• The HASH vs ICHI lawsuit presents claims for crypto fraud and theft for U.S. courts.
• According to the lawsuit, highly leveraged borrowing, insider control and collusion with repeated fund flows led to the loss of over US$16,200,000 of the investors’ funds.
• The forensic report shows ICHI lending scheme’s flaws were exploited by insiders to withdraw crypto assets belonging to other investors before its collapse for financial gain.
• The investigation traces the funds from the suspicious wallets to central exchanges pointing to attempts for liquidation and concealment, and identifies accomplices in the scheme.

NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ —

The forensic graph shows there are notable connections between the wallets 0xE4f4, 0x1fc9, 0x0ead, 0xd409, 0x420b, 0x2dDd, 0x71cE, 0x5915 (5th 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th,19th, and 20th largest bad debt holders) as well as ozgjoker.eth which all transact with 0xc8b5c (largest bad debt holder) in such a way that it could suggest the possibility common ownership amongst some of the wallets, according to the Declaration of Paul Sibenik, filed in the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware.

SUMMARY

– HASH Asset Management (the Plaintiff), a crypto venture capital firm, brought a lawsuit in the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware against DMA Labs Inc. (DMA), ICHI Foundation (ICHI), their founders Bryan Gross and Nick Poore, and their associates Tyler Christian Pintar and Julian Brand aka Julian Finch-Brand (the Defendants). According to the Verified Complaint, filed on 8 April 2025, the Defendants executed a fraud scheme which caused the investors to lose over $16,200,000.

– The Amended Verified Complaint, filed with the same Court on 23 May 2025, is an action for fraud, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, conversion, and piercing the veil and alter ego liability. It seeks to pierce the corporate veil of DMA to hold the individual defendants Poore and Gross liable, in addition to also asserting claims for breach of fiduciary duty and other claims against them. It clarifies and updates the lawsuit revealing more evidence on the associates in the alleged fraudulent scheme.

– The new, updated forensic expert declaration by Paul Sibenik, a certified blockchain forensics investigator, filed with the Court on 21 August 2025, gives further specific and detailed evidence, providing an in-depth analysis of the “pump-and-dump” scheme in supporting the Plaintiff’s claims.

– According to the investigation, which employed blockchain forensic tracing to identify wallet ownership and transaction flows, the collapse of the liquidity pool “Rari Pool 136” was the result of collusion, insider trading and manipulation by individuals associated with ICHI and DMA, pointing to the insiders, namely Julian Brand and Tyler Pintar, profiting from the collapse of “Rari Pool 136”.

– The findings indicate the scheme had design flaws and was exploited by ICHI insiders to borrow and withdraw assets immediately before its collapse for their own financial gain. The report asserts that highly leveraged borrowing, insider control and apparent collusion with insider-controlled wallets, and unauthorized movements of funds led to the loss of over $16,200,000 of the investors’ funds.

– The lawsuit and the expert declaration describe the alleged fraud scheme in forensic detail. As one of the lead investors who participated in the lending program by providing crypto for others to borrow, the Plaintiff brought the complaint to hold the Defendants accountable and personally liable so as to recover for their losses resulting from their misconduct and to protect the crypto community in future.

LAWSUIT: THE FRAUD SCHEME

According to the lawsuit, the Defendants issued their own cryptocurrency, ICHI, and offered a yield earning “liquidity pool” opportunity for investors. As alleged in the complaints, they perpetrated a fraud by deceitfully enticing investors to deposit crypto assets as collateral into their “Community Treasury” in return for issuing “oneTokens” (ICHI-designed “stablecoins” each worth US$1). The Defendants promised that their offering was safe and “decentralized,” and that any changes to it would be subject to a “community vote.” These representations were false. After the Plaintiff invested millions of dollars’ worth of the stablecoins into the liquidity pool called “Rari Pool 136”, the Defendants, contrary to their pledge, exerted full control over it, made unilateral decisions, removed the liquidity protections to protect their own crypto at the expense of the Plaintiff’s crypto assets, and executed a series of transactions that ultimately caused its collapse. As a result, the Plaintiff lost over US$16,200,000.

