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Fusion Connect Simplifies Enterprise AI Adoption with Predictable Flat-Fee Pricing for AI-Powered Contact Centers

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Industry-leading innovative pricing model removes the uncertainty of token– and usage-based AI pricing, making it easier for organizations to budget, adopt, and scale AI.

ATLANTA, Aug. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Fusion Connect, a leading provider of managed communications, connectivity, and cloud solutions, today announced the availability of its AI-powered Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform alongside an industry-leading, innovative flat-fee pricing model designed to eliminate one of the biggest barriers to enterprise AI adoption: unpredictable costs.

While artificial intelligence has rapidly become a strategic priority for organizations, pricing AI remains one of the industry’s greatest challenges. Unlike traditional software, which is typically licensed on a per-user basis, most AI solutions are priced according to usage—charging customers by complicated token consumption rate cards. Because pricing often varies based on which AI capabilities are used and how frequently they are invoked, organizations frequently struggle to estimate costs before deployment.

For many businesses, that uncertainty slows or even prevents AI adoption.

Fusion Connect is taking a different approach.

Instead of requiring customers to estimate token consumption, Fusion Connect offers predictable monthly pricing for its AI capabilities. Customers know their costs before deployment, making it easier to budget, evaluate return on investment, and confidently expand AI throughout their organization.

“Organizations shouldn’t need a data scientist or financial model just to understand what their AI investment will cost,” said John Nee, Chief Marketing Officer of Fusion Connect. “Our goal is simple: remove the complexity from AI purchasing so customers can focus on improving customer experiences—not deciphering pricing models or worrying about unexpected cost overruns.”

Why Contact Centers First?

Contact centers represent one of the most compelling applications for artificial intelligence within enterprise communications.

Every day, contact centers process thousands of customer interactions involving billing inquiries, technical support, account management, scheduling, returns, and other repetitive yet business-critical conversations. These interactions generate enormous amounts of valuable data while requiring agents to answer many similar questions repeatedly.

Artificial intelligence excels in precisely these environments—analyzing large volumes of conversational data, automating repetitive tasks, assisting agents in real time, and identifying insights that improve both customer satisfaction and operational performance.

Organizations implementing AI within their contact centers can reduce manual effort, improve first-call resolution, shorten wait times, enhance agent productivity, and deliver a more consistent customer experience while creating measurable operational savings.

AI Capabilities Available Today

Fusion Connect’s AI-enabled Contact Center platform introduces intelligent capabilities across the customer journey, including:

Agent AI Assistance

Provides real-time guidance to customer service representatives by surfacing relevant information, suggested responses, and knowledge in real time while conversations are taking place, enabling agents to resolve customer issues more quickly and accurately.

Navigator AI

Uses customers’ natural language to understand a caller’s intent, autonomously resolve requests, and intelligently route customers to the most appropriate representative—reducing transfers, shortening wait times, and replacing traditional “Press 1, Press 2” endless interactive voice response menus.

Autopilot Agentic AI

Automates routine customer interactions without requiring a live agent, allowing organizations to provide faster responses for common inquiries while enabling human representatives to focus on higher-value customer engagements.

CX AI Analytics

Automatically analyzes customer conversations to identify trends, service opportunities, coaching insights, quality issues, and operational performance without requiring supervisors to manually review thousands of recorded calls.

Bringing Predictability to AI

Rather than charging customers based on complicated token calculations or unpredictable usage metrics, Fusion Connect has introduced a transparent pricing structure that customers can easily understand.

Core AI capabilities—including Agent AI Assistance and CX AI Analytics—are offered on a straightforward monthly per-seat basis, while high-volume automation services such as Autopilot Agentic AI and AI-powered call routing are available through simple monthly packages based on anticipated call volumes.

The result is a pricing model that enables organizations to forecast costs with confidence while avoiding unexpected monthly AI charges.

Frederic Dickey, Senior Vice President of Product Management of Fusion Connect, added: “Organizations want to understand the business value AI delivers—not spend time estimating token consumption or worrying about unexpected invoices. Our pricing model removes that uncertainty and gives customers a clear path toward broader AI adoption.”

Built for Customers—and Partners

Fusion Connect’s simplified pricing benefits not only end customers, but also the company’s nationwide network of technology advisors and channel partners.

