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Pooky Lighting Joins Visual Comfort & Co.

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HOUSTON, June 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Visual Comfort & Co., the global resource for design-led, whole-home lighting, today announced that UK-based lighting brand Pooky is joining the company’s family of brands. Recognized for its colorful decorative lighting and distinctive lampshades, Pooky brings a playful and expressive perspective to the Visual Comfort offering while further expanding the company’s assortment across style and price point. Pooky will continue to operate independently, maintaining its existing brand identity and business model.

“We’re excited to confirm that Pooky Lighting is joining Visual Comfort & Co. We have long admired and respected one another’s brands, creative perspectives, and contributions to the world of lighting. This partnership brings together two complementary points of view, while allowing Pooky to continue operating independently with the same creative spirit, character, and distinctive approach that have made the brand so special. Together, we look forward to introducing Pooky to a broader audience through the reach of the Visual Comfort platform.”

— Andy Singer, Founder & CEO of Visual Comfort & Co. and Rohan Blacker, Founder of Pooky Lighting

The partnership expands access to Pooky lighting through Visual Comfort & Co.’s U.S. trade and showroom network. Beginning this summer, a selection of Pooky products will be showcased in Visual Comfort’s direct showrooms.

At this time, no operational changes are planned for customers, partners, or business operations. Both companies will continue operating business as usual. Visual Comfort remains committed to product innovation, customer service, and support across all customer channels and partners.

About Visual Comfort & Co.:

Visual Comfort & Co. is the world’s premier resource for whole-home lighting solutions, spanning decorative, architectural, ceiling fans, landscape, integrated controls, and shading. Collaborating with the most talented designers and brands in the industry, Visual Comfort offers an unparalleled assortment of products for every category, style, and price point. With over 65 showrooms and growing across the US, UK, and Asia, Visual Comfort continues to advance its vision of enhancing people’s lives through the power and beauty of light.

About Pooky Lighting:

Pooky is a British lighting brand founded in 2014 by Rohan Blacker, a serial entrepreneur who named it after his grandmother and wanted to bring fun, colorful lighting and lampshades to people at an accessible price point. The brand launched in the US in February 2024 and is most beloved for its rechargeable products and pattern-forward lampshades. Pooky’s unique approach combines traditional craftsmanship with contemporary design sensibilities, creating lighting solutions that add character to any space. Their collections range from table and floor lamps to pendants and wall lights, all designed to offer distinctive style without the designer price tag. Pooky Lighting is committed to quality craftsmanship and innovative design that makes beautiful lighting accessible to all. To learn more, visit www.pooky.com.

Press Contact:
Sabrina Hames, sabrina@blitzerandcompany.com 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pooky-lighting-joins-visual-comfort–co-302798524.html

SOURCE Visual Comfort & Co.

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SmartOrg releases Version 10.x of its Decision Intelligence platform

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New release expands SmartOrg’s Decision Intelligence platform with a cleaner, more configurable experience and new product capabilities.

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 11, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — SmartOrg, Inc., a Palo Alto-based provider of Decision Intelligence solutions, today announced the release of version 10.x of its software platform, with its standard products Innovation Navigator® and Portfolio Navigator® now deployed by configuring modules on a newly integrated platform.

“This release is really about giving customers a better experience and more flexibility in how they apply the platform to their specific decision challenges.”

Combined in other ways, these modules support deployments optimized for other contexts.

“This release is really about giving customers a better experience and more flexibility in how they apply the platform to their specific decision challenges,” said David Matheson, President and CEO of SmartOrg. “We’re delighted to see customers using SmartOrg’s Decision Intelligence Platform in more targeted ways, for example in Technology Assessment, Energy Exploration and Drug Discovery. Version 10.x gives them a cleaner, more configurable foundation for doing that work.”

The release includes major updates to Innovation Navigator®, including flexible brainstorming canvases, enhanced Learning Plan modules, and upgraded Discovery Grid visualizations. These enhancements help innovation teams capture ideas, organize learning activities, and focus attention on the uncertainties that matter most.

Portfolio Navigator® also receives significant new capabilities, including a Maturity Matrix, Probability of Success calculator, and portfolio goal analysis. These features help leaders better assess projects, compare them, and support portfolio decisions.

“Version 10.x is part of our ongoing commitment to keeping SmartOrg’s software current, useful, and easier for customers to apply,” said Dave Wachenschwanz, Director of Development at SmartOrg. “The platform has significant upgrades in its user interface, improving consistency and usability.”

To see highlights of the new release, SmartOrg has published a short video overview from its development team that you can watch here: https://bit.ly/4xdA7QY

About SmartOrg

SmartOrg helps innovation, R&D, and strategy teams convert uncertainty to opportunity. Its software products—Innovation Navigator® and Portfolio Navigator®—apply quantitative methods to prioritize learning, build confidence in the business case, and guide investment decisions at both the project and portfolio levels to help organizations meet their growth objectives.

