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MYAVANA Hosts Inaugural Beauty Tech Summit and Announces Funding

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Personalized Hair Care Pioneer Innovating $83BB Global Hair Care Market

ATLANTA, Aug. 9, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — MYAVANA, the trailblazer in AI-driven personalized hair care, announced today it has just closed a $5.9 million seed round led by Ulta Beauty’s Digital Innovation Fund and hosted its inaugural Beauty Tech Summit last month. This infusion of capital underscores MYAVANA’s pivotal role in revolutionizing the global hair care market, which is projected to reach $113 billion by 2031. This round of funding will accelerate MYAVANA’s unique market position, pioneering personalized hair care under the visionary leadership of its founder, Candace Victoria Mitchell.

MYAVANA’s journey over the past 12 years has been marked by scientific research and breakthrough innovations, with the development of the world’s first AI-driven, proprietary personalized hair care software system at its core, eliminating the repetitive trial and error for consumers. The company introduced the Unique Hair ID comprised of 972+ hair type combinations which disrupts the current hair typing system and reveals a more diverse range of customer hair profiles to cater to globally. The company’s tagline: “your hair is as unique as your fingerprint” reveals so much more about us: texture, type, condition, and on the health side, toxins and minerals in the body, early detection for chronic illnesses, stress indicators, and diet suggestions.  Their first publication The Definitive Healthy Hair Care Guide aims to re-educate the market and demystify common trends found on the Internet. MYAVANA is leveraging its market leadership position and data-driven insights to establish its business as the authority of the hair industry.

Inaugural Techturized Beauty Tech Summit: Driving Industry Transformation during Atlanta Tech Week https://www.techturized.com/ 

MYAVANA celebrated its 12th anniversary by hosting its inaugural Techturized Beauty Tech Summit on Saturday, June 15th at the Georgia Tech Klaus Advanced Computing Building, to unlock value and drive innovation in the hair care sector with its strategic partners and beauty tech enthusiasts. The Summit featured an AR experience and interactive product demos for every sector of the hair industry. Business leaders from Groove Global, Braintrust Founders Studio, UPS, and more gathered to discuss the opportunities for retailers, manufacturers, distributors, salons, and consumers. Beauty industry veterans such as Robin D. Groover, Melissa Hibbert, Claire Sulmers, and Mimi Johnson explored the transformative potential of technology in shaping the future of hair, beauty, wellness, retail, and fashion. Global social impact leader La’Kerri Jackson shared the economic empowerment social impact MYAVANA has with its first retail store opening in Uganda to open up product distribution channels in Africa. The company shared its advancements in opening new career paths for women in STEM through its Beauty Tech Fellowship Program and announced a new brand ambassador, singer and songwriter Serayah, who will aid in cultivating community in MYAVANA’s mobile app, which serves as a concierge for consumers on their hair journey. To watch the virtual rebroadcast, sign up here.

HairAI™: Redefining Personalized Hair Care

MYAVANA’s pioneering HairAI™ technology utilizes microscopic hair analysis and advanced algorithms to decode the intricacies of hair texture, type, and condition, providing consumers with instant product recommendations tailored to their specific needs. “A person’s hair is as unique as their fingerprint and we’ve unlocked powerful, personalized insights with our AI platform,” said MYAVANA CEO and Founder Candace Victoria Mitchell. “Hair is the longest record of your body’s health, providing as much as a decade of information about a person’s health and needs. I’m grateful to our investors who see the long-term potential and share our mission to transform the hair industry and create personalized consumer journeys.”

Four Business Lines Driving Growth and Innovation

At the heart of MYAVANA’s business model lie five distinct pillars, each contributing to its rapid growth and market penetration through licensing and partnership under the initiative “powered by MYAVANA”:

