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Academy Software Foundation Welcomes CIQ, Evercast, and Rochester Institute of Technology as New Members

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New Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) members join ahead of Open Source Days, July 19-20, strengthening collaboration and advancing open source technologies for the motion picture and media industries

Summary

ASWF new members are CIQ as a Premier Member, Evercast as a General Member and Rochester Institute of Technology as an Associate MemberOpen Source Days is July 19–20, 2026 at the J.W. Marriott L.A. Live in Los Angeles, held alongside SIGGRAPH 2026Bill Ballew, CTO of DreamWorks Animation, to keynote Open Source Days and talk about MoonRay’s development from DreamWorks’ Dragons to ASWF

LOS ANGELES, July 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), the leading open source foundation for advancing open source software in motion pictures, visual effects, and animation, today announced three new member organizations ahead of its annual Open Source Days event, taking place July 19–20, 2026 in Los Angeles. CIQ has joined as a Premier Member, Evercast as a General Member and Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as an Associate Member.

“We are pleased to welcome CIQ, Evercast and Rochester Institute of Technology to the Academy Software Foundation,” said David Morin, executive director of the Academy Software Foundation. “Each organization brings valuable expertise that will strengthen our community – infrastructure that scales render farms, real-time review tools that keep artists collaborating across studios, and the academic programs training the next generation on OpenColorIO, ACES, and other open source tools before they ever set foot on a production floor.”

As members of the Academy Software Foundation, CIQ, Evercast, and Rochester Institute of Technology will have opportunities to contribute engineering expertise, participate in technical working groups, collaborate on open source projects and help shape the technical direction of the ASWF. Their participation will expand the community, bringing together technology providers, studios, software vendors and academic institutions to advance the open source tools and standards foundational to modern content creation.

Hosted annually by the Academy Software Foundation, Open Source Days is the leading event dedicated to open source software for visual effects, animation, and digital content creation. This year’s event will take place in Los Angeles on July 19-20, 2026, coinciding with the SIGGRAPH 2026 Conference, and features a keynote address by DreamWorks Animation CTO Bill Ballew on “How to Train Your Renderer: MoonRay’s Journey from DreamWorks’ Dragons to the ASWF.” Space is limited; register here to attend.

Supporting Quotes

“Open source has always been the backbone of production pipelines in film and visual effects, and as AI transforms what those pipelines can do, that foundation matters more than ever. CIQ is proud to join the Academy Software Foundation as a Premier Member and to help the creative industry build on infrastructure that is open, resilient, and built for the scale of what comes next.”
– Bjorn Hovland, President, CIQ

“We’re thrilled to join the Academy Software Foundation. At Evercast, we build high-quality, real-time review solutions that enable creative teams to share content and collaborate within the third-party tools they already use. This software-agnostic approach reflects our belief that open codebases, shared standards, and diverse teams are the best way for software to serve content creators worldwide. We look forward to collaborating with this amazing community at such a unique moment in our industry.”
– Jose Aguerre, VP of Engineering, Evercast

“RIT is pleased to join the Academy Software Foundation and participate in advancing creation and adoption of open source tools for the entertainment industry. Through a long partnership with Linux Foundation and establishment of our own free and open-source center of excellence on campus, we have encouraged students, faculty, and alumni to contribute to important open source projects. The motion picture science, film and animation, and games communities from RIT, in particular, have already been active with ACES, OpenColorIO, O3DE, and other ASWF projects and we are excited to provide our support going forward to this important work.”
– David Long, Director and Professor, RIT MAGIC Center | MAGIC Spell Studios, Rochester Institute of Technology

About the Academy Software Foundation
Developed in partnership by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Linux Foundation, the Academy Software Foundation provides a world-class home for open source software developers in the motion picture and broader media industries to share resources and collaborate on technologies for image creation, visual effects, animation and sound. The Academy Software Foundation is home to 22 projects including ACES, MaterialX, OpenEXR, OpenColorI, and OpenVDB. For more information about the Academy Software Foundation, visit https://www.aswf.io/.

