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Locus FS Expands The Woodlands Laboratory to Advance Biosurfactant Innovation

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Expansion brings mining, oil and gas, and biosurfactant formulation expertise together under one roof to speed product development and customer-focused innovation

THE WOODLANDS, Texas, July 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Locus Fermentation Solutions has expanded its laboratory operations in The Woodlands, Texas, strengthening its ability to develop and validate high-performance biosurfactant-based formulations for mining, oil and gas, and industrial applications.

The self-funded expansion consolidates Locus FS’s mining and ingredients laboratory capabilities with its existing oil and gas (Bio-Energy) technical operations, bringing cross-disciplinary teams, specialized equipment, and formulation expertise together in one facility. The investment is designed to accelerate customer-driven product development, improve collaboration across technical disciplines, and support the company’s continued growth in mining and institutional and industrial markets. These laboratory expansions double total functional lab space, enhancing R&D capacity to accelerate biosurfactant innovation across multiple markets.

To learn more about Locus FS’s biosurfactant technology platform and industrial applications, please visit www.LocusFS.com.

“This expansion reflects the next phase of Locus FS’s growth as a science-first specialty chemistry company,” said John Uhran, CEO of Locus FS. “By bringing our technical teams together in one facility, we are creating a more integrated innovation environment that allows us to move faster, solve more complex formulation challenges, and deliver high-performance biobased solutions to customers across multiple industries.”

The expanded facility includes dedicated space for formulation, analytical equipment, ore sample preparation, mineral processing, hydrometallurgical testing and interfacial and coating science. These capabilities support work across mining applications including flotation, leaching, and other process-focused evaluations where surface chemistry plays a critical role in performance. Additionally, the new lab will support growth in our Ingredients segment through biosurfactant formulation while accelerating learning, innovation and knowledge-sharing across all the specialty markets we serve.

The expansion builds on Locus FS’s proprietary fermentation platform and its deep expertise in glycolipid biosurfactants – biobased molecules engineered to address interfacial challenges that occur across industrial systems. In mining, oil and gas, and other heavy industrial markets, many of the most persistent performance challenges occur at the interface between oil, water, minerals, rock, metals, or deposited solids. Locus FS’s biosurfactant-enhanced formulations are designed to act on those interfaces by improving dispersion, modifying surface behavior, and supporting more efficient material separation and mobilization.

Advancing Mining Innovation Through Cross-Industry Expertise

Locus FS has spent years developing and deploying biosurfactant-based solutions for oil and gas applications, where complex reservoir environments require chemistry that can perform under challenging conditions. Many of the same surface and interfacial phenomena are central to mining, where mineral composition, ore variability, and process conditions can significantly influence chemical performance.

The expanded Woodlands laboratory allows Locus FS to apply lessons learned from oil and gas formulation development to mining applications more directly, helping the company develop more robust chemical packages that can perform across a wider range of ore compositions and customer-specific operating conditions.

“Mining presents a highly variable formulation challenge, because ore composition can change from mine to mine and even over time within the same operation,” said Megan Pearl, Vice President of Global Technology. “By integrating our mining work with the broader technical expertise we have built in oil and gas, we can better leverage what we know about biosurfactant behavior, surface chemistry, and complex formulation design to develop solutions faster and with greater application flexibility.”

Unlike conventional approaches that often require highly bespoke chemistry for each ore body or operating condition, Locus FS is focused on developing more adaptable biosurfactant-enhanced formulations that can address shared mechanism-level challenges across different mining environments. The goal is to help customers move from one-off product development toward more scalable, durable solutions that improve process efficiency and support long-term operational performance.

Strengthening a Platform for Sustainable Specialty Chemistry

The lab expansion reinforces Locus FS’s broader strategy of translating precision fermentation into high-performance specialty chemical solutions across multiple end markets. Through its proprietary biomanufacturing platform, the company produces novel glycolipids and microbial blends that act as formulation amplifiers, enabling customers to improve performance while advancing the transition toward renewable, biobased alternatives from conventional petrochemical inputs.

“This investment is about more than additional lab space,” added Uhran. “It is about building the infrastructure, technical alignment, and application expertise needed to scale biosurfactant innovation across industries where performance, reliability, and sustainability all matter.”

Locus FS expects the expanded laboratory to support faster testing cycles, stronger collaboration between technical teams, and continued commercialization of biosurfactant-based solutions for mining, energy, agriculture, industrial, and consumer product applications.

Media Contact: Matt Prissel

Contact Info: pr@locusfs.com

ABOUT LOCUS FS

Locus Fermentation Solutions (Locus FS) is a USA-based biotechnology company delivering high-performance specialty chemical formulations enhanced with novel glycolipids and microbial blends. Built on deep microbial expertise, the company develops bio-based additives that act as powerful formulation amplifiers – pushing performance beyond the limits of traditional chemistry across industrial, CPG, energy, mining and agricultural applications. With a proprietary biomanufacturing platform and science-first approach, Locus FS helps customers solve complex formulation challenges and accelerate the transition to smarter, more sustainable solutions.