Personalized Hair Analysis: Unlike traditional one-size-fits-all approaches, MYAVANA offers personalized hair analysis through its HairAI™ technology, empowering consumers with tailored product recommendations suited to their unique hair characteristics.Scientific Intelligence Services: MYAVANA’s scientific intelligence provides access to its proprietary HairSI™ Strand Analysis Kit, offering comprehensive healthy hair care plans tailored to individual hair health challenges and goals.Strategic Retail Partnerships: MYAVANA’s recommendation intelligence enables retail enterprise partners such as Ulta and Unilever to drive personalized hair product purchases with its HairRI™ API integrations. MYAVANA has also forged collaborations with the National Black-Owned Beauty Supply Association and BrainTrust Founders Studio to introduce a Retail Innovation Academy facilitating personalized HairAI™ technology distribution and guidance through beauty supply stores across the globe.Business Data Solutions: MYAVANA’s comprehensive HairCl™ database serves as a valuable resource for product manufacturers and ingredient suppliers seeking actionable market research and consumer insights to enhance their offerings. MYAVANA Labs has analyzed over two billion hair strands, making it the world’s largest database of textured hair care data. The company aims to work with all hair product manufacturers to support R&D initiatives for product development and target marketing for a wider range of customer segments that boost sales accordingly.Salon Success Solutions: MYAVANA’s new HairScope™ and Pro+ software and puts the power of its HairAI™ technology in the hands of stylists to provide hair & scalp analysis in-salon and generate personalized healthy hair care plans for their clients, which will grow their retail revenue through its recommendation system. MYAVANA has partnered with expert cosmetologist Robin D. Groover, founder of Too Groovy Hair Salons, to introduce a Salon Success Academy that powers salons of the future through innovating and elevating the client experience with technology.

About MYAVANA: Empowering Consumers, Inspiring Change

MYAVANA is a venture-backed beauty technology company providing data-driven hair care insights to retailers, salons, brands, and consumers. As one of the only Black-owned beauty tech enterprises, MYAVANA takes pride in its diverse team of women in STEM who have been instrumental in shaping its success story. MYAVANA has raised $6.2M total since the inception of the business to chart new frontiers in personalized hair care and beyond, empowering consumers and businesses by driving positive internal and external change in the beauty and wellness industry.

Candace Mitchell founded MYAVANA in beta in 2012, researching and developing proprietary hair care technology that analyzes the variables of hair strands and hair products to produce personalized hair care plans that support healthy hair care throughout a consumer’s hair journey. As a graduate of Georgia Tech, she brings over 18 years of experience in computer science to MYAVANA. Candace is the 2023 BeautyMatters Innovator of the Year, Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, WWD Top 50 Beauty Innovator, BET Honors STEM Award winner, Sephora Accelerate fellow, and recent Georgia Tech College of Computing Hall of Fame inductee. Candace’s work has been featured nationally on Cheddar News, CNN, CNBC, Marie Claire, ESSENCE, Inc. Magazine, Black Enterprise, Business Insider, and more.

For more information visit www.myavana.com or follow @MYAVANAHairCare

Media Contact:
Elizabeth Byington
elizabeth.byington@sparkpr.com

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Safetyfirst Systems, LLC Provides Notice of Data Security Event

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PARSIPPANY, N.J., July 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Safetyfirst Systems, LLC (“SFS”) is providing notice of a data security event that may involve information relating to certain individuals. While SFS is not aware of any misuse of information associated with this event, it is providing notice to potentially affected individuals out of an abundance of caution.

On January 19, 2026, SFS identified suspicious activity involving a limited portion of its server environment. Upon discovering the activity, SFS quickly took steps to secure its systems, notified federal law enforcement, engaged leading third-party forensic specialists, and performed a detailed investigation into the nature, scope, and impact of the activity. The investigation determined that an unauthorized actor accessed and/or acquired certain files from limited SFS systems between January 16, 2026, and January 19, 2026. SFS then conducted a comprehensive review of the affected files to determine what information may have been involved and identify the individuals to whom the information relates. The review has recently concluded, and SFS is providing this notification to potentially impacted individuals out of an abundance of caution. Although the types of information vary by individual, the affected information may include names, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers.

Protecting the privacy and security of the information entrusted to SFS is a responsibility the company takes very seriously. In response to this event, SFS promptly strengthened security measures, continues to enhance its technical safeguards and monitoring capabilities, and is reviewing existing policies and procedures to further protect against similar incidents in the future. SFS is also providing notice to potentially affected individuals and, where required, appropriate regulatory authorities.

Although SFS is unaware of any misuse of personal information impacted by this event, individuals are encouraged to remain vigilant against events of identity theft by reviewing account statements, explanation of benefits, and monitoring free credit reports for suspicious activity and to detect errors. Any suspicious activity should be reported to the appropriate insurance company, health care provider, or financial institution.

Individuals seeking additional information regarding this event can contact SFS’s dedicated assistance line at 1-833-289-5523 between the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. Individuals may also write to SFS at PO Box 101, 3299 US Highway 46, Parsippany, NJ 07054-9998.

