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SCAD’s New AI Insights Report Accelerates Creative Value

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SCADask Research Finds AI Is Shifting from Production to Direction — and SCAD Is Building the Curriculum to Match

SAVANNAH, Ga., June 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is excited to present the SCAD AI Insights 2026 Report, developed by the university’s applied research unit, SCADask. Drawing on a pre-summit survey of more than 100 creative leaders across entertainment, technology, healthcare, and automotive sectors, and on summit proceedings featuring practitioners from NVIDIA, Google, Adobe, Netflix, Amazon, Canva, Deloitte Digital, The Coca-Cola Company, and others, the report argues that the most consequential challenge in creative practice today is directional.

Survey data anchors the case: AI is driving its biggest efficiency gains where work is generative: research and insights synthesis at 76%, content creation at 67%, ideation at 63%. But 63% of practitioners still define their primary KPI for AI success as time saved, while output quality, customer outcomes, and revenue growth together account for just 16%. The field, the report concludes, is measuring what’s easiest to count.

“This report confirms something we’ve been teaching at SCAD for several years: the most durable creative skill has never been production speed, its judgment,” said Nye Warburton, Dean of the School of Creative Technology at SCAD. “AI accelerates the making. It doesn’t replace the knowing. The designers, directors, and strategists who will lead in this moment are the ones who can look at what a machine generates and ask, ‘Does this feel right?’ Building on taste, context, and intention that’s what a creative education is for.”

Direction Over Fluency: What Creative Leaders Want
Across the summit, a consistent signal emerged: hiring is moving toward resilience and direction, not tool fluency. Creative direction and storytelling lead the human skills gaining most ground — at 61% and 56% respectively — followed by strategy at 44%, research synthesis at 40%, and data literacy at 33%. Prompt craft and technical integration ranks near the bottom. What practitioners are reaching for, the report finds, is interpretive. This moment represents a restructuring of how the industry looks at the creative role.

Students Building with OpenUSD and Omniverse: The Summit’s 48-Hour AI Jam
At this year’s summit, SCAD launched its first AI Summit Jam, a 48-hour sprint powered by NVIDIA. Eighteen teams of more than 70 students across disciplines were challenged to scale 3D content and simulation using digital twins, OpenUSD, and NVIDIA Omniverse, integrating directly into existing pipelines with access to SCAD’s Satellite AI Lab.

The solutions students produced spanned industries and scales: 2D documentation converted to 4D preservation, immersive worldbuilding, a digital twin of hospital foot traffic, a customizable coral reef, and rescue robot training simulations for collapsed interiors. The work that would take quarters to learn was compressed or eliminated by AI-driven platforms, allowing students with the least technical background to keep pace.

The winning team, Project R.E.M. (Remember Every Moment), built a system that lets people capture and step back inside their own memories — assembling a production pipeline across Blender, Unreal Engine 5, Luma AI, Meshy, and Figma within the 48-hour window. Integrating 3D Gaussian splats into Unreal Engine required engineering work-arounds; the team solved it and then went further, identifying a practical path to consumer adoption and use cases the brief hadn’t specified, including applications for individuals with visual or memory impairments.

Dan Schneider, Enterprise Platforms Product Specialist at NVIDIA, observed: “I’m amazed that the students were able to ideate and build such a memorable product in just 48 hours — all while learning new toolsets.”

The AI Jam is a direct expression of the report’s core argument. Multi-agent orchestration, identified by 31% of survey respondents as the emerging AI trend most likely to reshape their industry, is not a future skill. SCAD students are already building it.

How SCAD Is Responding
SCAD is building curriculum and studio infrastructure to develop the direction layer — not just tool fluency:

Bachelor of Design in Applied AI program: A first-of-its-kind program preparing students to steer emerging technologies with intention.Satellite AI Lab: Specialized R&D hubs where students and faculty prototype AI integrations with industry partners, building the organizational and technical fluency the report identifies as the next competitive edge.AI Jam Challenges: High-pressure studio environments that encourage students to move beyond prompting and into building complex, ethical technical pipelines with creativity and innovation in mind.SCAD AI Values: A university-wide framework emphasizing human creativity, ethical responsibility, transparency, and intentional human-AI collaboration across creative disciplines.

Human-AI collaboration studios lead university investment priorities at 65% across survey respondents, ahead of all other categories. SCAD is already there.

The SCAD AI Insights 2026 report is available now. To learn more about AI education at SCAD and the future of design, visit scad.edu.

