Technology

Extropic Signs $75 Million Letter of Intent with U.S. Department of Commerce to Scale and Onshore Thermodynamic Computing

Published

2 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Planned CHIPS R&D funding to scale Extropic’s Thermodynamic Sampling Units for AI workloads and fabricate them at an American foundry.

SAN FRANCISCO and WALTHAM, Mass., July 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Extropic, the American company pioneering thermodynamic computing hardware, today announced the signing of a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $75 million in funding through the CHIPS Research and Development Office (CRDO). The planned funding is expected to accelerate the development of Thermodynamic Sampling Units (TSUs), an entirely new category of semiconductor purpose-built for probabilistic AI workloads, and qualify a domestic manufacturing path for the technology.

TSUs use the natural thermodynamic fluctuations of standard CMOS transistors to sample directly from programmable probability distributions in a power-efficient manner, a capability useful for generative AI, simulations of biology, markets, and beyond. The same capability extends to probabilistic inference for physical intelligence and defense, where robots, autonomous systems, and sensor platforms must reason under uncertainty in real time on tight power budgets. On key generative-AI workloads, TSUs can achieve energy-efficiency gains of orders of magnitude over conventional GPUs.

“The current era of AI is one of exponential acceleration, and energy is its binding constraint. Brute-forcing the digital, deterministic paradigm to unfathomable scale cannot be the endgame,” said Guillaume Verdon, founder and CEO of Extropic. “TSUs harness the inherent randomness of nature to deliver more intelligence per watt. And because they run on mature nodes, we can build them here, in American fabs, without waiting in line for anyone else’s capacity. We are proud to partner with the Trump Administration, Secretary Lutnick, and Executive Director Frauenhofer to manufacture this new category of compute on American soil and help return the United States to compute dominance.”

Replaying the playbook that built Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley was built on public-private partnerships: the first integrated circuits found their earliest volume customers in federal programs, and the government acting as first customer and first investor is how the American semiconductor industry was built up. Six decades later, Extropic is reinventing how the transistor is used for the generative AI era, moving beyond deterministic digital logic into stochastic electronics and thermodynamic computation. Once again the federal government is acting as a key partner to bridge the gap from working prototype to production scale and accelerating the scaling and diffusion of this technology into the market. Thermodynamic computing will fundamentally change how we compute from the ground up, enabling new capabilities, unparalleled energy efficiency and greater access to AI at lower costs for all Americans.

Scaling American AI output

AI’s overall growth, accessibility, and costs are running up against the limits of the power grid: both power production and energy efficiency have become limiting factors for American compute. In the age of AI, a nation’s strength will be measured by its total intelligence production: the watts it generates, multiplied by the intelligence it extracts from every watt.

While America secures the watts through a new American nuclear renaissance, spurred by the President’s May 2025 executive orders on nuclear energy, power efficiency will determine whether artificial intelligence is ubiquitously and cost-efficiently accessible at scale. This investment in thermodynamic computing will push the frontier of how much intelligence per watt one can get from American silicon, unlocking a path to potentially orders of magnitude greater total intelligence output at a national scale. More intelligence output means more discovery, more industry, and more abundance, compounding directly into American economic strength and the prosperity of every American.

Building the first large-scale thermodynamic computing system

For Extropic, the bridge from prototype to production runs from the X0, the prototype silicon chip that took thermodynamic computing from zero to one, to the Z1, its first production-scale TSU. Under the letter of intent, the planned R&D funding would support bringing the first Z1 clusters online and demonstrating chip performance on generative-AI benchmarks. Much of the frontier of this work lies beyond the chip itself, in the systems around it: the infrastructure to control TSUs, connect them to one another, and integrate them with conventional forms of computing at rack scale.

