BIGC Partners with Bauer Lab to Expand K-POP in the Middle East




BIGC Partners with Bauer Lab to Expand K-POP in the Middle East

• EnterTech Platform and Immersive Dome Theater Join Forces to Build Regional Digital Performance Ecosystem
• Mega-Scale Dubai K-POP Festival Planned as Strategic Gateway for Market Expansion

SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BIGC (CEO Mihee Kim, www.bigc.im), a global entertainment-tech company operating an all-in-one digital venue platform, announced the signing of a strategic MOU with immersive content specialist Bauer Lab to expand K-POP business initiatives in the Middle East.

The agreement, signed on February 10 at BIGC’s headquarters in Gangnam, Seoul, goes beyond simple concert collaboration. The two companies aim to jointly build a Middle East-focused K-POP digital performance ecosystem integrating concerts, exhibitions, and artist IP. By combining their core technologies and platform capabilities, the partners plan to establish a sustainable distribution structure for Korean cultural IP in the region.

As part of the partnership, the companies plan to co-host a mega-scale K-POP festival in Dubai within the year, positioning it as a strategic gateway for expansion into the Middle East. Moving beyond one-time events, the initiative seeks to transform performance content into scalable and monetizable digital assets, with the long-term vision of fostering the Middle East as a key hub for global K-POP expansion.

The Middle East is regarded as a high-potential market, characterized by a young population and rapidly growing global content consumption. According to the “2025 Overseas Hallyu Status Survey,” more than 70% of respondents in countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia reported having consumed K-POP content. While performance infrastructure and digital distribution systems remain underdeveloped in parts of the region, this gap presents significant opportunities for EnterTech-driven market entry. BIGC and Bauer Lab aim to address these structural limitations through technological innovation.

Under the agreement, BIGC will leverage its global “All-in-one Digital Venue” platform to oversee integrated operations including performance planning, ticketing, commerce, fandom services, and data analytics. Through this approach, K-POP concerts in the Middle East will be expanded beyond standalone live events into scalable, platform-driven digital business models.

Bauer Lab will contribute its high-resolution LED dome theater “ORBYT,” specializing in immersive content production and venue operations. Equipped with spatial audio and real-time transmission technology, ORBYT supports not only physical concerts but also virtual performances, hybrid live events, and archive-based content screenings.

Mihee Kim, CEO of BIGC, stated, “By integrating K-POP content with the digital venue technologies of both companies, we aim to establish a new EnterTech model in the Middle East and further expand into diverse K-culture consumption markets worldwide.”

Su Hyun Cho, CEO of Bauer Lab, commented, “We seek to transform performances from one-time events into scalable and continuously distributable content assets. By combining BIGC’s global platform capabilities with ORBYT’s immersive technology, we will introduce a new concert experience to the Middle East.”

BIGC operates an all-in-one digital venue platform for the entertainment industry, offering integrated services including BIGC PASS (ticketing), AI Live, commerce, fandom services, and data analytics.

With more than 1.3 million members across 230 countries, the company continues to strengthen its global footprint across key entertainment markets.

Through this partnership, BIGC aims to accelerate its digital expansion strategy for K-POP IP in the Middle East and beyond.

Contact information: marketing@bigc.im 

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ebbfdc5b-ba6f-44fc-93e0-5dd4aef7ad3b

BIGC Partners with Bauer Lab to Expand K-POP in the Middle East




BIGC Partners with Bauer Lab to Expand K-POP in the Middle East

• EnterTech Platform and Immersive Dome Theater Join Forces to Build Regional Digital Performance Ecosystem
• Mega-Scale Dubai K-POP Festival Planned as Strategic Gateway for Market Expansion

SEOUL, South Korea, Feb. 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BIGC (CEO Mihee Kim, www.bigc.im), a global entertainment-tech company operating an all-in-one digital venue platform, announced the signing of a strategic MOU with immersive content specialist Bauer Lab to expand K-POP business initiatives in the Middle East.

The agreement, signed on February 10 at BIGC’s headquarters in Gangnam, Seoul, goes beyond simple concert collaboration. The two companies aim to jointly build a Middle East-focused K-POP digital performance ecosystem integrating concerts, exhibitions, and artist IP. By combining their core technologies and platform capabilities, the partners plan to establish a sustainable distribution structure for Korean cultural IP in the region.

As part of the partnership, the companies plan to co-host a mega-scale K-POP festival in Dubai within the year, positioning it as a strategic gateway for expansion into the Middle East. Moving beyond one-time events, the initiative seeks to transform performance content into scalable and monetizable digital assets, with the long-term vision of fostering the Middle East as a key hub for global K-POP expansion.

The Middle East is regarded as a high-potential market, characterized by a young population and rapidly growing global content consumption. According to the “2025 Overseas Hallyu Status Survey,” more than 70% of respondents in countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia reported having consumed K-POP content. While performance infrastructure and digital distribution systems remain underdeveloped in parts of the region, this gap presents significant opportunities for EnterTech-driven market entry. BIGC and Bauer Lab aim to address these structural limitations through technological innovation.

