David Blandford assumes leadership role as Chief Financial Officer; Peter O’Donnell joins company as Vice President of Business Development.

FREMONT, Calif., Oct. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — RK Logistics Group, a leading provider of high-value logistics services and sustainable supply chain solutions for innovation industries, today announced the addition of two experienced business executives to its management team, taking key leadership roles for the company’s finance and business development operations.

Named as RK’s new Chief Financial Officer is David Blandford, who brings over a decade of experience directing accounting, treasury and financial management operations with growth companies in multiple industries. In his new role, he oversees all RK’s back-office functions, including Accounting, Financial Planning and Audit, Human Resources and Information Technology. He also provides strategic direction and counsel for personnel structures, compensation and benefits programs, merger and acquisition integration, and treasury management.

Prior to RK, David held financial operations management positions with companies including PrePass, Payment Alliance International and TEC Equipment. He holds a master’s degree in accounting from the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business, where he also was a graduate teaching fellow.

Peter O’Donnell has joined RK as Vice President of Business Development, bringing over 25 years of experience in logistics and supply chain sales and solution development to the RK team. In his new role, he is responsible for design and execution of business plans, go to market strategies, profitable revenue growth, sales team staffing and overall leadership of RK’s business development and account management teams.

Peter joins RK from One World Supply Chain Consulting, where he was a managing partner. Over more than two decades in the supply chain field he has advanced through increasingly responsible logistics sales and solutions development roles with recognized 3PL leaders including Flex, CEVA Logistics and Ryder Supply Chain Solutions.

“David and Peter are two proven executives who bring demonstrated skills and experience in their respective fields that will drive RK’s continued growth and profitability,” said Joe MacLean, RK’s chairman, chief executive officer and president. “I’m pleased and excited to collaborate with them as we continue to build RK’s reputation for reliable performance, innovative, superior value solutions, and differentiated logistics services for our clients.”

Founded in Silicon Valley over 30 years ago, RK specializes in high-performance, zero fault tolerance logistics for industries including industrial, semiconductor and automotive manufacturing, EV/lithium-ion battery storage and transport, hazardous materials and consumer goods. The company also provides retail product inventory management, store-door fulfillment, eCommerce order fulfillment, reverse logistics and dedicated/specialty transportation services.

RK Logistics provides warehousing, transportation and related supply chain management services to companies in leading industries through a network of facilities principally in Northern California, as well as in Michigan, Texas, New York and Arizona. RK’s California facility footprint includes sites in Fremont, Hayward, Newark and Livermore, California. Overall, the company operates some 1.7 million square feet of warehousing.
For more information about the company’s services or to inquire about partnering with RK Logistics Group, please visit http://www.rklogisticsgroup.com.

ABOUT RK LOGISTICS — RK Logistics provides sustainable supply chain solutions for innovation industries. RK’s expertise is in complex, high value density, zero fault tolerance, regulatorily intensive products that often require comprehensive services. We offer warehousing, specialty transportation, reverse logistics, manufacturing support, engineering support, hazardous materials storage, handling and transportation and order fulfillment. RK’s manufacturing support, warehousing, eCommerce order fulfillment and transportation services feature enabling technologies, skilled, experienced teams, lean practices, ISO-9001 and CA Board of Pharmacy 3PL certifications, delivering flexible, sustainable, and efficient logistics solutions. For more information, go to http://www.rklogisticsgroup.com

Media Contact
Gary Frantz, RK Logistics Group, (925) 594-1434, gary@gnfcomms.com, www.rklogisticsgroup.com

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SOURCE RK Logistics Group

Announcing Light Unfolding® Technology, Lumenuity Secures $1.2M in Seed Funding to Significantly Enhance Optical Zoom Performance, Cost and Capability

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Lumenuity today announced its official launch with a revolutionary optical technology that significantly enhances the zoom capabilities of smartphone cameras. The company also unveiled a $1.2 million seed funding round, and are collaborating with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. to optimize the Lumenuity technologies for use on smartphones that contain the latest Snapdragon mobile platforms. The breakthrough technology offers widespread applications beyond smartphones, including drones, augmented reality (AR), and more.

