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Ledger Run and ICE Global Consulting Expand Strategic Partnership to Advance Clinical Trial Contracting and Financial Management

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Ledger Run deepens commitment to its ClinRun platform and site payments services; ICE Global expands market position as the industry’s leading provider of global site contracting and budgeting

RALEIGH, N.C., Sept. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Ledger Run, a leader in clinical trial financial management solutions, and ICE Global Consulting, a leader in contract and budget management services, today announced an expansion of their five-year partnership. As part of the expanded relationship, ICE Global will carry forward providing site contracts and budget negotiation and management services, while Ledger Run focuses on advancing its best-in-class ClinRun platform and site payments services to support the end-to-end contract-to-pay process.

The expanded partnership brings together ICE Global’s experienced clinical contracting team and Ledger Run’s advanced technology to provide continuity for customers while allowing each company to concentrate on its core strengths. ICE Global will work directly with customers on their contracting and budget needs while continuing to leverage the ClinRun technology to support efficient clinical trial contracting and financial operations.

“Deepening our strategic partnership with Ledger Run is a natural alignment for both organizations and a strong catalyst for our continued growth in site contracting services,” said Brooke Millman-Ice, CEO of ICE Global Consulting. “Clients gain direct access to a global team with decades of hands-on expertise in site contracts and budgets, seamlessly paired with Ledger Run’s advanced, AI-powered financial platform technology. We have experienced its efficiency firsthand and are thrilled to build on this shared momentum.”

Ledger Run is laser-focused on its core strength: the ClinRun platform and its site payments services, providing sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) with both the technology and the expert, hands-on support needed to manage end-to-end financial operations and improve the payment experience for research sites. Ledger Run continues to increase its investment in research and development, releasing platform updates quarterly and infusing AI into key friction points across the payment lifecycle. In its latest ClinRun update, Ledger Run incorporated intelligent automation and expanded flexibility to accelerate payment operations while it continues moving forward on an aggressive product improvement roadmap.

“Agentic technology is ideal to automate low-value payment processing activities, such as cross-referencing invoices and uploading them to multiple systems,” said Patrick Mizer, Chief Technology Officer at Ledger Run. “These tasks are still largely manual, time-consuming, and prone to human error plus they pull study staff away from strategic work. Administrative payment processing is the perfect strike zone for AI and will drive our next-generation platform.”

For ICE Global, the expanded relationship further strengthens its trusted contracting operations and builds on its experience supporting sponsors, CROs, and other research organizations. By combining experienced contracting professionals with technology-enabled processes, ICE Global will ensure continuity of service while supporting the evolving needs of existing and future customers. Legacy Ledger Run customers will also have access to ICE Global’s broader suite of contracting and legal support solutions, providing additional opportunities to support their needs across the clinical development lifecycle.

In addition to increasing financial management efficiency for sponsors and CROs, Ledger Run remains dedicated to improving the site experience by providing greater clarity and faster remittance. “Sponsors are starting to think about site experience as part of their brand, so being able to demonstrate that the payment process is fast and easy becomes a differentiator,” added Mizer. “This is especially poignant given the growing disproportionate site-to-trial ratio of approximately four trials to one site – making attracting sites more competitive than ever.”

CEO of Hightower Clinical Brad Hightower voiced similar sentiment on a recent episode of his podcast, Note to File. “There is increasingly more chatter at conferences by sponsors who want to know how they can become a sponsor-of-choice for sites – and payment processing is a big part of the criteria. For instance, I am most motivated to work with a sponsor that pays on time and provides the most financial transparency and clarity with the least friction.”

“Our contracts and budgets customers will be in experienced hands with ICE Global,” concluded John Chinnici, CEO of Ledger Run. “Our expanded relationship provides continuity for customers while enabling both companies to focus on what they do best. I am excited for the possibilities that our dedicated focus and increased investment in technology will deliver for the clinical research industry.”