SCAD: The University for Creative Careers
SCAD is a private, nonprofit, accredited university, offering 100 graduate and undergraduate degree programs across locations in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia; Lacoste, France; and online via SCADnow. SCAD enrolls approximately 18,500 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 100 countries. The future-minded SCAD curriculum engages professional-level technology and myriad advanced learning resources, affording students opportunities for internships, professional certifications, and real-world assignments with corporate partners through SCADpro, the university’s renowned research lab and prototype generator. SCAD has earned top rankings for degree programs in interior design, architecture, film, fashion, digital media, and more. Career success is woven into every fiber of the university, resulting in a superior alumni employment rate. A 2025 study found that 99% of recent SCAD graduates were employed, pursuing further education, or both within 12 months of graduation. SCAD provides students and alumni with ongoing career support through personal coaching, alumni programs, a professional presentation studio, and more. Visit scad.edu.

SCADask
SCADask is an applied research studio that leverages the university’s collective expertise to facilitate and generate strategic insights for business and media partners. Our design-centered research identifies business opportunities that reveal the future of commerce, creativity, and culture. SCADask initiatives include the university’s annual Al Summit, an event that unites design and technology luminaries with SCAD leadership, faculty partners, and students to discuss Al’s impact on design, education, and creative careers. SCADask research and award-winning publications like The Future of the American Dream and the Al Insights 2024 and 2025 reports have been featured in USA Today, Fast Company, Paste Magazine, AP News, Yahoo! Finance, California Business Journal, and more. To partner with us on custom research, email research@scad.edu.

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SOURCE Savannah College of Art and Design

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DapuStor to Showcase AI Storage Innovations with Global Infrastructure Partners at Tech Week Singapore 2026

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SINGAPORE, Sept. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — DapuStor, an enterprise storage solutions provider, will showcase its latest enterprise SSD technologies alongside four global AI infrastructure partners at Tech Week Singapore 2026, taking place September 29–30 at Marina Bay Sands.

Under the theme “Powering AI Infrastructure Together,” DapuStor will demonstrate how enterprise storage works with data platforms, compute infrastructure, and AI applications to support increasingly data-intensive AI workloads.

The showcase will feature DapuStor’s latest enterprise SSD portfolio, including the 512TB R6060 E2 QLC SSD, J5060 SLC/QLC mixed-mode SSD, R6 liquid-cooled E1.S SSD, and J5 M.2 boot drive SSD. Designed for evolving AI training and inference requirements, the portfolio addresses growing dataset sizes, thermal constraints, storage density, and infrastructure efficiency.

DapuStor will also present a series of joint AI infrastructure showcases with its partners. Together with DDN (DataDirect Networks), DapuStor will demonstrate high-performance enterprise TLC SSDs supporting AI data platforms including DDN Infinia, EXAScaler, and X3M, with a focus on efficient data access and movement at scale.

With Ubitus, DapuStor will showcase an integrated AI infrastructure solution combining scalable GPU computing with enterprise storage for AI training and inference. Together with ExponTech, DapuStor will highlight AI-oriented storage for KV Cache, RAG, training, and inference workloads.

DapuStor will also showcase enterprise NVMe storage alongside platforms from a leading global server technology provider, highlighting scalable compute and storage infrastructure for AI and cloud deployments.

Beyond the exhibition, DapuStor will participate in two conference sessions. On September 29 at 3:35 p.m. SGT, John Li, VP of Marketing and Operations at DapuStor, will join the panel “AI Sovereignty in Asia Pacific – Navigating Strategy, Policy, and Control.”

On September 30 at 12:45 p.m. SGT, DapuStor and DDN will jointly present “Powering AI Infrastructure with High-Performance Storage” at the Cloud & AI Infrastructure Keynote Theatre, sharing perspectives on scalable, production-ready AI infrastructure.

Visitors can meet DapuStor and explore the joint showcases at Booth 5-I45, Level 5, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, September 29–30.

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SOURCE DapuStor

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Xinhua Finance: Robotics Contest Highlights Chongqing District’s Push Into Embodied AI

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National competition in Shapingba District draws more than 100 teams developing robotics technologies for real-world deployment

CHONGQING, China, Sept. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A national robotics competition held this month in Chongqing offered a look at China’s efforts to move embodied artificial intelligence out of research laboratories and into commercial use.

The finals of the 11th “Maker in China” SME Innovation and Entrepreneurship Contest for Intelligent Biomimetic Robots concluded Sept. 11 in Chongqing’s Shapingba District. The three-day national competition drew more than 100 teams from across China, with projects spanning biomimetic robotics, industrial automation and AI systems designed to perceive and interact with the physical world. 

Alongside the competition, organizers arranged meetings involving companies, universities and research institutions, as well as discussions aimed at technology transfer, financing and local deployment. The event formed part of a national program intended to support innovative SMEs with specialized technologies. Its theme was “Pushing Tech Frontiers, Unleashing Creativity.”

The competition comprised 13 tracks, covering work ranging from foundational research to systems approaching commercial deployment. Teams in the startup category competed in three broad areas: cutting-edge technologies, core enabling technologies and specialized applications. Their projects focused in part on the hardware, software and control systems underpinning the next generation of robots.

Teams in the enterprise category, by contrast, tested systems designed for real-world use in the electric power, healthcare and service sectors. The emphasis was on whether the technologies could perform reliably in operating environments and be scaled for broader deployment.