Lumenuity’s Light Unfolding® technology delivers DSLR camera performance in a pocket-sized mobile device. This advancement delivers users professional zoom quality without the cost or weight of traditional cameras, revolutionizing mobile photography.

Co-founded by Dr. Benjamin Shapiro and Dr. Edo Waks, experts in optics, electrical engineering and quantum, Lumenuity has spent years refining and developing this new optical solution. The team is supported by a prestigious advisory board with decades of leadership in top-tier smartphone and AR companies.

“Our patented Light Unfolding technology compresses unprecedented optical power into compact devices,” said Dr. Benjamin Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of Lumenuity. “With this innovation, consumers can capture stunning, high-quality images from their smartphones—virtually eliminating the need for bulky, high-end cameras.”

In addition to enhancing image performance, Lumenuity’s technology offers significant manufacturing advantages by reducing the need for multiple cameras in devices. Currently, smartphones rely on separate cameras for primary, wide-angle, and zoom functions. Lumenuity’s optical system can deliver the performance of two cameras in one, streamlining design and reducing production costs—savings that can be passed directly to consumers.

“Lumenuity’s technology allows higher-performance optics in a more efficient form factor,” said Judd Heape, Vice President, Product Management at Qualcomm. “Qualcomm will be able to support phone makers that will be implementing this new technology on the Snapdragon platform, by providing complimentary advanced image processing and AI features to further increase image quality.”

Lumenuity has already developed prototypes that deliver double the zoom capability of existing smartphone cameras, all while maintaining industry-standard size and form. The company has been collaborating closely with Qualcomm, a leader in the smartphone industry, and with DXOMARK, leaders in assessing phone camera image quality, to refine and validate their technology.

“Given the company’s unique technological approach, robust IP portfolio and attractive project roadmap, we’re thrilled to invest in the team at Lumenuity,” said Michael Beer, Investment Partner at Vest Coast Capital. “The company is well-positioned to meaningfully improve camera performance while also reducing phone costs”.

About Lumenuity:
Lumenuity is a cutting-edge optics company delivering groundbreaking technology for enhanced optical performance in compact systems. Our Light Unfolding® technology unlocks new imaging possibilities. We provide custom solutions tailored to our partners’ needs. Learn more at www.LumenuityInc.com.

Founders:
Benjamin Shapiro, PhD: Founder and CEO. Served in C-suite roles for 3 deep-tech companies. Was a Full Professor in engineering for 18 years, at the University of Maryland at College Park. Fulbright scholar. On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-shapiro-834ab28b/

Edo Waks, PhD: Co-Founder. Full Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Quantum Institute, University of Maryland at College Park. Expert in optics, light and quantum mechanics. PECASE (Presidential Early Career award). Fellow APS (Applied Physics Society), OSA (Optical Society of America). On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edo-waks-3635173b/

About Qualcomm:
Qualcomm is a trademark or registered trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated. Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.

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SOURCE Lumenuity, Inc.

The industry initiative brings together leading financial and market infrastructures, Euroclear and Swift, along with some of the world’s largest financial institutions, including UBS, Franklin Templeton, Wellington Management, CACEIS, Vontobel, and Sygnum Bank.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Chainlink announced today the results of an industry initiative that harnesses the combined advancements in AI, oracles, and blockchain technology to address the lack of real-time and standardized data around corporate actions. This initiative brings together financial and market infrastructures Euroclear and Swift, as well as major financial institutions including UBS, Franklin Templeton, Wellington Management, CACEIS, Vontobel, and Sygnum Bank.

