Category: Technology

The MENA Fintech Association and Swiss Fintech Association Forge Strategic Alliance to Accelerate Global Fintech Integration, Cross-Border Innovation, and Ecosystem Empowerment

 

June 15 – Abu Dhabi, UAE – The MENA Fintech Association (MFTA) and the Swiss Fintech Association (SFTA)  announced a landmark strategic partnership designed to advance a new era of cross-border collaboration, ecosystem integration, and innovation-led financial transformation across global markets.

This alliance reflects a shared conviction that the future of financial services will be defined by interconnected ecosystems, seamless knowledge exchange, and the collective empowerment of institutions, innovators, and talent across geographies.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was formally signed with the Swiss Fintech Association, represented by its President, Phillip Weights, marking a significant milestone in strengthening institutional ties between the two ecosystems. The engagement was held under the presence and facilitation of H.E. Arthur Mattli, Ambassador – Embassy of Switzerland to the United Arab Emirates & Kingdom of Bahrain, whose support underscored the strategic importance of deepening bilateral cooperation in financial innovation and reinforcing cross-border ecosystem linkages.

Philip J. Weights, SFTA President, comments: “This strategic MOU between the Swiss FinTech Association (SFTA) in Zurich and the MENA Fintech Association (MFTA) in Dubai creates a powerful cross-border corridor for wealth, innovation, and digital finance. It establishes a bridge between two of the world’s most prominent financial technology hubs.”

“This alliance is a defining step toward deepening cross-border collaboration and co-creating the future of financial innovation between our two ecosystems. It reflects a shared ambition to enable sustainable growth and global connectivity in fintech.” — Nameer Khan, Chairman, MENA Fintech Association

 

 

Make sure to visit AAEON at Booth #4251 of McCormick Place, Chicago, IL to see the latest in intelligent automation technology.

 

Orange, California – June 15:  AAEON, an industry-leading provider of industrial automation and edge AI platforms, announced that it will present a range of new and upcoming products from across its portfolio at Automate Show and Conference, one of the largest and most influential automation events in the Americas.

Taking place from June 22nd to June 25th, 2026, at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, Automate is expected to host thousands of professionals from over 100 countries to explore solutions driving the future of industry.

Date: June 22nd – 25th, 2026

Booth: #4251

Venue: McCormick Place, 2301 S Martin Luther King Dr, Chicago, IL 60616

At booth 4251, AAEON will present a live robotics demonstration featuring its upcoming CEXD-INTRBL, an open robotic development system powered by the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors. Custom-built for the next generation of advanced robotics development, the CEXD-INTRBL will be used as the primary edge device for a robotic arm capable of 360° GMSL camera-guided manipulation, demonstrating how manufacturers can accelerate the deployment of vision-guided robotics, reduce integration complexity, and advance robotics toward greater autonomy.

Alongside its live demonstration, AAEON will also present a range of products from across its business units. One of the stand-out products on show will be the BOXER-8741AI, powered by NVIDIA Jetson T5000 module. Also from AAEON’s AI system collection will be the BOXER-8645AI, an AI@Edge Fanless Embedded AI System powered by NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin, which was honored with the Golden Award at the COMPUTEX 2025 Best Choice Award.

From its single-board and development kit lineup, AAEON will showcase products across form factors, selected for their suitability as foundations upon which automation solutions can be built. Particularly noteworthy products on show include the UP Xtreme PTL Edge, built on Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, and the uCOM-Q6490, an upcoming SMARC module powered by the Qualcomm Dragonwing QCS6490 SoC.

Make sure to visit AAEON at booth #4251, where experts from both AAEON and will be on-site to provide full rundowns of the demonstration, give insight into the platforms on show, and explore how AAEON’s product roadmap can help visitors implement AI-powered automation platforms for their projects.

 

June 12| SHANGHAI: AutoFlight’s V2000CG CarryAll has been granted a Validated Type Certificate (VTC) in Indonesia, becoming the world’s first eVTOL to secure overseas type certificate validation.

