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Agree Realty Prices $400 Million Of 5.650% Senior Unsecured Notes Due 2036

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Agree Realty Corporation has priced a $400 million public offering of 5.650% senior unsecured notes due 2036 through its operating partnership, Agree Limited Partnership. The offering was priced at 98.497% of the principal amount, representing an effective yield to maturity of 5.849%. Following the company's previously executed interest rate hedges, the all-in interest rate on the notes is approximately 5.36%.

Sol Raises $4 Million In Funding To Launch Proactive AI Assistant

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Sol, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup, has emerged from stealth with $4 million in funding from General Catalyst, Nexus Venture Partners, DeVC, Peercheque, and Kunal Shah. The company has developed a proactive AI assistant that identifies commitments made in Gmail and automatically begins completing the associated work, including research, document creation, presentations, scheduling, and drafting email responses. Unlike conventional AI assistants that wait for instructions, Sol is designed to recognize what users have already promised to do and initiate the necessary tasks, while requiring their approval before completing final actions.

Horowitz Andreessen Academy Raises $42 Million And Launches Tuition-Free Fellowship In San Francisco

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a new education company incubated by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), has launched in San Francisco with $42 million in funding and support from 10 founding technology partners, including OpenAI, NVIDIA, Google, Meta, and Anthropic. The Academy has opened applications for its inaugural tuition-free Founding Class Fellowship, which will welcome approximately 50 students in September 2027. The program is designed for ambitious young technology builders who want to develop companies, pursue careers in technology, and learn directly from Silicon Valley founders and executives.

Peakline Partners Acquires Kalon Capital To Expand Equipment Finance Platform

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Peakline Partners has acquired Kalon Capital, a Stamford, Connecticut-based equipment finance company, expanding its capabilities in mid-ticket equipment financing and asset-backed private credit. The acquisition brings Kalon's financing platform and experienced management team into Peakline's investment business, strengthening its ability to originate equipment financing transactions directly and serve businesses across the United States.

THINK Surgical Appoints Rick McDowell As Vice President Of Sales

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

THINK Surgical, a developer of orthopedic surgical robots, has appointed Rick McDowell as Vice President of Sales. McDowell brings more than 20 years of experience in medical device commercialization, clinical strategy, and capital sales, including extensive leadership experience in surgical robotics. He will report to Chris Marrus, Executive Vice President, and lead the company's national sales organization as THINK Surgical expands its commercial operations.

Paul Weiss Expands Private Equity Practice With Christopher Machera And Five Additional Lawyers

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP has announced the expansion of its private equity practice with the addition of a six-lawyer transactional team led by Christopher Machera. Machera has joined the firm's Private Equity M&A Group within its Corporate Department as a partner in New York, while Timothy Burns, Noah Beck, Amanda Rotkel, Andrew Lawson, and Dylan Hans are expected to join in the coming weeks.

meshIQ Launches AgentIQ To Provide Real-Time Governance And Control Over Enterprise AI Agents

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

meshIQ has launched AgentIQ, a new AI agent governance solution designed to provide enterprises with real-time visibility, oversight, and control over autonomous AI agents. The platform operates directly within an agent's execution flow, allowing organizations to enforce policies, intervene in potentially risky activities, and maintain comprehensive audit records as AI agents operate across different enterprise systems and frameworks.

Pinterest Unveils Visual Search Ads And New AI-Powered Advertising Tools

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Pinterest has introduced Visual Search Ads, a new advertising format designed to help brands reach consumers as they search visually for products, compare options, and make purchasing decisions. Announced on September 17, 2026, during the company's annual Pinterest Presents advertiser summit, the new offering combines visual search technology with advertising placements across Pinterest Search Results and Pin closeups.

Nscale IPO Filing Reveals $103.4 Billion In Active And Contracted AI Infrastructure Agreements

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Nscale has filed for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, revealing $103.4 billion in active and contracted total contract value (TCV) as of August 31, 2026. The London-based artificial intelligence infrastructure company disclosed the figure in its September 18 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, highlighting the scale of its agreements with major technology companies and AI developers. Nscale plans to list on the NYSE under the ticker symbol NSCL.

