Product & Tech

NEC Corporation announced that the Ohio Attorney General's Office, through the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, is upgrading its biometric identification system to NEC's next-generation Integra-ID 7 Software-as-a-Service platform, hosted within the Microsoft Azure Government Cloud environment. The large-scale modernization project transitions the State of Ohio's existing on-premises Integra-ID MBIS environment to a fully managed SaaS architecture, began in 2026, and is anticipated to be completed in less than nine months. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation operates Ohio's Automated Biometric Identification System, known as OABIS, which today contains more than 6 million biometric records, over 41 million events associated with approximately 25 million subjects, connectivity to nearly 600 livescan systems, and integration with eight local AFIS systems and the FBI Next Generation Identification system. NEC previously deployed a successful AFIS replacement project for the State of Ohio in 2021 following a competitive procurement process, replacing both the legacy AFIS and Computerized Criminal History systems. Eugene le Roux, Senior Vice President of NEC National Security Systems, Inc., said the project reinforces NEC's commitment to helping public safety agencies adopt secure, scalable SaaS biometric solutions, with Integra-ID 7 built on NEC's SaaS platform and powered by its everBlu continuous innovation framework.

IBM has placed its z17 system at the heart of Marist University's new AI Innovation Incubator, giving students and researchers hands-on access to enterprise-grade computing infrastructure. The incubator could tackle projects ranging from autonomous marketing agents and AI-enhanced polling to quantum-assisted portfolio allocation, with IBM supplying the z17 and opening up the same class of high-volume, security-focused infrastructure it sells to large enterprises. No commercial value was disclosed, so the deployment is less about an immediate revenue win and more about putting IBM technology directly into the hands of future developers, researchers and enterprise decision-makers. IBM shares were nearly flat at $231.70 on Tuesday, sitting 4.58% below the $242.82 GF Value estimate. The payoff from Marist will not appear as a big contract today, but reusable applications, stronger recruiting pipelines and broader institutional adoption could turn a relatively small academic deployment into something more valuable over time.

VERAXA Biotech is entering a new phase of development following its transition to the NASDAQ market and a series of scientific and corporate milestones centered on its proprietary BiTAC platform. The Swiss biotechnology company began trading on the NASDAQ Capital Market under the ticker VRXA in June following the completion of its business combination with Voyager Acquisition Corp. The transaction was accompanied by financing arrangements that included a $27.5 million senior secured note and a securities purchase agreement for up to an undisclosed additional amount. VERAXA is advancing an oncology pipeline built around BiTAC, an AND-gated therapeutic approach in which two complementary components must engage the same cancer cell before the intended cytotoxic mechanism is activated, alongside additional antibody-drug conjugate and engineered-antibody technologies. The company has reported early preclinical evidence for both its BiTAC-TCE and BiTAC-ADC approaches, including an in-vitro proof of concept for BiTAC-ADC announced in June, and recently appointed Raju Willener as CFO and Christoph Erkel, Ph.D., as chief scientific officer.

Dexon Mechanical Solutions Co., Ltd., or DMS, a subsidiary of Dexon Technology Public Company Limited, or DEXON, participated in ONS 2026 in Stavanger, Norway, one of the key stages of the global energy industry, spending four days meeting partners both at the event and on the sidelines to discuss ways to apply technology to Inspection, Maintenance and Asset Integrity work, particularly subsea pipelines and structures, in order to serve customer demand in Thailand and the wider Asian region. Key topics included Integrity Clamp for repairing and strengthening subsea pipelines, which helps reduce the need for shutdowns, the CP Retrofit System for preventing corrosion and extending the life of structures, and the Mini Powerful ROV, which helps reduce the need for big operations, adding flexibility and lowering the cost of underwater inspection and maintenance. For subsea inspection work, DMS places emphasis on adopting new inspection technologies and methods to improve the efficiency and accuracy of assessing structural condition, and on using the data to plan repairs and maintenance and manage Asset Integrity, as well as seeking solutions for Splash Zone work to improve safety in areas at high risk of corrosion. The company's participation this time reflects DMS's approach of combining global technology with local expertise to develop solutions that meet real on-site needs, focusing on reducing downtime, improving safety, lowering risk and extending service life, while building on its capabilities in Mechanical Solutions, Subsea Solutions and Asset Integrity to deliver solutions that are safe, cost-effective and suited to the future of the energy industry.

Walmart is rolling out support for Apple Pay and Google Pay across its U.S. stores, reversing a policy under which it had promoted its own Walmart Pay solution and limited acceptance of third-party digital wallets. The support is expected to cover in-person checkout, though timing and specific rollout details are still emerging. Walmart operates a global network of retail and wholesale stores, membership clubs, ecommerce sites and mobile apps, so the decision on which digital wallets to accept affects how millions of shoppers pay at checkout. The reversal trades some control at checkout for potentially richer data and more ways to keep shoppers inside Walmart's ecosystem, feeding its push into digital commerce and higher-margin services such as Walmart+. It also brushes against a flagged risk that handing payment front-door access to Apple and Alphabet could make it harder for Walmart Connect and marketplace services to fully monetise shopper data.