About Ledger Run
Ledger Run is transforming clinical trial business operations through an innovative combination of technology and services. ClinRun, the company’s software suite of budgeting, contracting, payments, and forecasting, automates manual tasks, reduces errors, and speeds cycle times, while Ledger Run’s site payments services provide expert, hands-on support for sponsors, contract research organizations (CRO), and trial sites. ClinRun is the industry’s only unified CTA-to-pay platform and is leveraged by three of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, two of the top five CROs, and 18,000 sites worldwide. Ledger Run is backed by Blue Star Innovation Partners (“BSIP”), a growth-focused investment firm that partners with healthcare and technology companies in highly regulated industries to drive accelerated growth via its deep operational experience. For more information, contact info@LedgerRun.com or visit www.LedgerRun.com.

About ICE Global Consulting
ICE Global Consulting, Inc. provides technology-enabled contracting and legal support solutions to the global clinical research industry. ICE Global supports sponsors, CROs and other organizations across the clinical development lifecycle with site contract and budget negotiation and management, commercial contracting, and related contracting services. Through a combination of experienced professionals, scalable processes and technology-enabled solutions, ICE Global helps customers streamline contracting operations and navigate the complexities of global clinical research. www.iceglobalconsulting.com; info@iceglobalconsulting.com

Media Contact:
Lisa Barbadora, Barbadora INK for Ledger Run
+1 (610) 420-3413
lbarbadora@barbadoraink.com

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SOURCE Ledger Run

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World News Day: 1,000-plus newsrooms in 100-plus countries unite to defend trusted journalism

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TORONTO, Sept. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ – On 28 September, more than 1,000 news organizations and support agencies from more than 100 countries will mark World News Day, a global campaign to promote the value of journalism.

This year, news organizations are asked to show what goes into their journalism so that the public can know the facts, understand what matters and choose trusted journalism.

The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) founded World News Day in 2018 with 17 participating organizations. With the addition of WAN-IFRA as a partner a year later, the campaign went global and last year, it reached more than 1,000 publishers across 108 countries and 17 languages. This year’s campaign runs from 25 September to 1 October with 28 September as the focal day, coinciding with the UN International Day for Universal Access to Information.

“News organizations are very good at telling other people’s stories. But we have not always been equally good at telling our own,” says Stig Ørskov, CEO of the World Association of News Publishers, in urging media outlets to join World News Day 2026.

Adds CJF President and Executive Director Natalie Turvey: “When trust in journalism erodes, so does the public’s ability to make sense of the world. World News Day is a chance for more than 1,000 newsrooms to make the case together for fact-based reporting at a time when that case has never been more important.” 

Newsroom closures and shrinking budgets have weakened journalism worldwide, while AI-generated content and disinformation increasingly compete with real reporting for public attention. No single newsroom can address these challenges alone. World News Day brings newsrooms together to make one collective case, and to do something journalism rarely does: explain its own process. For one week, participating outlets are invited to show readers the work behind what they publish, giving the public something concrete whereby to judge trust.

“A society that loses its grip on facts loses its grip on itself,” says Branko Brkic, founder of Project Kontinuum, a global network to secure the news media’s future and co-organizer of World News Day. “A society that fights for truth can still find its way back.

“Alone, any one of us can be dismissed. Together, in dozens of languages and more than 100 countries, we’re harder to ignore. That’s the whole point of doing this on the same day. It is not a fundraiser. It is a rallying point.”

World News Day is organized jointly by the World Editors Forum, the Canadian Journalism Foundation and Project Kontinuum.

Newsrooms can register at https://wan-ifra.my.salesforce-sites.com/onlineregistration?regid=a1PW7000004FkLBMA. From 1 September, all who register gain access to campaign materials, including a collection of op-eds from leading journalists, translated campaign assets in 20+ languages, social media graphics and copy for the campaign week, print and digital ads, and cartoons and video, all built around the campaign message:

“Know the facts. Understand what matters. Choose trusted journalism. Because it’s your right to know.” 

Members of the public are invited to follow the campaign at [worldnewsday.org] and on social media using #WorldNewsDay #WND26 #ChooseTrustedJournalism #YourRightToKnow.

About World News Day
World News Day is a global campaign built around fact-based journalism. It is organized jointly by WAN-IFRA’s World Editors Forum, the Canadian Journalism Foundation and Project Kontinuum.

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SOURCE The Canadian Journalism Foundation

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NeuralTrust Named a Pioneer in Gartner EMQ for AI Application Security

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NeuralTrust is the best-positioned European platform recognised in the Pioneer quadrant of Gartner’s first-ever research framework dedicated to AI Application Security.

NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — NeuralTrust is the leading platform for securing and scaling AI agents, providing runtime protection, agent posture management, automated red teaming, and gateway-level enforcement to help enterprises deploy AI systems securely and at scale.

NeuralTrust today announced it has been named a Pioneer in the Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security, Gartner’s first dedicated research framework evaluating vendors in this category. NeuralTrust is the best-positioned European-headquartered company recognized in the quadrant, reinforcing its position as the leading AI security platform built for the era of autonomous agents.

The Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant differs from the established Gartner Magic Quadrant in that it evaluates markets still in formation, where vendor differentiation comes from architectural innovation rather than scale alone. Pioneer status recognizes vendors that show architecturally advanced approaches to AI security, with coverage across the full lifecycle of agentic applications, from discovery and posture management to automated testing and real-time runtime defense.

“Being named a Pioneer in Gartner’s first AI Application Security quadrant validates what we have been building since day one,” said Joan Vendrell, Co-Founder and CEO of NeuralTrust. “AI applications and autonomous agents introduce a fundamentally different risk surface, one that traditional security tools were never designed to address. We built NeuralTrust to be the security layer that sits between enterprise AI and the threats that target it, and this recognition reflects the depth and breadth of what we have shipped.”

The report reflects several shifts now shaping the AI Application Security category:

A market distinct from traditional AppSec. AI Application Security protects AI-powered applications, large language models, and autonomous agents against threats that do not exist in traditional software security, including prompt injection, data exfiltration, and model manipulation.Full lifecycle coverage as the standard. Gartner identifies three core capabilities defining the market: automated discovery and inventory of AI applications, automated AI security testing, and AI runtime defense that monitors inputs and outputs in real time.A closed-loop architecture. Pioneers combine posture management, adversarial testing, and runtime defense in a single platform rather than as disconnected point solutions.

NeuralTrust is headquartered in Barcelona and operates offices in London and New York, making it the best-positioned European-headquartered platform in the quadrant. The company opened its London office in September 2026 to support a growing base of financial services, technology, and enterprise clients across the UK.

“European enterprises face the same urgency as their counterparts in the United States when it comes to AI agent security, and they carry additional compliance obligations that platforms built outside the EU were never designed to address,” said Cameron Brown, UK Managing Director at NeuralTrust. “Being the only European Pioneer in Gartner’s first AI Application Security quadrant is a clear signal that the region now has a platform purpose-built for its security and regulatory needs.”

The Emerging Market Quadrant Pioneer designation adds to a year of Gartner recognition for NeuralTrust, which has also been named a Sample Vendor in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Application Security 2026, the Gartner Hype Cycle for AI Governance Technologies 2026, the Gartner Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Security 2026, and the Gartner Hype Cycle for Data Security 2026. The company has also been included in the Gartner Market Guide for AI Gateways and the Gartner Market Guide for Guardian Agents.

NeuralTrust remains committed to giving enterprises a single platform, TrustGate, TrustGuard, TrustLens, and TrustTest, to discover, test, and defend AI agents across their full lifecycle.

Gartner members can access the full report here.

About NeuralTrust

NeuralTrust is the leading platform for securing and scaling AI Agents. Recognized by Gartner, its platform helps enterprises identify, secure, and govern all the AI agents running in the company. Clients span from global banks and airlines to energy companies and government agencies. NeuralTrust’s mission is to make AI adoption measurable, governable, and safe, turning AI security into a strategic advantage.

Learn more at neuraltrust.ai 

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SOURCE NeuralTrust

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Stonly Launches Business Process Agents to Automate Complex Customer Service Processes

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New AI agents follow the same knowledge, rules, and workflows that support teams already use, without rebuilding SOPs as siloed knowledge for AI

NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Stonly, the knowledge platform for customer service in the AI era, today announced the launch of Business Process Agents (BPAs), AI agents that automate customer service processes end-to-end by following the same knowledge and SOPs human support teams use.

Business Process Agents go beyond AI that simply answers questions. They follow structured Stonly Guides that define the steps, decision logic, rules, required information, and actions behind a support process. That means the same process can be followed by a human agent, used to guide a customer through self-service, or executed autonomously by AI.

