Category Archives: News

Ardian Announces Sale of Hill Top Energy Center to Blackstone

Ardian

Successful outcome demonstrates Ardian’s investment and operational expertise in power generation sector

Ardian, a world-leading private investment firm, today announced a definitive agreement to sell Hill Top Energy Center (“Hill Top” or the “Project”), a state-of-the-art combined cycle gas turbine facility in Western Pennsylvania.

Hill Top, a 620-megawatt natural gas-fired facility, sells energy and capacity to the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (“PJM”) transmission organization, the largest competitive power market in the U.S. Ardian, through its Ardian Americas Infrastructure Funds series, acquired a co-control 41.9% stake in Hill Top in July 2019 and purchased the remaining stake in the Project in April 2025.

Over the course of Ardian’s ownership, the firm’s Infrastructure team generated significant value through proactive industrial asset management, including on-time and on-budget construction execution, operational optimization, and capital structure enhancement. Through these initiatives, Ardian has positioned Hill Top as the premier asset in PJM with efficient and reliable power generation facilities.

“Investing at the start of construction, we had the conviction that a new state-of-the-art power plant in PJM with access to cheap, abundant, clean-burning natural gas was a winner. For more than 20 years, Ardian has invested in clean, efficient power generation in growing markets, and we plan to continue to do so long into the future.” Mathias Burghardt, Executive Vice-President, Head and Founder Infrastructure, Ardian

“Rapid growth in AI workloads and hyperscale data centers are fueling extraordinary power demand and driving our mission to lead the energy transition and meet demand for reliable baseload generation. Ardian’s follow-on investment in Hill Top earlier this year demonstrated the firm strategic vision and anticipation of market trends. Our control position allowed us to opportunistically right size the Project’s capital structure to provide liquidity to our investors.” Kevin Rohde, Director Infrastructure, Ardian

“Hill Top is a prime example of how Ardian continually adds value throughout an assets lifecycle – from funding and actively managing construction to an on-time, on-budget result and working with management to smoothly manage operations to best-in-class availability levels. We look forward to witnessing the continued success of the Project and are confident that Blackstone will be great stewards of this asset into the future.” Mark Voccola, Co-Head of Infrastructure Americas and Senior Managing Director, Ardian

Solomon Partners and Macquarie Capital served as financial advisors to Ardian in connection with the sale of Hill Top Energy Center, and Gibson Dunn served as legal advisor.

ABOUT ARDIAN

Ardian is a world-leading private investment firm, managing or advising $180bn of assets on behalf of more than 1,850 clients globally. Our broad expertise, spanning Private Equity, Real Assets and Credit, enables us to offer a wide range of investment opportunities and respond flexibly to our clients’ differing needs. Through Ardian Customized Solutions we create bespoke portfolios that allow institutional clients to specify the precise mix of assets they require and to gain access to funds managed by leading third-party sponsors. Private Wealth Solutions offers dedicated services and access solutions for private banks, family offices and private institutional investors worldwide. Ardian’s main shareholding group is its employees and we place great emphasis on developing its people and fostering a collaborative culture based on collective intelligence. Our 1,050+ employees, spread across 19 offices in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Middle East are strongly committed to the principles of Responsible Investment and are determined to make finance a force for good in society. Our goal is to deliver excellent investment performance combined with high ethical standards and social responsibility.
At Ardian we invest all of ourselves in building companies that last.

ardian.com

Media Contacts

ARDIAN

H/ADVISORS ABERNATHY

ardian@h-advisors.global212-371-5999

Categories: News

Blackstone Announces Agreement to Acquire Hill Top Energy Center in Western Pennsylvania for Nearly $1 Billion

Blackstone

New York, NY – September 15, 2025 – Blackstone (NYSE: BX) announced today that private equity funds affiliated with Blackstone Energy Transition Partners (collectively, “Blackstone Energy Transition Partners”) have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Hill Top Energy Center (“Hill Top”), a 620-megawatt natural gas power plant in Western Pennsylvania for nearly $1 billion, from Ardian, a global private investment firm.

This transaction follows Blackstone’s recent July 2025 announcement that it would invest over $25 billion to support the build out of Pennsylvania’s digital and energy infrastructure supporting the AI revolution and help catalyze an additional $60 billion investment into the Commonwealth.

Hill Top is one of the newest and most efficient combined cycle gas turbine plants in the country with among the best-in-class operating performance – situated in an area of the country that is well suited to serve as a strategic hub to power America’s AI future. Completed in 2021 and located in Greene County, Pennsylvania, Hill Top will continue to help support the power needs related to data center development and other use cases in the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (“PJM”) electric market.

Bilal Khan, a Senior Managing Director, and Mark Zhu, a Managing Director, at Blackstone Energy Transition Partners, said: “The electricity infrastructure required to power the AI revolution requires a tremendous amount of capital. We are proud to make our latest investment in this sector – which is among our highest conviction investment themes – in Western Pennsylvania. Hill Top is among the best-in-class and a highly efficient modern power generation facility that is exceptionally well positioned to help Pennsylvania and the region serve as a key center of AI innovation.”

“In addition to the historic $25 billion investment they announced at our Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh this summer, I am thrilled to see Blackstone deepening its commitment to Pennsylvania’s energy infrastructure,” said Senator Dave McCormick.

Blackstone is a leader in investing in the infrastructure powering AI – across not just energy but a wide array of areas. Blackstone is the largest data center provider in the world with major investments in both Pennsylvania and globally. Blackstone also recently made an investment in Potomac Energy Center, a 774-megawatt natural gas power plant in Loudoun County, Virginia, and has been in late stage development or construction for approximately 1,600 megawatts of new-build power generation capacity over the last three and a half years in the United States.

