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USD Breaks Ground on New Shiley STEM Initiative Building, Transforming USD’s STEM Education and Research

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SAN DIEGO, May 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The University of San Diego (USD) community celebrated the groundbreaking of the Shiley STEM Initiative building alongside the building’s namesake Darlene Marcos Shiley, a philanthropist and Chair Emerita of USD’s Board of Trustees, and her late husband Donald. Mrs. Shiley announced the lead gift of $75 million in 2024 to make the building a reality.

“I believe that science, technology, engineering and math are always going to be important and that’s the best place for me to make this gift. STEM is the future — and especially in San Diego,” said Shiley. “I think the future lies in people like Donald, applying whatever talents they have, and utilizing a space like this to solve humanity’s most urgent challenges.”

The 70,000 square foot, three-story facility will expand USD’s commitment to STEM education –  with a goal of being one of the top programs nationally for undergraduate STEM research and academics.

Shiley’s gift, the largest in the university’s history, established the Shiley STEM Initiative. The gift will build on USD’s commitment to STEM programs on campus, meet the needs of ever-evolving biotechnology and science industries and create a state-of-the-art STEM facility for students to grow in their respective fields.

“Today’s groundbreaking is the first step in creating a new, innovative space for our STEM-based students that will elevate their educational experience and research as they become future scientists, engineers and changemakers in our communities. None of this would be possible without the generous support of Darlene Marcos Shiley and her late husband Donald, who understand the value in STEM education and believe in our approach to providing values-based, hands-on research opportunities for our students,” said James T. Harris III, president of the University of San Diego.

The space was imagined with experiential learning front and center, giving students the tools and hands-on learning they need to thrive as future engineers, scientists, researchers and healthcare professionals. From the beginning of their time at USD, students have opportunities to conduct high-level research in labs even as undergraduates. This new facility will create even more experiential learning opportunities through its collaborative spaces and innovative classrooms that can adapt to an ever-changing technological world.

The new facilities will include a biomedical engineering lab, a medical device lab to develop prototypes, a food science and coffee lab to study the science of food, an ecology rooftop space and a space to study the next generation of robotics.

ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO
Strengthened by the Catholic intellectual tradition, we confront humanity’s challenges by fostering peace, working for justice and leading with love. With more than 8,000 students from 75 countries and 44 states, USD is among the Top 20 Best Private Schools for Making an Impact according to The Princeton Review. USD’s eight academic divisions include the College of Arts and Sciences, the Knauss School of Business, the Shiley-Marcos School of Engineering, the School of Law, the School of Leadership and Education Sciences, the Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science, the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, and the Division of Professional and Continuing Education. In 2021, USD was named a “Laudato Si’ University” by the Vatican with a seven-year commitment to address humanity’s urgent challenges by working together to take care of our common home.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/usd-breaks-ground-on-new-shiley-stem-initiative-building-transforming-usds-stem-education-and-research-302777024.html

SOURCE University of San Diego

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TacnIQ.ai raises US$1.5 million from In Group Holdings to scale tactile AI

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Part of a US$3 million pre-seed round, the funding will accelerate the physical AI start-up’s tactile foundation model, engineering team and commercial deployments across five key industries

SINGAPORE, Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — TacnIQ.ai, a physical AI startup building technology that enables machines and robots to interpret touch, has secured US$1.5 million from lead investor In Group Holdings as part of a US$3 million pre-seed round. The funding will support the development of TacnIQ.ai’s  tactile AI foundation models, expansion of its engineering team, and scaling of commercial deployments.

The TacnIQ.ai platform enables machines to interpret signals generated through physical contact so they can understand and respond more reliably to real-world interactions. TacnIQ.ai has deployed a scalable, commercially validated and field-tested model with paying customers across five key industries: logistics, construction, e-commerce, hospitality, and healthcare. These deployments, which gather signals through sensor-based data collection nodes, deliver real-world value by improving workplace safety and ergonomics, while giving TacnIQ.ai the raw sensor data it needs to build a robust, reliable, and commercially ready foundation model.

“Our mission is to build AI models that deliver real-world impact today and transform how engineers design and develop hardware,” said Aashish Mehta, Co-founder and CEO of TacnIQ.ai. “We are grateful to In Group Holdings for backing that mission. Securing this investment is an important milestone and will enable us to hire talented engineers, build advanced tactile models, and to fully develop the technology into practical, scalable industry applications.”

To date, TacnIQ.ai has built one of the world’s largest tactile datasets with more than 5,000 hours of interactions collected from both controlled experiments and commercial deployments. The company is developing additional sensor nodes to capture a wide range of physical signals, which will broaden the multimodal data available to train its models.

While many tactile AI systems are trained on laboratory data or built for specific applications, TacnIQ.ai uses its proprietary dataset to train its model across different industries, tasks and operating conditions. This enables its model to generalize across industries and physical tasks, perform more reliably in complex environments, and reduce the need for application-specific training.

Liu Song, CEO of In Group Holdings, said: “Physical AI is emerging as one of the next major frontiers in artificial intelligence. TacnIQ.ai is building a critical intelligence layer for the physical world, underpinned by proprietary tactile data and real-world commercial deployments. We believe this combination of data, technology and practical applications strongly differentiates the company, and we are excited to lead this funding round and support the team as it scales.”

TacnIQ.ai is working with Synaptics to close the gap between research and commercially ready tactile applications. Commenting on the investment, Mahesh Srinivasan, Vice President & GM, Touch & Display at Synaptics, said: “We are delighted to partner with the TacnIQ.ai team in unlocking the potential of touch-based AI. For physical AI to move beyond the lab, systems must be able to interpret complex physical signals reliably and in real time. TacnIQ.ai is tackling that challenge by turning tactile intelligence into robust, commercially ready hardware.”

