News

Ketchum, Idaho – September 23, 2026 -- Skilled trades workers reach financial break-even by age 19, nearly seven years faster than bachelor's degree holders who hit that mark at 26, according to new commissioned research from truck-storage manufacturer DECKED. The findings, drawn from an economic trajectory study and a proprietary survey of 500 tradespeople, anchor the company's new Built for Those Who Build campaign, launching with a Builder's Day event on Sept. 30 at DECKED's manufacturing facility in Defiance, Ohio.

Chicago – September 23, 2026 -- WovenX Health, a Chicago-based specialty care platform, has won the Industry Disrupter Award at 1871's 19th Annual Momentum Awards for its model expanding access to gastroenterology care.

National GI wait times average 40 days as two-thirds of U.S. counties lack a specialist

One in five Americans is affected by a gastrointestinal condition, yet the average wait for a GI consult has grown to 40 days nationally, according to the company. GI-related visits account for 10% of all emergency department visits, 86% of which WovenX says are avoidable with timely specialty access.

Washington – September 23, 2026 -- Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) has joined the Rare Access Action Project (RAAP), adding a major biopharmaceutical player to a coalition working to resolve coverage and access barriers for rare disease patients.

RAAP expands coalition with BMS to tackle patient access barriers

RAAP, a coalition of patient advocates and life sciences companies, confirmed BMS's membership as part of its ongoing effort to develop policy solutions for structural access and coverage gaps affecting rare disease patients. Michael Eging, Executive Director of RAAP, said BMS brings a long history of scientific innovation and a strong commitment to patients facing serious and complex diseases.

Arlington, Va. – September 23, 2026 -- Eagle Hill Consulting's new HR Technology and Service Delivery Survey finds that 51% of HR professionals spend at least half their workweek on routine, repetitive, or low-value administrative tasks, even as 86% say automation or AI improves the service they deliver to the business.

Fragmented systems undercut technology investment across HR functions

Ninety-one percent of surveyed HR professionals use two or more systems to complete a single task, and 43% rely on three or more. Seventy-eight percent regularly re-enter the same information across multiple platforms, while 68% turn to workarounds such as spreadsheets, shared drives, or manual tracking to get work done.

Washington – September 23, 2026 -- Grain Management has appointed Amran Hussein, a 23-year veteran of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, as General Counsel to lead its legal and governance functions and join the digital infrastructure investment firm's leadership team.

Hussein exits 23-year Paul Weiss tenure to join Grain leadership team

Based in New York, Hussein spent more than two decades at Paul, Weiss advising sponsors of private investment funds on formation, governance, secondary transactions, joint ventures, and investment management M&A. She has worked with Grain for more than a decade as outside counsel prior to this internal appointment.

San Francisco – September 23, 2026 -- None of the 15 major institutions interviewed by Bitwise Asset Management reduced their crypto allocations during a roughly 50% market drawdown between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026, with several increasing positions instead, according to the firm's new Institutional Crypto Adoption report.

Bitwise, a crypto asset manager overseeing $9 billion in client assets, conducted in-depth interviews with senior investment professionals at endowments, foundations, public pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, multi-family offices, investment consultants, and public companies to determine what institutions hold, why, and what would trigger a sale.

Delray Beach – – September 23, 2026 -- The global Workforce Management (WFM) market is projected to grow from $10.6 billion in 2026 to $17.2 billion by 2031, a compound annual growth rate of 10.1%, according to a new report from MarketsandMarkets. The market stood at $9.6 billion in 2025, with North America alone accounting for $3.4 billion of that total.

Analytics and optimization tools post the fastest segment growth

Within the market, workforce optimization and analytics is expected to expand at a 13.2% CAGR, the highest of any solution category, as enterprises push to use data for staffing decisions and labor planning. The broader solutions segment held the largest share of the market in 2025, while services are forecast to register the fastest growth rate as organizations outsource implementation, integration, and managed support for increasingly complex scheduling, timekeeping, and compliance systems.

Durham, N.C. – September 23, 2026 -- Avalara, Inc. unveiled Avalara Aviator, an AI agent hub designed to cut manual tax and compliance work from days to minutes, at its CRUSH customer and partner conference.

Avalara Aviator connects specialized AI agents to close gaps between automated compliance tasks

For years, tax software automated discrete steps such as calculations, filings, and exemption certificate management, leaving finance teams to manually bridge the gaps, chasing approvals, interpreting reports, and building business logic. Avalara says it is the first company to unify specialized AI agents, compliance workflows, and its trusted tax technology into one connected agent hub. Customers interact via Avi, an orchestrator agent that delegates to lead agents overseeing research, certificates, and returns, validating and executing work while leaving judgment-based decisions to humans.

Sunnyvale, Calif. – September 23, 2026 -- FlashGrid Inc. has released version 26.05 of FlashGrid Cluster and FlashGrid Server with support for Oracle AI Database 26ai, Oracle's next long-term support release, enabling enterprises to run the AI-native database platform on Oracle RAC across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

Oracle AI Database 26ai brings over 300 new capabilities to enterprise workloads

Oracle AI Database 26ai integrates AI functions directly into the database engine, adding more than 300 new capabilities spanning artificial intelligence, developer productivity, performance, and mission-critical availability. Oracle designed the release to let organizations build AI-powered applications while retaining the security, governance, and transactional consistency standards of Oracle Database.

Shenzhen – – September 23, 2026 -- Lenovo has launched the ThinkVision P27UL-40 IJP OLED monitor, its first 27-inch UHD Thunderbolt docking display built for commercial and remote-collaboration environments, powered by TCL CSOT's inkjet-printing OLED panel technology.

Panel specs target color accuracy and text clarity for professional workflows

The 27-inch UHD panel runs at 120Hz with 3840 x 2160 resolution, 99% DCI-P3 and 100% sRGB color gamut coverage, and carries VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification. TCL CSOT's Real Stripe RGB pixel layout in the IJP OLED panel is designed to cut text color fringing, a longstanding OLED weakness in office and content-creation applications.