Santander and Houlihan Lokey served as financial advisors and Kirkland & Ellis served as a legal advisor to Blackstone Energy Transition Partners on this transaction.

About Blackstone Energy Transition Partners
Blackstone Energy Transition Partners is Blackstone’s energy-focused private equity business, a leading energy investor with a successful long-term record, having committed over $27 billion of equity globally across a broad range of sectors within the energy industry. Our investment philosophy is based on backing exceptional management teams with flexible capital to provide solutions that help energy companies grow and improve performance, thereby delivering cleaner, more reliable and affordable energy to meet the needs of the global community. In the process, we build stronger, larger scale enterprises, create jobs and generate lasting value for our investors, employees and all stakeholders. Further information is available at https://www.blackstone.com/our-businesses/blackstone-energy-transition-partners/.

About Ardian
Ardian is a world-leading private investment firm, managing or advising $180bn of assets on behalf of more than 1,850 clients globally. Our broad expertise, spanning Private Equity, Real Assets and Credit, enables us to offer a wide range of investment opportunities and respond flexibly to our clients’ differing needs. Through Ardian Customized Solutions we create bespoke portfolios that allow institutional clients to specify the precise mix of assets they require and to gain access to funds managed by leading third-party sponsors. Private Wealth Solutions offers dedicated services and access solutions for private banks, family offices and private institutional investors worldwide. Ardian’s main shareholding group is its employees and we place great emphasis on developing its people and fostering a collaborative culture based on collective intelligence. Our 1,050+ employees, spread across 19 offices in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Middle East are strongly committed to the principles of Responsible Investment and are determined to make finance a force for good in society. Our goal is to deliver excellent investment performance combined with high ethical standards and social responsibility. At Ardian we invest all of ourselves in building companies that last. Ardian.com 

Media Contacts

Blackstone
Jennifer Heath
Jennifer.Heath@Blackstone.com

Ardian
H/Advisors Abernathy
ardian@h-advisors.global

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AmTrust Financial Services and Blackstone Credit & Insurance Enter Into Strategic Transaction for AmTrust’s Global MGA and Fee Businesses

Blackstone

Strategic Transaction Unlocks Value for AmTrust and Positions Global MGA and Fee Businesses for Accelerated Growth

AmTrust President Adam Karkowsky to Leave to Become Chairman and CEO of New Multinational MGA Platform

New York, NY – September 15, 2025 – AmTrust Financial Services, Inc. (“AmTrust” or the “Company”), a global specialty property casualty insurer, and Blackstone Credit & Insurance (“BXCI”), today announced a definitive agreement under which AmTrust and funds managed by BXCI will partner in the spin-off of certain of AmTrust’s Managing General Agencies (“MGAs”) and fee businesses in the U.S., United Kingdom, and Continental Europe into a new, independent company.

AmTrust and the newly formed company will enter into a ten-year capacity agreement through which AmTrust will remain underwriter of the existing books of business offered through the MGAs.

The agreement includes seven AmTrust subsidiaries: ANV, Risico, Collegiate, AmTrust Nordic, Arc Legal, Qualis, and Abacus. These businesses provide diverse risk and insurance coverages including cyber excess and surplus (E&S), directors and officers (D&O), transaction risk insurance, professional indemnity, legal expense, mortgage and structured credit, warranty, agricultural workers’ compensation, income protection, accident and health (A&H), and residential and commercial niche property. The new company is expected to have over 700 employees.

Adam Karkowsky, who is currently President of AmTrust, will leave to become Chairman and CEO of the new company. He brings deep insurance leadership experience, having first joined AmTrust in March 2011 and becoming President in December 2018. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of AmTrust Financial Services, Inc. since January 2019. Prior to his current role, Karkowsky held the positions of Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President, Strategic Development and Mergers & Acquisitions. He has served in various finance and strategy roles in the private equity and insurance industries.

Karkowsky’s leadership team at the new company will include Joseph Brecher, currently SVP, Head of Alternative Investments at AmTrust, in the role of Chief Financial Officer, and Jacob Decter, currently Chief Strategy Officer, Global Fee Businesses, at AmTrust, in the role of Chief Operating Officer.

The new company will operate under a new brand name, which will be announced at a later date.

Barry Zyskind, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AmTrust, said, “We are very pleased to partner with Blackstone to unlock the substantial embedded value that we have built in our global MGA and fee businesses. With this transaction, these businesses will be positioned to further invest in their operations, meaningfully grow their portfolio, and continue to deliver outstanding service to their clients. With our significant retained equity interest, AmTrust looks forward to participating in the future success of the new company. I am confident in the strength and experience of Adam and the leadership team to drive the new company to great heights.”

Adam Karkowsky, President, AmTrust, said, “Bringing these businesses together as a standalone company creates a diversified, multinational MGA platform with significant value creation potential through organic growth, expanded partnerships, and acquisitions. I deeply appreciate the opportunities I have had at AmTrust and am grateful for what we achieved together. I look forward to working with our talented team in the U.S., UK, and Europe, in the delivery of services for our brokers, partners and clients, with the support of our partners AmTrust and Blackstone.”

“AmTrust has built an impressive franchise and we are excited to support the new standalone MGA platform, which should have significant tailwinds,” said Louis Salvatore, Senior Managing Director, BXCI.  “BXCI has extensive experience investing in and supporting insurance services businesses, helping them achieve their full potential. We look forward to partnering with AmTrust and the new company’s executive team to create long-term value.”