TacnIQ.ai is hiring across AI, software engineering and business development. Interested candidates can explore opportunities to help build the foundation model for physical interaction at https://www.tacniq.ai/careers#open-positions.

About TacnIQ.ai

TacnIQ.ai is a physical AI startup building foundational sensor models for physical interaction, starting with tactile. Backy, its tactile wearable data node, is deployed across logistics, construction, e-commerce, hospitality, and healthcare environments, delivering real-world impact while serving as the company’s testing ground for a robust, reliable tactile model. Additional data nodes are in development to capture physics primitives and support generalization across applications. TacnIQ.ai’s mission is to bridge AI and the physical world by building the foundation model for physical interaction. For more information, visit https://www.tacniq.ai/.

About In Group Holdings

In Group Holdings is a Singapore-based investment firm focused on backing high-growth companies across artificial intelligence, deep technology, healthcare, climate technology, semiconductors, robotics, quantum technologies, and other frontier sectors. The firm partners with visionary founders to accelerate commercialization, scale globally, and create long-term value through strategic capital, active governance, and access to its extensive network of industry partners, customers, and co-investors. For more information, visit https://ingroupholdings.com/

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/tacniqai-raises-us1-5-million-from-in-group-holdings-to-scale-tactile-ai-302885436.html

SOURCE TacnIQ.ai

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FXT Unveils FXT AI: A Multi-Agent Trading Co-Pilot for Market Insight, Risk Awareness and Trader Development.

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SYDNEY, Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — FXT today announced the launch of FXT AI, an advanced AI trading co-pilot integrated directly into the FXT trading platform. Designed to give traders an immediate edge. FXT AI acts as a dedicated partner that continuously watches the market, reviews trading history, and monitors risk.

Traders often struggle to make sense of overwhelming market data while managing risk exposure. FXT AI solves this by operating as three specialist agents working together seamlessly within a trader’s existing account. There is no new app to download. Traders simply open their dashboard to get instant, actionable insights, asking questions to dig deeper into market movements and personal performance.

Three Specialist Agents

Market Reader: Reads the market around the clock and explains what matters and why.
Traders can ask about specific instrument movements.

Trade Mentor: Turns a trader’s history into their next advantage. It breaks down trade history,
flags costly habits and compares win rates.

Risk Monitor: Explains the risk in open positions in plain terms, offering stop-loss suggestions and leverage exposure insights.

Unlike generic market signals, FXT AI is built on the trader’s actual account activity. Every insight is transparent and explainable. FXT AI informs the strategy, but the trader always decides and executes the trades.

“We built FXT AI to give traders a partner that understands their habits and the wider market,” said Adam Phillips, Chief Executive Officer at FXT. “It turns complexity into clear, personalised insight, helping clients recognise opportunities, strengthen their process and make confident decisions.”

FXT AI runs directly on the FXT platform across web, desktop, and mobile devices, alongside third-party MetaQuotes platforms such as MT4 and MT5. Additional specialist agents are currently in development as FXT continues to expand the platform’s capabilities.

About FXT

FXT is part of the Gleneagle Group being a leader in the evolution of financial markets offering corporate advisory, funds management, institutional dealing, broking and trading platform services. It has an Australian Financial Services license and the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC) Financial License. FXT is a multi-asset CFD trading platform offering access to 200+ instruments across FX, indices, commodities and shares from a single account.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/fxt-unveils-fxt-ai-a-multi-agent-trading-co-pilot-for-market-insight-risk-awareness-and-trader-development-302886755.html

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Accels has been serving customers in recent years. The company’s plans extend far beyond routing

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Token Is Becoming a Managed Asset.

The Economics of AI Are Entering a New Phase.

SINGAPORE, Sept. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Enterprise spending on AI tokens is growing faster than the systems designed to track it. A McKinsey study found that enterprise LLM spending tripled in twelve months, even as the cost per token fell sharply — because companies are running more complex workloads across more workflows. Goldman Sachs projects token consumption will increase 24-fold by 2030. And yet, for most companies, token spending remains a black box: unpredictable, difficult to forecast, and impossible to finance.

Token consumption is already one of the fastest-growing costs on the enterprise P&L,” said Raymond, CEO of Accels. “But it is still managed with spreadsheets and manual reconciliation. There is no infrastructure for treating token usage the way finance teams treat any other material input — something to be measured, optimized, and financed.”

One company that has been operating in this space is Accels, whose routing product, Accels Router, has been serving customers in recent years. The platform provides reliable, low-latency access to a wide range of large language models, and is now being upgraded and expanded to cover 15 leading model providers and more than 150 AI models through a single API.

The team behind Accels has spent the past several years researching and building at the intersection of AI infrastructure and financial services. That experience shaped a key design principle: routing data, billing data, and credit assessment should operate as a single system, rather than separate products stitched together. The goal is that a company’s actual token consumption patterns — how much it uses, how predictably, at what cost — will inform its credit profile and financing terms.

The company’s plans extend far beyond routing. Accels is exploring a broader set of capabilities designed for how AI agents actually operate, spend, and grow — with the intention of helping businesses manage token consumption as both an operational input and a financial resource.

“The companies that will win in AI are not just the ones with the best models,” said Raymond. “They are the ones that can manage the economics of running agents at scale. That requires infrastructure that understands tokens as both an operational input and a financial resource.”

About Accels

Accels is headquartered in Singapore and is dedicated to building AI infrastructure for the agentic economy. Combining deep experience in financial services with a growing AI infrastructure business, Accels aims to launch inclusive, accessible financial products that help businesses and developers participate in — and benefit from — the growth of AI agents and the token economy that powers them.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/accels-has-been-serving-customers-in-recent-years-the-companys-plans-extend-far-beyond-routing-302886009.html

SOURCE Accels

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