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SOURCE Locus FS

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Balto Launches Kodi: Contact Center Leaders have a New Way to Ask Anything, Find the Answer, and Put It to Work

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Kodi works alongside contact center leaders to investigate problems, uncover opportunities, recommend what needs to happen, and put approved decisions into action.

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Balto today announced the general availability of Kodi, an AI coworker built specifically for contact center leaders that can investigate issues, determine what needs to happen next, and execute approved changes across the tools teams use to run the floor. Rather than stopping at an insight or recommendation, Kodi can carry the work through to action, turning contact center data into changes that can improve performance, revenue, quality, and compliance.

This changes what you can do with contact center data. When something needs to improve, you can have Kodi investigate the underlying interactions, identify the factors driving the outcome, show the evidence, determine what needs to change, and recommend where that change should happen. You review the recommendation, approve it, and Kodi can put it into action through Agent Assist, coaching, QA scorecards, compliance scorecards, Notes, dynamic prompts, checklists, dashboards, data fields, and other Balto capabilities.

“Most insights tools stop at the moment they show you the problem,” said Kyle Jones, VP of Product at Balto. “Kodi is built for what happens next. It can investigate the issue, work through the evidence, determine what needs to change, and then go into Balto and make the approved change.

A new way to work with your contact center

For years, contact center technology has given leaders more dashboards, more reports, and more data. The challenge has been turning that data into decisions and then turning those decisions into changes on the floor. Kodi brings those steps together. It can work through the data required to understand what is happening, connect findings to the underlying interactions, identify the factors driving the result, and determine what action could improve the outcome. Because Kodi operates inside Balto, it can then move that decision into execution.

Kodi can also recognize when the original question is not enough. If additional data would produce a better answer, it can create what is needed, backfill the last 60 days, and begin tracking it going forward.

The result is not simply an answer to the question that was asked. Kodi can also surface related patterns and problems you did not think to ask about.

From insight to action without change management required

Execution is powered by a different way of working with your contact center. You can start with a question, a problem, an observation, or something you simply want to understand. You do not need to know exactly which report to run or which data field contains the answer.

The way you need information depends on what you are trying to understand or decide. Kodi can adapt its output to match. You can ask for a chart, change the visualization, compare time periods, break results down by team or location, see the interactions behind a number, summarize findings across conversations, or turn the result into a report or PDF you can share. The information is not locked inside a predefined dashboard. Kodi can work with you to shape the answer around the question, the evidence, and the decision in front of you.

You can ask Kodi to go deeper, change the timeframe, compare teams, investigate a pattern it surfaced, or show the calls behind a finding. The conversation gives you a way to direct the work while Kodi handles the investigation. The insight, the decision, and the tools needed to execute it are connected. Kodi has immediately closed the gap between what you know and what you can do.

Availability

Kodi begins rolling out today exclusively for all Balto customers. To see it in action, visit balto.ai/contact-center-insights/.

About Balto

Balto unifies the contact center by pairing human execution with the speed of agentic AI. Powering thousands of customer interactions daily across the globe, Balto’s agent assist, automated QA, and agentic insights to empower contact centers to maximize revenue, eliminate compliance risk, and scale elite operational performance. Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, Balto is backed by premier venture capital firms and trusted by leading brands across financial services, healthcare, insurance, and retail operations. Learn more at balto.ai

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SOURCE Balto Software, Inc.

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Vertafore Launches Velocity Document Intelligence Agent to Automate Research Across Insurance Workflows

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New Velocity AI agent helps insurance professionals find and act on critical information faster across document-intensive workflows

DENVER, Sept. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Vertafore®, the leader in insurance distribution technology in the AI era, today announced general availability of its new Velocity™ Document Intelligence Agent, which automates time-consuming research across insurance documents so professionals can get to the information they need faster.

Agency, MGA, and carrier teams often spend significant time reviewing dozens of documents to answer a customer question, renew or endorse a policy, assess a risk or resolve a claim. The information they need is usually somewhere in the content they have access to, but the time it takes to find, compare and piece it together is the problem.

Available in Vertafore’s ImageRight®, Document Intelligence Agent automates that research so insurance professionals can spend less time finding and more time acting on information.

Users ask a question in natural language and the AI agent finds and synthesizes relevant information across the content they are authorized to access—spanning Word documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, images, email, and more—bringing it together in a clear answer with document- and page-level source citations. Unlike traditional keyword search, the agent uses the meaning and context of the question to surface relevant information rather than simply returning matching results.

For example, Document Intelligence Agent can identify and summarize changes in coverage between policy terms, bring together claims and loss history to support underwriting or reconstruct the documented sequence of communications around a claim—supporting everything from compiling an answer while on the phone with a client to reviewing a new submission, preparing for a renewal, taking over a new account, and preparing for an audit.

In early testing, information that took approximately 20 minutes to find manually was surfaced in two minutes—up to a 90% reduction in document search and review time.

“Our teams spend a lot of time searching through policy files for specific information, sometimes going back years,” said Amber Troyer, Software Administrator at Hummel Group Insurance. “With the Document Intelligence Agent, we can ask what we’re looking for in plain language and get directly to the right information. It’s even finding relevant results in mislabeled documents—something that would be easy for a person to overlook. This is going to help our team surface all the content they need to service accounts, faster.”