Following the close of the transaction, AmTrust will remain a leading multinational insurance company with approximately 6,000 employees providing risk and insurance solutions with a broad offering across industries and classes globally.

Approvals and Closing Timeline
The transaction has been approved by AmTrust’s Board of Directors.  It is expected to close by year-end 2025, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Advisors
Evercore is serving as financial advisor to AmTrust in connection with the transaction, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is legal counsel. Latham & Watkins LLP is acting as legal advisor to BXCI.
 
About Blackstone Credit & Insurance
Blackstone Credit & Insurance (“BXCI”) is one of the world’s leading credit investors. Our investments span the credit markets, including private investment grade, asset based lending, public investment grade and high yield, sustainable resources, infrastructure debt, collateralized loan obligations, direct lending and opportunistic credit. We seek to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for institutional and individual investors by offering companies capital needed to strengthen and grow their businesses. BXCI is also a leading provider of investment management services for insurers, helping those companies better deliver for policyholders through our world-class capabilities in investment grade private credit.

About AmTrust Financial Services, Inc.
AmTrust Financial Services, Inc., a multinational insurance holding company headquartered in New York, offers specialty property and casualty insurance products, including workers’ compensation, business owner’s policy (BOP), general liability and extended service and warranty coverage. For more information about AmTrust, visit http://www.amtrustfinancial.com.

Contact
Blackstone
David Vitek
David.Vitek@blackstone.com
(212) 583-5291

AmTrust Financial Services
Mairi Mallon
mairi.mallon@rein4ce.co.uk
+44 (0)7843 076533

Cathy Loos
amtrust@ketchum.com
(212) 729-3753

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Simon AI Launches Agentic Marketing Platform to Unlock Data for Contextual Personalization

.406 Venture

Simon AI acts as a marketer’s data and execution team, uncovering hidden signals, activating real-world context, and accelerating high-performing launches that elevate customer experiences

 

NEW YORK — Sept. 15, 2025 — Simon AI, formerly known as Simon Data, today announced the launch of the Simon AI™ Agentic Marketing Platform, to enable marketing teams at fast-growing and enterprise brands to break free from the limitations and trade-offs that hold back high-performing personalization. With Simon AI, marketers set business goals, then purpose-built agents turn live customer and contextual data into adaptive campaigns that deliver higher conversion, increase customer lifetime value, and drive measurable growth.

Personalization previously took weeks to months to execute. Now, Simon AI Agents identify signals and patterns, prepare data for execution, and automate high-volume micro-segmentation into engagement channels. As a result, marketing is now fast and nimble enough to activate customer moments, elevating both scale and performance.

“Agentic AI is changing how marketing gets done, representing the biggest shift since the move to SaaS and cloud computing,” said Jason Davis, co-founder and CEO of Simon AI. “Until now, marketers have faced a painful trade-off — launch more campaigns and watch performance drop, or push for deeper personalization and lose volume. With Simon AI, that trade-off ends.

“Agentic Marketing is a new model where embedded agents operate across the most complex workflows on an AI-first, composable CDP, accessing all customer and contextual data live in the data cloud. Simon AI Agents can reason over that data, enrich it, and execute at a scale that was previously impossible. Now, marketing teams can finally overcome the data and execution complexity that has held personalization back.”

Solving Data and Execution Complexity for Marketers

For most brands, personalization is still constrained by four challenges:

  • Data access: Marketers can’t get the right signals in time to act.
  • Execution bottlenecks: Campaigns take weeks to launch, making “real-time” and “continuous” impossible.
  • The missing context: First-party data leaves out signals like weather, inventory, and trends that drive customer decisions.
  • AI acceleration: Teams use surface-level AI tools for content generation and predictive analysis, yet struggle to apply AI to the most complex marketing problems that are blockers to insight and execution.

Together, these challenges prevent marketing teams from achieving true personalization — and they define why a new way of marketing and a new solution are needed.

The Simon AI Agentic Marketing Platform

Simon AI combines a goal-based workflow, agents that deliver insights and automate execution, and an AI-first composable CDP powered by best-in-class integrations. With unified customer and contextual data in a brand’s existing cloud data environment, real-world signals define audiences and trigger messaging, adaptive campaigns launch faster, and personalization executes with governance and control.

Simon AI Personalization Studio

The workspace where marketers turn strategy into performance. The Personalization Studio starts with goals, not static segments, and gives teams a guided environment to connect data to campaigns that adapt automatically to live signals. With it, marketers can:

  • Define business goals in plain language and turn them into data-driven campaigns.
  • Use Blueprints—reusable playbooks that translate goals into strategies and execution plans—to guide agents and launch thousands of micro-campaigns.
  • Continuously evolve campaigns with AI Fields and AI Moments. AI Fields create new attributes about customers or products, such as a “Cold-weather readiness score” or “Price sensitivity”. AI Moments detect and operationalize real-world triggers, such as a weather swing, social trend, or inventory change, that signal when to act.
  • Automate execution across every channel—engagement platforms, owned channels, and paid media—with campaigns that stay aligned to outcomes.

Simon AI Agents

The marketer’s data and execution team that builds personalization based on insights and customer moments. Agents handle the complexity of surfacing signals, preparing data, and activating campaigns so that marketers can focus on strategy, creative, and customers. With Simon AI Agents, marketers can:

  • Detect hidden signals such as churn risk, demand spikes, inventory changes, weather, and social trends.
  • Transform messy customer and contextual data into campaign-ready attributes.
  • Orchestrate workflows and activation across platforms like Braze, Attentive, Iterable, and more.