The systems scaling work supported by this award will allow for Z1 clusters large enough to begin exploring thermodynamic AI algorithms at scales impractical to simulate on GPUs today. This will in turn enable the discovery of novel algorithms native to this hardware paradigm. Accelerating that algorithmic development is key to migrating generative AI workloads from traditional accelerators to the more power-efficient substrate that is the TSU.

Bringing the thermodynamic computing supply chain home

Extropic’s TSU chips are unique in that they extract more computation from orders of magnitude fewer transistors by operating them probabilistically, achieving dramatic power efficiency gains without requiring the smallest transistors from the cutting edge process nodes. As a result, TSUs can be manufactured on mature process nodes with substantial capacity available in the United States today, without competing for the predominantly offshore leading-edge wafers on which the world’s supply of digital accelerators depends.

The capstone of the project is a new thermodynamic chip: Z1.5, an iteration over Z1, but now fabricated at a U.S. foundry, establishing onshore production capability for thermodynamic computing for the first time. Extropic has already demonstrated the fab-portability of its probabilistic primitive IP, with two X0 variants taped out and successfully tested at two different fabs.

“With today’s compute supply chain investments, the Trump Administration is accelerating America’s innovation engine,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “These strategic investments will enhance our country’s domestic capabilities, create high-paying jobs and keep America at the forefront of the semiconductor industry.”

Stochastic electronics represent the future of computing for AI, and they have different fabrication requirements than digital. This award will ensure U.S. foundries create the manufacturing know-how to begin optimizing the American supply chain for the next generation of computing. Onshoring that supply chain is essential to American sovereignty and national security as computing transitions to its next substrate.

“The CHIPS R&D incentives will support a breakthrough in compute architecture to power next-generation AI and scientific discoveries,” said Bill Frauenhofer, the Executive Director for Semiconductor Innovation and Investment at the Department of Commerce. “Accelerating R&D for probabilistic compute provides American industry the energy efficiency to scale complex AI workloads securely and rapidly.”

The company will share a comprehensive technical update on its full thermodynamic computing stack, spanning hardware, software, and API access, in the coming days.

The letter of intent is non-binding, and the planned funding remains subject to the negotiation of definitive agreements with the Department of Commerce and the achievement of project milestones.

About Extropic

Extropic co-designs full stack thermodynamic computing systems that are radically more energy efficient than GPUs. Its Thermodynamic Sampling Units (TSUs) deliver more intelligence per watt, per square millimeter, and per second. The company’s stack spans silicon, systems, compilers and stochastic programming frameworks. Extropic is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with offices in San Francisco. Learn more at extropic.ai.

Media Contact

contact@extropic.ai

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SOURCE Extropic Corp.

Technology

Fairground Entertainment Launches Industry’s First AI-Only FAST Channel

Published

59 minutes ago

July 30, 2026

Pioneering Talent Kelly Boesch, Phantom X Studio Co-Founders Kavan the Kid, Mike J Mitch and S.A.V, as well as Ryan Phillips Headline Fairground AI Creator TV, Debuting Across 5+ Connected TV and FAST Platforms this August.

LOS ANGELES, July 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Fairground Entertainment, a first-of-its-kind AI-powered, creator-centric entertainment platform, today announced the launch of Fairground AI Creator TV, the first FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) channel dedicated exclusively to AI-generated content. The channel will debut across more than five connected TV and FAST channel platforms in August 2026, marking a landmark moment in the distribution of AI Cinema — a groundbreaking new form of storytelling that merges cinematic production values with the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence.

Fairground AI Creator TV will feature dedicated programming from some of the most celebrated names in the AI creator and visual art space, including Kelly Boesch, Phantom X Studio Co-Founders Kavan the Kid, Mike J Mitch and S.A.V, as well as Ryan Phillips, alongside a growing roster of innovative creators and over 40 AI content studios including Wonder Studios, Massive Studios, Machine Cinema’s accelerator program and more.

The channel represents a first-of-its-kind distribution model for AI-native content, giving independent creators direct access to the massive audiences watching connected TVs and FAST platforms every day.