Along with these market participants and three blockchain ecosystem partners—Hyperledger Besu, Avalanche, and ZKsync—the initiative successfully demonstrated how Chainlink decentralized oracles can be used in combination with large language models (LLMs) to validate and deliver critical financial data onchain. The specific LLMs used included OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4o, Google’s Gemini 1.5 pro, and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 sonnet. Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) was then used to securely move the onchain corporate actions data across various public and private blockchains.

Current inefficiencies in corporate action processes cost regional investor, broker, and custodian businesses approximately $3-5 million each annually, with 75% of firms re-validating custodian and exchange data manually. These issues stem from inconsistencies in structure, format, terminology, timeline, medium, and data standards for dissemination. This industry-wide initiative with Chainlink introduces a novel solution using Chainlink oracles, which provide a unified golden record around corporate actions data that is accessible in real-time. This approach mitigates the need for manual reviews and enables all participants, from custodians to asset managers, to have near-instant access to accurate and standardized data.

The initiative successfully demonstrated how LLMs can be used in combination with Chainlink for near real-time data distribution of corporate actions events across three blockchain networks. With its novel approach of an interoperable, unified golden record, the initiative marks a significant architecture milestone in the ongoing journey to transform the management and dissemination of corporate actions data.

“The combination of AI and oracles is a powerful tool for taking corporate actions data and turning it into highly reliably structured data. Turning various pieces of disconnected corporate actions data into unified golden records that can then be relied on by hundreds of market participants as a definitive, single source of truth is truly a huge step forward in how financial markets deal with critical and error-prone data. Solving this problem creates a lot of advantages for asset managers, banks, and financial market infrastructures to all be in sync many times faster than today, at a fraction of the cost, and with a massive reduction in costly errors that affect the financial system.” — Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink

“By collaborating across the industry and leveraging cutting-edge technologies, we can address major pain points and redesign workflows for greater efficiency, transparency, and value. With proper implementation, co-creation allows AI and DLT to amplify each other’s strengths, creating golden records accessible to all in real time and paving the way for transformative solutions.” — Stéphanie Lheureux, Director Digital Assets Competence Center, Euroclear

“The complexity of corporate actions is a relevant and appropriate use case for the convergence of AI, oracles, and blockchain technology. By leveraging AI and Chainlink oracles to interpret, standardize, and deliver high-value unstructured data, we can dramatically reduce the manual processes required, enabling significant potential operational efficiency and cost reduction while ensuring that data flows through the system with the required levels of accuracy and transparency.” — Mark Garabedian, Director, Digital Assets & Tokenization Strategy, Wellington Management

“CACEIS fully supports industry efforts to create a blockchain-based ‘golden source’ of information to streamline corporate action management with data distributed in real time to all market participants. A shared data framework optimises existing operational processes, reduces error rates, and prepares the ground for further innovation in the field of asset tokenisation. Being at the cutting edge of technologies like AI, machine learning and DLT is key to CACEIS’ future service development and our IT investment strategy reflects that.” — Younes Ayouaz, Group Head of Project & Transformation – Custody and Cash Clearing Business Unit at CACEIS

While corporate actions are the first use case, unified golden records can also be applied to the valuation of private assets, risk management data, legal identifiers, security-level data, and more. The next phase of this initiative will use established Swift messaging standards to make onchain unified golden records interoperable with and consumable by existing mission-critical portfolio processing and management systems utilized by financial institutions.

Read the full report: Transforming Asset Servicing With AI, Oracles, and Blockchains.

Chainlink

Chainlink enables financial institutions to develop customized, compliant, and future-proof blockchain applications and tokenized assets. Chainlink has securely enabled over $16 trillion in transaction value and delivered more than 15 billion verified messages onchain across the blockchain ecosystem. Major market infrastructure providers and institutional banks have collaborated with Chainlink to successfully demonstrate how financial institutions can use existing infrastructure and messaging standards to interact with tokenized assets across any blockchain.

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SOURCE Chainlink