Media Contact
Emily Olin, The Linux Foundation/Academy Software Foundation
pr@aswf.io

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SOURCE The Linux Foundation

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Generate Capital Announces Sale of Global Anaerobic Digestion Platform Generate Upcycle

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Pinta Energy and Vanguard Renewables to acquire separate portions of 12-site platform across the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States

NEW YORK, Sept. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Generate Capital (“Generate”), a leading investor, owner and operator of critical infrastructure today announced the 100% sale of Generate UpcycleUpcycle“, its global anaerobic digestion platform, through two separate transactions in North America and the UK.

Pinta Energy, a UK-based renewable energy platform and part of the ABIO Group of companies, a leading pan-European biogas platform backed by Asterion Industrial Partners, has acquired Upcycle’s seven UK facilities.

Vanguard Renewables, a leading U.S. environmental services platform and producer of biomethane from organic waste, has signed an agreement to acquire Upcycle’s five North American facilities in Ontario, Canada and upstate New York. The transaction is expected to close on October 1, 2026.

The transactions position the businesses with strategic operators to support their next phase of growth.

“We have spent the past decade building Upcycle into a scaled organic waste platform with strong businesses across three countries,” said David Crane, CEO of Generate Capital. “Pinta Energy and Vanguard Renewables bring the experience and capabilities to support these businesses as they continue to grow. For Generate, the transactions allow us to recycle capital toward our strategy of delivering reliable power to large energy users in an increasingly constrained grid.”

Upcycle is a renewable natural gas and electricity production platform that provides integrated organic waste solutions to public and private-sector partners across Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2025, Upcycle processed more than 871,000 tons of food and agricultural waste, and generated more than 365,000 MWh of renewable energy, including 1.1 billion cubic feet of renewable nature gas. As a result, the company avoided 609,739 MTCO2e tons of harmful emissions from escaping into the atmosphere, the equivalent of taking approximately 132,552 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles off the road for a year.

Generate has invested in anaerobic digestion since 2016, building Upcycle into one of the largest pure-play organic waste platforms, with 12 facilities across three countries. Through sustained investment in the platform, its management team and operations, Generate helped build businesses with strong operating track records that are well positioned for continued growth in their respective markets.

About Generate Capital

Generate Capital is an investor and operator providing reliable and affordable energy solutions to customers for over a decade. Founded in 2014, Generate focuses on accelerating the energy transition by helping large energy users access power and connection faster in a grid constrained world. The firm supports data centers and other power-intensive facilities with multi-technology scalable energy infrastructure solutions, combining deep investment expertise with hands-on operating capabilities. Since inception, Generate has raised more than $16 bn in capital and built a proven track record across critical infrastructure assets. 

For more information, visit www.generatecapital.com.

About Vanguard Renewables

Vanguard Renewables is a leading U.S. environmental services company and producer of biomethane from organic waste. Headquartered in Weston, Massachusetts, the company builds, owns, and operates on-farm anaerobic digesters that convert food, beverage, and agricultural waste into pipeline-ready renewable natural gas. Vanguard Renewables is rapidly scaling its footprint, operating sites across the Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast while developing additional facilities nationwide. By diverting organic waste streams from landfills, the company is reducing greenhouse gas emissions at scale while supporting critical domestic energy infrastructure and regenerative agriculture for America’s farms. Vanguard Renewables is a portfolio company of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), part of BlackRock.

Learn more at www.vanguardrenewables.com

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SOURCE Generate Capital

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Vaulted Deep Secures $35 Million in Debt Financing to Expand Nationwide

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New financing from Mediobanca and facilitated by CFP Energy will support new waste disposal sites across the country and continued investment in technology to accelerate site development

HOUSTON, Sept. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Vaulted Deep, a waste management company building subsurface infrastructure for organic waste, today announced a $35 million debt facility from Mediobanca to expand its national buildout. The financing, arranged by CFP Energy, a leading provider of market-based energy transition solutions, is the largest publicly disclosed U.S. commercial debt deal in durable carbon removal to be secured by long-term purchase contracts. It demonstrates how such contracts can help companies borrow from mainstream lenders to build physical infrastructure.

The facility was supported by Vaulted’s waste service agreements and contracted carbon removal revenue, including its set of offtakes with Frontier buyers. Frontier is an advance market commitment backed by companies including Stripe, Shopify, and Google. Vaulted delivered more than 20,000 tons of carbon removal to Frontier buyers in the first half of 2026, surpassing the total amount delivered in 2025. Since 2023, the company has also increased weekly waste volume sixfold, reflecting its ability to scale operations alongside demand.