“Fairground AI Creator TV is a genuinely groundbreaking moment for this medium,” said Colin Petrie-Norris, Founder and CEO of Fairground Entertainment. “We are bringing AI Cinema to entirely new audiences, people who have never encountered this art form before, and we’re doing it at scale across the connected TV ecosystem.”

THE CREATORS AND STUDIOS OF FAIRGROUND AI CREATOR TV

Kelly Boesch

Kelly Boesch is a Los Angeles-based AI visual artist, innovator and TED speaker whose work sits at the intersection of cinematic storytelling, generative art, and original music. Drawing on nearly two decades of design expertise, including a prominent career at IMAX. In April 2026, she delivered a TED Talk in Vancouver titled “Art, Music, AI and The Joy of Creativity”, placing her at the forefront of the global conversation around AI as a legitimate creative medium. Her content has resulted in over 4 million followers and 500 million social views across Instagram, TikTok, MetaAI, Facebook, with over 100 million streams across digital music services.

Phantom X Studio

Kavan the Kid, Mike J Mitch, and S.A.V lead Phantom X, a studio that combines advanced AI filmmaking with traditional storytelling craft to create cinematic content at the highest production standards. The studio currently has five commissioned original series generating tens of millions of views monthly: the Magnific Original series The Chronicles of Bone (Kavan the Kid), and the Made in InVideo Agent One series Exile Protocol (S.A.V), The Sage (Mike J Mitch), Red Rainbow (Aze Alter), and Metamorphosis (Rafa the Artist). Their work has been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, the Los Angeles Times, and Forbes.

Ryan Phillips

Ryan Phillips is a BAFTA-nominated filmmaker and former BBC lead director, who is the founder of Uncanny Harry Productions. Leveraging over two decades of broadcast experience to bridge classical TV standards with cutting-edge AI workflows, Phillips was named an “AI rockstar” by IndieWire and featured in Forbes. Phillips currently collaborates with global studios and tech leaders to shape the future of high-end generative cinema.

Wonder Studios

Wonder Studios is an award-winning creative studio, fluent in live action, animation, and hybrid production, and backed by a deep bench of industry insiders including executives from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, ElevenLabs, and Activision Blizzard. Its Originals have been made with Emmy, BAFTA, and Grammy-recognized filmmakers, including the anthology series “Beyond the Loop,” billed as the first of its kind from an AI-native studio, and an AI music video for Lewis Capaldi’s “Something in the Heavens”.

Massive Studios

Massive Studios is a production and production-services company built around generative AI, creating films, series, video games, trailers, animation, and commercials through AI, traditional, and hybrid workflows. Widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s first AI-native studios, it was co-founded by Sundance- and Cannes-winning filmmaker Reza Sixo Safai alongside Alex Patrascu, Mike Ewing, and partner Scott Holmes, and has been described by Forbes as “a creative shop with deep expertise in generative AI,” with a commitment to ethical AI and IP protection.

Machine Cinema

Machine Cinema is media covering AI creative culture, and an ecosystem and platform for AI creatives with presence in over 30 countries, including San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and across Europe. Built in partnership with Google, OpenAI, Bytedance, Runway, and Luma, Machine Cinema connects a global community of 20,000+ creators with the tools, resources, and industry relationships they need to thrive. Its accelerator program takes the best of this network and helps produce, distribute, and finance the next generation of AI artists and filmmakers, with distribution powered by Fairground.

Fairground AI Creator TV will be available at launch across more than five connected TV and FAST platforms, which will all be mentioned in August. For more information, visit https://fairground.tv.

ABOUT FAIRGROUND ENTERTAINMENT

Fairground Entertainment is a first-of-its-kind AI-powered, creator-centric entertainment platform focused on innovative content development and distribution. Founded in 2025 by streaming pioneer Colin Petrie-Norris, founder of FAST platform Xumo, Fairground is building the future of television through advanced AI capabilities combined with premium, specialized programming and formats developed by a global creator community. Fairground has raised $4 million to date, led by Viant Technology. To learn more, visit https://fairground.tv.