Atropos Health announced a significant expansion of its federated Atropos Evidence Network, adding deeper collaborations with Norstella and Arcadia and new data partnership agreements with OneMedNet Corporation. The network, which comprises dozens of primary and aggregated data sources, now covers more than 330 million U.S. patients, scaled open and closed claims, and over 150 million patient EHR records including clinical notes for regulatory-grade real-world evidence applications. The expansion also adds multimodal imaging and omics data linked directly to clinical outcomes and mortality datasets, along with privacy-first cross-source linkage using proprietary de-identification technology. Atropos Health said the added scale supports regulatory-grade observational research, health economics and outcomes research, rapid commercial analytics, and AI and predictive model training, and that integrating its tools lets partner platforms run complex temporal queries up to 50 times faster and 30 times more cost-effectively than traditional data analytics methods. All integrated solutions use the company's Real World Fitness Score grading framework, and OneMedNet President and CEO Aaron Green said the partnership puts its regulatory decision-grade data directly into partners' hands as a long-term subscription collaboration.

XtalPi announced that Viva-Thera, a biotechnology company it incubated and backs as a strategic shareholder, has nominated a preclinical candidate targeting the membrane-proximal external region of HIV-1 gp41, completing discovery and optimization in seven months by combining Viva-Thera's atomic-resolution structural research with XtalPi's AI drug design and automation platform. Deploying generative AI from the outset, XtalPi navigated a chemical space of approximately 10 million compounds to isolate five validated hits with desirable drug properties and strong antiviral activity, then continuously optimized the leads to reach PCC nomination. The asset targets gp41-mediated membrane fusion at MPER, a region that retains approximately 90% sequence identity across viral strains, opening a path toward a broad-spectrum antiviral with a binding site distinct from those addressed by reverse-transcriptase, integrase, and protease inhibitors. In its public debut, Viva-Thera also reported that its MPER vaccine immunogens elicited antibody levels in rhesus macaques approximately five times those of the conventional HIV immunogen comparator, with antisera retaining substantial inhibition of HIV pseudovirus infection at a 1:1,000 dilution. The company is pursuing HIV prevention and cure through four modalities—vaccines, long-acting small molecules, gene therapy and cell therapy—and its gene-therapy program has completed vector construction, cell-infection experiments and CD4+ T-cell introduction in humanized mice, with live-virus infection and treatment studies in preparation.

Rigetti Computing said in its latest technology update that the biggest challenge in its quantum roadmap is no longer adding more qubits but improving the performance of its flagship 108-qubit Cepheus system. During the second quarter of 2026 earnings call, management acknowledged that coherence time has become the primary bottleneck limiting two-qubit gate fidelity, even as Cepheus-1-108Q stands among only three generally available gate-based quantum computers with more than 100 qubits. The system currently operates with coherence times of roughly 25-30 microseconds, a level that constrains the reliability of quantum operations. Rigetti is directing engineering efforts toward chip redesigns, fabrication process improvements and new materials, including tantalum-capped superconducting contacts, and management expects these initiatives to gradually double or even triple coherence times over the next several years. In peer updates, Quantum Computing Inc. signed a three-year Framework Agreement with Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar covering quantum computing, sensing and communications, while IonQ secured an $8.18 million commercial agreement with Congruity360 to integrate quantum-safe networking into its enterprise data management platform.

Omnilogy has partnered with Power by Fortra to bring its i-Rays observability platform to Fortra's customer base. According to Fortra's 2026 IBM i Marketplace Survey, 69% of 315 IBM i professionals polled named skills shortages as their top concern, overtaking cybersecurity for the first time in nine years. The partnership gives Omnilogy access to Power by Fortra's established customer base and channel expertise, while Power by Fortra will provide sales, implementation, training, and technical support services, along with opportunity discovery and qualification, contract negotiation, billing, and renewals. i-Rays General Manager Marek Walczak said the alliance is built around bringing AI-powered observability to any organizations that need it, whether they are addressing skills shortages, modernizing operations, or expanding enterprise observability initiatives with platforms such as Dynatrace. Omnilogy is a privately held global technology company based in Warsaw that focuses on observability, monitoring, and cybersecurity for the IBM i and IBM Z ecosystems.

Tesla is headed to a civil rights trial over racial harassment and discrimination claims tied to its Fremont Assembly plant, where Black workers allege racist slurs, graffiti and unequal treatment on the factory floor. Separately, Tesla and Sunrun coordinated what they describe as the largest residential distributed home battery dispatch event so far in California, a 580 megawatt event. Tesla operates as both an electric vehicle manufacturer and an energy storage provider, so the trial and the grid event both sit within core parts of its business model. The company's next detailed update on Energy Generation and Storage is expected to show how often these virtual power plant style dispatches occur and what they contribute to segment gross profit, alongside any quantified disclosure of legal provisions tied to workplace litigation.

