Houston – November 03, 2026 -- Spark Energy has moved all of its roughly 445,000 residential customer equivalents (RCEs) onto VertexOne's VXretail and VXexchange platforms, VertexOne announced. The migration covers every Spark market and brand across 111 utility service territories in 21 states and Washington, D.C.

Migration folds a decade of acquisition-built systems into one platform

Customer accounts, billing operations, market transactions and associated business processes now run on a single integrated platform. They replace the multiple systems Spark accumulated through more than a decade of acquisitions and growth. Spark's brands include Spark Energy, Major Energy, Provider Power and Verde Energy.

VertexOne's implementation and customer service teams supported Spark at every stage. The teams worked to minimize the impact on Spark's customers and day-to-day operations during the transition.

Winnipeg – November 03, 2026 -- FIBERSCOPE has launched the STORMER X Municipal Grade Pipe Crawler in North America, a portable CCTV platform that inspects sewer mains, storm drains, culverts and industrial pipelines from 6 to 80 inches (DN150–2000) without a dedicated inspection truck.

Wheeled platform moves from pickup to access point

The crawler, motorized reel and control tablet are combined into one wheeled unit. Crews can carry it from a pickup or service vehicle to sites that full-size trucks struggle to reach, including backyard easements, rough terrain, parking structures, remote culverts and industrial facilities. FIBERSCOPE says dedicated trucks remain efficient where crews can drive from manhole to manhole.

The vendor argues the question is whether every inspection requires a truck. In its words, STORMER X brings crawler capability to the access point instead of designing each job around vehicle access.

Dallas – November 03, 2026 -- Integrity, LLC has partnered with Chicago-area independent marketing organization Cornerstone Insurance Services, giving the agency access to the AI-powered IntegrityCONNECT platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Cornerstone targets Chicago's underserved Asian American community

Young Joo "YJ" Yoon founded Cornerstone to improve insurance accessibility for Chicago's Asian American community. The agency sells individual and small group health insurance and annuities, and specializes in Medicare, according to its company profile. Its hands-on training program pairs new agents with clients from the outset.

Chicago – November 02, 2026 -- Ziegler has closed a 35-year, fixed-rate, fully amortizing FHA/HUD Section 232/223(f) refinancing for Magnolia Crossing Senior Living, a nonprofit assisted living and memory care community in Clovis, California.

HUD loan replaces construction-era debt with permanent financing

The transaction retires the community's construction-era debt and substitutes permanent, long-term financing with competitive interest rates and flexible future financing options. The release did not disclose the loan principal or the interest rate.

The deal also funded roughly $660,000 of owner-elected capital improvements, including solar energy infrastructure. It established what Ziegler described as substantial reserves for future repairs and replacement needs.

DETROIT – November 02, 2026 -- Ally Financial (NYSE: ALLY) earned the top overall spot in two Money Best Banks 2027 categories, National Bank and Online Bank, and collected recognition from five other organizations covering workplace culture, leadership and corporate trust.

Money ranks Ally Bank best overall among national and online banks

Money evaluated more than 115 retail banks, credit unions and regional institutions for its national bank category. It cited Ally's competitive rates, absence of monthly maintenance fees and strong JD Power customer satisfaction scores.

California – November 02, 2026 -- A local-inference benchmark on an AMD Strix Halo machine found that gemma-3-27b delivers a correct answer for 729 joules at 98% accuracy, while the faster, leaner trinity-nano needs 1,004 joules at 39% accuracy.

The test covered 27 local models on 190 small tasks with checkable answers, each run under two prompts, with a power meter running. Energy was priced at California summer rates of 34 cents per kilowatt-hour off-peak and 58 cents on-peak. The rank correlation between energy per token and energy per correct answer is +0.27, close to no relationship.

St. Louis – November 02, 2026 -- Spire Missouri has filed a rate case with the Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC) that would raise the average residential gas bill by about 11% in western Missouri and 15% in eastern Missouri if approved as filed.

Western and eastern Missouri face different increases

Assuming current natural gas market conditions, the average western Missouri residential bill would climb about $10 per month. In eastern Missouri, the average residential bill would rise about $13 per month. New rates would take effect next fall, because the PSC typically completes its review within about eleven months of filing.

Spire Missouri serves more than 1.2 million customers in the state. President Steve Mills said the utility's focus is on delivering "affordable natural gas service" safely and reliably.

SAN DIEGO – November 02, 2026 -- Neurocrine Biosciences (Nasdaq: NBIX) grew third-quarter 2026 revenue 41% year over year to $1.1 billion, up from $795 million, and raised its full-year INGREZZA net sales guidance to $2.9 billion to $2.925 billion.

The prior INGREZZA range was $2.825 billion to $2.875 billion. Net product sales topped $1 billion for the first time, according to the company.

INGREZZA sales rise 17% to $801 million on double-digit volume growth

INGREZZA growth reflected record TRx and NRx and high persistency rates. CRENESSITY contributed $211 million, with approximately 80% reimbursement for dispensed prescriptions. VYKAT XR added $107 million.

Neurocrine acquired VYKAT XR through its purchase of Soleno Therapeutics, which closed in May 2026. The company recorded about $2.2 billion of VYKAT XR intellectual property on its balance sheet, to be amortized over an expected 16 years.

MANAMA – – November 02, 2026 -- Beyon will power a third data centre entirely with renewable energy once Phase 5 of its Beyon Solar Park programme is completed, an investment of about BD544,500 that is expected to generate 2.5 GWh of clean energy a year.

Phase 5 adds 2,292 panels and 1.5 MWp of capacity across 14,000 square meters

Beyon developed the phase with Almoayyed Solar. The installation is expected to cut carbon emissions by more than 1,585 tonnes of CO2 annually. Completion is due in the coming months.

Beyon announced the milestone at Gateway Gulf 2026, in the presence of Beyon Group Chairman H.E. Shaikh Abdulla bin Khalifa Al Khalifa.

Beyon extends solar programme beyond data centres with Bahrain's first green contact centre

During 2026, Beyon completed Phase 4, which brought renewable power to Total CX's Customer Contact Centre. Beyon describes it as the first green contact centre in Bahrain.

Sheridan, Wyoming – November 02, 2026 -- The global industrial automation market is valued at USD 266.7 billion in 2026 and will reach USD 410.3 billion by 2031, a CAGR of 9%, according to a new study by Wissen Research. The market is moving from isolated, hardware-oriented machine control toward connected, software-based production that combines control hardware, robotics, industrial software and real-time analytics.

Factories installed a record 603,000 industrial robots in 2025

The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) reports that installations rose 11% year on year, lifting the global operational stock to 5.079 million units. IFR forecasts a further 9% increase in 2026, to about 655,000 units.

Demand now extends beyond the car plant. In 2025, installations in metal and machinery grew 22%, while automotive and electronics each rose 10%. Collaborative robots accounted for 66,000 new installations, about 11% of the total.