Under the agreement, BIGC will leverage its global “All-in-one Digital Venue” platform to oversee integrated operations including performance planning, ticketing, commerce, fandom services, and data analytics. Through this approach, K-POP concerts in the Middle East will be expanded beyond standalone live events into scalable, platform-driven digital business models.

Bauer Lab will contribute its high-resolution LED dome theater “ORBYT,” specializing in immersive content production and venue operations. Equipped with spatial audio and real-time transmission technology, ORBYT supports not only physical concerts but also virtual performances, hybrid live events, and archive-based content screenings.

Mihee Kim, CEO of BIGC, stated, “By integrating K-POP content with the digital venue technologies of both companies, we aim to establish a new EnterTech model in the Middle East and further expand into diverse K-culture consumption markets worldwide.”

Su Hyun Cho, CEO of Bauer Lab, commented, “We seek to transform performances from one-time events into scalable and continuously distributable content assets. By combining BIGC’s global platform capabilities with ORBYT’s immersive technology, we will introduce a new concert experience to the Middle East.”

BIGC operates an all-in-one digital venue platform for the entertainment industry, offering integrated services including BIGC PASS (ticketing), AI Live, commerce, fandom services, and data analytics.

With more than 1.3 million members across 230 countries, the company continues to strengthen its global footprint across key entertainment markets.

Through this partnership, BIGC aims to accelerate its digital expansion strategy for K-POP IP in the Middle East and beyond.

Contact information: marketing@bigc.im 

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ebbfdc5b-ba6f-44fc-93e0-5dd4aef7ad3b

Clicks Brings Communicator to New Markets with Localized Keyboard Layouts




Clicks Brings Communicator to New Markets with Localized Keyboard Layouts

Communication-centric Android smartphone will be available in English (QWERTY), French (AZERTY), German (QWERTZ), Korean and Arabic keyboard layouts

LONDON, Feb. 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Clicks Technology, today announced expanded language support for Clicks Communicator, introducing new localized keyboard layouts that bring the communication-focused Android smartphone to more users globally. The update reflects stronger-than-expected demand since opening reservations earlier this year, and reinforces the role of Communicator being purpose-built to help people communicate with confidence and take action on the go.

New keyboard layouts include French (AZERTY), German (QWERTZ), Korean and Arabic, enabling Communicator to better serve customers across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

In response to strong global interest, Clicks extended the early bird window to March 15, giving customers in these markets the opportunity to take advantage of special pricing and bonuses.

Customers will configure their preferred keyboard layout, along with their Communicator color and back Covers, closer to shipping.

“Communicator reservations continue to exceed our most optimistic forecasts,” said Adrian Li Mow Ching, CEO at Clicks. “The response from customers around the world sends a strong signal that Communicator fills a gap for a phone purpose-built for communicating and taking action. Adding support for French (AZERTY), German (QWERTZ), Korean and Arabic keyboard layouts allows us to bring the Communicator experience to a larger and more diverse audience.”

Purpose-Built For Fast, Responsive Communications Over Time

Clicks also confirmed today that Communicator will be powered by the Dimensity 8300 (MT8883), a modern 4nm architecture that delivers a fast, responsive experience, with performance to spare.

As a smartphone purpose-built for doing, not doomscrolling, Communicator is designed to feel instant and responsive every time it’s picked up, empowering customers to take action on the go. Clicks selected the MT8883 platform to provide plenty of performance headroom while ensuring the experience continues to meet customer expectations over time.

“In building Clicks Communicator, every decision starts with the experience we want customers to have from a device purpose-built for communication,” said Jeff Gadway, Chief Marketing Officer at Clicks. “Strong early demand gave us the opportunity to step up to a more advanced platform that delivers smooth multitasking, consistent responsiveness and strong efficiency with performance to spare.”

The MT8883 platform also supports a long runway for Android and security updates, with software support planned through Android 20 and five years of security updates.

Pricing and Availability

Clicks Communicator will be available in Smoke, Clover, and Onyx at a special launch price of USD $499. Purchase your reservation before March 15 to lock in early bird pricing and priority access:

• Reservation deposit: USD $199 to lock in a USD $399 early bird price, or
• Reservation paid in full: USD $399 with two additional back covers included ($100 value)

Clicks Communicator will begin shipping later this year.

Meet Clicks at MWC 2026
Clicks will be meeting with media, creators and partners at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, March 2-5. Media interested in briefings or hands-on demos can contact press@clicks.tech.