Simon AI Composable CDP

The data foundation and semantic layer that makes AI work. Running natively in your cloud, the composable CDP makes customer and contextual data actionable, enables high-volume personalization, and enriches the enterprise source of truth. With the AI-first CDP, marketing teams can:

  • Explore and activate all customer, business, and contextual signals.
  • Run personalization directly on live data with zero ETL pipelines.
  • Enrich data and write back new fields, segments, and results into the data cloud for enterprise use.
  • Maintain enterprise-grade governance and control inside the data warehouse.

What It Means for Customers

With Simon AI, brands accelerate differentiation and growth by launching campaigns frequently, acting on more signals, and scaling personalization without trade-offs. Early adopters have reported:

  • Rapid execution of contextually relevant campaigns.
  • Higher conversion rates driven by contextual signals and adaptive personalization.
  • Material revenue growth, powered by more campaigns in market at a greater speed.

The New Model: Agentic Marketing

AI is reshaping how brands engage customers. To compete, marketers must act on 100x more signals, make 100x more decisions, and run thousands of micro-campaigns. Simon AI introduces Agentic Marketing — a new model that removes bottlenecks, unlocks insights, and gives marketers direct control of fast, precise personalization:

  • AI-Powered Execution: Agents handle insights, data preparation, and orchestration as part of the marketing team. Campaigns adapt quickly to live customer and contextual data, scaling personalization without overhead.
  • Contextual Personalization with Real-World Signals: Marketers see customers in full context, connecting profiles and behavior to signals like inventory, weather, and trends. Marketing moves past assumptions and acts on what matters now.
  • Marketer-First, Goal-Based Workflows: Instead of starting with static segments, marketers define business goals. Agents turn those goals into personalized campaigns that launch faster and continuously optimize as new signals emerge.

Alongside the launch of the Simon AI Agentic Marketing Platform, the company has rebranded from Simon Data to Simon AI, reflecting its evolution into an AI-first company. The new name underscores the central role of agentic AI in enabling personalization and highlights the value of connecting data to execution through AI.

Visit simon.ai to learn more and connect with our team to see how Simon AI works.

About Simon AI

Simon AI empowers marketing teams with the data, tools, and support needed to deliver personalized experiences for each customer across every touchpoint. The platform combines an AI-first, composable customer data platform with AI agents, enabling marketers to start with a goal while agents analyze signals, create attributes, identify triggers, and orchestrate campaigns that continuously adapt to meet that goal. By uncovering hidden signals, activating 100x more customer and contextual data, and automating execution across engagement channels, Simon AI allows even small teams to perform like much larger ones. Leading brands such as ASOS, SeatGeek, and others rely on Simon to turn complex data into faster launches, personalized experiences at scale, and revenue-driving performance. Visit simon.ai to learn more.

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GreenLite Raises $49.5M Series B to Advance the Privatization of Construction Permitting with AI-Powered Solutions

Insight Venture

Walgreens, O’Reilly Auto Parts, and TD Bank are among the Fortune 500 companies using GreenLite’s AI-driven Private Plan Review for permitting efficiency

NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — GreenLite, the construction technology company accelerating permit timelines by 75% through AI-powered plan review and compliance solutions, today announced a Series B funding round of $49.5M, led by global software investor Insight Partners with participation from Energize Capital, as well as existing investors Craft Ventures, LiveOak Ventures, and Chicago Ventures. GreenLite will utilize the new capital to expand its go-to-market efforts and enter new verticals, including lodging, industrial and logistics, clean energy infrastructure, and residential development, while further advancing its AI-powered technology platform.

As demand for construction surges, jurisdictions and building departments face unprecedented challenges, including labor shortages, limited adoption of technology, and rising backlogs.

This strain is renewing focus on technologies and policies for permitting solutions, including Private Plan Review (PPR), where qualified third-party experts conduct official code compliance reviews instead of the city. Nearly a quarter of U.S. states have advanced legislation for PPR in the past three years, aiming to reduce delays and streamline development. Today, GreenLite is the only Private Provider combining regulatory expertise with AI to deliver PPR at a national scale.

“The permitting backlog is holding back America’s ability to build at the scale and speed we need,” said James Gallagher, Co-Founder and CEO of GreenLite. “By combining a growing database of proprietary compliance comments with advanced automation, we’re catching violations faster and providing builders, developers, and jurisdictions with the predictability and transparency they need to move projects forward, dramatically transforming the plan review and construction code compliance process.”

GreenLite’s AI-powered digital plan review tool, LiteTable, rapidly ingests plan sets, identifies compliance flags and code requirements, and surfaces relevant guidance from GreenLite’s extensive comment library based on compliance patterns within specific jurisdictions. Today, GreenLite is trusted by nearly a hundred Fortune 500 customers, including retailers, REITs, quick service restaurants, industrial owner-developers, and production home builders to advance permitting nationwide. The company is expanding into lodging, logistics, multifamily, and additional verticals this year.

“GreenLite’s full-stack Private Plan Review approach delivers building permits in days, not months, and is driving growth in America’s local communities and economies,” said Jeff Horing, Co-founder and Managing Director at Insight Partners. “We’re thrilled to back GreenLite as it continues to partner with the commercial sector and local governments to power the future of construction permitting.”

GreenLite was founded in 2022 by James Gallagher and Ben Allen, former Gopuff executives. The company has 50 full-time employees today, and is actively hiring across engineering, product, sales, marketing, operations, and executive roles.