GRAIL Shares Surged As FDA Staff Reviews Galleri Multi-Cancer Blood Test

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

GRAIL shares surged 35% after U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff reviewers raised no major concerns regarding key analytical and safety aspects of Galleri, the company’s blood-based multi-cancer screening test. The development comes ahead of a September 23, 2026 meeting of the FDA’s Molecular and Clinical Genetics Panel, which will review GRAIL’s application for premarket approval of Galleri.

Paul Weiss Hires Deidre Kalenderian As Executive Compensation Partner In New York

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP has announced that Deidre Kalenderian has joined the firm as a partner in its Executive Compensation Department in New York. Kalenderian, who previously served as a partner at Paul Hastings, advises private equity sponsors and companies on executive compensation and employee benefits matters associated with complex corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and initial public offerings.

Eli Lilly Breaks Ground On $6.5 Billion Houston Manufacturing Facility

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Eli Lilly and Company has broken ground on a $6.5 billion manufacturing facility in Houston, Texas, marking another milestone in the pharmaceutical company's $50 billion initiative to expand domestic medicine production. The facility is one of 10 U.S. manufacturing sites Lilly has announced since 2020 and will produce active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for Foundayo (orforglipron), the company's first synthetic oral GLP-1 medicine, alongside other small-molecule medicines and advanced therapeutics.

Sorren Expands Into Legal Services With Launch Of Sorren Law

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Sorren, a Top 50 national accounting and advisory firm, announced the launch of Sorren Law, a new legal services practice designed to help businesses, investors, and individuals navigate complex legal matters. The expansion adds legal capabilities to Sorren's existing tax, assurance, advisory, and outsourced accounting services, allowing clients to access legal guidance alongside broader financial and business advisory resources.

Oura Seeks Up To $2.2 Billion At $15.6 Billion IPO Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Oura and some of its existing shareholders are seeking to raise as much as $2.2 billion through a U.S. initial public offering that could value the smart-ring maker at approximately $15.62 billion, according to Reuters.

Michigan CDFI Coalition Approved For Up To $10 Million Loan From Michigan Strategic Fund

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) announced that the Michigan Strategic Fund (MSF) Board has approved a loan of up to $10 million to the Michigan CDFI Coalition. The funding will increase lending capital available to Michigan-based, non-depository Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), supporting small businesses, affordable housing, and community development projects throughout the state.

Shopify Integrates Shop Pay With Meta Muse For AI-Powered Checkout

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Shopify will integrate its Shop Pay system with Meta’s Muse personal AI agent, allowing users to complete purchases from participating merchants without leaving the AI conversation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Tricentis: Interview With Chief Product Officer Eran Sher About Agentic Quality Engineering

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Tricentis provides an end-to-end enterprise agentic quality engineering platform designed to help the world’s largest organizations scale software quality at the speed of AI while maintaining governance and human oversight. Its portfolio includes Tosca for test automation, qTest for test management and visibility, NeoLoad for performance testing, SeaLights for quality intelligence, and a growing set of AI agents coordinated through Tricentis AI Workspace. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Tricentis Chief Product Officer Eran Sher to learn more.

Michigan State University Research Foundation Breaks Ground On $20 Million Rosenberg Center

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

The Michigan State University Research Foundation (MSU Research Foundation) has officially broken ground on the Rosenberg Center, a $20 million, 65,000-square-foot innovation hub on Michigan State University's campus in East Lansing. I had the opportunity to attend the groundbreaking ceremony, and it was wonderful to see the university, business leaders, and Michigan's entrepreneurial community come together to celebrate this major investment in the region's innovation economy. The facility is expected to open in summer 2027 and will bring startups, researchers, investors, and corporate partners together to accelerate the commercialization of new technologies.

Teal Health Raises $22 Million Series A To Expand FDA-Authorized At-Home Cervical Cancer Screening

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Teal Health has raised $22 million in Series A funding to expand access to its FDA-authorized at-home HPV cervical cancer screening platform as the women's healthcare company prepares for broader insurance coverage beginning in January 2027.