About Clicks Technology

Clicks Technology Ltd is a mobile company empowering people through purpose-built technology. After launching the Clicks Keyboard Case in 2024, Clicks has shipped over 100,000 keyboards for iPhone, Google Pixel and Motorola Razr, with customers in more than 100 countries. Introduced in 2026, Clicks Communicator and Clicks Power Keyboard enable people to cut through the noise and do more on the go. Founded by a team of creators and technologists with decades of experience at some of the world’s most well-known mobile brands, Clicks is passionate about building products to help people take action. For more information on Clicks, visit: clicks.tech.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/b67c1e90-3057-4b47-b81b-e3b9553a83aa

A video accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/92250cc1-a9f0-425e-b99b-9ca2e38876a9

Baba Emerges from Stealth with Over $6.5 Million in Seed Funding to Expand Medicare-Covered Patient Advocacy for Older Adults




Baba Emerges from Stealth with Over $6.5 Million in Seed Funding to Expand Medicare-Covered Patient Advocacy for Older Adults

Public debut includes Medicare- and Medicare Advantage-covered advocacy model and forthcoming Johns Hopkins clinical study

NEW YORK, Feb. 25, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Baba, a Medicare- and Medicare Advantage-covered patient advocacy platform, today announced its public debut from stealth alongside more than $6.5 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst, with participation from Genius Ventures, Soma Capital, Ground Up Ventures, Triedge Investments and others. Baba supports older adults and caregivers across their entire healthcare journeys with dedicated, experienced human advocates who help improve care follow-through for patients, reduce administrative burden for providers, and support a more efficient healthcare system.

Baba’s advocates, who are usually nurses or social workers, manage the operational breakdowns that most often derail care plans, including insurance challenges, scheduling issues, and care coordination, while working alongside providers rather than outside the system.

“Healthcare has become increasingly complex for older adults and caregivers, who are often left to navigate insurance rules, scheduling, paperwork, and provider coordination on their own,” said Connor Sweeney, founder and CEO of Baba. “In life’s most important healthcare moments, a family shouldn’t be learning how to navigate the American healthcare system on the fly. We built Baba to expand access to professional care coordination that was previously only accessible to the top 1%, and we’re excited to build a proactive, rather than reactive, frontline to each healthcare journey.”

In addition to human advocacy, Baba offers a phone- and text-based AI companion that provides daily engagement, reminders, and early signals when barriers to care arise—allowing advocates to intervene quickly and manage follow-through.

“Care coordination is one of the most underappreciated drivers of healthcare outcomes,” said Jon Gruber, professor of economics at MIT and advisor to Baba. “But it often ends too soon and is too disconnected. By building a model that combines human advocacy for the most severe cases with AI support as patient acuity improves, Baba is addressing a real system gap in a way that’s scalable and reflects how older adults actually experience healthcare.”

To date, Baba has supported more than 6,000 families. The company partners with nursing homes, home care agencies, and home health organizations nationwide to connect patients with Baba’s dedicated advocates during care transitions. Baba is enrolling in an IRB-approved clinical study with Johns Hopkins to independently evaluate the impact of its advocacy model on health and claims outcomes.

The capital will support the continued expansion of Baba’s Medicare-covered advocacy services, deepen partnerships with providers and health systems, and advance its long-term mission to make healthcare simpler, safer, and more manageable by embedding advocacy throughout the care journey. For more information, visit www.callbaba.com.

About Baba
Baba is a Medicare- and Medicare Advantage-covered patient advocacy platform that supports older adults and caregivers across their entire healthcare journeys. By embedding dedicated human advocates into care delivery, Baba helps reduce operational friction, improve follow-through, and ensure patients are never left to navigate healthcare alone.

Media Contact:
Devin Getz
dgetz@thisisoutcast.com

Baba Emerges from Stealth with Over $6.5 Million in Seed Funding to Expand Medicare-Covered Patient Advocacy for Older Adults




Baba Emerges from Stealth with Over $6.5 Million in Seed Funding to Expand Medicare-Covered Patient Advocacy for Older Adults

Public debut includes Medicare- and Medicare Advantage-covered advocacy model and forthcoming Johns Hopkins clinical study

NEW YORK, Feb. 25, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Baba, a Medicare- and Medicare Advantage-covered patient advocacy platform, today announced its public debut from stealth alongside more than $6.5 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst, with participation from Genius Ventures, Soma Capital, Ground Up Ventures, Triedge Investments and others. Baba supports older adults and caregivers across their entire healthcare journeys with dedicated, experienced human advocates who help improve care follow-through for patients, reduce administrative burden for providers, and support a more efficient healthcare system.

Baba’s advocates, who are usually nurses or social workers, manage the operational breakdowns that most often derail care plans, including insurance challenges, scheduling issues, and care coordination, while working alongside providers rather than outside the system.

“Healthcare has become increasingly complex for older adults and caregivers, who are often left to navigate insurance rules, scheduling, paperwork, and provider coordination on their own,” said Connor Sweeney, founder and CEO of Baba. “In life’s most important healthcare moments, a family shouldn’t be learning how to navigate the American healthcare system on the fly. We built Baba to expand access to professional care coordination that was previously only accessible to the top 1%, and we’re excited to build a proactive, rather than reactive, frontline to each healthcare journey.”

In addition to human advocacy, Baba offers a phone- and text-based AI companion that provides daily engagement, reminders, and early signals when barriers to care arise—allowing advocates to intervene quickly and manage follow-through.

