NEW YORK, Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — AvePoint Inc. (NASD: AVPT) will replace LXP Industrial Trust (NYSE: LXP) in the S&P SmallCap 600 effective prior to the opening of trading on Monday, November 2. Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are acquiring LXP Industrial Trust in a deal expected to close soon, pending final closing conditions.

Following is a summary of the changes that will take place prior to the open of trading on the effective date:

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The round will help Archera expand its guaranteed cloud commitments, bringing insurance-backed financial protection to companies navigating unpredictable AI and cloud spending. The company has delivered more than $700 million in customer savings and now manages approximately $5.6 billion in annual cloud and AI spend.

BELLEVUE, Wash., Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — As artificial intelligence makes cloud spending harder to predict, companies face an increasingly expensive choice: commit to long-term cloud and AI contracts to unlock significant discounts or preserve flexibility and leave savings on the table. Archera has raised a $15 million Series C to expand its Guaranteed Commitments and change that equation.

The cloud economics company today announced it closed its Series C funding round, led by Pivot Investment Partners, with participation from existing investors including HighSage Ventures. The financing brings Archera’s total funding to $38.3 million. It will support the expansion of Archera’s Guaranteed Commitments and its suite of free cloud cost tools, including its FinOps Agent and MCP.

Insurance-backed financial protection is central to Archera’s next phase of growth. Archera purchased a policy on a surplus lines basis from Crum & Forster Specialty Insurance Company to back its guarantee. This model helps businesses pursue cloud commitment savings while managing the financial risk of usage changes.

The company has delivered more than $700 million in savings to over 2,200 organizations, including PubNub, Art.com, and Astronomer. The thesis behind Archera is simple: companies shouldn’t have to predict AI’s future to commit and save money on today’s infrastructure.

Why Cloud and AI Commitments Need to Change

Cloud providers reward customers who commit to spending over one- to three-year periods with substantial discounts and access to capacity. Historically, those commitments have helped businesses reduce infrastructure costs. But AI is changing the risk and economics of that decision.

A new model launch can multiply GPU spending in months. A more efficient model, a shift in architecture, or a move to a different service can reduce it just as quickly. Long-term commitments that once looked financially sound can become expensive liabilities.

Companies are left choosing between overcommitting and risking unused spend, or undercommitting and missing out on available discounts. Many choose the latter, sacrificing potential savings to preserve flexibility.

Archera believes that the trade-off is unnecessary. Its Guaranteed Commitments provide resource-level cloud and AI discounts with terms as short as 30 days. If usage declines and a covered commitment goes unused, Archera covers the cost under the terms of its guarantee.

The result is a different way to approach cloud purchasing. Businesses can pursue deeper discounts and unlock capacity otherwise gated behind a commitment, without bearing the entire financial consequence when actual usage diverges from forecasts.

Turning Cloud Optimization Into a Financial Product

Traditional cloud cost management tools provide visibility, recommendations, automation, and forecasting, but they can’t eliminate the financial risk of unused commitments. Archera combines its free FinOps platform and Agent with a financial guarantee that addresses inaccurate forecasts.

“Every tool in this market is trying to forecast your cloud usage a little better. We think that’s the wrong bet,” said Aran Khanna, co-founder and CEO of Archera. “Nobody can forecast AI demand, not the customer, not the cloud provider. So instead of predicting it, we guarantee it, and we have purchased an insurance policy to back that guarantee. If covered usage drops, we address the unused commitment cost under the terms of our guarantee. That’s a new way to purchase cloud, not another dashboard, and it’s why we’ve been able to return $700 million to our customers.”

The approach positions cloud commitments as a financial risk decision, helping finance and engineering leaders manage budgets while adapting to changing technology.

Built for CFOs, CTOs, and the Teams Managing AI Costs

The approach addresses a growing challenge across finance and engineering: how to control infrastructure costs without constraining the business.

For CFOs: Capture commitment-level discounts while reducing exposure to eligible unused spend under the guarantee.For CTOs and engineering leaders: Preserve flexibility to adopt new AI models, change architectures, and scale workloads without letting past commitments dictate future decisions.For FinOps teams: Increase commitment coverage with a financial backstop when usage changes, without more back-and-forth with engineering teams to get perfect forecasts.For cloud partners and resellers: Give customers a differentiated way to pursue cloud savings that can be reinvested in new cloud services while managing commitment risk.

Archera’s platform connects to AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud billing data in read-only mode and analyzes actual usage. It then recommends and automates the purchasing of both native commitments and Archera Guaranteed Commitments.

Customers can evaluate their potential savings before making any purchasing decision. Commitments remain in the customer’s own cloud account, preserving end-to-end control over cloud purchasing strategy.

Archera earns when customers save through its guaranteed commitments, aligning its commercial model with the outcomes customers seek.