By replacing complex AI consumption calculations with transparent monthly pricing, partners can quote solutions more quickly, customers can approve projects with greater confidence, and sellers can focus conversations on business outcomes instead of pricing mechanics.

As Fusion Connect continues expanding artificial intelligence across its portfolio, the company intends to maintain the same philosophy: making enterprise AI easier to buy, easier to understand, and easier to adopt.

Availability

Fusion Connect’s AI-powered Contact Center solutions and simplified pricing model are available immediately.

For additional information, visit www.fusionconnect.com or contact a Fusion Connect sales representative.

About Fusion Connect

Fusion Connect delivers managed communications, connectivity, cloud, security, and customer engagement solutions to businesses across the United States. Its comprehensive portfolio includes managed network services, Unified Communications, Contact Center, cloud connectivity, and cybersecurity solutions backed by U.S.-based service and support. Fusion helps organizations simplify technology, improve customer experiences, and accelerate digital transformation through innovative, secure, and reliable communications solutions.

PR@fusionconnect.com

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SOURCE Fusion Connect

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Beghou Expands Pune Office, Strengthening Data, Analytics, and AI Capabilities

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The expanded office brings together multidisciplinary teams to solve increasingly complex life sciences commercialization challenges 

PUNE, India, Nov. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Beghou, a life sciences commercialization consulting and technology company, today announced the expansion of its Pune office. Opened on October 7 to foster cross-team collaboration, the new space reflects Beghou’s growing global delivery and innovation model. The Pune office is home to consulting and product teams with expertise spanning analytics, data engineering, technology, and AI. Beghou has also expanded its offices in Hyderabad and Bengaluru this year as its workforce continues to scale. The larger Pune space makes room for that growth, along with expanded leadership opportunities, specialist capabilities, and global client exposure for teams based there. 

“There’s a real sense of momentum at Beghou right now, and it’s exciting to see that reflected in our global expansion. We’re growing across markets, expanding the capabilities we bring to clients, and investing in the people and technology behind that work,” said Adrienne Lovink, CEO, Beghou. 

Commercialization challenges rarely sit within a single discipline, and Beghou’s model is built around that reality. Teams work together to move from identifying a business question to designing, building, and implementing the solution. The new office gives them dedicated space to collaborate, share knowledge, and learn from one another. 

“It is incredibly fulfilling to see the growth of our India organization and the world-class talent and capabilities we have built over the years. I see this growth as a stepping stone to something much bigger – not just scaling, but driving innovation, developing differentiated offerings, and solving increasingly complex commercialization challenges for our clients. Our new office reflects this ambition, bringing together diverse expertise and creating more opportunities for our teams to collaborate, innovate, and build meaningful solutions,” said Sonam Dubey, India Head, Beghou. 

The office is also a key hub for Beghou’s AI and product innovation, with teams working to embed AI in the solutions clients use across planning, analysis, and execution. They are also helping to develop new products that pair Beghou’s commercialization expertise with modern data capabilities. 

“We are at an exciting point in Beghou’s journey. I see this office as a melting pot of deep commercial expertise, technology, product thinking, and AI, the capabilities that will shape our next phase of growth. The opportunity is to combine those strengths to build differentiated solutions that solve real client problems and scale our impact,” said Abhigya Jain, Partner, Beghou. 

About Beghou 

Beghou drives commercialization that works for life sciences. For over 30 years, Beghou has been a long-term consulting and technology partner to more than 250 life sciences clients. We connect the dots between strategy, data, technology, and teams, helping clients accelerate launches, deepen customer engagement, and advance patient access. Whether a company is pre-commercial and building from scratch or refining an existing commercial strategy, Beghou provides fresh ideas and pragmatic, technology-enabled solutions to help organizations adapt and thrive in an increasingly complex environment. 

We build enduring partnerships by remaining engaged and accountable beyond project delivery to help ensure solutions take hold and deliver results. Combining strategic thinking, technical expertise, and hands-on execution, we help clients achieve faster outcomes and lasting impact. 

Find out more at www.beghou.com.