“Care coordination is one of the most underappreciated drivers of healthcare outcomes,” said Jon Gruber, professor of economics at MIT and advisor to Baba. “But it often ends too soon and is too disconnected. By building a model that combines human advocacy for the most severe cases with AI support as patient acuity improves, Baba is addressing a real system gap in a way that’s scalable and reflects how older adults actually experience healthcare.”

To date, Baba has supported more than 6,000 families. The company partners with nursing homes, home care agencies, and home health organizations nationwide to connect patients with Baba’s dedicated advocates during care transitions. Baba is enrolling in an IRB-approved clinical study with Johns Hopkins to independently evaluate the impact of its advocacy model on health and claims outcomes.

The capital will support the continued expansion of Baba’s Medicare-covered advocacy services, deepen partnerships with providers and health systems, and advance its long-term mission to make healthcare simpler, safer, and more manageable by embedding advocacy throughout the care journey. For more information, visit www.callbaba.com.

About Baba
Baba is a Medicare- and Medicare Advantage-covered patient advocacy platform that supports older adults and caregivers across their entire healthcare journeys. By embedding dedicated human advocates into care delivery, Baba helps reduce operational friction, improve follow-through, and ensure patients are never left to navigate healthcare alone.

Media Contact:
Devin Getz
dgetz@thisisoutcast.com

Wootzwork raises $6.6M to bring predictability to offshore manufacturing




Wootzwork raises $6.6M to bring predictability to offshore manufacturing

Wootzwork is scaling a new manufacturing model that gives global OEMs a single, accountable partner for complex industrial programs across India and Southeast Asia.

Houston, Feb. 25, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — As global manufacturing shifts across regions, supply chains, and regulatory environments, execution risk has quietly become one of the biggest constraints on industrial growth. For many OEMs, the challenge is no longer access to factories, but the complexity of coordinating dozens of suppliers, quality systems, timelines, and interfaces across borders. Wootzwork was built to solve that problem. Today, the company announced a $6.6 million Series A round to scale a new model of manufacturing execution built around single-point accountability. 

Wootzwork co-founders: Himanshu Uniyal and Karan Anand.

The round was led by Z47, with continued participation from Nexus Venture Partners and AdvantEdge Founders, and the addition of Stride Ventures. The capital will be used to expand Wootzwork’s global engineering and program teams, support larger and more complex OEM programs, and scale its manufacturing control systems across regions.

As industrial supply chains globalise, execution has become increasingly fragmented. Programs now span multiple countries, dozens of suppliers, and different quality frameworks, creating coordination gaps that lead to delays, rework, and cost overruns. It is estimated that 15 to 30 percent of anticipated offshore savings are typically lost through these breakdowns. What should be a strategic advantage often turns into an operational burden that absorbs time, talent, and leadership attention.

Wootzwork was built as an alternative to that model. The company operates as a single, accountable manufacturing partner to global OEM’s for complex industrial programs across India and Southeast Asia, with on-shore manufacturing where required in customer markets. This allows OEMs to execute at scale without managing factories, interfaces, or execution risk internally. Wootzwork operates with engineering and program teams across India, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, enabling close coordination with enterprise customers while retaining deep on-ground manufacturing control.

“Most companies treat manufacturing complexity as a risk to be minimised,” said Karan Anand, co-founder and CEO of Wootzwork. “We treat it as a competitive advantage. When the system is engineered properly, complexity becomes leverage – not chaos.” 

No factory in the world is fully efficient for any complex product. Modern OEM programs involve high-mix parts, specialised processes, and sequencing that rarely exist under one roof and often shouldn’t, for economic reasons. Even when capacity exists, the right machine, process maturity, or quality discipline is usually fragmented across suppliers. By mapping, qualifying, and governing manufacturing capacity across regions, Wootzwork orchestrates the journey of a product from concept to factory-level output in weeks rather than years. For global enterprises, this translates into faster time to production, fewer internal teams tied up in supplier coordination, and full visibility and control from raw materials through final delivery which allows them to stay focused on product, engineering, and customers instead of execution complexity.

Over the past year, Wootzwork has executed highly complex, cross-border manufacturing programs for more than 22 global enterprises across 12 international trade lanes spanning North America, Europe, and APAC. These include the US, UK, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand. 

The company has activated a network of more than 300 suppliers, executing over 30 million parts and assemblies across precision components, heavy and structural fabrication, industrial fasteners and hardware, custom industrial machines, process equipment and skids, and multi-part assemblies. Programs span industries including food processing, packaging, renewable energy, data centres, automotive engineering, material handling, warehousing, and industrial hardware. Across these programs, Wootzwork has maintained greater than 98 percent on-time delivery and quality compliance under stringent international quality frameworks.

“Even as a relatively new partner, Wootzwork moved very quickly to support us across a broad range of work, including programs tied to demanding end customers,” said Felix Franke, managing director at Saxonia-Franke GmbH & Co. KG. “Their ability to ramp up fast while maintaining quality gave us confidence early on.”

