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Waterloo Capital Announces Investment in and Partnership with Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners

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The Williamsburg, Virginia–based advisory firm will operate as Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners, Powered by Waterloo, and its advisors will become investment adviser representatives of Waterloo Capital — bringing institutional asset management, private markets access, advanced planning and integrated tax services to Bay Rivers Group clients while the same team continues to serve them from the same location

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Waterloo Capital, L.P., an Austin-based registered investment adviser, today announced that it has made an investment in Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners, a wealth management firm headquartered in Williamsburg, Virginia, and that the two firms have decided to partner moving forward. Effective September 15, 2026, the Bay Rivers Group team will operate as Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners, Powered by Waterloo, and its advisors will become investment adviser representatives of Waterloo Capital. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.

The partnership pairs one of the Southeast’s longest-tenured advisory practices with a national RIA platform built to give advisors institutional-grade investment management, tax integration, private markets access and family office infrastructure. The Bay Rivers Group team will continue to serve clients from its Williamsburg office under the Bay Rivers Group name, with advisory services offered through Waterloo Capital, L.P. Charles P. Lucy, CFP®, Bruce A. Lemley, CFP®, and Alan L. Broderick, CFP®, will continue to lead the practice, joined by Will P. Gibson, CFA, CFP®.

Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners was built around a simple premise: that competent, objective advice is the most durable thing an advisor can offer a family. For nearly three decades, the firm’s advisors have served individuals, business owners, families and successive generations across the Historic Triangle and the greater Hampton Roads region, guiding clients through the accumulation, preservation and transfer of wealth. That local orientation is unchanged — clients will continue to work with the same advisors, in the same office, under a name they recognize.

What changes is the depth of resources behind those relationships. As investment adviser representatives of Waterloo Capital, the Bay Rivers Group advisors gain access to Waterloo Capital’s investment platform, including institutional asset management, alternative and private markets strategies, advanced financial planning resources, integrated tax services through Waterloo Capital Tax Partners, and the operations, compliance, technology and marketing infrastructure that support the firm’s advisors nationally. Waterloo Capital, in turn, establishes a Mid-Atlantic presence anchored by a practice with deep community roots and a client-first culture the firm says mirrors its own.

“We spent a long time being deliberate about this decision, because our clients have trusted us with decisions that will outlast all of us. We came in looking at infrastructure, and we came away just as impressed by the culture. The platform is excellent — but it was the people, and the way they think about serving families, that made the decision for us. What we found in Waterloo Capital was a partner that wanted to strengthen what we have built rather than replace it. Our clients will work with the same advisors, in the same office, under the Bay Rivers Group name — now with materially deeper resources behind those relationships.”

— Charles P. Lucy, CFP®, Senior Partner, Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners

For Waterloo Capital, the investment continues a growth strategy that has combined advisor recruitment, strategic partnerships and the development of specialized brands and service lines. The firm has expanded from its Austin headquarters into a multi-affiliate platform that today includes Intelligent Wealth Solutions, Waterloo Capital Tax Partners, Waterloo Capital Family Office Services, serving high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients across the country.

“Bay Rivers Group is exactly the kind of firm we want to be in business with. Charles, Bruce and Alan have spent their careers earning the trust of families in their community, and Will represents the next generation of that work. By combining their track record and their local knowledge with our infrastructure, we can help more families plan thoughtfully for retirement and bring institutional asset management to individual investors — which has been the objective from the day we started building this platform.”

— John Chatmas, Chief Executive Officer, Waterloo Capital

Both firms said cultural alignment, not economics, was the deciding factor. The Bay Rivers Group partners conducted extended diligence on Waterloo Capital’s advisor experience — meeting with affiliate leadership, investment and tax personnel, and advisors already on the platform — before reaching agreement, and have said publicly that the firm’s culture weighed as heavily in their decision as the capabilities it brought to the table.

The firms describe the arrangement as a partnership rather than an acquisition of the practice. Waterloo Capital’s investment is designed to align interests over the long term, and the Bay Rivers Group leadership team will continue to direct the practice, its staffing and its client relationships within the Waterloo Capital platform. Both firms expect the arrangement to support continuity planning for Bay Rivers Group clients — an increasingly common concern across an advisory industry in which a significant share of practitioners are approaching retirement without a defined succession path.