The certification confirms that the V2000CG’s design complies with the airworthiness requirements of both the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) and Indonesia’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Formally issued on 3 June 2026, the certificate clears the 2-ton unmanned cargo eVTOL to begin commercial operations in the Indonesian market.

The V2000CG first obtained its Type Certificate (TC) from the CAAC in March 2024, following extensive compliance verification and flight testing. AutoFlight submitted its VTC application to the DGCA in July 2025. The validation process drew on comparative analysis of airworthiness standards, multiple rounds of technical consultation, a comprehensive documentation review, and on-site inspections in China by Indonesian authorities, after which the DGCA confirmed full compliance with Indonesian regulations.

With more than 17,000 islands, Indonesia faces significant logistics challenges. Maritime transport is slow, while conventional air cargo depends on costly runway infrastructure. With a maximum take-off weight of 2,000 kg, a cruise speed of 200 km/h, and a range of 200 km, the V2000CG addresses these constraints through a fully electric lift-and-cruise configuration that takes off and lands vertically without runways. This makes it well suited to inter-island transport of high-value goods, including fresh produce, pharmaceuticals, and emergency supplies, and delivers a reliable low-altitude logistics solution for Southeast Asia.

The V2000CG is the only ton-class eVTOL in the world to hold the full set of CAAC airworthiness certificates of TC, Production Certificate (PC), and Airworthiness Certificate (AC). It has already demonstrated its operational capability in offshore logistics, island resupply and emergency response missions in China.

The Indonesian VTC accelerates the full industrial chain, from technical validation and airworthiness certification through to overseas commercial deployment. The milestone establishes an operational foundation for commercial eVTOL services in Southeast Asia and advances AutoFlight’s broader strategy for global market expansion.

PARAMUS, N.J. and RESTON, Va., June 12:  Checkmarx and Carahsoft Technology Corp., The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider®, today announced a partnership. Under the agreement, Carahsoft will serve as Checkmarx’s Master Government Aggregator®, making the company’s application security solutions available to the Public Sector through Carahsoft’s reseller partners and NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V, E&I Cooperative Services Contract and The Quilt contracts.

“Partnering with Carahsoft enables us to expand access to our application security platform across the Public Sector,” said Jonathan Kozimor, VP of Channel Americas at Checkmarx. “Carahsoft’s deep expertise in Government procurement and its extensive reseller ecosystem make the company an ideal partner to help agencies strengthen their application security posture. Together, we can empower organizations to integrate security seamlessly into modern development environments, reduce risk across the software lifecycle and accelerate the delivery of secure, mission-critical applications.”

Checkmarx delivers a unified, AI-native application security platform designed to secure modern software development across the agentic development lifecycle (ADLC)—from code creation through runtime. The platform consolidates multiple security capabilities, including static and dynamic application security testing (SAST and DAST), software composition analysis (SCA), API security, container and infrastructure-as-code security and application security posture management (ASPM), into a single, integrated solution. By correlating risk signals across the ADLC, Checkmarx provides real-time visibility into vulnerabilities and prioritizes the most critical risks. Its agentic AI-driven capabilities embed security directly into developer workflows, enabling continuous detection, automated remediation guidance and policy enforcement without slowing development velocity.

Built to address the increasing complexity of AI-driven and cloud-native environments, the platform helps organizations eliminate fragmented tooling and replace it with a centralized, always-on security layer. This unified approach enables teams to reduce noise, focus on exploitable risks and remediate issues earlier in the development process, minimizing rework and improving overall software resilience. With seamless integration into existing DevOps ecosystems and real-time governance dashboards, Checkmarx supports secure, scalable innovation while ensuring continuous compliance, visibility and control across even the most complex application environments.

“We are pleased to partner with Checkmarx to bring its innovative application security platform to the Public Sector,” said Brian O’Donnell, Vice President of Cybersecurity Solutions at Carahsoft. “As agencies continue to modernize their development environments, it is critical they have access to solutions that embed security throughout the software lifecycle. Together with our reseller partners, we are enabling Government organizations to adopt a proactive, integrated approach to application security—helping them reduce risk, protect sensitive data and accelerate the delivery of secure, mission-critical applications.”

