directly to the organization’s broader mission.

The Environmental Journalism Awards have honored journalists at outlets ranging from established newsrooms – The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Bloomberg, NPR, and ProPublica – to emerging, climate-focused publications including Mongabay, Grist, Earther, and The Narwhal. Each year, the program recognizes twelve journalists for reporting that connects environmental systems to the political and economic forces shaping them and the communities living through them.

The Environmental Research Grants fund graduate students and postdoctoral researchers early in their environmental policy careers, with past recipients based at institutions including Harvard, MIT, UCLA, Arizona State University, Princeton, the University of Colorado Boulder, the Marine Conservation Institute, and Duke.

Beyond granting recognition to corporate sustainability and environmental journalism, SEAL Awards has taken on its own impact campaigns, including developing the concept for an Eco Rewards credit card, launching the “UpTheCup” public call for Starbucks to reduce cup waste that achieved over 70,000 petition signatures on Change.org, and a push for Yelp to highlight sustainable restaurant listings – efforts that use the organization’s network to drive change directly rather than solely through recognition. Through these campaigns, over 100 interns gained training by directly owning impact campaign deliverables.

“Ten years ago, sustainability was often a small, ignored cost center within companies,” said Matt Harney, Founder of SEAL Awards. “Today, companies are being asked to show their work, and increasingly, they can. In the past decade, we’ve seen real progress in making sustainability a core pillar instead of an afterthought. The challenge we face in the coming decade is to shift from sustainability as an aspiration to a baseline, with regenerative business practices as the new goalpost.”

“It has been an honor to support SEAL Awards and serve its mission from the beginning,” said Safa Bee Wesley, Impact Lead. “I’m proud of the work we’ve accomplished over the past ten years, and especially proud of our impact internship program. Our impact campaigns set out to change the way business is done — but the biggest impact we created may have been through the experience our interns gained from planning and implementing our campaigns, and the skills they carried into their own careers in sustainability.”

SEAL Awards continues to expand its search for honorees across varied industries, journalism formats, and global locations, reflecting the scale of the environmental challenges it was founded to address.

ABOUT SEAL AWARDS
SEAL (Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership) Awards is an environmental advocacy organization that honors leadership through its corporate sustainability awards and environmental journalism awards, while funding academic research and pursuing its own environmental impact campaigns.

The SEAL Awards’ core pillars are:

Business Sustainability Awards, honoring the most sustainable companies in the worldEnvironmental Journalism Awards, recognizing journalists across established and emerging outletsEnvironmental Research Grants, funding early-career researchers at institutions including Harvard, MIT, and DukeImpact Campaigns, applying the organization’s network directly toward environmental accountability

Company Website
https://sealawards.com/

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SOURCE SEAL Awards

TAIPEI, Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — DFI, a Qisda Group company and a global leader in embedded motherboards and industrial computers, today announced that it will showcase its latest gaming computing platforms at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) 2026. Designed for next-generation smart gaming systems, the platforms combine high-resolution graphics, responsive edge computing, and integrated system security.

Leading DFI’s showcase is the SF101-PTH embedded system, powered by the Intel® Core™ Ultra processor (Series 3) platform. Utilizing Intel® Xe3 graphics architecture and delivering up to 180 TOPS of combined AI performance across its NPU, GPU, and CPU on a single-board computer, the system addresses the demanding computational requirements of next-generation slot machines and smart bingo terminals. With its integrated edge AI capabilities, the SF101-PTH processes advanced computer vision workloads to drive player engagement analytics for tailored guest experiences, alongside on-device fraud prevention to safeguard machine integrity. These AI workloads run concurrently with low-latency multi-screen 4K 3D game rendering within a low-power envelope. DFI will demonstrate these capabilities on-site through an interactive, live Bingo Machine showcase, illustrating real-time graphical throughput and edge analytical processing.

DFI’s showcase further includes an extensive motherboard portfolio spanning Intel® Core™ Ultra processors (Series 3 and Series 2) as well as Intel® Core™ 14th/13th Gen processors to accommodate diverse cabinet form factors, offering scalable performance from mainstream socketed processing to next-generation edge AI and multi-display 4K configurations. Supporting Qisda Group’s four AI pillars – “AI Vision & Display,” “AI Infrastructure,” “AI Solutions & Smart Manufacturing,” and “AI Hospital & Wellness Ecosystem”- DFI advances high-performance graphics, edge AI processing, and scalable infrastructure to empower next-generation gaming at G2E 2026.

To simplify cabinet architecture and streamline peripheral management, DFI will feature the GM841-HPF system, powered by the AMD Ryzen™ Embedded 8000 Series processor. Built as an all-in-one platform for gaming cabinets, the GM841-HPF integrates 8-channel physical intrusion detection, 32-in/32-out isolated GPIO, 4 native ccTalk ports, and iButton interfaces directly onto the board. This unified design enables direct connectivity to bill validators, buttons, and lighting peripherals without requiring external converter boards, reducing cabling complexity and maintenance costs.

To support regulatory compliance across global gaming markets, DFI offers gaming platforms with hardware TPM 2.0 and jurisdiction-specific BIOS options pre-verified by GLI. Using cryptographic hashing and public-key verification, these capabilities help protect BIOS and storage media integrity while simplifying system validation across different gaming jurisdictions.

Exhibition Information

Location: The Venetian Expo, Las Vegas, USAHall: Exhibition HallDate: September 29 – October 1, 2026Booth No.: 1832

About DFI

Founded in 1981, DFI is a global leading provider of high-performance computing technology across multiple embedded industries. With its innovative design and premium quality management system, DFI’s industrial-grade solutions enable customers to optimize their equipment and ensure high reliability, long-term life cycle, and 24/7 durability in a breadth of markets including Industrial Automation, Medical, Gaming, Transportation, Energy, Mission-Critical, and Intelligent Retail.