“Working with Wootzwork has been a seamless experience,” added Curtis Bishop, director of sales at AFC Industries. “The team stands out for its responsiveness and ability to stay flexible as our requirements evolve. Their quoting process is extremely thorough, and they remain highly adaptable to our needs. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Wootzwork in 2026 and beyond.”

Under the hood, Wootzwork overlays its proprietary engineering, governance, and execution systems on top of existing factory infrastructure, enabling manufacturing partners to operate at global standards without being replaced or rebuilt. “Scale usually breaks quality because systems don’t scale with it,” explains Himanshu Uniyal, co-founder and COO of Wootzwork. “We built the system so quality scales with execution, not against it.”

“Wootzwork represents the kind of founder-led global ambition in advanced manufacturing that we want to back from India,” said Sudipto Sannigrahi, Managing Partner and Investor at Z47. “Karan and Himanshu have built deep execution capability in a space where trust is earned over years, not quarters. We are happy to see the AI driven manufacturing engine that Wootzwork has built and the quality of global customers they are adding value to. We’re proud to support them with patient capital, conviction, and partnership as they build a globally relevant manufacturing company.” 

The Series A will enable Wootzwork to expand its engineering footprint, deepen its manufacturing control capabilities, and take on larger, more mission-critical OEM programs. As global supply chains continue to rebalance, the company believes the next phase of industrial manufacturing will be defined less by geography and more by who owns execution.

Media images can be found here. 

About Wootzwork
Wootzwork Labs Pvt. Ltd. (India), Wootzwork Labs Ltd. (UK), and Wootzwork Labs Inc. (US) together form a global advanced engineering and manufacturing solutions company serving OEMs. Operating across India and Southeast Asia, with teams in India, the US, the UK, and Italy, Wootzwork integrates engineering, precision manufacturing, and digitally governed quality systems to deliver globally competitive manufacturing outcomes at scale.

CONTACT: For further information please contact the Wootzwork press office on press@wootz.work 

General Magic Raises Oversubscribed US$7.2M to Cut Insurance Quote Time to 3 Minutes




General Magic Raises Oversubscribed US$7.2M to Cut Insurance Quote Time to 3 Minutes

AI agents reduce inbound calls by 30%, deploy in 3 minutes, and save teams 250+ hours monthly across pre-quote, post-quote, and claims workflows

Toronto, Feb. 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Insurance is complicated. Customers have questions before they quote, need guidance after, and expect clarity when they file a claim. But the work of answering those questions, collecting documents, and following up still runs on calls, emails, and portals stitched together by manual effort. For brokers and carriers, this coordination overhead is one of the most operationally expensive and taxing parts of the business. General Magic is building AI agents to solve this problem.

The General Magic team.

Today, the company announced a US$7.2M seed funding round led by Radical Ventures, with significant participation from a16z Speedrun and new investment from Figma VP of Product Brendan O’Driscoll and Larry James Erwin from OpenAI. The company has raised $8.4M to date, backed by Radical Ventures, a16z Speedrun, and Comma Capital, along with operators who have built foundational AI and product platforms, including Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere, as well as the executive team at Braze, including Kevin Wang, Chief Product Officer, and Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth.

General Magic builds AI agents that take over the work insurance teams spend the most time on: answering routine questions, collecting documents, and following up with customers when clarity matters. These agents work across the full insurance lifecycle, covering pre-quote eligibility, post quote engagement, and claims coordination. They do all of this while connecting directly to broker management systems, quoting platforms, and CRMs. 

Early deployments show what’s possible. Working with one of the world’s largest general insurers, General Magic has reduced time-to-quote from roughly 30 minutes down to under 3 minutes via its SMS-based agent. 

“Too much of insurance still relies on manual follow through across calls, inboxes, and scattered systems,” said Jai Mansukhani, Co Founder and President of General Magic. “We focus on keeping customers engaged at every stage of the lifecycle, not just at quote or claim. Our agents handle the routine work that slows teams down, while giving insurance leaders real visibility into what customers are asking, where they are getting stuck, and how they are feeling. When that engagement and data flow directly into core systems, teams move faster and customers feel genuinely supported.”

The company’s agentic offerings are centered around a product called Cell, a proactive AI agent that connects directly to the systems insurance teams already use. Cell integrates with broker management systems, quoting and rating platforms and CRMs to support teams. It can be deployed across SMS, iMessage and RCS, and can extend into policy, billing and claims workflows as needed.

When a customer has a question, they can text Cell over SMS, or the insurance team can proactively deploy it to the customer. The agent responds using real system data, asks for missing information, follows up automatically, and updates records as workflows progress. Conversations stay in one thread, context is preserved, and customers move forward at their own pace without being chased or dropped.

Early deployments point to the scale of the opportunity. In early rollouts with large personal lines insurers, General Magic is reducing the time required to generate and finalize quotes from roughly 30 minutes to about 3 minutes by automating routine clarification and follow ups over SMS across auto and life insurance workflows. This increase in speed expands effective quoting capacity while keeping customers engaged through the most failure prone part of the journey after a quote is issued. By handling frequent questions and coordination over text, the agent reduces delays and prevents conversations from stalling. General Magic is currently supporting deployments with carriers across auto and life insurance, where post quote follow through and customer coordination are most critical.