Checkmarx’s application security solutions are available through Carahsoft’s SEWP V contracts NNG15SC03B and NNG15SC27B, E&I Contract #EI00063~2021MA and The Quilt Master Service Agreement Number MSA05012019-F. For more information, contact the Carahsoft Team at (703) 889-9710 or Checkmarx@carahsoft.com; or register for this complimentary webinar, Application Security for Federal Environments. Explore Checkmarx’s solutions here.

LaunchLemonade, the no-code AI platform enabling creators to build and monetise AI agents, has begun beta-testing their marketplace feature, allowing users to buy and sell ready-to-go agentic AI workflows.

LaunchLemonade is continuing to develop its platform in its mission to democratise access to advanced AI tools. With the introduction of the LaunchLemonade store, the platform is aiming to solidify its capabilities in allowing users to buy, sell and deploy ready-to-use intelligent AI solutions, transforming how individuals and businesses access automation and intelligent digital services.

Following a successful oversubscribed pre-seed investment round and a $300,000 grant from Google, LaunchLemonade is accelerating development of its platform, with the marketplace positioned as a core component of its long-term vision. The company plans to roll out an initial version of the marketplace by late summer, with in-house products being made available to buy. Broader capabilities are expected later in the autumn, where users can publish their own agents for sale. This phased rollout will enable iterative improvements based on user feedback while expanding the platform’s capabilities at pace.

Founded in 2024, LaunchLemonade was created by CEO and Founder, Cien Solon, to simplify the process of building, deploying and monetising intelligent AI solutions that automate workflows, generate content and make smarter decisions. Unifying over 300 AI models, LaunchLemonade’s interface formulates specialised agents that complete tasks from content creation to report analysis and research. These agents can be trained from users’ unique data, allowing for highly personalised and context-aware outputs without requiring technical expertise.

With the introduction of the LaunchLemonade store, users will gain access to ready-to-go agentic AI workflows designed for a wide range of use cases, from marketing and operations to finance and research. Each agent listing includes descriptions, capabilities, pricing and user reviews, offering a consumer-friendly experience while delivering significantly more powerful, outcome-driven functionality. Rather than simply installing software, users will be able to deploy goal-orientated AI agents that can actively complete tasks and integrate into existing workflows. 

The marketplace will also create new opportunities for developers and creators to monetise their work. By publishing their AI agents on the platform, developers can generate revenue through subscription or usage-based models, while benefiting from LaunchLemonade’s infrastructure, distribution and user base. For businesses and end users, the marketplace removes the need to build AI solutions from scratch, significantly lowering the barrier to adopting automation and enabling faster, more cost-effective implementation. 

As the wider platform evolves, LaunchLemonade plans to introduce deeper interoperability between agents, allowing users to chain multiple workflows together into more complex automated systems. This vision positions the marketplace not just as a distribution channel, but as an ecosystem of intelligent, collaborative AI agents capable of handling end-to-end processes.

CEO and Founder Cien Solon said: “The launch of our AI marketplace represents a major milestone in making advanced AI even more accessible and usable for everyone. We’re proud to be building an ecosystem where innovation can scale rapidly and where even smaller businesses can access powerful AI capabilities without technical barriers.”

With its initial marketplace launch set for late summer and further capabilities planned later in the autumn, LaunchLemonade is positioning itself at the forefront of the emerging AI agent economy, aiming to redefine how AI solutions are built, shared and deployed at scale. 

Cien concludes by saying: “Big players have dominated the AI economy, which has incidentally held back innovative AI applications from smaller businesses. With our marketplace, we are democratising the AI economy for smaller players, diversifying the talent and solutions on offer, championing those who are solving unique challenges, breaking innovation bottlenecks, and closing the AI literacy gap in businesses.”