“I came into this profession from an operating background, and I have always evaluated opportunities by asking what actually changes for the client. Here, the answer is that they get more — more investment capability, more planning depth, more certainty that this practice will be here for their children. Nothing they value about working with us goes away. I will say this plainly: we loved the culture at Waterloo Capital as much as we loved the infrastructure. Capabilities can be bought, but the way a firm treats its advisors and its clients cannot, and that is what we were really underwriting.”

— Bruce A. Lemley, CFP®, Senior Partner, Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners

Bay Rivers Group clients will continue to work with the same advisors and the same local team. In connection with the transition, clients will receive documentation reflecting that advisory services are provided through Waterloo Capital, L.P., including Waterloo Capital’s Form ADV disclosure brochure and Form CRS, and will be asked to complete new advisory agreements and any account paperwork required by their custodian. Over time, clients will have access to an expanded set of capabilities — among them alternative investment strategies, concentrated stock and capital gains planning, estate and charitable structuring, and coordinated tax preparation and planning — delivered through the Waterloo Capital platform and introduced by their existing Bay Rivers Group advisors.

“Our clients hired us for our judgment and our availability, and neither of those changes. What this partnership gives us is scale: the ability to sit across from a family and bring solutions that, frankly, a practice our size could not have delivered on its own. We evaluated several paths, and this was the only one where the culture fit as well as the capabilities did. That mattered to us every bit as much as the platform — it was the only one that did not ask us to give up who we are.”

— Alan L. Broderick, CFP®, Senior Partner, Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners

Waterloo Capital said it intends to support Bay Rivers Group’s organic growth in the Williamsburg, Newport News, Richmond and greater Hampton Roads markets, including the addition of advisors and support staff.

The announcement is the latest in a series of partnerships completed by Waterloo Capital, which has been recognized as one of the nation’s fastest-growing registered investment advisers, named to USA TODAY’s Top 100 Financial Advisory Firms for 2026, and has earned recurring placement on Citywire RIA’s “50 Growers Across America” list.

No changes to the Bay Rivers Group team or its Williamsburg office location are contemplated in connection with the investment or the partnership. Clients with questions about the transition are encouraged to contact their Bay Rivers Group advisor directly.

ABOUT WATERLOO CAPITAL

Waterloo Capital, L.P. is a registered investment adviser headquartered in Austin, Texas, offering institutional asset management, advanced financial planning, private markets access, integrated tax services and family office services to high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, families and institutions. The firm operates a multi-brand platform that includes Intelligent Wealth Solutions, Waterloo Capital Tax Partners, Waterloo Capital family Office Services, and supports independent advisors nationally through its turnkey asset management and IAR platform. . The firm’s mission is to bring the highest standards of investment management and financial planning to the individual investor, helping clients plan for and achieve their retirement and legacy goals.

ABOUT BAY RIVERS GROUP WEALTH PARTNERS

Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners, Powered by Waterloo, is a financial advisory and wealth management practice based in Williamsburg, Virginia, serving individuals, business owners, families and multiple generations throughout the Historic Triangle, greater Hampton Roads and beyond. The practice’s mission is to deliver value to clients through competent, objective advice across the creation, growth and transfer of wealth. It is led by Charles P. Lucy, CFP®, Bruce A. Lemley, CFP®, and Alan L. Broderick, CFP®, together with Will P. Gibson, CFA, CFP®. Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners is a trade name used by investment adviser representatives of Waterloo Capital, L.P.; advisory services are offered through Waterloo Capital, L.P. Learn more at bayriversgroup.com.

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES

Waterloo Capital, L.P. is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply any level of skill or training. Effective September 15, 2026, Bay Rivers Group Wealth Partners is a trade name (“doing business as” name) used by investment adviser representatives of Waterloo Capital, L.P.; advisory services are offered through Waterloo Capital, L.P. and not through a separate registered entity. Information about Waterloo Capital, L.P. and its investment adviser representatives is available at adviserinfo.sec.gov and through FINRA BrokerCheck. [CONFIRM — conform to the final structure and to the timing of any Form ADV-W filing by the predecessor entity.]