AbbVie announced that the European Commission has approved its immunology drug Rinvoq, also known as upadacitinib, for the treatment of active polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis in patients aged two years and older who have had an inadequate response or intolerance to disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs. The approval marks the 11th indication for Rinvoq in the European Union, where it can be used either as monotherapy or in combination with methotrexate, and follows the drug's existing United States approval for the same condition. The decision was supported by the open-label phase I SELECT-YOUTH study, in which 66.4% of patients achieved an ACR Pediatric 70 response at week 12, rising to 79.5% by week 48, while clinical remission increased from 23% to 43.4% over the same period. Rinvoq is a key growth driver for AbbVie, with sales up 22.2% year over year to $4.64 billion in the first half of 2026 and expected revenues of around $10.2 billion for the full year. Separately, AbbVie announced a multi-year collaboration with Iambic to accelerate discovery of small-molecule therapies in immunology, neuroscience and oncology, using Iambic's AI-powered platform including its next-generation Enchant v3 model, with Iambic receiving an upfront payment plus milestone payments and tiered royalties on net sales.

Olas unveiled a new AI model Tuesday that was trained on more than 200,000 prediction market forecasts and matched OpenAI's GPT-4.1 in a test of its ability to predict real-world events. Olas-Predict-R1-14B achieved 75.8% accuracy across 2,628 previously unseen markets, compared with 75.4% for GPT-4.1 and 71.4% for the underlying DeepSeek model, according to benchmark materials shared with Benzinga. Olas, which develops autonomous AI agents that research and trade on prediction markets, trained the model using 214,529 forecasts from 5,116 resolved markets, and fine-tuning improved the model's Brier score by roughly 20%. David Minarsch, CEO of Valory and founding member of Olas, told Benzinga the results suggest cheaper, specialized AI models are putting increasing economic pressure on the industry's most advanced general-purpose systems, and said frontier models may need to find new markets to maintain their growth rates. Olas says its model can run on a single GPU and its weights are publicly available, letting developers run it themselves instead of paying a closed AI provider for each forecast. In a separate experiment requested by Benzinga, Olas-Predict gave Nvidia a 70% chance of ending 2026 as the world's largest company by market capitalization, while Polymarket traders currently put Nvidia at 78%.

Varda Space Industries announced the appointments of Steve Layne as Chief Revenue Officer and Aaron Huber as Chief Financial Officer, strengthening its leadership team as it scales across pharmaceutical development and government programs. Layne brings over 30 years of large-scale defense program experience, most recently as Vice President and Deputy General Manager for Strategic and Missile Defense Systems at LM Space, and previously as Vice President of Hypersonic Strike Weapon Systems at Lockheed Martin, where he led work on two of the Pentagon's highest-priority hypersonic initiatives. Huber joins with nearly two decades of experience spanning deep-tech and capital markets, including automotive technology, synthetic biology, and healthcare AI, and a $1.6 billion NYSE listing, multiple acquisitions, and complex non-dilutive financing structures. CEO Will Bruey said the two give Varda the commercial and financial leadership to match its technical progress. Varda has completed six successful launch and return missions and is advancing toward delivering the world's first commercial pharmaceutical product manufactured in low Earth orbit, with three vehicles at launch sites around the country set to bring its reentry record to nine commercial reentries by the end of the year.

Meta Platforms is testing whether its new Muse AI product can convert rapid early adoption into a subscription business, with shares gaining about 0.5% to $744.80 Tuesday. Reuters cited Apptopia estimates showing 2.8 million Muse downloads in its first 12 days, an unusually fast user-acquisition start for the social-media and AI giant. Muse currently combines free access with $20 and $100 monthly plans, and Jefferies modeled a longer-term scenario of one billion users, a 3% paid-conversion rate and roughly $10.8 billion in annual revenue, which would mean 30 million paying subscribers generating an average of about $360 each per year, or $30 per month. That math sets a high bar, requiring enough users to choose higher-priced plans while Meta builds merchant participation around autonomous AI transactions. At $744.80, the shares sit about 12.86% below GuruFocus' GF Value estimate of $854.73.

Microsoft opened its new three-zone India South Central cloud region in Hyderabad, its fourth cloud region in India, with shares trading at $496.905. Adani Group, Bajaj Finserv, HDFC Bank and PB Pay are already participating in trials, and the infrastructure is designed to support sovereign-cloud requirements and Indian data residency while using effectively zero water for cooling. The facility is part of a broader $20.5 billion India investment commitment rather than that sum being dedicated to the Hyderabad site alone, and management has not disclosed the region's megawatt capacity, server count or revenue target. The shares sit 15.28% below the $586.56 GF Value estimate.