To learn more about LaunchLemonade, visit their website on https://launchlemonade.app/

HITRUST Certification validates ECLAT’s evaire platform and healthcare performance solutions are meeting rigorous cybersecurity and data protection standards through independent assessment and assurance

Herndon, Va. (June 11, 2026) — ECLAT Health Solutions, a leading risk adjustment and coding technology partner for Medicare, Medicaid and ACA plans, today announced its AI-powered evaire risk adjustment platform and healthcare performance solutions have earned certified status from HITRUST for cybersecurity and information protection.

The HITRUST r2 Certification demonstrates that ECLAT has met the requirements defined by a leading cybersecurity assurance leader, confirming that strong controls are in place to protect sensitive data and manage risk effectively.

Built on the HITRUST Assurance Program, this achievement reflects independent third-party testing, centralized quality assurance, and certification backed by HITRUST’s Cyber Threat-Adaptive engine. These elements ensure continuous alignment with the latest threat intelligence and evolving standards across NIST, ISO, and OWASP.

“As cybersecurity expectations rise, our stakeholders expect credible, validated assurance,” said Gabe Stein, CEO at ECLAT. “Achieving HITRUST Certification reinforces our ongoing commitment to protecting data, managing risk, and maintaining the trust of those we serve.”

“The HITRUST Assurance Program is rigorous and reliable because of the comprehensiveness of control requirements, depth of review, and consistency of oversight,” said Bimal Sheth, EVP, Standards Development & Assurance Operations at HITRUST. “HITRUST Certification demonstrates ECLAT is taking the most proactive approach to cybersecurity, data protection, and risk management.”

Established partnership helps companies move from point-in-time testing to continuous security validation with AI + human expertise

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. June 11: —Synack, the AI + human penetration testing platform is expanding its partnership with Wolfpack Information Risk, a South Africa-based specialist cybersecurity firm, to bring Sara AI Pentesting to organizations across South Africa.

Sara AI Pentesting, powered by the Synack Autonomous Red Agent, combines agentic AI with the Synack Red Team (SRT), a globally vetted community of elite ethical hackers. Together, Sara AI Pentesting and the SRT help organizations expand coverage across their attack surface, accelerate testing, and validate real-world exploitability with greater speed and confidence.

Wolfpack Information Risk, established in 2011 and a B-BBEE Level 1-certified company, brings deep expertise in governance, risk and compliance, penetration testing, cybersecurity consulting, and security operations to organizations across the region. Through its partnership with Synack, Wolfpack enables clients to adopt a modern model of continuous security validation, moving beyond periodic testing toward always-on assurance.

The longstanding partnership has already delivered measurable value for customers. Leading organisations across the financial services, mining, and telecommunications sectors have engaged Synack through Wolfpack to address critical challenges in their controls assurance programme, including extended lead times, expansive technology footprints, and the need for continuous testing across rapidly changing codebases. The result has been faster pre-deployment testing, significantly reduced repeat findings, and improved mean time to remediation (MTTR).

As attack surfaces expand and the time between vulnerability discovery and exploitation continues to shrink, organizations need security testing that keeps pace with modern adversaries. Sara AI Pentesting helps accelerate reconnaissance, attack surface mapping, and initial exploit validation at scale, while the SRT validates what is real, exploitable, and relevant to the business.

Synack and Wolfpack will further explore these themes during a joint webinar, “AI + Human: Keeping Pace with the Modern Adversary,” on June 23, 2026. The session will discuss how companies can use continuous security validation to improve attack surface risk management, accelerate remediation, and strengthen resilience against evolving threats.

“Giving organisations access to continuous security validation—not periodic testing—is what drives the way we build our channel,” said Angela Heindl-Schober, Chief Marketing Officer at Synack. “Wolfpack brings deep security expertise and strong relationships, and together we’re ensuring our customers have what they need to stay ahead of threats.”

“Partnering with Synack gives our clients access to a level of continuous security validation that simply was not available to them before,” said Craig Rosewarne, Managing Director of Wolfpack Information Risk. “By combining Sara AI Pentesting, the Synack Red Team, and Wolfpack’s local expertise, organizations across our markets can move toward ongoing assurance and know that findings are real, validated, and actionable.”