Transition of client relationships: the arrangement described in this release involves the transition of advisory relationships to Waterloo Capital, L.P. Affected clients will receive advance notice, Waterloo Capital’s Form ADV Part 2A brochure, Part 2B brochure supplements and Form CRS, and will be asked to enter into new advisory agreements. No client’s advisory contract is assigned without that client’s consent as required under Section 205(a)(2) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. Clients should review the fee schedule, services and conflicts of interest described in those documents, which may differ from their prior arrangement. [CONFIRM — counsel to approve consent mechanics and notice period.]

This release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, nor a recommendation of any investment strategy, product or service. Nothing herein should be construed as investment, legal, accounting or tax advice. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Alternative and private markets investments involve additional risks, including illiquidity and limited transparency, and are available only to qualified investors.

Third-party recognitions: Rankings and recognitions, including USA TODAY’s Top 100 Financial Advisory Firms and Citywire RIA’s “50 Growers Across America,” are not indicative of any adviser’s future performance and should not be construed as a guarantee that a client will experience a certain level of results. Recognitions are based on criteria established by the issuing publication and may involve data provided by the adviser. Neither Waterloo Capital nor Bay Rivers Group paid a fee to participate in or be considered for these recognitions, except where separately disclosed. A full description of the rating criteria, the number of firms considered and any compensation paid in connection with the rating is available upon request. [CONFIRM — compliance to verify participation/compensation facts for each listing before distribution.]

Statements attributed to Charles P. Lucy, Bruce A. Lemley and Alan L. Broderick are the views of those individuals as of the date of this release and are not statements of any current or prospective client of Waterloo Capital. Effective September 15, 2026, each is an investment adviser representative and supervised person of Waterloo Capital, L.P., and each is compensated by Waterloo Capital in that capacity and has a financial interest in the arrangement described in this release. Their affiliation with Waterloo Capital is disclosed here and is readily apparent from the context of this release. Statements attributed to John Chatmas and Josh Teeters are the views of Waterloo Capital personnel. Individuals’ views may not be representative of the experience of any client and are no guarantee of future results.

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking and reflect current expectations regarding the partnership, anticipated capabilities and future growth. Actual results may differ materially. Neither firm undertakes any obligation to update forward-looking statements. Clients will receive notice of any material change to their advisory relationship as required.

MEDIA CONTACT

Taylor Chatmas | Marketing Manager, Waterloo Capital
(512) 717-4495 | marketing@waterloocap.com
Waterloo Capital, L.P. | 2801 Via Fortuna, Suite 250, Austin, TX 78746

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SOURCE Waterloo Capital

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Realset AI and Flatkey Raise $10M Series A to Build Real-World Training Data for Frontier Models and Embodied Agents

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September 23, 2026

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Real-world data lab captures expert human demonstrations, builds RL environments from real workflows and evaluates agents with domain experts; first open benchmark on household manipulation due Q4 2026

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Realset AI (https://realset.ai), a real-world data lab that produces training data for LLMs, frontier models and embodied agents, today announced that Realset AI and Flatkey have raised $10 million in Series A funding. The funding will expand Realset’s capture network of real workplaces and studio environments, grow its pool of expert demonstrators and domain experts, and support open benchmarks that measure whether AI policies work outside the lab.

Why It Matters: The Internet Is Exhausted, the Physical World Is Not

Frontier labs and robotics companies have largely consumed the text available on the internet. The next gains come from data about people doing real tasks in real places: how a worker folds laundry, loads a dishwasher, packs an order or handles a customer return. That data does not exist on the web, and simulation does not reproduce it.

Realset’s answer is that every dataset starts with a real person doing a real task in a real place. The company uses expert demonstrators rather than crowd annotators, real environments rather than simulation, and delivers de-identified data to US-hosted cloud buckets, with quality measured at every step of a single pipeline.

Three Ways to Produce Ground Truth

Realset Body: embodied data for physical policy models. Egocentric and third-person capture of skilled workers performing manipulation tasks in homes, kitchens, warehouses and light assembly lines, plus bimanual teleoperation episodes with synchronized stereo video, IMU and action logs. Delivered with dense action-level annotation optimized for vision-language-action (VLA) training.Realset Field: LLM and agent training data from RL environments built on real workflows. Environments that mirror e-commerce operations, customer support, logistics dispatch and manufacturing SOPs. Domain experts generate trajectories, preference pairs and rubrics inside the environment, with verifiable rewards from real business outcomes and bilingual English/Chinese expert pools.Realset Judge: expert evaluation for agents in production. Evaluation design, failure diagnosis and continuous monitoring by people who do the job the agent is replacing, with targeted fix-data for the top failure modes and re-scoring as models and prompts change. The same services are offered to data integration and AI solution companies that deploy agents for their own clients.

