Events

Trenton – September 22, 2026 -- New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill has signed bipartisan legislation (A5016/S4218) creating an Employee Ownership Transition Program and a revolving loan fund at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) to finance conversions of businesses into employee-owned firms.

NJEDA revives a financing model that returned ninefold on its original loan

The new Employee Ownership Revolving Loan Fund reactivates a mechanism NJEDA first used 50 years ago to finance the employee buyout of the Okonite Company in Passaic County. That original loan was fully repaid and revolved nine times over; Okonite remains 100% employee-owned today and has distributed more than $300 million in ESOP payouts to workers. The fund can draw capital from state appropriations, federal sources including U.S. Economic Development Administration grants, and philanthropic capital.

Columbus, Ohio – September 22, 2026 -- Industrial robot installations have topped 500,000 units for four consecutive years, and MES Inc., a global manufacturing sourcing and supply chain partner to Fortune 500 OEMs, says structural aluminum components will now determine how fast robotics makers can move from prototypes to volume production.

Global robot installations hit 542,000 units in 2024, doubling the 2014 total

According to the International Federation of Robotics' World Robotics 2025 report, roughly 542,000 industrial robots were installed worldwide in 2024, more than twice the figure from a decade earlier. The global operating fleet reached about 4.66 million units in 2024, up 9% year-over-year, with annual installations holding above 500,000 units for four straight years.

Carrollton, Ga. – September 22, 2026 -- 121G has added AI Process Anomaly Monitoring to its 10Bridge data acquisition and interoperability platform, giving healthcare organizations automated detection of irregular file and data processing behavior before it disrupts operations.

New tool flags data deviations before they cause integration failures

The capability continuously monitors jobs processed through 10Bridge, automatically identifying transactions, files, or data that fall outside typical processing patterns. When an anomaly surfaces, the system alerts designated users so they can investigate and resolve issues preemptively, rather than after a failure disrupts downstream systems.

Bozeman – – September 22, 2026 -- REAL Shows Network (RSN) has added Life Montana Style, a locally hosted 30-minute real estate and lifestyle series covering Bozeman, Montana, and the surrounding region, to its national television lineup.

Local real estate leader Laura Sacchi hosts new 30-minute series

The series is produced by RSN's Emmy-nominated, Telly Award-winning production team and hosted by local real estate leader Laura Sacchi. Each episode highlights notable neighborhoods and distinctive properties throughout the Bozeman area, celebrates local businesses, nonprofits and community organizations, and spotlights people and stories shaping everyday life in the region.

New York – September 22, 2026 -- Métaphores, the French textile Maison within Hermès' textile division, will launch its first U.S. designer-led showroom partnership on October 7, 2026, debuting a furniture textile capsule called Fragments at Lemieux et Cie in SoHo.

Métaphores enters U.S. furniture market through New York showroom deal

The collaboration marks Métaphores' first partnership with a U.S. designer-led showroom and the American debut of Fragments applied to furniture. The Maison, which draws on the century-old expertise of Verel de Belval in furnishing silks and Le Crin in handwoven horsehair, will place fabrics on sofas, accent chairs, benches, Pierre Jeanneret dining chairs, pillows and full-height drapery throughout the SoHo space.

Boston – September 22, 2026 -- Viva-Thera has nominated a preclinical candidate targeting the membrane-proximal external region (MPER) of HIV-1 gp41, completing discovery and optimization in seven months through a partnership with AI drug-design firm XtalPi (HKEX: 2228). The biotech, incubated and backed by XtalPi as a strategic shareholder, made its public debut disclosing progress across four HIV modalities: vaccines, long-acting small molecules, gene therapy and cell therapy.

XtalPi's AI screened 10 million compounds to isolate five validated hits

Using generative AI, XtalPi navigated a chemical space of approximately 10 million compounds to identify five hits with strong antiviral activity and favorable drug properties. Continuous optimization of these leads drove the program to preclinical candidate nomination within seven months, according to the companies.