Media Contact

Doug Williams, SmartOrg, Inc., 1 3399270834, dwilliams@smartorg.com, https://smartorg.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prweb.com/releases/smartorg-releases-version-10x-of-its-decision-intelligence-platform-302796404.html

SOURCE SmartOrg, Inc.

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Cathay Financial Holdings Leverages Open-Source Small Language Models to Identify Customer Intent

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Fine-tuning Small Language Models to Better Understand Local Financial Service Contexts, Domain Terminology, and Ambiguous Customer Queries

TAIPEI, June 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — To enhance operational efficiency and customer experience, Cathay Financial Holdings (Cathay FHC) continues to advance the application of generative AI in financial services through its generative AI technical framework, GAIA, and AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) strategy. Building on last year’s validation of large language models (LLMs) for financial applications, Cathay FHC recently unveiled its latest AI research findings at NVIDIA GTC Taipei 2026, demonstrating how open-source small language models (SLMs) can be fine-tuned for customer intent classification and applied to future financial service scenarios.

The study evaluated several leading open-source models from Meta, TAIDE, TAME, NVIDIA and OpenAI. Preliminary results showed that, under the testing framework, fine-tuned SLMs may reduce dependence on complex prompt engineering and vector retrieval modules, potentially simplifying system architecture while lowering future operational and maintenance complexity.

The findings indicated that, when combined with carefully designed financial-domain datasets and targeted model fine-tuning, SLMs can further improve model stability, inference efficiency, and deployment controllability. In customer intent classification, the fine-tuned SLM achieved performance close to mainstream closed-source LLMs, approaching that of leading proprietary LLMs, providing enterprises with a practical reference for evaluating AI model training and deployment strategies.

From a data governance and privacy perspective, the study adopted a fully synthetic data approach, ensuring that no real customer information was used during model training. Through techniques including service-function clustering, single-intent and multi-intent dataset design, Taiwan-context localization, and keyword expansion, Cathay FHC strengthened the model’s ability to understand local financial service contexts, industry-specific terminology, and ambiguous customer queries.

Potential future applications include mortgage balance inquiries, credit card payment assistance, and branch service navigation, laying the groundwork for intelligent search, service routing, and next-generation customer engagement experiences.

From a technical architecture standpoint, Cathay FHC integrated NVIDIA AI tools—including NVIDIA NeMo Customizer, NVIDIA NeMo Curator, and NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM—together with NVIDIA Hopper architecture computing resources to support data generation, model fine-tuning, inference optimization, and experimental evaluation. Leveraging NVIDIA AI ecosystem, Cathay FHC continues to strengthen its capabilities in financial-domain model development, data governance, and application validation.

In recent years, Cathay FHC has steadily expanded AI innovation across a wide range of financial scenarios, building scalable technological foundations spanning internal process optimization, customer service enhancement, financial knowledge understanding, and model governance. As financial institutions navigate an increasingly regulated environment, stringent data governance requirements, and rapidly evolving customer expectations, Cathay FHC remains committed to advancing AI research in a compliant, secure, and resilient manner.

Looking ahead, Cathay FHC will continue exploring long-context classification, advanced financial document understanding, and cross-scenario AI applications. By developing model training and deployment approaches tailored to the financial sector, the company aims to accelerate innovation and create more intelligent, efficient, and customer-centric financial services.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/cathay-financial-holdings-leverages-open-source-small-language-models-to-identify-customer-intent-302798631.html

SOURCE Cathay Financial Holdings

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First Advantage Set to Join S&P SmallCap 600

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NEW YORK, June 11, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — First Advantage Corporation (NASD: FA) will replace Kennedy-Wilson Holdings Inc. (NYSE: KW) in the S&P SmallCap 600 effective prior to the opening of trading on Tuesday, June 16. A consortium led by KW’s CEO with Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (TSE: FFH) is acquiring Kennedy-Wilson Holdings 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:

Effective Date     

Index Name      

Action

Company Name

Ticker     

GICS Sector     

June 16, 2026

S&P SmallCap 600     

Addition     

First Advantage

FA

Industrials

June 16, 2026

S&P SmallCap 600

Deletion

Kennedy-Wilson Holdings     

KW

Real Estate

ABOUT S&P DOW JONES INDICES

S&P Dow Jones Indices is the largest global resource for essential index-based concepts, data and research, and home to iconic financial market indicators, such as the S&P 500® and the Dow Jones Industrial Average®. More assets are invested in products based on our indices than products based on indices from any other provider in the world. Since Charles Dow invented the first index in 1884, S&P DJI has been innovating and developing indices across the spectrum of asset classes helping to define the way investors measure and trade the markets.

S&P Dow Jones Indices is a division of S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI), which provides essential intelligence for individuals, companies, and governments to make decisions with confidence. For more information, visit www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

S&P Dow Jones Indices
index_services@spglobal.com 

Media Inquiries
spdji.comms@spglobal.com 

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/first-advantage-set-to-join-sp-smallcap-600-302798639.html

SOURCE S&P Dow Jones Indices

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