Strategic Acquisition Combines Dragonpass’ Loyalty Infrastructure, Powering 35 of the World’s 50 Largest Banks, With iCoupon’s Vouchering Technology Supporting Over One Billion Passengers

SINGAPORE, Nov. 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Dragonpass, the global travel and lifestyle benefits platform serving more than 45 million members worldwide, has announced the acquisition of iCoupon, the intelligent digital vouchering technology business whose network spans over 400 airports worldwide. The transaction represents a strategic expansion of Dragonpass’ technology and distribution capabilities, combining established financial services relationships with extensive airline and retail integrations to accelerate its development of a global loyalty-as-a-service platform.

The acquisition follows almost a decade of commercial collaboration between the two businesses, initially focused on delivering digital dining benefits across airports. While Dragonpass has developed its global presence through partnerships with financial institutions, including some of the world’s largest banks and payment networks, iCoupon has built complementary infrastructure connecting 200 airlines, over 400 airports and 4,000 retail units across 56 countries. The combination creates immediate opportunities to expand dining and retail offerings, alongside access to previously untapped solutions and customer segments across both networks.

In the near term, Dragonpass will focus on extending its dining and retail propositions through iCoupon’s established network, while introducing additional Dragonpass services to iCoupon’s airline and airport partners. Longer term, the business will explore how transferable integrations can support a wider lifestyle offering beyond aviation, creating opportunities to deliver relevant benefits across more frequent customer interactions. iCoupon’s existing team will remain in place, with its open-network model continuing to operate, ensuring continuity for existing partners while supporting new opportunities across the combined business.

Dragonpass acquires iCoupon following nearly a decade of collaboration, expanding its financial services, aviation and retail capabilities.iCoupon’s network spans over 200 airlines, 400+ airports and over 4,000 retail units across 56 countries, with support already available to over one billion passengers.iCoupon issued over £100 million in digital vouchers in 2025, demonstrating the scale of its existing distribution and redemption infrastructure.Dragonpass research finds 50% of Britons consider loyalty schemes outdated, while 76% value affordable everyday treats.The deal strengthens dining and retail offerings in the near term, supporting Dragonpass’ wider ambition to build a global loyalty-as-a-service platform

Jane Zhu, CEO & Co-founder at Dragonpass, shares:

“The acquisition of iCoupon represents a significant step in our strategy to build a global loyalty-as-a-service platform. Having worked together for almost a decade, we recognise the strength of its technology and network, and the immediate opportunity to expand our dining and retail offering while exploring applications across new lifestyle markets.

“The future of loyalty lies in connecting customer intelligence with relevant benefits at scale. By bringing together complementary distribution networks and investing in more intelligent engagement technology, we’re building the infrastructure to help our partners deliver greater value to customers, precisely when they need it.”

iCoupon’s technology enables airlines and other partners to distribute vouchers, discounts and customer entitlements through existing identifiers, including boarding passes, barcodes and QR codes. Integrated directly into participating retailers’ point-of-sale systems, its platform supports real-time redemption, transaction tracking and automated reconciliation. Having issued over £100 million in digital vouchers during 2025, including 12 million food and beverage entitlements, iCoupon has expanded into 13 technology modules spanning passenger care, retail and other travel services, providing Dragonpass with additional capabilities and new commercial opportunities.

Richard Bye, CEO and Co-founder at iCoupon, shares:

“For too long, loyalty has been constrained by fragmented ecosystems, disconnected rewards and experiences that often fail to reflect what customers genuinely value. This acquisition is about helping accelerate a shift away from traditional points-based programmes towards real-time, contextual engagement that delivers meaningful benefits exactly when and where they matter most. By combining Dragonpass’ global distribution and customer intelligence capabilities with iCoupon’s powerful airline connected redemption infrastructure, we are creating the foundations for a new generation of loyalty; one that is intelligent, frictionless and seamlessly embedded into the everyday lives of consumers around the world.”

Dragonpass’ nationally representative Comfort Index finds 50% of Brits consider loyalty schemes outdated, revealing the mounting pressure on traditional loyal models to demonstrate value while 48% of Brits are more likely to switch long-term providers due to rising costs, poor support or irrelevant rewards. Meanwhile, 69% say brands that reduce everyday friction are more likely to earn their loyalty. Demand for practical benefits is also growing, with 76% valuing affordable everyday treats, despite 56% worrying about the cost of dining, drinks and experiences.

This expansion forms part of Dragonpass’ broader investment in data orchestration and customer engagement technology. By connecting a wider global benefits supply chain with more intelligent distribution and personalisation capabilities, the company aims to address a longstanding challenge for enterprise loyalty programmes: sourcing relevant benefits across markets and delivering them through a seamless customer experience. Its longer-term strategy is to enable financial institutions, airlines and other partners to move beyond static rewards catalogues, offering benefits aligned with individual customer needs, while strengthening engagement and commercial value across its network.

About Dragonpass

Established in 2005, Dragonpass is a leading global travel and lifestyle platform, providing premium benefits and experiences to more than 45 million members worldwide. Its growing ecosystem spans travel, health and wellness, lifestyle and entertainment, with a global network covering more than 140 countries and regions and partnerships with more than 800 enterprises.

About iCoupon

iCoupon is a market-leading intelligent vouchering company with a global presence, specialising in the provision of digital vouchering services within the aviation industry and beyond. Collaborating with an extensive network of more than 200 airlines, spanning over 400 airports and in excess of 4,000 retail establishments, the company’s aim is to share value and place it where it counts. iCoupon leverages its unique technology to facilitate the seamless distribution of intelligent vouchers by airlines, airports, ground handlers and retailers directly to passenger boarding passes, enhancing the value-sharing experience.

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SOURCE Dragonpass

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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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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SOURCE TIER IV, Inc.