The Realset Workspace

All three run on the Realset Workspace, where domain experts in six languages (English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Arabic) answer real tasks, attach evidence and screen recordings, and pass an independent quality review before a record is approved. Every approved record exports as JSONL with provenance that customers can verify.

Open Benchmarks on Real Tasks

Realset publishes open benchmarks so the field can measure what matters: whether a policy works outside the lab. The Realset Household Manipulation Bench evaluates open-source VLA policies including π0, OpenVLA, GR00T and Octo on folding, loading, sorting and wiping tasks captured in real kitchens and laundry rooms, scored by success rate over three trials per task, with results expected in Q4 2026. A Light Assembly Bench, scored by the line workers who trained on the tasks, and a Commerce Ops Agent Bench for computer-use agents on real e-commerce seller operations are planned.

“The easy data is gone. What is left is the physical world, and you cannot scrape it,” said Hunter Guo, founder of Realset AI. “You have to put a camera on a skilled person doing real work, structure what they did, and check it with people who know the job. That is a capture and quality problem, not a labeling problem, and it is the problem we are building a company around.”

About Realset AI

Realset AI is a real-world data lab and training data provider for LLMs and embodied AI. It captures expert human demonstrations, builds RL environments from real workflows and evaluates AI agents with domain experts, for frontier labs, robotics companies, and data integration and AI solution providers. Realset is headquartered in San Jose, California. Learn more at https://realset.ai 

About Flatkey

Flatkey is an AI infrastructure platform that gives developers access to more than 100 official AI models and more than 1,000 AI tools through one key and one balance. Learn more at https://flatkey.ai 

Media Contact

Xingru Ren
Head of Marketing
+1 424 356 6176
xingru@flatkey.ai
https://realset.ai 

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SOURCE Realset AI

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From Product Photos to Campaign Content: MakeShot on AI Video Efficiency for Small Teams

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September 23, 2026

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Longer video generation and richer reference inputs give small businesses new ways to develop marketing content, with savings determined by the work required to reach a usable result.

SINGAPORE, Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — MakeShot sees the strongest opportunity for small-team video marketing in reducing the work between a creative brief and usable footage. Capabilities such as longer video generation and richer reference inputs can help teams spend less effort assembling clips and correcting mismatched results, giving limited production budgets more room for creative testing.

For small marketing teams, production costs extend beyond filming or generating a clip. Preparing assets, matching shots, reviewing outputs, and revising details all consume resources. As AI video capabilities develop, the opportunity is to reduce these demands while giving teams more room to explore creative ideas.

Industry research illustrates the distinction between production gains and marketing outcomes. In Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs’ 2026 B2B research, 87% of marketers using AI for content creation reported improved productivity, while 39% reported improved content performance. These findings cover broader content creation, suggesting that faster production still needs to be paired with clear creative objectives and audience testing.

Longer Sequences, Fewer Assembly Tasks

Seedance 2.5, available through MakeShot’s AI Video Generator, supports videos of up to 30 seconds in a single generation. For a small team, that creates room to develop a connected sequence encompassing a product introduction, a setting, and a closing composition.

A skincare brand, for example, could explore a sequence moving from a moisturizer close-up into a morning bathroom scene before returning to the product. Generating that sequence together may reduce the work involved in assembling separate clips and reconciling differences in lighting, motion, or visual style.

The benefit depends on the result. A longer sequence that requires repeated regeneration can consume additional time and credits. Teams therefore need to consider how much of the output is usable and how easily it can be refined.

Clearer References, More Focused Creative Direction

On MakeShot, Seedance 2.5 supports up to 30 reference images, 10 video clips, and 10 audio clips, allowing teams to combine product, scene, motion, and sound references in one generation request.

For businesses with established product photography and brand assets, these inputs can communicate details that are difficult to express through text alone. Product images can guide appearance, scene references can establish atmosphere, and video or audio references can convey movement and sound.

MakeShot’s view is that the value lies in selecting relevant materials and assigning them clear roles. A focused set of references can provide a stronger creative brief than a larger collection containing conflicting directions. This gives small teams a practical way to apply their existing assets while retaining responsibility for product accuracy and final presentation.

