News

San Francisco/Philadelphia – September 22, 2026 -- Instacart (NASDAQ: CART) will add Gopuff to its Marketplace and deploy its Carrot Ads technology across Gopuff's digital storefront, giving more than 9,000 brand advertisers direct access to Gopuff's on-demand customer base in the U.S.

Gopuff will join over 2,200 national and local retail banners already on the Instacart Marketplace, offering Instacart customers delivery in as fast as 15 minutes from a catalog of thousands of groceries, snacks, beverages and household staples. Orders placed through Instacart will be fulfilled directly by Gopuff via its own network of micro-fulfillment centers.

San Francisco – September 22, 2026 -- Handshake, the career network for the AI economy, has launched AI Skills Studio, a free learning hub offering hands-on AI projects to more than one million employers on its platform. The tool was built with partners including Clay, Figma, Gamma, Google, Lovable, Notion, OpenAI, Replit, Salesforce, Southern New Hampshire University, and Vercel.

Job seekers complete AI 'missions' in 10 to 45 minutes using real practitioner tools

AI Skills Studio offers personalized, project-based missions that produce a tangible output, ranging from automated workflows to working software. An AI Skills Instructor guides learners through the process, and early users have built interactive games, data dashboards, personal portfolios, and sales and marketing tools.

McDonough, Ga. – September 22, 2026 -- Piedmont Orthopedics | OrthoAtlanta has added board-certified interventional pain specialist Vic Manocha, M.D., to its Henry County team, deploying him across both its McDonough office and its newly opened Locust Grove location.

New physician strengthens nonsurgical pain treatment capacity

Dr. Manocha treats acute and chronic back pain, neck pain, joint pain and musculoskeletal conditions using interventional techniques including spinal cord stimulation, peripheral nerve stimulation and minimally invasive spine procedures. He also maintains a focus on regenerative medicine and orthobiologic therapies for chronic spine and joint pain, and is the founder of RegenCures, a practice dedicated to orthobiologic treatments.

The Woodlands, Texas – September 22, 2026 -- Astound Ventures, a collaborative investment fund founded by hoteliers Burt Cabañas, Alex Cabañas and Kirk Jones, has raised more than $8 million toward a $30 million target aimed at boosting net unit margin across hotel real estate operations.

Fund targets $30 million entirely from industry "smart money"

Unlike traditional venture funds backed by institutional allocations, Astound is raising its entire pool from operators, owners and brands within the hospitality sector. Chairman Burt Cabañas is founder of Benchmark Resorts & Hotels and co-chairman of Pyramid Global Hospitality; CEO Alex Cabañas is Pyramid's executive chairman and a Convene Hospitality Group board member; CFO Kirk Jones previously served as CFO of Benchmark and Capella Hotels.

Poughkeepsie, N.Y. – September 22, 2026 -- Marist University and IBM have launched an Innovation Incubator equipped with an IBM z17 mainframe, extending their five-decade partnership into university-wide artificial intelligence research.

IBM z17 mainframe brings enterprise-scale AI computing to Marist campus

IBM provided the z17 system to give students and faculty access to enterprise technology built for the performance, security and reliability demands of large organizations, enabling hands-on application development and testing.

Atlanta – September 22, 2026 -- Siemba has launched general availability of Siemba MCP, a Model Context Protocol server that lets security and engineering teams run penetration tests and generate finished security analysis by chatting directly with AI assistants, eliminating the need for a separate dashboard login.

Six packaged skills replace manual dashboard analysis

Siemba MCP ships as a single plugin containing a connector and six named skills: Test Analysis, Kill Chain, Critical Briefing, Remediation Plan, Attack Surface, and CISO Report. Test Analysis reads login screenshots to diagnose failed authenticated test runs caused by bad credentials or unexpected multi-factor prompts. Kill Chain maps individual findings into full attack paths, rating each chain by its weakest link rather than raw severity and naming the single fix that breaks the most chains at once.

Santa Clara, Calif. – September 22, 2026 -- Palo Alto Networks has launched Unit 42 Continuous Frontier AI Defense, a new agentic offensive security service built on Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6-Cyber models, aimed at helping enterprises find and fix exposures before attackers exploit them at machine speed.

The service responds to a shift in attacker capability: threat actors using AI have compressed breach cycles by nearly 97% in some cases, cutting the time from vulnerability discovery to exploitation from weeks to hours, according to Palo Alto Networks.

State College, Pa. – September 22, 2026 -- Giv Local, LLC, a Pennsylvania-based payment processor, is donating 20% of its processing revenue to nonprofits chosen by its merchant clients, a model that undercut a national competitor's rates for one Ohio retailer while funding local causes at no extra cost to businesses or customers.

Rate hike at national processor pushed Ohio retailer to switch

Roads Rivers and Trails (RRT), an independent outdoor retailer in Milford, Ohio, left its national payment processor after the provider raised rates without warning. Owners Bryan Wolf and Emily White evaluated multiple replacement processors before selecting Giv Local, found through the B Corp certification directory.

Victor, N.Y. – September 22, 2026 -- Lite Coms has been selected by Boeing Defence Australia to supply tactical satellite communications terminals for the LAND 4140 Beyond Line-of-Sight (BLOS) SATCOM program, part of the Australian Defence Force's LAND C4 Modernization effort.

Lite Coms will deliver its LITE SAT 1.3A terminals for the ADF's beyond line-of-sight network

The LITE SAT 1.3A is a lightweight, rugged, auto-acquire satellite terminal built with a carbon fiber reflector and designed for tool-free deployment. The system is engineered to establish secure, resilient satellite links for military and government operations in austere environments.

Montreal – September 22, 2026 -- AECOM used One Click LCA's Carbon Designer 3D platform to model whole-life carbon emissions for a major transportation corridor redevelopment in the City of Montreal before detailed engineering plans existed, enabling early comparison of low-carbon design options.

City of Montreal targets a low-carbon, climate-resilient district

The municipality launched the redevelopment to transform the corridor and surrounding neighborhood into a climate-resilient zone, requiring comparison of early design concepts before detailed designs were finalized.