To learn more about GreenLite’s AI-powered permitting and private plan review capabilities, please visit: https://greenlite.com/.

About GreenLite:
GreenLite is transforming how America builds by streamlining the permitting process for developers, builders, and local governments. GreenLite pioneered AI-powered Private Plan Review (PPR), where third-party experts, supported by proprietary software, conduct official code compliance reviews instead of cities.

Its technology accelerates approvals by scanning plan sets, identifying code violations, and surfacing jurisdiction-specific guidance from a large and growing proprietary database of compliance comments. With a team of in-house architects, engineers, and plan examiners, GreenLite helps customers reduce revisions, avoid delays, and cut weeks or months off their permitting timelines.

Trusted by nearly 100 national brands, GreenLite is reshaping the future of permitting across industries from retail and banking to logistics, lodging, and multifamily development. Learn more at https://www.greenlite.com.

About Insight Partners:
Insight Partners is a global software investor partnering with high-growth technology, software, and Internet startup and ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. As of June 30, 2025, the firm has over $90B in regulatory assets under management. Insight Partners has invested in more than 875 companies worldwide and has seen over 55 portfolio companies achieve an IPO. Headquartered in New York City, Insight has a global presence with leadership in London, Tel Aviv, and the Bay Area. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with tailored, hands-on software expertise along their growth journey, from their first investment to IPO. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit insightpartners.com or follow us on X @insightpartners.

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EQT completes public offering of common stock of Waystar Holding Corp.

eqt
  • The offering resulted in aggregate proceeds of c. USD $705.8 million, of which EQT received c. USD 304.5 million

An affiliate of the fund known as EQT VIII (“EQT”) is pleased to announce the completion of an underwritten public offering (the “Offering”) of c. 18.0 million shares of common stock of Waystar Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: WAY) (the “Company”) (“Shares”), for aggregate proceeds of c. USD 705.8 million to all the selling stockholders.  As part of the Offering, EQT sold c. 7.8 million Shares (and now holds c. 24.9 million Shares) and received proceeds of c. USD 304.5 million. The remaining Shares sold in the Offering were sold by other stockholders of the Company. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC acted as underwriter of the Offering, which was completed on September 12, 2025.  The Company did not sell any Shares in the Offering and did not receive any proceeds from the sale of the Shares sold by EQT and the other stockholders.

Contact

EQT Press Office, press@eqtpartners.com

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About EQT

EQT is a purpose-driven global investment organization with EUR 266 billion in total assets under management (EUR 141 billion in fee-generating assets under management) as of 30 June 2025, within two business segments – Private Capital and Real Assets. EQT owns portfolio companies and assets in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas and supports them in achieving sustainable growth, operational excellence and market leadership.

More info: www.eqtgroup.com

Follow EQT on LinkedIn, X, YouTube and Instagram

About Waystar

Waystar’s mission-critical software is purpose-built to simplify healthcare payments so providers can prioritize patient care and optimize their financial performance. Waystar serves approximately 30,000 clients, representing over 1 million distinct providers, including 16 of 20 institutions on the U.S. News Best Hospitals list. Waystar’s enterprise-grade platform annually processes over 6 billion healthcare payment transactions, including over $1.8 trillion in annual gross claims and spanning approximately 50% of U.S. patients. Waystar strives to transform healthcare payments so providers can focus on what matters most: their patients and communities.

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Thoma Bravo Completes Acquisition of Olo

Thomas Bravo

NEW YORK—Thoma Bravo, a leading software investment firm, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Olo Inc. (“Olo” or the “Company”), a leading open SaaS platform for restaurants, in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $2.0 billion in equity value. The agreement to acquire Olo was approved by Olo stockholders at the Special Meeting of Stockholders held on September 9, 2025.

With the completion of the transaction, Olo stockholders are entitled to receive $10.25 per share in cash for each share of Olo common stock they owned. The Company’s common stock has ceased trading and will be delisted from NYSE.

“Olo has grown from a pioneer in digital ordering into a world-class platform that helps restaurants engage guests and drive profitable growth,” said Noah Glass, Olo’s Founder and CEO. “We are excited to continue our ambitious journey with Thoma Bravo. Together, we will take Olo’s mission further by scaling faster and innovating deeper, while continuing to deliver industry-leading reliability and exceptional experiences for restaurants and their guests.”

“Olo has built a powerful platform and strong relationships with some of the world’s most iconic and admired restaurants brands,” said Hudson Smith, a Partner at Thoma Bravo. “We are excited to support Noah and his team’s vision for the future of Olo and the restaurant technology space. We see enormous potential ahead for them to scale their business, expand their capabilities, and deepen their impact on how restaurants operate and connect with their guests.”

Advisors

Goldman Sachs served as the exclusive financial advisor and Goodwin Procter LLP served as legal counsel to Olo. Morgan Stanley served as the financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel to Thoma Bravo.

About Olo

Olo is a leading restaurant technology provider with ordering, payment, and guest engagement solutions that help brands increase orders, streamline operations, and improve the guest experience. Each day, Olo processes millions of orders on its open SaaS platform, gathering the right data from each touchpoint into a single source—so restaurants can better understand and better serve every guest on every channel, every time. Over 750 restaurant brands trust Olo and its network of more than 400 integration partners to innovate on behalf of the restaurant community, accelerating technology’s positive impact and creating a world where every restaurant guest feels like a regular. Learn more at olo.com.