“Insurance professionals spend a huge amount of their expertise just finding the information needed to do their job,” said James Thom, president and chief AI officer at Vertafore. “AI changes that equation. By automating the research and bringing the right information forward, we can remove a major source of distribution drag and give people more capacity for the decisions, relationships and judgment that require their expertise.”

Bringing specialized AI into insurance workflows

Built on the Vertafore Velocity™ AI Platform, Document Intelligence Agent is the latest addition to Vertafore’s growing portfolio of AI agents embedded directly in the workflows insurance professionals use every day.

The new AI agent is a key enabler to Vertafore’s vision for the Agentic Agency and Digital Underwriter, helping the insurance industry eliminate drag across the distribution lifecycle and achieve Distribution Velocity—speed with intentional outcomes across workflows. Leveraging AI to take the friction out of research and surface insights is a valuable step in empowering agencies, MGAs and carriers to adapt faster and grow smarter.

About Vertafore

Vertafore powers Distribution Velocity, accelerating every part of the insurance value chain within and across agencies, MGAs, and carriers so they can adapt faster and grow smarter. As the trusted backbone of the industry, Vertafore provides the core digital systems, specialized AI, and data-driven foundation to eliminate distribution drag across sales, servicing, accounting, underwriting, and back-office operations, taking insurance workflows from friction to flow.

Supporting over 95% of the top agencies and insurers and 50% of industry compliance transactions, Vertafore leads at the intersection of innovation and trust, giving customers the speed, performance power, and confidence to transform and grow at scale in the new era. Vertafore is headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Learn more at www.vertafore.com.

©2026 Vertafore and the Vertafore logo are registered trademarks of Vertafore. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

MEDIA CONTACT:
INK Communications
vertafore@ink-co.com

New Velocity AI agent helps insurance professionals find and act on critical information faster across document-intensive workflows

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SOURCE Vertafore, Inc.

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FULCRUM LAUNCHES CERTIFICATE AUTOMATION, DOUBLING THE TIME ITS PLATFORM GIVES BACK TO ACCOUNT MANAGERS

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Workflow verifies coverage and pulls endorsement forms directly from the policy, extending automation Fulcrum already runs for policy checking and proposals.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Fulcrum today launched a certificate workflow that returns a complete, endorsement-ready certificate from an emailed request in under a minute, built on the same policy data the platform already uses for policy checking and proposal generation.

Fulcrum automates the underwriting context the document depends on, reading the policy rather than filling a form the way most certificate tools do. The workflow reads the inbound request and any attached contract, compares what is being demanded against the coverage the client actually carries, and flags requests the policy cannot satisfy before an account manager commits to anything. It locates the supporting endorsement forms inside the policy, pulls them, sorts them by the situation they apply to, and attaches them. Description of operations language comes from wording the agency has already approved, shaped to each client’s preferences. Account managers review and approve every certificate before it issues.

“When you track the lifecycle of a policy, from policy checking to proposals to servicing, certificates are such a major, tedious piece of that,” said Albert Hu, Product Lead for certificates at Fulcrum. “They’re also extremely hard to automate, because they require so much context about where a policy stands. We’d always wanted to build it, and once we’d proven ourselves with other workflows, we knew it was time.”

Certificates are the latest, and most demanding, of the major workflow areas Fulcrum has taken on, following policy checking and proposal generation. The sequence was deliberate: both of those required the platform to read and reconcile policy data across carriers, forms, and lines of business, and certificates inherit that same foundation.

Renewals compound the gain: because each certificate is built from current policy data rather than a stored template, an entire account can be reissued in a single batch, work that can otherwise take agencies days or weeks each year. It is the largest single gain Fulcrum has delivered to date, doubling the time the platform returns to account managers. Endorsement handling drew the most scrutiny from early users but has been fully tested and proven.

“I am confident, based on what Fulcrum has built, that this new workflow is going to be a game changer for all of Foundation Risk Partners (FRP) We’re really excited about the deployment of COIs,” said Daniel Greene, Midwest Regional Vice President of P&C Operations at FRP.

“Certificate requests are one of the most repetitive, time-consuming parts of an account manager’s day, not because the work is unimportant, but because it eats up hours that should go to higher-value client conversations,” said Arjun Mangla, CEO and Co-founder at Fulcrum. “Getting that time back without losing turnaround is what changes for these teams.”

Fulcrum is used by nearly half of the top 50 U.S. insurance brokerages and executes more than 2,500 hours of servicing work each day. The certificate workflow joins the company’s agents for policy checking, coverage analysis, proposal preparation, and sales preparation.

About Fulcrum

Fulcrum is the leading AI platform for insurance brokerages, helping teams modernize workflows like policy checking, proposal generation, and certificate issuance. Trusted by top U.S. brokerages, Fulcrum’s AI agents integrate directly with existing systems to deliver faster, more accurate service without adding headcount. Learn more at www.withfulcrum.com

Media Contact: Colleen O’Hara | press@withfulcrum.com

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SOURCE Fulcrum

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