Digital Transformation

Chicago – October 05, 2026 -- Expand Energy (NASDAQ: EXE), North America's largest independent natural gas producer, has selected global technology consultancy Thoughtworks to design and build an enterprise-wide AI capability, with a production-ready solution targeted for deployment by the end of 2026.

Expand Energy moves beyond isolated AI pilots toward enterprise-scale deployment

The multi-phase engagement spans AI strategy, use case prioritization, machine learning platform implementation and production delivery across Expand Energy's exploration, production and energy marketing operations. Josh Viets, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Expand Energy, said the company selected Thoughtworks for its ability to connect strategy, technology and delivery within a single engagement.

Newtown, Pa. – October 05, 2026 -- EPAM Systems (NYSE: EPAM) has launched a strategic offering aimed at powering frontier AI models through high-fidelity data generation, model evaluation and custom reinforcement learning (RL) environments, targeting what it calls a critical industry bottleneck in enterprise AI deployment.

EPAM positions engineering heritage against shift from compute to domain intelligence

Elaina Shekhter, Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer at EPAM, said demand has moved from raw compute to specialized domain intelligence as frontier AI models shift from general experimentation toward complex enterprise workflows and multi-step agentic execution. The company is leveraging its multi-decade enterprise engineering background to build what it describes as a foundational intelligence layer for the AI ecosystem.

Cary, N.C. – October 05, 2026 -- SAS Institute will stage the 2026 SAS Championship at Prestonwood Country Club Oct. 12-18, pairing PGA Tour Champions competition with a new AI-powered fan platform and roughly $280,000 in direct community and charity funding tied to tournament week.

SAS launches Fairway Forecast, an AI analytics app for live tournament data

The company has built Fairway Forecast, a mobile web application powered by SAS analytics and AI that gives fans real-time player insights, tournament trends and an interactive chat feature. The tool includes the SAS Index, a proprietary rating that projects player competitiveness, along with live leaderboards and a prediction contest on holes 17 and 18. Fans access the platform via QR code at the venue or through official tournament channels.

Austin, Texas – October 05, 2026 -- Nonhuman sources generated 87.3% of all recorded click activity across 1.77 billion emails processed in the first quarter of 2026, according to data from Omeda, raising questions about the reliability of engagement metrics marketers use to evaluate campaigns and report results to sponsors. Even newsletters, which registered the lowest bot share among major high-volume email categories, still saw 82.4% of clicks attributed to automated activity rather than human readers.

Breaker, a B2B-focused newsletter platform, has launched RealClickTM alongside a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and API designed to address distorted click data and unchecked AI access to marketing workflows.

New York – October 05, 2026 -- Slang AI has launched Superhost, a voice AI platform the company calls the industry's first conversational, memory-aware hospitality agent built for full-service restaurants, moving beyond scripted bots to handle calls in 97 languages while recognizing returning guests and their preferences.

Superhost replaces scripted voice bots with a memory-driven conversational agent

Unlike prior voice AI limited to basic reservation handling, Superhost recalls prior conversations, visit history, allergies and birthdays, and can detect emotional tone in guest speech, responding differently to an exasperated 'ok' versus a delighted one. The system also handles mid-sentence interruptions and changes of mind, aiming to replicate the fluid back-and-forth of an experienced floor host.

Raleigh, N.C. – – October 05, 2026 -- Self-storage operator 10 Federal has installed a formal executive leadership team effective September 28, 2026, naming Geoff Hayth President and Chief Customer Experience Officer, hiring Beau Agnello as Chief Operating Officer from Go Store It, and promoting Brian Oakley to Chief Technology Officer, as the company prepares for an accelerated growth phase across acquisitions and third-party management.

Four-person executive team now reports directly to Co-CEOs Brad and Cliff Minsley

Hayth, Agnello and Oakley join Chief A.I. Officer Christopher Taylor, appointed in April, to form the company's first formal executive bench. Hayth continues to lead DaVinci Lock, the 10 Federal-founded access control platform he has run since 2022 and which is now used in one of every six storage facilities nationwide. He previously spent eight years at Extra Space Storage, most recently as Director of Operations.

New York – October 05, 2026 -- Diray Media, a woman-owned, WBENC-certified performance media company, has named Media Consulting Group (MCG) as its upstream optimization partner for streaming TV, extending its outcomes-based media model into the supply chain before bids are placed.

Diray extends its performance model upstream into supply-side procurement

Diray built its business model on scoring every media placement against client outcomes -- sales, orders, leads, and market share -- then adjusting buys to improve results. The company identified supply-side structuring as the next lever in that discipline, selecting MCG to shape streaming inventory before it reaches the bid rather than optimizing only after a placement is won.

Wilmington – October 05, 2026 -- SignSplit PBC has secured a $400 million strategic seed round from W Group that values the data-licensing startup at $1 billion, as it emerges from stealth to build infrastructure for compensating people and institutions for their data, work and likeness.

W Group's fintech ecosystem backs SignSplit's data-licensing model

The financing comes from W Group, a global fintech and technology ecosystem serving more than 40 million users across 150 countries. The deal combines capital with a multi-year package of strategic resources to support SignSplit's global rollout.

San Francisco – October 05, 2026 -- The SONiC Foundation, the open source network operating system hosted under the Linux Foundation, has added Lenovo, NADDOD and Zhanwang (NEXAI) as General Members, expanding its industry base ahead of the OCP Global Summit 2026 in San Jose.

Three networking specialists join SONiC as AI infrastructure strains bandwidth and latency requirements

The additions bring expertise spanning networking silicon, hardware platforms, high-speed interconnects and enterprise infrastructure deployments. SONiC Foundation officials cited rising demands from AI, high-performance computing, cloud and data center operators for greater network bandwidth, reliability and observability as the driver behind the expansion.

San Antonio – October 05, 2026 -- Frost & Sullivan has named Cymulate the recipient of its 2026 Indian Competitive Strategy Leadership Recognition in the breach and attack simulation sector, citing customer retention exceeding 90% and a platform architecture that enables continuous security validation across enterprise environments.

Frost & Sullivan cites Cymulate's broad attack library and rapid deployment model

Rajarshi Dhar, Associate Director at Frost & Sullivan, said Cymulate's platform differentiates itself through one of the industry's broadest attack libraries, covering tactics, techniques, and procedures across email security, endpoint security, data protection, and cloud environments. The rapid deployment capability allows security teams to begin simulations quickly, shortening time to value and enabling faster identification of configuration weaknesses without lengthy implementation cycles.