Customers Are Rethinking the Commitment Model

For organizations accustomed to treating cloud commitments as a single, high-stakes decision, Archera offers a more flexible approach.

“Working with Archera meant rethinking commitments as a spectrum rather than a single, high-stakes decision,” said James Hamilton, VP of Operations and Controller at PubNub. “This was a big mind shift for us. We needed to think about how our commitments could be broken up into a spectrum of purchases versus a single one-time buy.”

That flexibility is particularly valuable as companies adopt AI workloads, where technology choices and resource requirements can shift faster than traditional budgeting cycles.

Instead of making one large bet on future usage, businesses can take a more measured approach while still securing meaningful discounts.

A Series C to Expand Insurance-Backed Cloud Purchasing

Archera has been operating profitably at scale. It raised a Series C to support larger guarantees, expand its reach, serve more customers, and upgrade the insurance policies backing its guarantee to serve larger global clients.

The company plans to use the capital in three ways:

Accelerate go-to-market efforts.Expand its global partner network across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and Latin America.Serve more teams focused on AI-driven workloads.

“Archera has built a capital-efficient and differentiated business at the intersection of cloud infrastructure and risk management,” said Dinkar Jetley, co-founder and managing partner at Pivot Investment Partners. “The team pairs a deep understanding of the cloud ecosystem with a rigorous approach to underwriting, and the result is a compelling value proposition that a fast-growing roster of customers relies on as their cloud spend scales. We are privileged to have led this Series C round and look forward to working closely with Aran and the management team in the years ahead.”

Built by People Who Understand Cloud Infrastructure

Aran and Nikhil Khanna founded Archera in 2019. Aran previously planned capacity for Azure’s core compute and database services at Microsoft and was a founding member of AWS’s deep learning team leading launches, including SageMaker, DeepLens, and the Neuron SDK, behind Amazon’s Trainium and Inferentia AI chips.

His research on deep learning model efficiency has been cited more than 1,900 times, and he serves on the FinOps Foundation governing board.

As AI transforms infrastructure economics, Archera aims to make cloud savings more accessible without forcing businesses to assume unnecessary financial risk.

To explore potential savings, request a free assessment at Archera.ai.

Free savings assessment: https://app.archera.ai/savings-estimate?utm_source=forbes&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=series-c-2026

Name: Sarah
Email Address: shiara@archera.ai
Phone Number: +13018255007

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SOURCE Archera

SYDNEY, Oct. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Creative Technology Ltd launches Creative XF1, a new Hi-Res speaker system designed for users who care about both sound quality and aesthetics, and want more vivid music, more cinematic movies, and more engaging listening. Creative XF1 offers sleek design, bi-amplified architecture, 72W RMS output, dual Hi-Res Audio certification, next-gen connectivity, and personalisation with the Creative Nexus app.

Creative XF1 brings out details in music that many compact 2.0 speakers in this price range do not reproduce, from the rasp in a voice to the rumbling bass under a game soundtrack. With a bespoke FEA-optimised 3-inch woofer, Creative XF1 adds extra punch and close-range clarity. The 72W RMS bi-amplified design delivers a clear, powerful sound that is easy on the ear.

“For many of us, the desktop has become the centre of work, entertainment and creation,” said Ernest Sim, CEO and Executive Chairman, Creative Technology Ltd. “Creative XF1 is built to deliver room-filling power with richer depth and clarity, so every note, voice and effect sounds closer, more vivid and more real at your desk.”

Besides advanced connectivity via Bluetooth® 6.0, USB audio, and AUX input, users can also connect a subwoofer for richer bass and an easy 2.1 upgrade.

Crafted by in-house audio specialists, the Creative Nexus app offers a 10-band parametric EQ and 120+ presets for different music genres and games. Users can personalise their sound for focused work, movie nights, gaming sessions, or unwinding, all from one intuitive interface.  

Pricing and availability

Creative XF1 is priced at A$339.95, and is available at creative.com.

About Creative
Since its founding in 1981, Creative Technology has been driven by a singular mission: to reimagine the way the world experiences sound. Creative introduced the groundbreaking Sound Blaster®, the invention that gave personal computers the gift of sound — and forever changed the landscape of PC multimedia.

Guided by a legacy of bold ideas and breakthrough technologies, Creative continues to lead at the intersection of engineering and imagination.

At its core, Creative remains committed to pushing the boundaries of what audio can achieve — enriching lives, elevating experiences, and defining what’s next in sound.

This announcement relates to products launched in Australia. Availability is subject to change without notice and may differ elsewhere in the world according to local factors and requirements. Creative, and the Creative logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Creative Technology Ltd in the United States and/or other countries. The Bluetooth® word mark and logo are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such marks by Creative Technology Ltd is under license. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

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SOURCE Creative Technology Ltd