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TIER IV unveils end-to-end autonomous driving adaptable to map information and sensor configurations

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Multiple open-source AI models are available with Autoware

TOKYO, Nov. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — TIER IV, the pioneering force behind Autoware, open-source software for autonomous driving, today announced the development and open-source release of multiple end-to-end (E2E) autonomous driving AI models that support different system requirements, including map information and sensor configurations. The models offer flexible options ranging from camera-only configurations to those incorporating LiDAR, radar and high-definition (HD) maps, enabling developers to select AI models suited to their performance requirements. Through Autoware, TIER IV provides a development environment for optimizing these models and integrating them into vehicle systems, helping automakers and technology partners develop and deploy their own autonomous driving stack.

Overview of the Autoware 2.0 Architecture

TIER IV is leading the development of Autoware 2.0, the next-generation architecture of Autoware. Autoware 2.0 is a scalable and adaptable architecture that flexibly combines AI models with conventional rule-based technologies. By supporting different AI models and sensor configurations, it enables autonomous driving systems to be built for a range of applications and system requirements. The E2E autonomous driving AI models announced today are concrete technological outcomes designed to leverage this architecture.

NVIDIA Alpamayo 2 Edge

As part of its collaboration with NVIDIA announced in March 2026 , TIER IV has been evaluating the performance of NVIDIA Alpamayo, a vision-language-action (VLA) foundation model, and integrating it with Autoware. The latest model, Alpamayo 2 Edge, is an E2E autonomous driving AI model that takes only camera images as input and uses reasoning to generate driving trajectories. With 2 billion parameters, compared with 34 billion in Alpamayo 2 Super, it is substantially smaller and offers promise for practical deployment in vehicles. TIER IV is currently optimizing the model and adapting it to real vehicles, while having completed its integration with Autoware.

GitHub (source code): https://github.com/autowarefoundation/alpamayo-autowareHugging Face (AI model): https://huggingface.co/nvidia/Alpamayo2-Edge

AutoE2E

AutoE2E, whose development is led by the Autoware Foundation (AWF) and TIER IV, is an E2E autonomous driving AI model capable of running on computing platforms beyond NVIDIA hardware. It adopts a Fast–Slow architecture combining a Reactive Model for real-time driving decisions, a World Model for predicting future changes in the surrounding environment, and a Reasoning Model that supports driving decisions. It can accommodate configurations ranging from cameras alone to those incorporating LiDAR and radar sensor data. With 79.9 million parameters, it is lighter than Alpamayo 2 Edge. The Reactive Model has been released, while development of the World Model and Reasoning Model continues, alongside consideration of commercialization for robotaxi applications. Integration of the Reactive Model with Autoware has been achieved.

GitHub (source code): https://github.com/autowarefoundation/auto_e2eHugging Face (AI model): https://huggingface.co/AutowareFoundation/auto_e2e

METEOR

Developed independently by TIER IV, METEOR is a lightweight, multitask E2E autonomous driving AI model primarily intended for privately owned passenger vehicles. Built on a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture, it uses a bird’s-eye-view (BEV) representation to perform everything from perception of the surrounding environment to driving trajectory generation within a single neural network, without relying on high-definition maps. It supports configurations using images from one to eight cameras and can also incorporate LiDAR and radar sensor data. With 16 million parameters, it is even lighter than AutoE2E and supports operation across different semiconductor platforms, including NVIDIA and Renesas. TIER IV also uses CoMET, the automated labeling platform within Co-MLOps, together with agentic AI to automate data labeling and model training, evaluation, and improvement, eliminating the need for manual coding and labeling. Automakers and component suppliers can optimize the open-source model to meet their own vehicle specifications and performance requirements.

GitHub (source code): https://github.com/tier4/METEORHugging Face (AI model): https://huggingface.co/AutowareFoundation/meteor

OnePlanner

OnePlanner is an E2E autonomous driving AI model that integrates perception of the surrounding environment with motion planning. It currently uses BEVFusion, which generates a BEV representation from LiDAR point-cloud data, with a planned transition to PTv3. Its flexible architecture allows the perception model to be replaced while directly using features extracted during perception for motion planning. Conventional autonomous driving systems convert perception results into information such as object positions and velocities before passing them to the planner. OnePlanner reduces these intermediate conversions, enabling richer use of information about the surrounding environment. It also incorporates HD maps, route information, traffic-signal states, and vehicle motion states to generate driving trajectories for the next six seconds. Integration with Autoware has been achieved.