Total Production Effort as the Measure of Efficiency

“For a small team, the most useful advance is one that removes work between the creative brief and the finished video,” said Wynn, Marketing Manager at MakeShot. “Longer generation and clearer references matter when they help teams reach an approved result with fewer revisions.”

MakeShot recommends evaluating total production effort, including unsuccessful generations, selection time, and final editing. Cost per usable video and time to an approved version provide more meaningful measures than the price or speed of a single generation.

This approach also helps teams decide where AI fits best. Concept exploration, atmospheric product footage, and creative variations may benefit from generation, while demonstrations requiring precise evidence of product performance may still call for filmed material. Allocating resources according to the task gives small businesses a clearer basis for managing production budgets.

About MakeShot

MakeShot is an AI video and image generation platform that gives creators and businesses access to multiple generative models through a browser-based interface. Its AI video generator supports text- and reference-driven creation for social media content, marketing projects, and visual storytelling.

Media Contact:
Wynn
Marketing Manager
Email: support@makeshot.ai
Website: https://makeshot.ai/

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Flatkey Raises $10M Series A After Surpassing 10,000 Developers in Two Months

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September 23, 2026

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The platform replaces a growing stack of provider accounts, credits and keys with one key, one balance and one invoice, at 60–90% of official list prices

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Flatkey (https://flatkey.ai), the AI infrastructure platform that brings models, tools and data together behind one API key, today announced that Flatkey and Realset AI have raised $10 million in Series A funding. The company also said that more than 10,000 developers have adopted the platform in the two months since its July 2026 launch, using a single API key and a single balance to access more than 100 official AI models and more than 1,000 AI tools. The Series A funding will go toward adding more official models and tools to the platform and scaling the infrastructure that routes developer traffic to them.

Flatkey is built as production infrastructure for AI developers, not a convenience layer. Every call is routed to the provider’s official endpoint, and because Flatkey buys upstream capacity in volume, most models are priced at around 80% of the providers’ official list prices, with some at 60% or lower as part of ongoing promotions. Developers pay less than they would going direct, and they do it through one key and one balance across models and tools.

Why It Matters: Models, Tools and Data Are Becoming One Layer

AI is shifting from answering questions to completing work. The agents doing that work depend on three things: the models that reason, the tools that act, and the data they act on. Each of those is fragmenting into more providers every quarter, and every provider adds an account, a top-up, an API key, a rate limit and an invoice.

Flatkey’s bet is that these three converge into a single layer developers reach through one key. A production application today rarely depends on one model: it combines several models across text, image, audio and video and pairs them with tools such as search, browsing and data enrichment. A team using models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and DeepSeek, a video model such as Seedance, and a search and a browser tool would ordinarily manage seven or more provider relationships. With Flatkey that becomes one key, one balance and one invoice, and a new model or tool is a parameter change rather than a new vendor.

What Developers Get

More than 100 official models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM and others, plus image and video models such as Seedance. Every call is routed to the provider’s official endpoint. Flatkey does not self-host modified or quantized versions and label them as the original model.More than 1,000 tools on the same balance: search, browsers, data enrichment, media generation and actions, with no separate billing setup per vendor.Simple pricing. Subscription plans start at $10 per month, and pay-as-you-go credits cover both models and tools on one balance.A one-line migration. Flatkey is a drop-in replacement for any OpenAI-compatible client: developers change the base URL and their existing code works.New models on release day. Flatkey adds new models through official channels as soon as they are released, so teams do not open a new provider account every time something new ships.

“AI development is becoming less about choosing one model and more about combining models, data and tools across text, image, audio and video,” said Hunter Guo, founder of Flatkey. “If developers can reach all of that through one key, the platform stops being a convenience layer and starts to look like infrastructure. That is the company we are building.”

Availability

Flatkey is available today at https://flatkey.ai. New users start with $1 in free credit and can continue with pay-as-you-go credits or a monthly plan.

About Flatkey

Flatkey is an AI infrastructure platform that gives developers access to more than 100 official AI models and more than 1,000 AI tools through one key and one balance. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Flatkey launched in July 2026. Learn more at https://flatkey.ai 

Media Contact

Xingru Ren
Head of Marketing, Flatkey
+1 424 356 6176
xingru@flatkey.ai
https://flatkey.ai 

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