Many of the entries targeted technical bottlenecks that have limited the wider deployment of robotic systems. Projects included multi-robot coordination and task-scheduling systems for warehouses; assistive exoskeletons for older adults and rehabilitation patients; biomimetic robots for inspecting electric power infrastructure; miniature hummingbird-inspired flapping-wing drones; and robots capable of folding clothing autonomously. Together, the projects illustrated the range of engineering approaches Chinese developers are pursuing as they seek practical applications for embodied AI.

The competition also served as a venue for financing and business-development discussions, and several participating projects announced plans to establish operations in Shapingba. At the closing ceremony, the Shapingba District government signed letters of intent with SIASUN Robot & Automation Co., Ltd. and Chentu Technology, among other companies. ZTE also signed letters of intent with teams from Zhejiang University and Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Shapingba is seeking to establish itself as a center for embodied AI within Chongqing’s broader robotics supply chain. The value of the district’s robotics output rose 233% from a year earlier during the first seven months of 2026, according to local government data.

 

 

 

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SOURCE Xinhua Finance

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Peoplevine Secures Multi-Million-Dollar Growth Investment to Accelerate AI-Powered Hospitality

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Investment from Recurring Capital Partners will accelerate Peoplevine’s AI roadmap, payments infrastructure and global expansion across private clubs and luxury hospitality.

CHICAGO, Sept. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Peoplevine, the Guest & Member Experience CRM for hospitality, today announced a multi-million-dollar growth capital investment from Recurring Capital Partners (RCP). The investment will accelerate Peoplevine’s AI-driven product roadmap, payments infrastructure and continued global expansion across private clubs and luxury hospitality.

“Hospitality has always been about remembering people, who they are, what they value and what makes them feel known. AI gives us an entirely new way to unlock it.” Boren Novakovic, CEO, Peoplevine

For hospitality operators in more than 20 countries, Peoplevine helps deepen guest and member relationships through a living profile, connecting identity, membership, preferences, payments, reservations, visits and experiences to make hospitality more personal.

Peoplevine is investing in AI capabilities designed to make the depth of guest and member context within its platform dramatically easier for operators to surface, understand and act on, turning the living profile into intelligence, personalization and action.

“Hospitality has always been about remembering people, who they are, what they value and what makes them feel known,” said Boren Novakovic, CEO of Peoplevine. “For more than 12 years, our technology has helped clients build those relationships, and the living profile gives operators that memory at scale. AI gives us an entirely new way to unlock it. This investment allows us to accelerate that vision and help our customers create more personal, more intelligent hospitality around the world.”

Peoplevine’s Guest & Member Experience CRM helps private clubs, hotels, resorts, stadiums, restaurants and other membership-driven hospitality operators manage the guest and member relationship across its lifecycle.

“The opportunity isn’t simply to add AI features to the interface,” said Jordan Gilman, CTO and Co-Founder of Peoplevine. “It’s to make the depth already inside Peoplevine more accessible and actionable. When intelligence can securely reason across the living profile, operators can move from searching for information to understanding what matters, identifying opportunities and taking action. We’re building toward a system of identity and intelligence that puts the full context of the guest and member relationship to work.”

The investment will also support Peoplevine’s continued international expansion, extending the company’s platform and support capabilities to private clubs and luxury hospitality operators in new global markets.

“Peoplevine has a proven track record of driving growth through innovation in the private club and hospitality market,” said Brian Henley, Managing Partner at Recurring Capital Partners. “Peoplevine is exactly the kind of high-growth, capital-efficient company we’re excited to support, led by a proven management team. We look forward to fueling their continued success and innovation.”

About Peoplevine

Peoplevine is the Guest & Member Experience CRM for hospitality, purpose-built for private clubs, hotels, resorts, stadiums, restaurants and other membership-driven hospitality businesses.

Peoplevine helps operators acquire, check in, engage, retain and grow guest and member relationships through a connected living profile that brings together identity, membership, engagement, transactions and experiences.

For more than 12 years, Peoplevine has helped hospitality businesses create more connected and personalized experiences and today serves customers across 20 countries.

Peoplevine integrates with leading hospitality platforms across property management, point of sale, reservations, payments and other critical systems.

For more information, visit Peoplevine.com.

About Recurring Capital Partners

Recurring Capital Partners provides growth capital to SaaS technology companies. Combining deep operating experience with startup finance expertise, the firm partners with founders and management teams to accelerate growth, manage business and personal risk, and help capital-efficient software businesses scale.

Media Contact

Chris Lindsey, Peoplevine, 1 7734160841, chris@peoplevine.com, www.peoplevine.com

View original content:https://www.prweb.com/releases/peoplevine-secures-multi-million-dollar-growth-investment-to-accelerate-ai-powered-hospitality-302883594.html

SOURCE Peoplevine

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