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/safetyfirst-systems-llc-provides-notice-of-data-security-event-302831894.html

SOURCE Safetyfirst Systems, LLC

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Sunrate and Mastercard Release White Paper on Agentic AI and the Future of B2B Global Payments

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SHANGHAI, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Sunrate, the global payment and treasury management platform, and Mastercard, a global technology company in the payments industry, unveiled a joint white paper, Beyond Automation: Defining Agentic Global Payments, at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC).

Among the first reports in the payments industry to examine the impact of Agentic AI on B2B cross-border payments, the white paper provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how AI agents are reshaping enterprise payment operations. It proposes that cross-border payments are evolving beyond digitisation and automation into a new stage: Autonomy—where AI agents with reasoning, planning, and execution capabilities can independently orchestrate and optimise end-to-end payment and treasury workflows within defined governance frameworks.

As businesses expand across borders, B2B cross-border payments continue to be constrained by fragmented workflows, disconnected systems, foreign exchange inefficiencies, rising compliance requirements, and complex reconciliation processes. While traditional automation improves individual tasks, the white paper demonstrates that Agentic AI represents a fundamental shift by enabling intelligent agents to coordinate entire payment journeys across systems, counterparties, and approval workflows.

Drawing on Sunrate’s global payment infrastructure and AI-native product capabilities, together with Mastercard’s expertise in secure payment networks and data intelligence, the white paper defines Agentic Global Payments — a new category of AI-native global payment infrastructure built to automate and manage complex enterprise workflows.

The report identifies 16 major pain points across the B2B payment lifecycle and outlines 13 high-value AI use cases spanning supplier onboarding, accounts payable and receivable, virtual commercial cards, payment routing, foreign exchange management, compliance screening, fraud detection, reconciliation, and conversational operational support. It also demonstrates how AI agents can automate complex workflows—from extracting information across multiple document formats and conducting compliance checks to initiating payments, optimising FX execution, and completing reconciliation—while operating within enterprise governance and control frameworks.

The white paper further highlights that trusted adoption of agentic payments depends on more than technological capability. It identifies governance, transparency, security, and ecosystem collaboration as essential foundations for enterprise deployment, supported by frameworks such as Know Your Agent (KYA), payment tokenisation, auditability, and cross-industry interoperability.

Sunrate.AI portfolio currently includes the Payment Agent, FX Agent, Compliance Agent, Onboarding Agent, and Chat Agent, designed to help enterprises automate and optimise critical payment and treasury processes while maintaining compliance and operational control.

Mastercard has also been actively building the foundations for trusted agentic commerce – combining AI capabilities with verifiable authorisation, clear accountability and proven payments security. Its work in this area, including Agent Pay (alongside Agent Pay for Machines) and Verifiable Intent, are proof points in how Mastercard is enabling AI to participate in commerce safely and transparently. 

“Our mission is to make global payments seamless, compliant, and intelligent,” said Paul Meng, Co-founder and CEO of Sunrate. “As businesses continue expanding internationally, AI agents will fundamentally reshape how enterprises manage global payments—enabling smoother capital flows, reducing operational friction, and embedding real-time intelligence into every payment decision. This white paper represents an important step in helping the industry understand how Agentic AI can be deployed responsibly at enterprise scale.”

“Agentic commerce is changing how businesses make and execute payment decisions, but speed without accountability creates new categories of risk,” said Anouska Ladds, Executive Vice President, Commercial & New Payment Flows, Asia Pacific, Mastercard. “As AI starts to act on behalf of businesses, autonomous payment decisions need a clear, auditable chain of identity, intent and action. That’s what allows organisations to delegate with genuine confidence — and what will determine whether agentic commerce scales past pilots.”

Released under WAIC 2026’s theme, “Intelligent Partners, Co-creating the Future,” the white paper provides business leaders with practical guidance on adopting AI-driven payment capabilities, covering implementation approaches, governance considerations, and real-world enterprise applications.

By combining Sunrate’s expertise in global payments and treasury management with Mastercard’s trusted payment infrastructure and network capabilities, the collaboration reflects a shared commitment to accelerating the next generation of intelligent, secure, and autonomous B2B global payments.

Click here to check the white paper.

About Sunrate

Sunrate is a leading global payment and treasury management platform for businesses worldwide. Founded in 2016, Sunrate has enabled companies to operate and scale both locally and globally in 190+ countries and regions with its cutting-edge infrastructure, global network, and unified solutions.

Sunrate operates through offices across key markets, including Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and London. The company partners with the top global financial institutions, such as Citibank, Standard Chartered, Barclays, J.P. Morgan. Sunrate is also the principal member of Mastercard and Visa. To learn more about Sunrate, visit https://www.sunrate.com/.

