New York and Bath, England – – September 30, 2026 -- A joint research study by Dynamic Infrastructure and the University of Bath has found that leading frontier vision-language models do not yet deliver the robustness needed for real-world infrastructure inspection, even as more specialised AI approaches perform substantially better on the same task.
Scottsdale, Ariz. – September 29, 2026 -- Appspace unveiled Appspace Context, a new architecture that lets workplace software adapt in real time to an employee's role, location, schedule, and surrounding conditions, at its WOW26 conference.
The platform draws on signals from communications, content, spaces, visitor logs, signage, and connected systems that companies already generate but rarely unify. CEO Pete Schmied said workplace technology has historically been configured around expected scenarios, while actual conditions such as shifting schedules, filling spaces, and arriving visitors change constantly.
Santa Clara, Calif. – – September 29, 2026 -- Forward Networks has made Forward Predict generally available, a network-change verification tool that customer IG Group says cut firewall change delivery time by roughly 95 percent and saves engineers more than 30 hours of manual work monthly.
The tool, built on Forward Enterprise's digital twin, models BGP, routing, path, ACL, NAT and firewall-rule changes to show connectivity, security and compliance impact before they reach production. Forward positions the capability as the verification layer required for AI agents to propose network changes safely at machine speed.
Dallas – – September 29, 2026 -- TrendAI, the enterprise AI security unit of Trend Micro (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), has entered private preview with TrendAI Vision One Autonomous Vulnerability Discovery, a service that pairs an agentic AI engine with validation from the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), described as the world's largest vendor-agnostic bug bounty program.
The service runs on an agentic system code-named AESIR, built primarily on Anthropic models, and deployed and operated on Amazon Bedrock from Amazon Web Services. When tested against the CyberGym benchmarking framework, the engine scored higher than both single-model and other agentic systems on the leaderboard. TrendAI states internal benchmarking shows its models identify more true-positive vulnerabilities with fewer false positives than leading vulnerability scanning and static analysis tools.
New York – September 29, 2026 -- JPMorgan Chase claimed the No. 1 spot on the 2026 Fortune AIQ 75, a ranking of Fortune 500 companies generating measurable business impact from AI adoption, jointly produced by Fortune and ServiceNow.
Building on the inaugural 2025 Fortune AIQ 50, the list grew by 50% this year, now spanning 18 sectors including Technology, Finance, Healthcare, Energy, Retail and Industrials. Alphabet, Coca-Cola, Amazon and Nvidia rounded out the top five, followed by Mastercard, Visa, Carrier Global, Cleveland-Cliffs and Microsoft to complete the top ten.
New York – September 28, 2026 -- Eighty-four percent of global wealth management firms say their operating models need a fundamental redesign to capture AI's full value, yet fewer than 10% report being prepared for that shift, according to a new HCLTech study.
The report, titled "Hidden In Pl(AI)n Sight," is based on a synthetic research methodology surveying 1,066 AI personas modeled on senior wealth management decision-makers across 17 global markets. It was produced in partnership with research firm Evidenza.
While 98% of leadership teams in the sector are actively pursuing an AI agenda, only slightly more than 7% are building agentic AI capabilities, the study found. HCLTech attributes the gap to firms funding AI primarily for efficiency gains rather than structural transformation.
St. Louis – September 28, 2026 -- Balto Software has launched Kodi, an AI coworker for contact center leaders that moves beyond generating insights to directly executing approved changes across the tools teams use to run daily operations.
Kodi can investigate underlying customer interactions, identify factors driving a given outcome, and present evidence before recommending a course of action. Once a leader reviews and approves the recommendation, Kodi executes it directly within Balto's platform through Agent Assist, coaching modules, QA scorecards, compliance scorecards, Notes, dynamic prompts, checklists, dashboards, and data fields.
Kyle Jones, VP of Product at Balto, said most insights tools stop at identifying a problem, while Kodi is designed to carry the process through to execution inside the platform.
Toronto – September 26, 2026 -- Jobber has launched two new integrations, a Plugin in ChatGPT and a Connector for Claude, that let home and commercial service businesses pull their Jobber account data directly into leading AI chat platforms.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations allow service pros to ask ChatGPT or Claude questions about clients, properties, jobs, quotes, invoices, requests, and visits, with answers grounded in their actual Jobber account. Users can also dictate or paste call and job notes into the AI tools, which then update the corresponding client, property, and request records inside Jobber.
Shanghai – September 25, 2026 -- Nutshell Therapeutics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. has received FDA clearance of its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for NTS231, a covalent allosteric molecular glue degrader targeting NRF2, allowing the company to begin clinical development in the United States. NTS231 is the first NRF2 degrader originating from China and only the second such molecule worldwide to reach clinical-stage development.
San Diego – September 25, 2026 -- SOCi Inc. secured three separate industry recognitions in the third quarter of 2026, ranking #1 in Marketing Products & Services on Entrepreneur's 9th Annual Top Franchise Suppliers list, landing on the Inc. 5000 for a ninth consecutive year, and reaching finalist status in five categories at The 2026 A.I. Awards.
Entrepreneur's ranking draws from an annual survey of franchisors that generated more than 1,000 responses this year, scoring over 180 suppliers across 13 categories on quality, cost, and value. More than 75 franchise brands reported using SOCi, giving it an average rating of 4.57 out of 5 and the top spot in Marketing Products & Services -- SOCi's second consecutive year at #1 and seventh straight year in the top three. The list appears in Entrepreneur's September/October 2026 double issue.