“Waste operators across the country need new options as traditional disposal options become limited. This financing lets us take on more projects and invest in the tools that help us evaluate and develop new sites faster,” said Julia Reichelstein, CEO and Co-Founder of Vaulted Deep. “This is a meaningful milestone for Vaulted as we move into the next phase of building infrastructure at a much larger scale.”

The new capital will help Vaulted advance more projects through its AI-Accelerated Site Development Platform, which combines proprietary technology and operating experience across site discovery, permitting, and injection operations. Geology, regulatory, and waste-supply data narrow the search for candidate sites while standardized templates and regulatory guides speed up the path to permitting. Once a site is running, monitoring and control algorithms maximize safe disposal capacity. Together, these tools make new sites faster to open and easier to replicate.

“Frontier’s theory of change is that robust demand for carbon removal, in the form of large, multi-year offtake agreements, gives companies the ability to raise the capital required to build and expand their businesses,” said Frontier spokesperson Hannah Bebbington Valori. “Vaulted raising institutional debt to expand their site development capabilities is a great example of this theory in practice.”

Tyler Manchester, Head of Voluntary Carbon, CFP Energy said: “By facilitating these types of transactions, we connect institutional capital with innovative climate technologies, helping accelerate the deployment of high-integrity carbon removal solutions. It reflects growing investor confidence in these solutions, driven by rising demand from corporate buyers seeking permanent pathways to support net-zero commitments and long-term climate strategies.”

The facility adds a new source of growth capital alongside the $48 million in equity Vaulted has raised to date and its $8 million XPRIZE Carbon Removal award. The capital positions Vaulted to advance multiple infrastructure projects as it builds beyond its existing operations.

Artio, a leading carbon insurance firm, supported the transaction by helping to de-risk the investment, as part of its wider work to unlock capital for high-quality carbon projects.

About Vaulted Deep

Vaulted Deep builds and operates subsurface infrastructure for organic waste, creating a scalable alternative to land application, landfilling, and incineration. Using proven deep well injection technology, the company stores waste deep underground in stable geologic formations. It works with municipalities, industrial operators, and agricultural producers to expand disposal capacity for hard-to-manage waste streams. By placing the waste deep underground, Vaulted reduces potential impacts on local land, air, and water that can come with surface disposal, while permanently removing carbon. Its infrastructure is permitted, operating, and designed to scale. Learn more at vaulteddeep.com.

Media Contact: Brooke Kinney | Vaulted@launchsquad.com 

About CFP Energy

CFP Energy is a leading specialist in carbon and environmental markets, helping large organisations navigate complex regulatory environments and volatile market conditions. With 20 years of experience and 9 offices across Europe, CFP Energy has built deep expertise across all major compliance carbon markets, including the EU and UK ETS.

Alongside access to environmental markets, CFP Energy offers a broader suite of services across gas and power, as well as voluntary carbon, biofuels and financial products. Through tailored market access services and financial solutions, the company acts as a strategic partner, helping businesses unlock liquidity, support investment and drive commercial growth throughout the energy transition.

Media Contact: Weronika Slomka/Sophie Colton | CFPEnergy@h-advisors.global 

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SOURCE Vaulted Deep

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RetailMeNot Launches App Week With Exclusive Cash Back Deals Across 7 Top Shopping Categories

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The new RetailMeNot Rewards app brings shoppers a week of hand-picked cash back offers, trending products and seasonal savings across seven key shopping categories.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Today, RetailMeNot kicks off App Week, a seven-day shopping event offering RetailMeNot Rewards app users exclusive, limited-time cash back offers across seven categories, from home and travel to electronics, beauty, fashion, pets and sports.

Running September 21–27, App Week transforms the RetailMeNot Rewards app into a daily shopping destination, with a new category spotlight each day and hand-picked offers featuring increased app-only cash back from brands and retailers shoppers know and love. The offers are available exclusively to RetailMeNot Rewards app users, giving shoppers a reason to tap in each day and discover what’s new.