The result is AI that can automate the complex, high-value support issues where the right resolution depends on the customer, the situation, company policy, and what happens at each step.

As customer service organizations push for greater automation, simple questions have become increasingly easy for AI to answer. The harder problem is everything that comes next: troubleshooting, eligibility decisions, account changes, policy workflows, escalations, and the countless “it depends” situations that make up real support operations.

Today, teams trying to automate those processes typically translate them into prompts, agent instructions, retrieval rules, workflow logic, and other AI configuration. Over time, they end up maintaining one version of the process for people and another for AI.

With Business Process Agents, AI can follow the same support knowledge, SOPs, rules, and workflows the team already uses.

“AI has gotten very good at answering questions, but customer service is not just a collection of questions and answers,” said Alexis Fogel, Founder and CEO of Stonly. “The most important support work follows processes: check this, ask that, apply this rule, take an action, and make a different decision depending on what happens. Business Process Agents let AI follow the actual process instead of requiring teams to recreate it separately for AI.”

What Business Process Agents Do

Execute Complex Support Processes

Business Process Agents follow Stonly Guides step by step, including branches, decision logic, required checks, customer information, policies, and actions. They can ask for information, determine what happens next, take action through connected systems, and continue through the process until the issue is resolved or human judgment is required.

That makes it possible to automate processes that cannot be handled reliably with a single answer or simple prompt, including troubleshooting, eligibility, intake, account changes, policy-driven workflows, and other complex “it depends” cases.

Use the Same Process as the Support Team

Business Process Agents run on the same Stonly knowledge and workflows used by human agents. Teams do not need to maintain separate documentation and logic for people and AI.

When the process changes, the team updates the Guide. The new process is immediately available wherever it is used.

Work Autonomously or With Human Agents

Business Process Agents can resolve customer issues directly or work alongside human agents. A BPA can complete an entire process autonomously, handle part of a process and ask an agent to approve an important decision, or collect information and complete procedural work before handing the case to a person with the context and next step ready.

This allows teams to automate as much of each process as makes sense without forcing every support interaction into either fully manual or fully autonomous service.

Make Advanced AI Easier to Build and Maintain

Business Process Agents are created from human-readable Stonly Guides that support, operations, and knowledge teams can understand and manage.

Teams define the process once and use it for people and AI. New BPAs can be created from processes the organization already knows how to run, and changes can be made directly to the underlying process instead of being recreated across separate systems.

Why Business Process Agents Matter Now

Customer service organizations are under pressure to use AI for more than answering simple questions. They need AI to reduce the cost of service by resolving the complex issues that consume meaningful agent time.

But complexity has been the ceiling on automation.

The more important a support process becomes, the more likely it is to depend on detailed procedures, exceptions, business rules, customer context, and actions across multiple systems. Human teams already have SOPs to manage that complexity. Recreating the same logic separately for AI creates another version that has to be built, tested, governed, and maintained.

Business Process Agents remove that duplication.

Instead of creating one process for people and another for AI, companies can have AI run the processes they already use. People and AI share the same source of truth, changes only need to be made once, and automation can extend to processes that were previously too complicated or too risky to hand over to AI.

“Without Stonly, teams end up recreating the same processes for AI that their support teams already know how to follow,” Fogel explained. “The opportunity is much bigger than making prompts better. It is giving AI the ability to follow the same processes the business already trusts its people to follow.”

Availability

Stonly Business Process Agents are [available today / entering beta with select customers today]. Business Process Agents can be deployed directly to customers or used alongside human agents.

For more information, visit stonly.com.

About Stonly, Inc.

Stonly is the knowledge platform for customer service in the AI era. It helps support teams create, govern, and deliver accurate, structured knowledge for customers, support reps and AI, and turn that knowledge into processes that people and AI can follow. Stonly makes self-service, agent guidance, and AI more reliable and scalable. Backed by top venture capital firms Northzone and Accel, Stonly serves complex support environments at companies. Stonly is HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant. Learn more at stonly.com.

Press Contact:

Trilby Lawless
6464504044
stonly.com

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SOURCE Stonly, Inc.

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