Cognex To Acquire RealSense For $500 Million To Expand Into Robotic Perception And Physical AI

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Cognex Corporation has agreed to acquire RealSense for approximately $500 million, expanding the industrial machine vision company's capabilities into 3D robotic perception and Physical AI as demand grows for robots capable of navigating and interacting with real-world environments.

Hunt Scanlon Ventures Invests In Millionways, Building The Behavioral Intelligence Layer For AI

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Hunt Scanlon Ventures, an M&A advisory firm focused on the human capital markets, has completed an investment in millionways, a New York-headquartered frontier lab building a behavioral intelligence layer for AI. millionways pioneered the development of a proprietary Large Psychology Model, Thorsten-4, designed to understand human signals, motives, communication patterns, and behavior, with applications across AI governance, executive hiring, talent management, and leadership assessment.

Alibaba Unveils New AI Chip And Plans Model With Up To 10 Trillion Parameters

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Alibaba Group is significantly expanding its artificial intelligence ambitions with a new processor, a much larger foundation model and a major increase in data-center capacity, according to Reuters.

Nexstrom Raises $12 Million Seed Funding To Commercialize 12-Inch 2D Semiconductor Wafers For AI Chips

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Nexstrom has raised a $12 million seed round to commercialize its wafer-scale 2D semiconductor platform, which is being developed to help chipmakers move beyond the physical limitations of silicon for next-generation AI and high-performance computing systems.

Sela’s AI Agents Help Originate $1 Billion In Loans Per Month, Company Raises $21 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Sela, the market-leading voice AI system for mortgage sales, has announced a total of $21 million in funding across Seed and Series A, led by Costanoa, with participation from Emergence Capital. Sela's AI agents currently help loan officers originate more than $1 billion in new mortgages per month, and the company has crossed $10 million in annualized run-rate revenue in 18 months. Six of the ten largest independent mortgage banks now use Sela.

Bird&Be Raises $13 Million To Expand Supplements, At-Home Testing, And Retail Distribution

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Bird&Be, a fertility and wellness company providing supplements and at-home reproductive health tests for women and men, has raised $13 million in new funding to accelerate product development, clinical research, retail expansion and broader access to evidence-backed fertility care. The round was led by BDC Thrive and BFG Partners, with participation from BAM Ventures, Founder Collective, Rejuvenation Ventures and HSR Ventures.

Ambitious Bio Launches Corpus To Map Protein Presence Across Healthy Human Tissues

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Ambitious Bio, a life sciences and AI infrastructure company building systematic records of human biology for artificial intelligence, announced the launch of Corpus, a comprehensive map of protein presence and relative abundance across healthy human tissues.

AttackIQ Names Former DISA CTO Dave Mihelcic As Federal Field CTO To Lead AI-Powered Cyber Defense Expansion

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

AttackIQ has appointed former Defense Information Systems Agency Chief Technology Officer Dave Mihelcic as Field Chief Technology Officer - Federal, adding a veteran government technology leader as the cybersecurity company expands its threat-informed Continuous Threat Exposure Management capabilities across federal agencies.

FactSet Acquires BCC Group To Expand Real-Time Market Data Solution Suite

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

FactSet has announced the acquisition of BCC Group International, a financial software development firm specializing in cloud-native and hybrid market data distribution platforms. The acquisition marks a milestone in the expansion of FactSet's Real-Time Solution Suite, strengthening its market data management capabilities and building on an ongoing collaboration between the two firms since 2021.

Cisco Partners With Notre Dame Athletics To Modernize Campus Network For AI Era

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Cisco has entered a multi-year partnership with Notre Dame Athletics to modernize the University of Notre Dame's campus-wide network, deploying advanced networking technologies intended to improve connectivity, resiliency and operational efficiency as artificial intelligence increases demands on higher-education infrastructure.

Paramount Completes $110 Billion Warner Bros. Discovery Acquisition After Settlements

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 22, 2026

Paramount Skydance completed its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery after settling legal challenges brought by a California-led coalition of states and the Writers Guild of America, according to Reuters.