In parallel, the team is focused on building agents that understand the realities of insurance distribution, including licensing and regulatory frameworks such as RIBO, OTL, and other broker and advisor exams. By specializing agents around how licensed professionals are trained to communicate, General Magic aims to ensure conversations feel accurate, compliant, and aligned with how insurance teams actually explain coverage to customers.

General Magic was founded by Anthony Azrak and Jai Mansukhani, second-time founders who previously sold AI products into legacy industries. The company’s move into insurance came from firsthand frustration. After a water leak spiraled into weeks of calls, delays, and higher premiums, the founders began exploring how common this experience really was. What they found was an industry that technically works, but often fails customers and intermediaries in the moments that matter most. That insight shaped General Magic’s decision to go deep into insurance rather than remain a horizontal AI platform.

The broader industry context underscores the urgency. Retention rates in insurance lag behind other sectors, and acquiring new customers costs significantly more than keeping existing ones. As digital distribution accelerates and customers shop more aggressively at renewal, both carriers and brokers that fail to improve post-quote engagement risk losing revenue they already worked to win.

Looking ahead, General Magic plans to expand across insurance lines and workflows, staying focused on moments where customer intent is high and coordination most often breaks down. The platform is being built to support high impact workflows across the insurance stack, prioritizing areas where follow through fails today and where fixing it creates meaningful value for customers, brokers, and carriers.

The long term vision is simple but ambitious: make follow through automatic, reliable, and invisible. By removing the need for manual chasing and fragmented handoffs, teams can spend less time managing processes and more time serving end customers. The team is motivated by solving complex, real world problems
that sit at the center of insurance operations, with the goal of delivering tangible improvements to how people experience insurance when it matters most.

Sanjana Basu, partner at Radical Ventures commented: “Most of the world’s financial and insurance data is locked inside rigid, legacy systems that were never designed for the AI era. General Magic isn’t trying to convince enterprises to throw away that infrastructure. Instead, they are giving them a way to finally talk to it. By building a reasoning layer that sits on top of existing systems of record, the General Magic team are unlocking a massive amount of trapped value. This is how the Fortune 500 becomes AI-native. Not by rebuilding from scratch, but by bridging the gap between old data and new intelligence.” 

Troy Kirwin, investment partner at a16z Speedrun added: “We’ve watched Anthony and Jai grow exponentially both during their speedrun cohort and in the months after. They are building a truly compelling product that we believe will revolutionize workflows across insurance carriers and brokerages globally. I have a personal thesis that outsiders will disrupt legacy industries, and General Magic has helped buttress this thesis with the immense progress they’ve made. We are excited to deepen our partnership through supporting their seed round.” 

Pete Tessier, BFA, CAIB, President at insurance MGA Taycon Risk added: “What I have seen with General Magic and their approach to AI was a willingness to adapt to the insurance industry’s needs.  This is significant because of the varied nuances of the insurance industry and how its products are distributed and why internal and external customer journeys are different. The challenge will be making it scale across all channels of insurance product distribution.  This might be the first true ‘game changer’ for the industry and deliver on customer experience and expectations”

Media images can be found here. 

About General Magic
General Magic, an AI company headquartered in Toronto, is building SMS native AI agents that power insurance workflows through natural language. The platform translates customer messages into actions across core insurance systems, making it possible to quote, service, renew, and manage claims entirely over text. The company believes natural language will be the default interface for getting work done. General Magic is focused on leading that shift in insurance, starting with SMS. 

About Radical Ventures
Radical Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in world-leading entrepreneurs who are applying artificial intelligence to transform massive industries. We partner with extraordinary founders at the forefront of the AI revolution, helping them build companies that will shape the future. Radical operates globally with teams in Toronto, San Francisco, New York, and London.

About a16z speedrun
Speedrun is Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) flagship program that invests in new startups across consumer/enterprise AI, bio + healthcare, crypto, fintech, games, infrastructure, and companies building toward American dynamism. Founded in Silicon Valley in 2009, a16z has $90B in assets under management.

CONTACT: For further information please contact the General Magic press office: Bilal Mahmood on b.mahmood@stockwoodstrategy.com or +447714007257

Potpie AI raises $2.2 million to make AI agents usable inside real-world engineering systems




Potpie AI raises $2.2 million to make AI agents usable inside real-world engineering systems

Potpie is building a foundational context layer that allows AI agents to operate across complex, large-scale codebases the way experienced engineers do.

San Francisco, Feb. 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Software teams are moving faster than ever, yet the systems they build and maintain were never designed for AI agents to operate inside them. Codebases span millions of lines, context is scattered across dozens of tools, and critical knowledge lives in the heads of a few senior engineers. Potpie was built to change that. Today, the company announced a $2.2 million pre-seed round to help engineering teams unify context across their entire stack and make AI agents genuinely useful in complex software environments.  