About Thoma Bravo

Thoma Bravo is one of the largest software-focused investors in the world, with over US$181 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2025. Through its private equity, growth equity and credit strategies, the firm invests in growth-oriented, innovative companies operating in the software and technology sectors. Leveraging Thoma Bravo’s deep sector knowledge and strategic and operational expertise, the firm collaborates with its portfolio companies to implement operating best practices and drive growth initiatives. Over the past 20+ years, the firm has acquired or invested in approximately 555 companies representing approximately US$285 billion in enterprise value (including control and non-control investments). The firm has offices in Chicago, Dallas, London, Miami, New York and San Francisco. For more information, visit Thoma Bravo’s website at thomabravo.com.

Read the release on PR Newswire here.

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KKR Agrees to Acquire NewDay’s Consumer Credit Portfolio from Cinven and CVC

KKR

Cinven and CVC have agreed to sell NewDay’s portfolio of consumer credit receivables to private credit funds and accounts managed by KKR, a leading global investment firm.

The transaction effectively separates NewDay’s credit balance sheet from NewDay’s origination and servicing business (“NewDay Operating Group”). KKR will enter into a multi-year forward flow agreement with the NewDay Operating Group in respect of its future origination. The underlying portfolios of consumer credit receivables originated by NewDay (the “Portfolios”) will continue to be operated and serviced as they are today by the NewDay Operating Group. Cinven and CVC will remain invested in the NewDay Operating Group, with KKR also investing in it as part of the transaction.

This highly innovative transaction brings together NewDay’s proven origination and servicing capabilities with KKR’s proven expertise in asset-based finance. The combination is expected to enhance NewDay’s ability to scale, broaden its reach, and continue delivering market-leading innovative credit and technology solutions to UK consumer and merchant partners.

The Portfolios will continue to be funded via NewDay’s existing securitisation structures. The NewDay Operating Group will continue to service its customers as it does today and remains committed to delivering exceptional customer outcomes across the Portfolios.

NewDay is a highly profitable and cash-generative business and has demonstrated consistently strong growth. In its half year results for the six months to 30 June 2025 NewDay reported a 30% increase in underlying profit before tax, at £107 million, and a 21% increase in gross receivables, at £5.2 billion. In February 2025, NewDay acquired economic ownership of the Argos Financial Services store card portfolio, with £834 million of gross receivables and 2.2 million customers, which will be included in this transaction. NewDay’s existing retail customers and merchant and technology partners will not see any changes as a result of the transaction.

Completion is anticipated to occur at the end of September 2025 subject to customary closing conditions.

John Hourican, CEO of NewDay, commented: “We are pleased to welcome KKR as a new shareholder and strategic partner. This transaction is a strong endorsement of NewDay’s platform, people, and performance, and reflects KKR’s confidence in our ability to deliver sustainable growth.

We also want to thank our shareholders Cinven and CVC, who have been exceptional partners since their investment in the business in 2017. Together we have built NewDay into a leading provider of consumer finance across multiple brands in the UK, serving c. 5.9 million customers.”

 

Peter Rutland, Managing Partner at CVC, said: “We are pleased to have partnered with NewDay, supporting the company’s impressive growth journey. During this time, NewDay has become the UK’s leading provider of digital embedded finance and credit card solutions, forged key partnerships with top British retailers and developed cutting-edge, next-generation proprietary technology.”

 

Rebecca Hunter, Senior Principal at Cinven, said: “Together with the management team, we identified an important yet underserved area of the market where NewDay had leading underwriting expertise. Throughout our ownership, NewDay has continued to pioneer innovation in credit, whilst also demonstrating a resilient track record. We are proud to have played a role in NewDay’s success and are confident in the continued growth trajectory of the business.”

 

Varun Khanna, Partner and Co-Head of Asset-Based Finance at KKR, added: “We are pleased to enter into this strategic partnership with NewDay to support their continued growth and innovation in the UK consumer credit market. We also look forward to collaborating with Cinven and CVC, whose backing has helped establish NewDay as a leading provider of consumer finance. Through our Asset-Based Finance strategy, KKR is well-positioned to support NewDay’s expanding multi-brand platform as they deliver responsible credit solutions to millions of UK consumers.”

 

KKR’s investment comes from KKR-managed credit funds and accounts via the firm’s Asset-Based Finance strategy.

Barclays Bank PLC served as financial advisor and Clifford Chance LLP served as legal advisor to NewDay. Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc served as lead financial advisor and structuring agent, Societe Generale, London Branch served as lead structuring advisor and provided financial advice, KKR Capital Markets LLC served as arranger, and Latham & Watkins LLP served as legal advisor to KKR.

ENDS

 

Media enquiries

For further information, please contact

Investor Relations:

 

investor.relations@newday.co.uk

Sodali & Co

 

 

 

Tel: +44 (0)207 250 1446

Email: newday@sodali.com

Cinven

Clare Bradshaw

Tel. +44 (0)7881 918 967

Email: clare.bradshaw@cinven.com

Alison Raymond

Tel. +44 (0)7826 856 198

Email: alison.raymond@cinven.com

Brunswick Group (Advisers to Cinven)

bgcinven@brunswickgroup.com

Joanna Donne

Tel. +44 (0)7834 307 881

Email: jdonne@brunswickgroup.com

Max McGahan

CVC

Nick Board

KKR

FGS Global (Advisers to KKR)

Alastair Elwen

Tel. +44 (0)7834 502 369

Email: mmcgahan@brunswickgroup.com

Tel: +44 (0)203 906 9700

Email: nboard@cvc.com

Tel: +44 (0)207 251 3801

Email: KKR-Lon@FGSGlobal.com

About NewDay

NewDay is a leading UK consumer credit provider serving c.5.9 million customers through a multi-brand strategy that includes credit builder products, co-branded credit cards, and embedded finance solutions. Operating across prime and near-prime segments, NewDay offers proprietary and co-branded products through long-standing partnerships with major UK retailers and financial institutions. The company combines deep underwriting expertise with a scalable technology platform to deliver responsible credit solutions and drive sustainable growth. With a strong technology platform and proven origination and servicing capabilities, NewDay drives growth and innovation in the UK credit market.