According to the filings with the Court, the sustainability of “Rari Pool 136” was possible due to an increasing price of ICHI tokens, while ICHI crypto price increase relied on continued borrowing. As soon as there was not enough buying demand for ICHI crypto to sustain the inflated price, it led to cascading liquidations in “Rari Pool 136” of which a large portion of assets had become ICHI crypto. It caused the price of ICHI to collapse by 99%, from nearly US$142 to US$1.79. When ICHI dropped in value, the Defendants executed a series of trades to protect themselves, which caused the rapid collapse of “Rari Pool 136” and the loss of nearly all the Plaintiff’s investments.

The lawsuit states that Bryan Gross, the self-appointed ICHI Foundation “steward” admitted to transferring the “Community Treasury,” with the millions of dollars’ worth of the investors’ deposits, without the required community vote. It asserts that the scheme intended to protect the Defendants’ assets and increase the price of their cryptocurrency, ICHI, at the expense of the crypto assets belonging to the investors, while the liquidity protections the Defendants touted were, in fact, illusory and false. The “Community Treasury” crypto with nearly all the Plaintiff’s investments was lost. According to the lawsuit, together with Poore and Gross, Pintar and Brand operated two primary wallets involved in the fraudulent, “pump-and-dumb” scheme and were direct participants in it.

According to the filings, HASH as a fund was only a lender in the liquidity pool, which deposited stablecoins and collected the interest payments. The Plaintiff did not buy the risky ICHI but earned the cryptocurrency as “yield” for providing “stablecoins” to “Rari Pool 136” for others to borrow.

INVESTIGATION: INITIAL FINDINGS

The Plaintiff commissioned a crypto tracing investigation by a reputable blockchain forensics and cybercrime investigative firm, Cryptoforensic Investigators, led by crypto tracing expert Paul Sibenik, which advises various cryptocurrency exchanges, and law enforcement and regulatory agencies.

The investigation firstly identified significant apparent defects of the lending scheme: a) an extremely high loan-to-value (“LTV”) ratio of 85% of “Rari Pool 136” (meaning that someone pledging US$100 worth of collateral could borrow the equivalent of US$85 in the “stablecoins”), b) it allowed borrowers to use unlimited amounts of ICHI crypto (which is not a “stablecoin”) as a collateral to borrow other crypto, including “stablecoins”, and c) there was no supply cap on the amount of assets to be deposited into “Rari Pool 136”. The depositions note that the “Angel Vault,” a liquidity protection device that the Defendants touted as a protective “buy wall” to stabilize the value of ICHI, also failed.

According to the report, the focus of the Defendants’ scheme was to: 1) displace the “stablecoin” and other valuable cryptocurrencies from “Rari Pool 136” in exchange for the highly risky ICHI, 2) to use borrowed “stablecoins” or other cryptocurrencies to purchase more ICHI, which would drive up the price of ICHI, and 3) to use that purchased ICHI as a collateral in “Rari Pool 136” to borrow more “stablecoins” and other cryptocurrencies and to continuously repeat this cycle. This scheme was possible as ICHI could be used as both the collateral for borrowers and the proceeds of the loan from “Rari Pool 136”. As a result, while the Plaintiff reasonably thought that “oneTokens” and other safer cryptocurrencies were protected, “Rari Pool 136” was completely reliant on the price of ICHI.

The investigation identified that the key transactions which caused the collapse of “Rari Pool 136” were executed by digital addresses linked to the ICHI Foundation and DMA insiders.

MORE INSIGHT INTO SCHEME TRANSACTIONS AND ACCOMPLICES

According to the Amended Verified Complaint (which exposes and scrutinizes activities of the associates of ICHI founders), Julian Finch, also known as Julian Brand or “BlueJay”, and Tyler Christian Pintar, were involved in a coordinated scheme to extract significant funds from the ICHI protocol’s treasury through insider access and manipulation of system parameters. Both individuals appear to have played key roles in the use of recursive leverage and unauthorized borrowing that led to the destabilization of the protocol and contributed to the collapse of the “Rari Pool 136” platform.

As alleged, Julian Brand and Tyler Pintar are believed to have executed large borrowing transactions shortly after treasury funds were moved – often within minutes – indicating potential coordination or foreknowledge of internal decisions. These activities involved borrowing “stablecoins”, purchasing ICHI tokens to influence price movement, and using those tokens as a collateral to further increase borrowing. During this time, the protocol settings such as loan-to-value ratios were modified, and liquidity was removed or dispersed in a manner that hindered liquidations and amplified systemic risk.