The round was led by Emergent Ventures with participation from All In Capital, DeVC and Point One Capital. The capital will be used to support early enterprise deployments, expand the engineering team, and continue building Potpie’s core context and agent infrastructure.

Potpie AI founders Aditi Kothari and Dhiren Mathur.

As generative AI adoption accelerates, most tools focus on surface-level code generation while ignoring the deeper problem of context. Large language models are powerful, but without access to system-level understanding, tooling history, and architectural intent, they struggle in real production environments. Traditional approaches rely on senior engineers to manually hold this context together, a model that breaks down at scale and fails entirely when AI agents are introduced.

Potpie addresses this by unifying context across the entire engineering stack and enabling spec driven development. It pulls in information from source code, tickets, logs, documentation, and reviews, links it together, and makes it usable by agents.

Potpie AI product overview.

With Potpie, the spec becomes the source of truth. Agents plan the feature end to end first by turning requirements into a clear implementation plan, mapping dependencies and edge cases, and aligning tests and rollout steps before writing a single line of code. The principle is simple. An agent is only as effective as the information it can access and the tools it can use. Potpie focuses on both.

“As AI makes code generation easier, the real challenge shifts to reasoning across massive, interconnected systems. Potpie is our answer to that shift, an ontology-first layer that helps enterprises truly understand and manage their software” said Aditi Kothari, CEO and co-founder of Potpie.“

The platform enables teams to automate high-impact and non trivial use cases across the software development lifecycle, like debugging cross-service failures, maintaining and writing end-to-end tests, blast radius detection and system design.  It is designed for enterprise companies with large and complex codebases, starting at around one million lines of code and scaling to hundreds of millions. Rather than acting as another coding assistant, Potpie builds a graphical representation of software systems, infers behavior and patterns across modules, and creates structured artifacts that allow agents to operate consistently and safely.

Potpie also actively creates context as systems evolve. When pull requests are created, it can update documentation and tickets automatically. When tickets are opened, it can generate system designs. The platform automatically generates structured behavior definitions for each AI agent, outlining how they should operate within a specific codebase. At the same time, it builds a searchable, tagged index across APIs, services, databases, and components, narrowing the search space and significantly improving reliability.

The company was founded by Aditi Kothari and Dhiren Mathur, who began working on the problem in October 2023, at the start of the first wave of generative AI adoption. While much of the industry focused on knowledge workers, they saw that developers faced a fundamentally different challenge. Code is non-linear, deeply interconnected, and spread across large systems. They spent nearly two years building the foundational layer that understands codebases and creates the underlying knowledge graph, before launching Potpie publicly last year in January 2025

Early deployments reflect the scale of the problem Potpie is addressing. One customer with a codebase exceeding 40 million lines reduced root cause analysis for production issues from nearly a week to around 30 minutes, with engineers acting as reviewers instead of investigators. Another customer maintaining decades-old systems used Potpie to update and generate tests in the background, compressing work that previously took multiple sprints into a much shorter cycle.

Anupam Rastogi, Managing Partner at Emergent Ventures, commented:  In large enterprises, the real challenge is not generating code, it is understanding the system deeply enough to change it safely. Potpie’s ontology-first architecture, combined with rigorous context curation and spec-driven development, creates a structured model of the entire engineering ecosystem. This allows AI agents to reason across services, dependencies, tickets, and production signals with the clarity of a senior engineer. That is what makes Potpie uniquely capable of solving complex RCA, impact analysis, and high-risk feature work even in codebases exceeding 50 million lines.”

Potpie currently works with Fortune 500 and publicly listed companies in regulated industries, including healthcare and insurtech. Its open-source projects have surpassed 5,000 stars on GitHub, creating a strong magnet for enterprise adoption. 

“AI readiness is not about picking the right model,” Aditi Kothari added. “It’s about building systems that can support intelligence over time. Our goal is to make Potpie the foundational layer engineering teams rely on to build, operate, and evolve complex software with AI built in from the start.”

Media images can be found here.

About Potpie
Potpie is a foundational context layer that allows AI agents to operate across complex, large-scale codebases the way experienced engineers do. 

Potpie pulls in information from source code, tickets, logs, documentation, and reviews, links it together, and makes it usable by agents. In doing so, Potpie is unifying context across the entire engineering stack and enabling spec driven development.

With Potpie, the spec becomes the source of truth, not the existing code. Agents plan the feature end to end first by turning requirements into a clear implementation plan, mapping dependencies and edge cases, and aligning tests and rollout steps before writing a single line of code. The principle is simple. An agent is only as effective as the information it can access and the tools it can use. Potpie focuses on both. For more information please visit https://potpie.ai/

CONTACT: For more information please contact the Potpie AI press office: Bilal Mahmood on b.mahmood@stockwoodstrategy.com or +447714007257.

HappyRobot expands EMEA team, appointing Mia Bjorkenstam as MD for region




HappyRobot expands EMEA team, appointing Mia Bjorkenstam as MD for region

Ex-Palantir Technologies exec to lead go-to-market strategy and regional operations across EMEA.