About KKR

KKR is a leading global investment firm that offers alternative asset management as well as capital markets and insurance solutions. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and supporting growth in its portfolio companies and communities. KKR sponsors investment funds that invest in private equity, credit and real assets and has strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR’s insurance subsidiaries offer retirement, life and reinsurance products under the management of Global Atlantic Financial Group. References to KKR’s investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds and insurance subsidiaries. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKR’s website at www.kkr.com. For additional information about Global Atlantic Financial Group, please visit Global Atlantic Financial Group’s website at www.globalatlantic.com.

About Cinven

Cinven is a leading international private equity firm focused on building world-class global and European companies. Its funds invest in six key sectors: Business Services, Consumer, Financial Services, Healthcare, Industrials and Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT). Cinven has offices in London, New York, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Guernsey and Luxembourg. Cinven takes a responsible approach towards its portfolio companies, their employees, suppliers, local communities, the environment and society.

Cinven Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Cinven Fund Management S.à r.l. is authorised and regulated by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier. In this press release ‘Cinven’ means, depending on the context, any of or collectively, Cinven Holdings Guernsey Limited, Cinven Partnership LLP, and their respective Associates (as defined in the Companies Act 2006) and/or funds managed or advised by any of the foregoing. For additional information on Cinven please visit www.cinven.com and www.linkedin.com/company/cinven/.

About CVC

CVC is a leading global private markets manager with a network of 30 office locations throughout EMEA, the Americas, and Asia, with approximately €200 billion of assets under management. CVC has seven complementary strategies across private equity, secondaries, credit and infrastructure, for which CVC funds have secured commitments of over €260 billion from some of the world’s leading pension funds and other institutional investors. Funds managed or advised by CVC’s private equity strategy are invested in approximately 140 companies worldwide, which have combined annual sales of over €168 billion and employ over 600,000 people. For further information about CVC please visit: https://www.cvc.com/. Follow us on LinkedIn.

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Penguin Ai Accelerates Agentic AI for Healthcare with Snowflake Ventures Investment

Snowflake

Across every industry, organizations are adopting AI to drive new efficiencies and improve decision-making. The healthcare industry is complex and highly regulated. Compliance with regulatory statutes is mandatory, given the myriad rules around protected health information (PHI). The first step on the AI journey is building a robust data foundation, governance and security framework. Solving this challenge requires a new approach that can navigate these intricacies and unlock true efficiency.

The healthcare industry also expects an outcomes-driven approach to AI. That’s why we are thrilled to announce that Snowflake Ventures is investing in industry-AI disruptors like Penguin Ai to deliver innovations purpose-built for healthcare.

Penguin Ai has built a full-service, enterprise-grade AI platform to empower healthcare organizations to embrace AI with confidence and drive measurable outcomes across both the payer and provider ecosystem.

Founded in 2024 by the former chief data officer at Kaiser Permanente, United Healthcare and Optum, Penguin Ai delivers powerful, compliant AI solutions that reimagine complex healthcare workflows. The platform offers pre-trained AI models and sophisticated AI-based Digital Workers and Agents that automate high-cost, high-volume and data-intensive tasks. These include critical back-office processes like: prior authorization, medical coding, and HCC risk coding.

With this investment, Penguin Ai will bring its agentic AI solutions to the Snowflake Marketplace through a series of Snowflake Native Apps, empowering our customers to deploy fine-tuned healthcare LLMs and AI agents. This integration keeps sensitive data within the customer’s own Snowflake account and is designed to accelerate key industry workflows:

  • For payers: Streamline prior authorization, optimize claims processing, enhance HCC coding and risk analysis, appeals and grievances management, and payment integrity.
  • For providers: Automate medical coding, modernize document management and fax processing, streamline denials and appeals management, and accounts receivable (A/R) recovery.
  • For revenue cycle management: Enhance claims processing, enable AI-assisted billing and revenue capture, and automate denials and appeals.

At Snowflake, our mission is to help every enterprise achieve its full potential through data and AI. This investment brings Penguin Ai’s specialized applications into the Snowflake AI Data Cloud, giving our healthcare customers a powerful new way to accelerate their AI journey.

Get ready for Penguin Ai’s Snowflake Native App, launching soon on Snowflake Marketplace. To see how Snowflake is already empowering the industry, explore our solutions for healthcare and life sciences here.

Ebook

The Snowflake Life Sciences Playbook for AI, Apps and Data Collaboration

Explore 4 key industry use cases and over 10 leading AI, apps and data solutions.

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Nea – From Algorithms to Atoms: Our Investment in CuspAI

NEa

It’s often said that the next decade is the age of atoms rather than bits. We believe advances in the latter will unlock breakthroughs in the former.

