Artificial Intelligence

Leesburg, Va. – October 28, 2026 -- Omnilert has introduced a dual-AI gun detection platform that pairs its primary firearm detection neural network with a secondary Contextual AI, letting customers configure how each detection is evaluated and handled.

Contextual AI keeps customer data private and leaves the detection model unchanged

The Primary Detection AI identifies visible firearms in compatible live camera feeds. The Contextual AI applies industry- and customer-specific context without altering that model. It analyzes video captured before and after a detection to assess the surrounding scene and activity.

Omnilert says both AIs draw on its 100% organic approach to training and its large operational customer base. Unlike many large-scale AIs, the Contextual AI keeps all data private to the customer, which Omnilert describes as a key requirement for many organizations.

St. Louis – October 28, 2026 -- Forty-four percent of U.S. consumers who use AI tools for customer service say the AI has contradicted a company representative or its policies, according to a new survey of 1,000 consumers from support automation vendor Capacity.

The Agentic Consumer Report finds that 55% of respondents have used an AI tool, such as an agent or large language model, to help with a service request. Consumers are equally likely to trust the AI or the company representative when the two give conflicting information.

Gen Z and Millennials drive adoption of personal AI agents

Overall, 35% of respondents have used an AI agent to handle a customer service request at least once. Among Gen Z and Millennials, the figure is 49%.

Household makeup also matters. Among respondents with children aged 25 or younger at home, 46% have used a personal AI agent, against 29% of those without children at home.

DENVER – October 28, 2026 -- Nextworld has launched three products for upstream and midstream oil, gas and energy companies that move field tickets, supplier compliance and lease tracking out of spreadsheets and inboxes and into the ERPs operators already run. The products are nextField, nextVendor and nextLand, and all three are available now.

They are built to work alongside ERPs including SAP S/4HANA, JD Edwards, IFS, Quorum and Enertia. Nextworld says operators can start with a single workflow and add more over time, with no rip-and-replace.

Plainfield – October 28, 2026 -- PairSoft has appointed Vijay Vidiyala, an enterprise software executive with more than 20 years of experience, as Chief Product & Technology Officer (CPTO) to lead its product and engineering teams in building AI-driven solutions for the office of the CFO.

Vidiyala brings Model N and SAP experience to PairSoft's product organization

Vidiyala most recently led product, engineering, and operations teams across the U.S., Europe, and India at Model N. There he helped shape the company's SaaS transition strategy. Before that, he spent a decade at SAP, leading product development and go-to-market activities for cloud solutions.

New York – October 28, 2026 -- NFTE and BUILD, two U.S. youth entrepreneurship education nonprofits, are combining into a single organization that will reach more than 350,000 students a year, according to a letter from President and CEO Dr. J.D. LaRock to both communities.

Merged group will teach in schools, communities, out-of-school programs and online

The combined organization covers in-school, community, out-of-school and online delivery. LaRock cites educator training and research among its strongest capabilities, plus multi-year commitments to individual students rather than single-semester programs. The merger also joins New York and Silicon Valley under one purpose, a combination LaRock says exists nowhere else in the field.

United States – October 28, 2026 -- Path2Response bans generative AI from production modeling and decisioning, and its co-founder and CTO Michael Pelikan says competitors moving to a single generative AI model for data science put their clients at risk.

Pelikan separates statistical modeling from generative AI

Pelikan, who built neural networks at NASA's neurocomputing institute in the 1990s, distinguishes two categories: statistical models, machine learning and expert systems on one side, and large language models that synthesize content from training-data patterns on the other. He argues the second category does not meet the needs of statistical modeling.

Reno – October 27, 2026 -- Dragonfly Energy Holdings Corp. (Nasdaq: DFLI) will become the first battery pack manufacturer to place Sphere Energy's AI-powered state-of-health technology at the core of its battery management system (BMS), under a strategic partnership announced Aug. 17.

Sphere's AI models will enter Dragonfly's next-generation BMS architecture

Sphere Energy's proprietary battery AI models, based on its VETTA platform, will be integrated into Dragonfly's next-generation BMS. The integration targets more accurate state-of-charge and state-of-health data. It also creates a more flexible development platform intended to bring new products to market faster in response to specific customer needs.

Mittenwald – October 27, 2026 -- IT-Innerebner GmbH is adding AI-driven research and data population to its free-key CityApp, a platform already used by more than 700 municipalities in Germany and Austria. A prototype has passed its test phase, according to the company.

AI agents and open data replace manual entry for municipal content

The CityApp is connected to the nationwide open-data knowledge graph of the German National Tourist Board (DZT). Approved information on attractions, events, accommodation and restaurants can be imported automatically.

AI agents add information on leisure options, local businesses, associations and municipal services. The material is structured and prepared for transfer into the app.

All data is merged into a dedicated database. Municipalities can add their own entries and changes there, so the content base can be maintained both automatically and manually.

United States – October 27, 2026 -- Healthcare faces a projected shortage of up to 3.2 million workers by 2026, and IntelePeer argues that gap is making per-seat enterprise software economically obsolete as buyers shift from purchasing tools to purchasing completed work.

Per-seat pricing fails when healthcare cannot fill the seats

Enterprise software has been priced per seat, per user, per license for two decades, on the assumption that the human is the engine and software makes that engine faster. The IntelePeer analysis says that assumption breaks where labor is the bottleneck. Administrative roles are among the hardest to fill and retain, according to the Mercer / Oliver Wyman projection it cites, and wage inflation is compressing margins.

Canada – October 27, 2026 -- Service-operations software provider WaitWell grew 500% over three years and ranked No. 57 of 375 on Canada's Top Growing Companies list.

The platform has served nearly 45 million people and saved more than 12.8 million hours of waiting. Thousands of service locations across the United States and Canada have adopted it over the period.

Existing clients drive a significant share of WaitWell's growth

Growth came from two sources: new clients and existing clients that widened their use of the platform. The company says the second group accounted for a significant portion of the increase.

New clients include the Nevada DMV, Vancouver Coastal Health, SKIMS and UC Berkeley.

Clients typically expand in stages. A client may start with queue management, then add scheduling, more locations and more service types.