San Francisco, Feb. 18, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mia Bjorkenstam joins from Palantir Technologies, where she worked with enterprise customers to identify high-impact opportunities and deploy custom software solutions to capture them — first as a Deployment Strategist and most recently as a Commercial Lead within Palantir’s Deal Team reporting to OCEO.

The appointment marks the next chapter in HappyRobot’s growing EMEA presence. Founded by Spanish entrepreneurs with deep roots in the region, HappyRobot has built significant momentum with enterprise clients like Naturgy and CMA CGM. With Bjorkenstam based in London, the company is committing to its investment in EMEA — bringing its transformative technology and customer-first approach to a broader market.

At Palantir, Bjorkenstam developed deep experience in translating complex customer problems into deployable software that delivers measurable business value. Her ability to bridge the gap between technical capability and real-world outcomes is central to the role she will play at HappyRobot, where she will lead go-to-market strategy, customer relationships, and regional operations across EMEA.

“The enterprises getting the most from AI aren’t just deploying technology — they’re rethinking how work gets done” said Mia Bjorkenstam, Managing Director, EMEA at HappyRobot. “I’m excited to join a team that genuinely understands that, and to help more EMEA customers find and capture that opportunity.”

“We’re building the infrastructure for enterprises to create their own custom AI workforce — and that requires deep partnership with our customers. It means discovering the areas where we can have the most impact and designing deployments that deliver on it,” added Javier Palafox, COO and Co-Founder of HappyRobot. “We have a strong track record of doing exactly that, and bringing Mia on board is a key step towards operationalizing this approach and continuing to work closely with our partners across EMEA. We’re very excited.“

This appointment reflects HappyRobot’s continued investment in the talent and leadership needed to serve the EMEA market at scale, expanding upon on the strong foundation the company has established in the region.

About HappyRobot
HappyRobot is the infrastructure to build & orchestrate the AI workforce, partnering with over 150 enterprises including DHL, Naturgy, and CMA CGM. AI workers execute work with true autonomy, taking action across systems, communication channels, documents, and websites. Work is orchestrated across the AI workforce with context captured from every interaction and task, robust observability on every AI workers performance, and an architecture to scale work across regions and functions. All in one intelligent system powering a new way of working that means increased performance, reduced risk, and new channels for growth. For more information, please visit www.happyrobot.ai.

CONTACT: For further information please contact the HappyRobot press office on press@happyrobot.ai 

HappyRobot expands EMEA team, appointing Mia Bjorkenstam as MD for region




HappyRobot expands EMEA team, appointing Mia Bjorkenstam as MD for region

Ex-Palantir Technologies exec to lead go-to-market strategy and regional operations across EMEA.

San Francisco, Feb. 18, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mia Bjorkenstam joins from Palantir Technologies, where she worked with enterprise customers to identify high-impact opportunities and deploy custom software solutions to capture them — first as a Deployment Strategist and most recently as a Commercial Lead within Palantir’s Deal Team reporting to OCEO.

The appointment marks the next chapter in HappyRobot’s growing EMEA presence. Founded by Spanish entrepreneurs with deep roots in the region, HappyRobot has built significant momentum with enterprise clients like Naturgy and CMA CGM. With Bjorkenstam based in London, the company is committing to its investment in EMEA — bringing its transformative technology and customer-first approach to a broader market.

At Palantir, Bjorkenstam developed deep experience in translating complex customer problems into deployable software that delivers measurable business value. Her ability to bridge the gap between technical capability and real-world outcomes is central to the role she will play at HappyRobot, where she will lead go-to-market strategy, customer relationships, and regional operations across EMEA.

“The enterprises getting the most from AI aren’t just deploying technology — they’re rethinking how work gets done” said Mia Bjorkenstam, Managing Director, EMEA at HappyRobot. “I’m excited to join a team that genuinely understands that, and to help more EMEA customers find and capture that opportunity.”

“We’re building the infrastructure for enterprises to create their own custom AI workforce — and that requires deep partnership with our customers. It means discovering the areas where we can have the most impact and designing deployments that deliver on it,” added Javier Palafox, COO and Co-Founder of HappyRobot. “We have a strong track record of doing exactly that, and bringing Mia on board is a key step towards operationalizing this approach and continuing to work closely with our partners across EMEA. We’re very excited.“

This appointment reflects HappyRobot’s continued investment in the talent and leadership needed to serve the EMEA market at scale, expanding upon on the strong foundation the company has established in the region.

About HappyRobot
HappyRobot is the infrastructure to build & orchestrate the AI workforce, partnering with over 150 enterprises including DHL, Naturgy, and CMA CGM. AI workers execute work with true autonomy, taking action across systems, communication channels, documents, and websites. Work is orchestrated across the AI workforce with context captured from every interaction and task, robust observability on every AI workers performance, and an architecture to scale work across regions and functions. All in one intelligent system powering a new way of working that means increased performance, reduced risk, and new channels for growth. For more information, please visit www.happyrobot.ai.

CONTACT: For further information please contact the HappyRobot press office on press@happyrobot.ai