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SOURCE Fairground Entertainment

Technology

Sandler Partners Doubles Down on Independence, Names Adam Press President

Published

59 minutes ago

July 30, 2026

As private equity consolidates the Technology Solutions Distributor category, the nation’s largest independent TSD is investing in senior leadership rather than preparing for an exit.

REDONDO BEACH, Calif., July 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Sandler Partners, the largest independent Technology Solutions Distributor (TSD) in the United States, today named Adam Press President. Press will lead the company’s day-to-day operations and report to Founder and Managing Partner Alan Sandler, who continues to lead the company he built. The appointment is Sandler Partners’ clearest signal yet of how it intends to compete in a category reshaped by outside capital: by building rather than being bought.

A category consolidating around private equity

Over the past several years, private equity has taken a growing interest in the TSD market, and many of the largest distributors have brought on outside investors with their own priorities—integration, growth targets, and, eventually, a sale. Sandler Partners remains independently owned and operated, with no private equity ownership, outside investors, or debt—allowing the company to remain focused on putting Partners first by investing in the tools, resources, and support structures that help them sell more.

“Most of this industry is being bought. We’re being built,” said Alan Sandler, Founder and Managing Partner of Sandler Partners. “When a TSD takes private equity money, a clock starts, and the priorities move toward the exit—the integration, the fund’s return, the next deal. Our clock has been running in one direction for 23 years: making our Partners more money. Bringing Adam in as President is what continuing to invest in that actually looks like.”

What building looks like

Press will prioritize the Partner experience. His mandate is to scale the systems, support capacity, and management depth so that Sandler Partners can deliver the same quality of service at several times its current scale, without changing what Partners value about working with the firm.

“I’ve watched this company from the outside for a long time, and what stands out is how its growth is driven by Partners referring Partners,” said Press. “It has built a culture and processes that bring unique benefits to its customers, such as Sandler Strong contracts and a large team devoted to commission processing that has identified and returned over $25 million to its Partners. My job is to make sure the company’s infrastructure keeps up with its rapid growth, assuring that the next several thousand Partners get the same level of care and attention the first few hundred did.”

Press brings a background in investment banking and Family Office portfolio management. He founded and operated two companies during the past 35 years. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and has advised Sandler Partners for years prior to joining the company.

Alan Sandler remains the Managing Partner and will spend more time with Partners in the field and at company events, including the annual National Summit. The company’s priorities are unchanged: recruiting and supporting Partners, deepening its Provider portfolio, and preserving the independence and culture that have driven its growth.

Partner & Prospect FAQ

Q: Does this signify a strategic change in direction for Sandler Partners?
A: Sandler Partners remains independent. The addition of Adam Press only reinforces the company’s existing direction with the culture and Partner-first approach that built the company unchanged.

Q: What changes for Partners as a result of this addition?
A: Partners can expect more support and resources as Sandler continues to grow, backed by the same culture, tools, and Partner-first approach they already know. Day-to-day relationships with Sandler’s team remain unchanged.

Q: How can Partners connect with Adam?
A: Partners can look forward to meeting Adam at Sandler Partners events throughout the remainder of 2026 and can reach out through their Channel Director with any questions in the meantime.