Looking at the evolution of intelligent systems, we can identify three distinct eras:

  1. First came the era of systems built on formal (mathematical) models and simulations, generating synthetic data and reasoning within well-defined, logic-driven, and largely deterministic representations of the world. Manual experiments by scientists persisted in this first era and were essential for validating and calibrating the models and simulations.
  2. Next was the era of systems that learned directly from large-scale experimental data, using statistical and probabilistic methods to capture patterns and make predictions from observed reality.
  3. The emerging era will blend these paradigms into agentic, closed-loop systems that can define goals, design and run simulations, select viable paths, commission physical experiments, interpret results, and adapt their strategies iteratively without human micromanagement. By tightly coupling in-silico design with real-world validation in rapid feedback cycles, these systems will accelerate computational discovery and extend intelligent problem-solving into complex domains of the physical world.

CuspAI is spearheading this emerging era in computational materials science, where novel materials can be generated, synthesized, tested and validated in months instead of the 10-20 year horizon the industry has learned to expect. Based in Cambridge, UK with teams across Amsterdam and Berlin, CuspAI has demonstrated exceptional vision and execution: building state-of-the-art models, partnering with industry leaders across different domains, and gathering a stellar team with more than 2 million citations collectively. The company’s innovative approach to computational materials science aligns perfectly with our investment philosophy in backing exceptional talent with a pragmatic approach to solving world-changing problems in high-impact industries. And that is why we are thrilled to have led their Series A financing round.

Why Materials Science?

Materials underpin nearly everything: the homes and infrastructure we build; energy generation, storage, and transmission; mobility and aerospace; computing, communications, and sensing; clean water and food systems; health care and medical devices; textiles and packaging; and national security. Advancements here ripple across the economy.

Historically, discovering a new material is slow and expensive – often a decade or more and tens to hundreds of millions of dollars from idea to deployment[1].

CuspAI’s platform uses inverse design – starting with target properties and working backward to propose candidates – then evaluates stability, performance, and manufacturability through fast feedback loops. In practice, that means high-fidelity simulations, learned surrogate models, degradation pathway modeling, and constraint-aware generation informed by experimental data.

The acceleration of materials discovery enables:

  • Addressing emerging challenges. e.g., filtration of PFAS (“forever chemicals”) from drinking water and industrial discharge.
  • Tackling persistent bottlenecks. e.g., safer solid-state electrolytes, longer-cycle batteries, low-loss power electronics, corrosion-resistant coatings, high-performance membranes for desalination and gas separation. 
  • Anticipate future demand. e.g., lightweight, high-temperature alloys for aerospace; rare-earth-lean magnets; thermal interface materials for data centers; recyclable or bio-derived polymers for packaging and apparel.

Why CuspAI?

We believe CuspAI has amassed a set of unique resources and strategies that are unparalleled in this space:

Professor Max Welling and Dr. Chad Edwards, co-founders of CuspAI

Stellar, interdisciplinary team: CuspAI is led by a highly reputable, interdisciplinary team that brings together deep expertise in ML, computational chemistry, and industrial process engineering — as exemplified by the co-founders.

  • Dr. Chad Edwards (Co-founder & CEO) was previously the Commercial Co-Founder of Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC). He later served as VP of Strategic Partnerships and Global Head of Strategy at Quantinuum following CQC’s merger with Honeywell.
  • Professor Max Welling (Co-founder & CTO) is a Professor at University of Amsterdam, and previously VP Technology at Qualcomm AI Research and Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research. He is considered a pioneer in AI’s application to science, variational inference, probabilistic deep learning, and geometric deep learning.

Focus on large scale, curated data collection: CuspAI recognizes that high-quality, large-scale data is foundational to building state-of-the-art models. The team has made early and deliberate investments in building proprietary datasets at scale, including MOFs, to enable models that are both high-performing and generalizable across material classes. In addition, CuspAI runs tight integrations with downstream experimental data pipelines for simulation, synthesis, and testing workflows. This is also complemented by academic and scientific literature through licensing agreements.

Partnering with industry leaders across various domains: CuspAI partners directly with commercially successful businesses and industry leaders to drive impact at scale – aligning closely with partners’ priorities, and building deep collaborations across sectors like energy, climate, automotive, and semiconductors. In addition, CuspAI has assembled a distinguished advisory board that includes Nobel laureate Geoff Hinton (Turing Award laureate, deep learning pioneer), Yann LeCun (Turing Award laureate, Chief AI Scientist at Meta), Lord John Browne (former CEO of BP), Martin van den Brink (former President & CTO of ASML), Verity Harding (former Global Head of Policy at DeepMind), and Prof. Kristin Person (a leading figure in materials science).

Achieving SOTA model performance: CuspAI’s core model stack is fully proprietary, designed to cover end-to-end materials discovery lifecycle from micro-scale design (molecular and atomic levels) to macro-level deployment (process and manufacturability). The CuspAI platform includes a suite of generative models like MOFGEN, a state-of-the-art autoregressive transformer for metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that achieves a VUN (valid, unique, novel) rate of 49%, which outperforms by a large margin models from Microsoft (10%) and Meta (16%)[2]. Unlike simpler inorganic generators, MOFGEN produces highly complex, synthesizable structures validated against strict physical and chemical constraints and tested against experimental data generated from industry partners.

The Future of Materials

We believe that CuspAI will play a crucial role in shaping the future of materials discovery for generations to come, and will touch many aspects of our physical world from the chips powering our machines to ensuring the sustainability of our environment.

With our investment, CuspAI will be able to accelerate its research and development efforts, expand its market reach, and further solidify its position as a leader in the domain. We are thrilled to partner with Chad, Max, and the entire CuspAI team. Their vision and ambition have the potential to reshape the world, and we can’t wait to be part of that journey.

by Lila Tretikov, Philip Chopin, Andrew Schoen and Aya Somai

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