Brookfield, Conn. – September 22, 2026 -- ROM Technologies Inc. (ROMTech) said its PortableConnect Rehab System can address two structural barriers facing Department of Veterans Affairs knee-replacement patients: distance from rehabilitation sites and fractured coordination between VA and Community Care providers.

Rural Veterans face outsized travel burdens for post-surgical rehabilitation

Approximately 3 million rural Veterans are enrolled in VA health care, and 54% are age 65 or older. A national VA knee-replacement study found 40.8% of patients lived in rural areas, making repeated long-distance travel a barrier to consistent rehabilitation. The VA's 2026 revised budget request includes roughly $2.29 billion for Beneficiary Travel, though the agency does not break out spending attributable to rehabilitation or rural Veterans specifically.

Elizabeth, N.J. – September 22, 2026 -- New Jersey fast-casual chain Salad House catered a free, full-day youth basketball camp in Elizabeth as part of a growing NIL partnership with local high school standout Jayden Johnson.

Salad House delivers signature wraps to fuel young athletes at Elizabeth camp

The brand supplied platters of its Buffalo Chicken Wrap and Crispy Mutha Clucka Wrap during a lunch break at the Fred Erxleben Recreation Center, feeding campers between morning and afternoon basketball sessions. The camp offered free skill development, competition, and mentorship for local boys and girls.

Potsdam, N.Y. – September 22, 2026 -- Clarkson University has become one of only 14 institutions nationwide to earn the newly created Carnegie Elective Classification for Sustainability, following its participation in the 2025 pilot program that shaped the classification's framework.

Fourteen institutions defined the pilot cohort nationwide

Clarkson helped design the review process used to evaluate the classification, which assesses sustainability integration across research, education, community engagement and campus operations. The 14 pilot institutions will form the inaugural classified cohort, to be formally announced in June 2027, with the designation valid through 2033.

Pune – September 22, 2026 -- Bitwise has earned more than 130 Databricks Delivery Expert badges, securing recognition among the top partners in a credentialing program that launched in May 2026 to identify firms with deep migration and modernization expertise across the Databricks ecosystem.

Bitwise Certifications Surpass 330 Across Its Engineering Organization

The Chicago-headquartered engineering firm, which operates delivery centers in Pune, India, has accumulated over 330 Databricks certifications organization-wide. The company also holds Databricks Silver Partner status and was previously named a Databricks Genie GTM Partner for conversational, AI-powered enterprise data access.

Indianapolis – – September 22, 2026 -- CMIT Solutions marked its 30th year in business at CMIT Connect Live! 2026, a multi-day convention in Indianapolis that brought together franchise owners, technicians and technology partners from its national managed IT services and cybersecurity network.

Dayal Bhagat wins top franchise honor for growth across three regions

The Franchise of the Year Award, the event's highest honor, went to Dayal Bhagat, who operates CMIT Solutions locations serving Roanoke, Virginia, and North Charlotte and Statesville, North Carolina. The award recognized sustained business growth, service delivery and alignment with CMIT's core values. Other nominees included Matt McCracken, Mike Minkler, Tom Shirey, Cheryl Nelan and Evan Stein, and Marty and Leslie Wood.

Milan – September 22, 2026 -- Pirelli's Board of Directors has majority approved a roughly €1 billion ($1.2 billion) multi-year investment to expand its Rome, Georgia plant, with three board members -- Zhang Haitao, Xi Xiaohong and Wang Kun -- voting against the plan.

Rome, Georgia capacity to double to 6 million tyres by 2033

The expansion will lift annual production capacity at the Rome facility to approximately 6 million car tyres by 2033, including CyberTM Tyre technology, and is expected to create around 1,000 new jobs. The buildout begins in 2027 in two phases: a robotized production line using Pirelli's proprietary MIRS (Modular Integrated Robotized System) technology will scale from 2028 to 3 million tyres annually, while a separate fully automated conventional facility dedicated to premium products will add another 3 million tyres of capacity at full operation.

Las Vegas – September 22, 2026 -- GMA Consulting has appointed Alisa Mirabal and David Robins as Senior Advisors, adding operational expertise in casino marketing technology and hospitality management to its client-advisory bench spanning public gaming companies, tribal operators, banks and government agencies.