About Sandler Partners

Sandler Partners helps empower its network of leading independent Sales Partners to deliver a comprehensive range of technology solutions to organizations worldwide, including Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Connectivity, Cloud, Colocation, Mobility, Internet of Things (IoT), and Continuity. Its community-focused approach enables Partners to identify the right solutions for customers quickly and objectively from a diverse portfolio of 220+ Providers. Partner sales agents, VARs, and MSPs gain access to an innovative suite of sales tools within the Sandler Portal—including SCOUT, Solutions Finder, Scout for Solutions, and the Marketing Center—several of which are AI-powered, all backed by a robust support network, dedicated Sales Engineering expertise, and rich marketing resources. Together, these tools and resources empower Partners to focus on what they do best: delivering quality, value, performance, innovative solutions, unmatched expertise, and exceptional service to their clients. Members of the Sandler Partners community also benefit from the industry’s strongest negotiated agreements and a dedicated team committed to ensuring commissions are accurately identified, tracked, and paid. For more information, visit www.sandlerpartners.com.

Media Contact

Tina S. Dyksterhouse, Sandler Partners
tina@sandlerpartners.com
310-861-2295

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SOURCE Sandler Partners

Technology

CIMA+ ENTERS INTO A NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP WITH ACTUA

Published

59 minutes ago

July 30, 2026

MONTRÉAL, July 30, 2026 /CNW/ — CIMA+, one of Canada’s largest private consulting engineering firms, announces a three-year national partnership with Actua, a leading Canadian STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) outreach organization for youth. Through this collaboration, CIMA+ becomes the first consulting engineering firm in Canada to partner with Actua, reinforcing its commitment to helping develop the next generation of STEM talent and expanding equitable access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in communities across the country.

For more than 30 years, Actua has engaged hundreds of thousands of youths through hands-on STEM learning experiences delivered through a nationwide network of universities and colleges. Its programs are designed to reach young people from all backgrounds, with a particular focus on groups that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM, helping them discover new opportunities and build confidence to pursue STEM-related careers.

The partnership reflects CIMA+’s long-standing commitment to supporting the communities in which it operates and helping develop the talent that will shape tomorrow’s infrastructure, technologies and sustainable communities. Beyond financial support, CIMA+ will contribute to the partnership through mentorship, career awareness and knowledge sharing, helping inspire and empower youth across Canada pursue education and careers in STEM.

“The challenges faced by our society require a new generation of curious, innovative and diverse thinkers. Organizations like Actua play a vital role in opening doors to STEM for young people across Canada, particularly in Indigenous communities and among groups that have historically faced barriers to these fields,” said Denis Thivierge, President and CEO of CIMA+. “At CIMA+, we believe supporting that mission is part of our responsibility and reflects who we are as an organization. This partnership is especially meaningful to me because investing in young people means investing in stronger communities and a better future for Canada.”

“Inspiring the next generation of innovators takes leadership, collaboration and a shared commitment to the future, and we’re thrilled to welcome CIMA+ as a national partner,” says Jennifer Flanagan, co-founder and CEO of Actua. “Together, we’ll help equip youth across the country with the skills, confidence and opportunities they need to shape a more sustainable and inclusive future for Canada.”

Over the next three years, CIMA+ and Actua will work together to deliver initiatives that encourage youth to explore STEM, strengthen connections between education and industry, and cultivate the next generation of professionals who will help build a more innovative, sustainable and inclusive Canada.

To learn more about Actua, visit the website.

About CIMA+

CIMA+ provides complete consulting engineering services in the areas of Energy and Resources, Infrastructure, Defence, Transportation, Buildings, Project Management, Operational and Digital Technologies (including Telecommunication Systems), and Earth and Environment. The search for excellence has been part of our DNA since our founding in 1990, and our teams draw on decades of experience acquired across Canada to deliver quality projects that meet our clients’ expectations. This commitment to excellence and quality has allowed CIMA+ to rank among the largest private consulting engineering firms in the country. Today, with over 45 offices across Canada, CIMA+ employs more than 3,700 people, most of whom share ownership in the company.

Our multidisciplinary team is driven by a shared passion to deliver sustainable solutions that make our world a better place.

From our Board of Directors to the communities we serve, our commitment to people is evident in our drive to innovate, in the projects we carry out and in every action we take.

For more information, visit cima.ca

SOURCE CIMA+