GitHub (source code): https://github.com/autowarefoundation/autoware_oneplannerHugging Face (AI model): https://huggingface.co/AutowareFoundation/oneplanner

LatentDrive

LatentDrive is an E2E autonomous driving AI model that uses a world model to integrate predictions of the surrounding environment with motion planning. Using V-JEPA, a self-supervised learning approach, it represents features of the surrounding environment extracted from camera video in a latent space and uses these features to generate vehicle trajectories. Its distinguishing feature is that it directly leverages information from video for motion planning without intermediate processes such as object detection and tracking. It does not require HD maps and generates trajectories for the next four seconds using camera video, route information, and vehicle motion states. It supports configurations with either one or three cameras, and work is underway on integration with Autoware and validation in an in-vehicle environment.

GitHub (source code): https://github.com/autowarefoundation/autoware_latent_driveHugging Face (AI model): https://huggingface.co/AutowareFoundation/latent_drive

“Advances in E2E autonomous driving are fundamentally changing how autonomous driving systems are developed.” said Shinpei Kato, founder and CEO of TIER IV. “For automakers and component suppliers to incorporate AI technology into their own products, however, it is essential that they be able to internalize technologies according to their applications and performance requirements, without depending on a particular AI model or semiconductor platform. By releasing multiple AI models developed under the leadership of TIER IV and the Autoware Foundation, alongside the results of our collaboration with NVIDIA, we have significantly expanded those choices. We will continue to advance the open-source ecosystem centered on Autoware and work with partners around the world to democratize autonomous driving.”

“Advancing autonomous driving requires AI that can reason through complex situations and run efficiently in the car.” said Ali Kani, vice president of automotive at NVIDIA. “TIER IV’s integration of NVIDIA Alpamayo 2 Edge with Autoware gives developers an open foundation to bring that intelligence from research into their own vehicles.”

“The advancement of autonomous driving technology depends on an ecosystem in which diverse AI models can be developed and evaluated openly, then applied according to their respective use cases.” said Muhammad Zain Khawaja, President of the Autoware Foundation. “The AI models released today are an important demonstration of how Autoware is evolving into a flexible development platform that is not tied to any particular technology or hardware. We welcome TIER IV’s continued technology development and its collaboration with partners including NVIDIA. The Autoware Foundation will continue working with the global open-source community to make advanced autonomous driving technology accessible to everyone.”

Next Steps

TIER IV will continue improving the performance of the AI models released today and optimizing them for in-vehicle environments, while promoting the development and commercialization of E2E autonomous driving technology by automakers and partners through Autoware. TIER IV will also strengthen collaboration with the global open-source community and work to expand the adoption of autonomous driving systems across diverse vehicle types and applications.

About TIER IV

TIER IV stands at the forefront of deep tech innovation, pioneering Autoware, open-source software for autonomous driving. With a comprehensive suite of platforms and services built around Autoware, TIER IV provides everything from software development and vehicle procurement to operational support. Through the Autoware ecosystem, TIER IV works with partners worldwide to shape the future of intelligent vehicles with open-source software, aiming to create mobility that is safer, more sustainable, and accessible to all.

The word marks and logos of TIER IV are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIER IV, Inc. in Japan and other countries. All other company names, product names, service names, and logos referenced herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Autoware is a registered trademark of the Autoware Foundation.

Media contact
pr@tier4.jp 

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Dingdong to Report Third Quarter 2026 Financial Results on November 12, 2026

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SHANGHAI, Nov. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Dingdong (Cayman) Limited (“Dingdong” or the “Company”) (NYSE: DDL), a leading fresh grocery e-commerce company in China, with advanced supply chain capabilities, today announced that it will report its unaudited financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2026, before U.S. markets open on November 12, 2026.

About Dingdong (Cayman) Limited

Dingdong is the leading fresh grocery e-commerce company in mainland China, with sustainable long-term growth. The Company directly provides users and households with fresh groceries, prepared food, and other food products through delivering a convenient and excellent shopping experience supported by an extensive self-operated frontline fulfillment grid. Leveraging its deep insights into consumers’ evolving needs and its strong food innovation capabilities, Dingdong has successfully launched a series of private label products spanning a variety of food categories. Many of Dingdong’s private label products are produced at its own production plants, allowing it to more efficiently produce and offer safe and high-quality food products. Dingdong aims to be the first choice for fresh and food shopping.

For more information, please visit: https://ir.100.me.

 

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SOURCE Dingdong (Cayman) Limited

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