San Jose, Calif. – September 22, 2026 -- The OpenSearch Software Foundation has recorded a 140% year-over-year jump in global project downloads, surpassing 2.4 billion total, as the vendor-neutral search and analytics platform expands its enterprise backing.

Intel, Adelean and Sidecar join as General Members strengthening technical direction

The Foundation announced three new General Members -- Adelean, Intel, and Sidecar -- who will now engage with working groups and help guide technical initiatives. Intel's membership extends its existing open source contributions to OpenSearch, which have focused on hardware-level acceleration to optimize performance.

San Diego – September 22, 2026 -- BRIJ Medical reported zero documented cases of wound dehiscence, infection, allergic dermatitis, adhesive-related skin injury or wound-related reoperation across a 100-case retrospective study of its Brijjit Force-Modulating Tissue Bridges in sports medicine incision management.

Single-surgeon study spans three years of orthopedic procedures

The study, published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Experience & Innovation (Volume 7, Issue 2), evaluated 100 consecutive outpatient sports medicine procedures performed by a single surgeon, John A. Grotting, MD, between January 2023 and December 2025. Cases spanned ACL, knee, shoulder, elbow and ankle procedures, with co-author Ege Karadag.

Ottawa – September 22, 2026 -- Nearly 60% of Ottawa's occupied private dwellings were built in 1990 or earlier, placing them squarely within the era when asbestos was commonly used in construction, according to a housing-age analysis published by PatchBoyz Asbestos Removal. Statistics Canada's 2021 Census counts 243,080 of Ottawa's 407,250 occupied private dwellings as built in 1990 or earlier, equal to 59.7%.

San Francisco – September 22, 2026 -- Minerva University secured three No. 1 rankings in the 2027 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges list, marking its debut appearance in the annual survey.

Minerva tops 73 institutions in the Regional Colleges West category

The university ranked No. 1 overall, tied for No. 1 among private institutions, and No. 1 in Best Value Schools within the Regional Colleges West segment. U.S. News evaluated the category using up to 13 factors, including graduation rates, first-year retention, peer assessment, faculty resources and financial resources.

Academic metrics underpin the ranking outcome

Minerva reports a 14:1 student-to-faculty ratio, with 87% of classes enrolling fewer than 20 students. The university's four-year graduation rate stands at 79%.

San Jose, Calif. – September 22, 2026 -- GS Microelectronics U.S. (GSME) and Teradyne, Inc. (NASDAQ: TER) have signed a multi-year strategic partnership to build a semiconductor test and evaluation center at GSME's new 42,000-square-foot Silicon Valley headquarters, with the facility set to open in Q4 2026.

GSME will run a dedicated Teradyne-equipped test floor for next-generation chips

The center will deploy Teradyne's latest test handlers, probers, and automated test systems to support customer demonstrations, device evaluations, engineering development, pilot production, and technical training. Target applications include AI hyperscaler devices, silicon photonics, automotive semiconductors, power management, and RF technologies.

New York – September 22, 2026 -- Ande, an AI-native network for corporate entertainment, emerged from stealth with more than $52 million in seed and Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Duration Ventures, and Sierra Ventures, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures.

Enterprises spend an estimated $325 billion annually on entertainment, yet booking and expense tracking remain fragmented.

Client dinners, team outings, catering, sporting events, and gifting are currently managed across credit cards, accounts payable systems, and consumer apps, creating a manual reconciliation burden for corporate finance teams.

East Rutherford, N.J. – September 22, 2026 -- MetLife Stadium has signed a multi-year partnership with ready-to-drink spirits brand Sun Cruiser, naming it an official Proud Partner of the venue, the New York Jets and the New York Giants.

Sun Cruiser gains stadium-wide branding across signage and digital boards

The deal grants Sun Cruiser exposure on gate pylons, video board integrations and daily highway marquees at the 82,500-seat stadium, the largest capacity venue in the NFL. MetLife Stadium ranked No. 1 in the U.S. for both tickets sold and ticket revenue in 2024, according to Pollstar.