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SOURCE DFI

IBM enables financial institutions to connect to Swift’s blockchain-based shared ledger for tokenized deposit transactions with betaIBM Digital Asset Haven extends to on-premises beta deployment, giving institutions greater deployment control of their digital asset technology stack

ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced two key capabilities designed to help financial institutions, governments, and other regulated organizations provide digital asset services while prioritizing enterprise-grade security and control. In a beta offering, IBM Digital Asset Haven clients can now connect to permissioned blockchain networks, including Swift’s blockchain-based shared ledger. IBM is also extending IBM Digital Asset Haven to an on-premises beta deployment option, enabling clients to manage digital asset operations entirely within their own data centers.

According to J.P. Morgan Payments, 93% of financial institutions are modernizing their payments infrastructure¹ as banks look to move money more efficiently across borders and manage a growing range of digital assets. This shift is increasing demand for infrastructure that can support new forms of digital transactions while meeting banks’ security, compliance, and operational requirements.

IBM advances cross-border payments with Swift’s ledger

IBM Digital Asset Haven now enables clients to connect to Swift’s blockchain-based shared ledger. Swift is the globally inclusive cooperative that connects 12,500 financial institutions across 200+ markets. With the beta release of the IBM Digital Asset Haven ISO 20022 Messaging Adapter feature, institutions can instruct tokenized deposit transactions using standard ISO 20022 messages through the shared ledger infrastructure, allowing them to build on existing payment message formats and operational processes instead of blockchain-specific workflows. Swift’s ledger supports bank-issued tokenized deposits and participating IBM clients can move digital assets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ahead of final settlement through existing systems, while continuing to use established Swift standards and banks’ own compliance processes.

Announced at Sibos 2025 and designed in collaboration with more than 40 financial institutions worldwide, Swift’s ledger moved from concept to activation within nine months and is being put to first use by 17 first-mover institutions piloting tokenized deposit transactions. Financial institutions already participating in the program have successfully tested tokenized deposits on the Swift shared ledger with IBM Digital Asset Haven, demonstrating how banks can use existing standards and compliance processes to explore new models for moving money digitally.

IBM Digital Asset Haven extends to on-premises beta deployment

IBM is also extending Digital Asset Haven, a platform built to help banks, governments, and other regulated organizations manage and secure digital assets, to an on-premises beta deployment for clients. This deployment allows organizations to manage digital assets such as stablecoins and tokenized deposits entirely within their own environments.

Since launching IBM Digital Asset Haven SaaS and hybrid deployment options in October 2025, banking and payment institutions across multiple continents have begun implementing digital asset use cases with IBM Digital Asset Haven.

The new on-premises deployment option is designed to run entirely inside a client’s own data center on IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE with no dependency on public cloud infrastructure. Clients can deploy it on compatible IBM infrastructure already in their environment or add new capacity based on their requirements.

IBM Digital Asset Haven on-premises differentiates from existing deployment options by being built to combine client control with increased performance, speed, and scale for digital asset operations, while prioritizing enterprise-grade security. IBM Digital Asset Haven’s on-premises key features include:

Client-Controlled Deployment keeps both the solution layer and the key management layer entirely inside the client’s own IBM LinuxONE or IBM Z environment, with configurations achieving industry-leading 99.999999% availability2.Hardware-Backed Security protects keys using IBM Crypto Express HSMs embedded in LinuxONE, with confidential computing and secured environment partitioning isolating production, test, and development environments.Structured Key Ceremonies and Cold Storage follow formal, auditable processes used to generate root certificate authority keys, producing documentation clients can present to regulators, with support for IBM Offline Signing Orchestrator cold storage operations.Consistent Experience Across Deployments carries the same architecture, APIs, and workflows as Haven’s SaaS and Hybrid SaaS options, so clients can move between deployment models without rewriting applications.

“The financial services industry is entering a new era where tokenized and traditional assets will need to move side by side,” said Tom McPherson, General Manager, IBM Z and LinuxONE. “As institutions modernize payments and prepare for a future of always-on transactions, they need infrastructure that combines innovation with the security, resiliency, and regulatory compliance requirements of regulated banking. By connecting to Swift’s shared ledger and extending IBM Digital Asset Haven to on-premises environments, IBM is helping clients participate in emerging digital asset networks while prioritizing control of their most critical financial operations.”

For more information about IBM’s integration with Swift’s shared ledger, visit here. Institutions interested in IBM Digital Asset Haven’s on-premises beta can join the waitlist at here.

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Additional Sources
What’s New IBM Digital Asset Haven On-Prem and Swift Blog 

Disclaimers:
1. https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/payments/fx-cross-border/2026-trends-for-financial-institutions 

2. IBM internal data based on measurements and projections was used in calculating the expected value. Necessary components include IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper 5; IBM z/VM V7.3 systems or above collected in a Single System Image, each running RHOCP 4.14 or above; IBM Operations Manager; GDPS 4.6 or above for management of data recovery and virtual machine recovery across metro distance systems and storage, including Metro Multi-site workload and GDPS Global; and IBM DS8000 series storage with IBM HyperSwap. A MongoDB v4.4 workload was used. Necessary resiliency technology must be enabled, including z/VM Single System Image clustering, GDPS xDR Proxy for z/VM, and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) 4.14 or above for management of local storage devices. Application-induced outages are not included in the above measurements. Other configurations (hardware or software) may provide different availability characteristics.

Media Contact:
Aishwerya Paul
IBM Infrastructure Communications
Aish.Paul@ibm.com 

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