App Week builds on the launch of the new RetailMeNot Rewards app, which debuted in August as the company’s latest evolution of its mobile shopping experience. Since launching the new app, buyers are placing 27% more orders with RetailMeNot merchant partners. The increase suggests that shoppers who engage with the new savings experience are returning more frequently and spending more overall.

“App Week is designed around how people actually shop today. They want to know what’s worth buying, where they can find value and whether a deal is really a deal,” said Stephanie Carls, Retail Insights Expert at RetailMeNot. “And right now, shoppers have a lot to think about. Halloween and holiday shopping are already underway for many consumers, so this is a great window to get ahead of seasonal purchases, whether that’s an advent calendar, a Christmas tree, a giant skeleton or matching family pajamas. App Week gives shoppers another reason to check in, see what’s trending and save while they’re at it.”

The Holiday Shopper is already in motion

App Week arrives as shoppers are getting an early start on fall and holiday purchases. A RetailMeNot survey found that 63% of shoppers begin holiday shopping in October or earlier, and 47% plan to shop earlier this year than last year.

As shoppers plan ahead, they’re also looking for more ways to stretch their budgets. 71% say they’re more likely to use savings tools because of the current economy, making timely, trusted savings more valuable than ever.

App Week brings that value together with RetailMeNot’s editorial expertise and shopping insights, giving shoppers a curated destination to discover what to buy, where to save and what’s trending throughout the week.

Seven days. Seven categories. App-only savings.

Throughout App Week, RetailMeNot Rewards app users can tap in to discover a new category spotlight each day. Offers remain available throughout the week, while daily spotlights introduce shoppers to the category and featured savings.

Date

Category

Offers

September 21

Home & Garden

Home Depot: 10% cash back sitewideLowe’s: 14% cash back sitewideTarget: 8% cash back sitewideWalmart: 8% cash back sitewide

 

September 22

Travel

Expedia: 16% cash back sitewideBooking.com: 20% cash back sitewideCVS: 28% cash back sitewideIHG: 20% cash back sitewideSamsonite: 12% cash back sitewide

 

September 23

Electronics & Smart
Home

Vitamix: 18% cash back sitewideBest Buy: 8% cash back sitewideLG: 28% cash back sitewideWalmart: 8% cash back sitewide

 

September 24

Health & Beauty

Ulta: 16% cash back sitewideSephora: 8% cash back sitewideCVS: 28% cash back sitewideTarte: 20% cash back sitewideL’Occitane: 20% cash back sitewide

 

September 25

Clothing, Accessories &
Shoes

Old Navy: 8% cash back sitewideAthleta: 8% cash back sitewideExpress: 18% cash back sitewideNike: 16% cash back sitewideSHEIN: 25% cash back sitewide

 

September 26

Pets

Chewy: 8% cash back sitewideWalmart: 8% cash back sitewidePetco: 8% cash back sitewidePetSmart: 8% cash back sitewide

 

September 27

Sports & Outdoors

Home Depot: 10% cash back sitewideAthleta: 8% cash back sitewideadidas: 24% cash back sitewideAlo Yoga: 14% cash back sitewideColumbia: 8% cash back sitewide

 

With rotating daily spotlights, app-only cash back and hand-picked offers, App Week gives shoppers a new reason to tap in throughout the week. RetailMeNot Rewards app users can tap into App Week from September 21–27 to discover each day’s featured savings. The RetailMeNot Rewards app is available for download on iOS and Android.

About RetailMeNot Group: The RetailMeNot Group brings together leading shopping, savings and deal discovery brands that help people shop smarter and help businesses connect with high-intent consumers at moments of purchase. The RetailMeNot Group portfolio includes RetailMeNot, Offers.com, BlackFriday.com, TechBargains, Deals of America and R BrandWorks, reaching millions of consumers through trusted social content, real-time deals, cash back, and seasonal shopping moments. RetailMeNot Group operates as part of Ziff Davis, a leading digital media and internet company.
To learn more, visit www.ziffdavis.com/brands/shopping

About Ziff Davis: Ziff Davis (NASDAQ: ZD) is a vertically focused digital media and internet company whose portfolio includes leading brands in technology, shopping, gaming and entertainment, health and wellness, connectivity, cybersecurity, and martech. For more information, visit www.ziffdavis.com.

Press Contact: media@rmn.com 

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SOURCE RetailMeNot, Inc.

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