 

New Delhi, June 11: Artificial intelligence has been named as the most influential office innovation by global CEOs in a landmark report, “IWG: 300 Years of Office Innovation”, commissioned by International Workplace Group to mark the 300th anniversary of the modern office. AI was followed by laptops, video calling, Wi-Fi and hybrid working, as technology continues to transform the office. 

The findings come at a time when Indian organisations are also moving rapidly towards AI-enabled ways of working. Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Indexreleased last year reported that 93% of Indian business leaders intended to use AI agents to extend workforce capabilities within the next 12-18 months, indicating that AI is increasingly being viewed as a fundamental enabler of how work will be organised and delivered.

The report, commissioned by International Workplace Group (IWG) to celebrate 300 years since the world’s first purpose-built office – London’sOld Admiralty Building, which opened in 1726– surveyed business leaders about how the modern workplace has evolved.In India, Kolkata’s Writers’ Building, finished in 1780, is believed to be the first-ever purpose-built office. Meanwhile, Chennai’s Fort St. George, built in the 1640s, began functioning as a secretariat in 1782.

The results show that CEOs view the technological shift workers are going through right now as being as significant as anything the office has gone through in the last 300 years, such as the rise of the typewriter, smartphones or even the internet.

The top five is dominated by modern developments in technology that have transformed working life over the past decade. All are now firmly entrenched across IWG’s global network, the largest in the world.

Top five workplace innovations of the past 300 years for CEOs

1. AI (36%)

2. Laptops and tablets (35%)

3. Video call/conferencing (Teams/Zoom) (31%)

4. Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (29%)

5. Hybrid working (26%)

Hybrid working – selected by a quarter (26%) of CEOs stands out as the defining shift in how, where and why people work amidst developments in hard and software.

This transformation is already embedded in day-to-day working life. Compared to a decade ago, 35% of CEOs say technology has made it easier for employees to work from anywhere, while 30% say meetings are now more likely to be virtual than in person. 

The evolution of the office is already visible in India’s commercial workplace market. According to JLL,flexible workspaces and Global Capability Centres (GCCs) accounted for 21.5% and 37.7%, respectively, of full-year leasing, even as India recorded an all-time high of 83.3 million sq. ft. of gross office leasing in 2025. Flexible workspace operators leased an additional 5.56 million sq. ft. in the first quarter of 2026 across India’s top seven cities. These developments suggest that Indian businesses are increasingly seeking workplaces that are flexible, digitally enabled, and suited to evolving work patterns.

Transformational decades: the 2020s and 1990s

The 2020s are viewed as the most transformational decade to date, driven by the rapid adoption of hybrid models, AI, automation and flexible working practices. 

This marks a significant leap from the 1990s, the second most impactful era, when the internet, email and early computing technologies first connected workplaces on a global scale.

From fax machines to failed fads

But many of these ‘90s innovations are lost on younger workers. When asked if they could describe some of these innovations, only one in five (20%) could do so for fax machines and 16% for floppy disks – despite it being the instantly recognisable “save document” icon.

Despite this generational knowledge gap, there remains a sense of nostalgia. Over two-thirds (68%) of CEOs say they feel nostalgic for workplace tools and technologies of the past.

Much like typewriters and dial-up internet, not all modern technology is expected to survive. Innovations that CEOs expected to transform how we work but turned out to be short-lived include smart glasses (41%), desk treadmills (39%) and interactive whiteboards (35%).

Today’s workplace boosts productivity

More than a third (35%) of business leaders say it’s AI that has had the greatest impact on productivity in their organisation, ahead of laptops and video calling. Overall, 83% of CEOs say recent changes in how we work have been positive, while 81% believe today’s workplace is better designed for collaboration and productivity.

Mark Dixon, CEO and Founder of IWG, commented: “For the past 300 years, the office has continually evolved alongside each major wave of innovation, but AI represents the most significant shift in workplace life since the modern office first emerged. 

It is fundamentally changing how, where and why people work, and is now intrinsically linked with other transformative innovations such as hybrid working and digital connectivity.”