About Mastercard

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re building a resilient economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential. 

www.mastercard.com

SOURCE Sunrate

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JAMS Launches AI for Enterprise Job Scheduling: JAX and JAMS MCP

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A new AI agent and an open-standard connector let IT teams query, diagnose, and manage automation in plain language, on the model they choose, with operational data able to stay onshore inside their own network

SYDNEY, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — JAMS Software, an orchestration solution for scheduled and event-driven automation, today announced the general availability of two AI capabilities for enterprise job scheduling: JAX, an AI agent built into the JAMS Web Client, and JAMS MCP, a connector built on the open Model Context Protocol standard that brings JAMS into external AI coding tools. Both capabilities ship at no additional cost as part of JAMS Web.

Automation environments grow faster than the teams that run them. Jobs multiply across SQL Server, Azure Data Factory, Airflow, SAP, JDE, and Banner, and when one fails, finding the root cause often means searching several consoles at once, frequently outside business hours. At the same time, IT leaders carry pressure to adopt AI while staying accountable for where operational data goes. JAX and JAMS MCP close both gaps together.

Full details on how JAX and JAMS MCP work, including the control model behind every action, are available at jamsscheduler.com/product/ai.

JAX is an AI agent that runs inside the JAMS Web Client. It finds jobs, troubleshoots failures, and answers how-to questions in plain language, with each response grounded in the JAMS user guide and checked against a built-in glossary. JAX acts only when a user asks it to. Reads flow freely, and every write action pauses for the user’s explicit approval before it runs. JAX does not learn between sessions, and conversations are not retained on the server.

JAMS MCP is a connector, built on the open Model Context Protocol standard, that brings JAMS into the AI tools engineering teams already use, including Cursor, VS Code with Copilot, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Codex. Users query jobs, investigate failures, and manage runs in plain language without leaving their tool.

Both capabilities run inside the customer’s own network and act as the signed-in user, with that user’s exact JAMS permissions. There is no elevated AI account: whatever a user cannot do in the JAMS interface, JAX and JAMS MCP cannot do on that user’s behalf. Every JAX and MCP operation is recorded in its own dedicated log, and changes made through the JAMS API land in the JAMS audit trail like any other change. Customers choose their own AI model, whether a commercial provider such as OpenAI or Anthropic or a model running entirely on their own hardware, and JAMS never trains on customer data. In the current release, neither feature edits or deletes a job, folder, schedule, or agent definition. For teams that need operational data to stay onshore, JAX runs on a local model entirely inside the customer’s own network, so nothing leaves at all.

“Adopting AI usually means giving something up, most often visibility into where your data goes,” said Pete Hegland, Chief Executive Officer of JAMS Software. “We built JAX and JAMS MCP so that trade does not have to happen. Every action runs as the signed-in user, every change waits for approval, and the model can run on the customer’s own hardware, keeping operational data onshore.”

“For teams across Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, two things matter: keeping data onshore, and getting answers when a job fails after hours,” said Shayne Cooper, Account Executive for APAC at JAMS Software. “JAX and JAMS MCP address both. The model can run on the customer’s own hardware, and the answer arrives in plain language at the moment it is needed.”

JAX and JAMS MCP are available now to all JAMS Web customers across Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, with no separate licence, SKU, or additional cost. AI-assisted creation of new jobs and workflows from a plain-language description is on the roadmap for a future release, gated by the same approvals and permissions as every other action.

Learn how JAX and JAMS MCP work at https://jamsscheduler.com/product/ai.

Fast facts

JAX is an AI agent built into the JAMS Web Client for job scheduling and workflow automation.JAMS MCP is a connector built on the open Model Context Protocol standard, for Cursor, VS Code with Copilot, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Codex.Both act as the signed-in user, with that user’s exact JAMS permissions, and there is no elevated AI account.Customers choose the AI model, including a local model that runs entirely inside their own network.JAMS never trains on customer data.Both are available now at no additional cost as part of JAMS Web.

About JAMS Software
Founded in 1987, JAMS Software is an orchestration solution that helps IT teams centralize, automate, and manage scheduled and event-driven jobs across complex, hybrid environments. Over 850 customers rely on JAMS to run their automated workloads. JAMS Software, LLC is headquartered at 108 Patriot Drive, Suite A, Middletown, DE 19709.

Media Contact
Bobby Schmidt, Vice President of Marketing
press@jamssoftware.com
800.261.4267

 

 

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