The filing points to the fact that Julian Brand had previously served in a business development role at ICHI and continued to be publicly associated with crypto-related initiatives after his departure, while Tyler Pintar, similarly, maintained active involvement in decentralized finance through various accounts and projects. Their past activity, including the wallets’ behavior and their public affiliations, appears to align with the patterns observed during the collapse of the ICHI protocol.

NEW FORENSIC REPORT: EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION AND INSIDER TRADING

The forensic investigation aimed to assess whether ICHI founders and their associates, including DMA Labs., were likely behind or played a role in the collapse of “Rari Pool 136” for their own financial gain, and whether there is any indication of insider trading by individuals that were part of or associated with the ICHI Foundation.

In particular, the investigation identified the key wallets tied to insiders, including 0xd415 (Tyler Pintar, $13.09M of bad debt) and 0xfb06 (Julian Brand, $12.21M of bad debt), 0x4fe (ICHI Team, $5.644M of bad debt) and 0xc8b5 (Unknown, but with link to ICHI Team, the largest bad debt holder of $15.46M), and other linked addresses apparently operated or influenced by ICHI associates, which points to insider trading. The expert report suggests that the users with a large amount of bad debt (in the millions of dollars) knew that they were exploiting design flaws in “Rari Pool 136” and that it would likely collapse as a result of continuing to leverage ICHI and borrowing “stablecoins”.

The report identifies that on 6 April 2022, when Julian Brand borrowed $1.8M USDC, the ICHI team transferred $5M USDC and 43 wBTC from the “Community Treasury” without the required “community vote”. It points to other transactions between April 7 and 9 by Brand and Pintar borrowing millions of dollars’ worth of USDC and other crypto assets, just days before ICHI price collapsed. Overall, it shows evidence of transfers from the “Community Treasury”, totalling $9M, which evidently allowed insiders to profit while depleting the collateral reserves meant to protect investors. The report notes that the funds from the identified suspicious wallets were traced to centralized exchanges (including Binance, Kraken, BTCTurk, and stake.com), indicating attempts for liquidation and concealment, while the pattern of repeated fund flows demonstrates collusion and insider trading.

In his conclusion, Paul Sibenik specifies that, based on the analysis of blockchain data and events: 1) a small number of users were likely involved in the exploit of “Rari Pool 136”, while some of the other addresses might also be controlled by individuals that were part of or affiliated with the ICHI Team; 2) the ICHI Team directly transacted numerous times with multiple suspicious addresses with significant bad debt “which is suggestive of insider trading by the ICHI Team multiple individuals, some known and others unknown, who played a critical role in the collapse of Rari Pool 136”, 3) Julian Brand and Tyler Pintar attempted to borrow as much as they could from Rari Pool 136 in the days prior to the collapse, and during the collapse itself, while at the same time the ICHI team moved assets from the “Community Treasury” to “Rari Pool 136” “without the required community vote, allowing insiders, including Brand and Pintar to profit more and more from the inherent flaws in the protocol”, 4) “insiders were able to deplete Rari protocol of the limited USDC available before other users could redeem, possibly due to inside information that insiders like Brand and Pintar may have had”.

The findings document the scheme had design flaws exploited by ICHI insiders to borrow and withdraw assets immediately before its collapse for their own financial gain. The report shows the evidence disproving ICHI’s claims of “decentralization” such as the unauthorized movements of funds without the community vote (while the community voting system systems are meant to protect against centralized bad actors making unilateral decisions that harm stakeholders). The report evidences that highly leveraged borrowing, insider control and collusion with insider-controlled wallets, and identified unauthorized movements of funds – led to the loss of over $16,200,000 of the investors’ funds.

About HASH Asset Management

HASH Asset Management Ltd is a crypto venture capital firm specializing in decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain projects. It is driven by experts in crypto and DeFi, blockchain technology, investment banking, and trading and data analytics, united by the goal of bringing institutional level of service quality to the rapidly developing crypto-assets market.

PDF – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2861594/Declaration.pdf
PDF – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2861593/Amended_Complaint.pdf

FranklinWH is the first home energy storage provider to support both SRP and APS programs

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Arizona homeowners now have more ways to keep their homes powered during outages while earning utility incentives, as FranklinWH Energy Storage Inc. announced its participation in two major battery programs serving the state.

FranklinWH is working with EnergyHub to support the Salt River Project (SRP) Battery Partner Program and the Arizona Public Service (APS) Storage Rewards Pilot. Homeowners with a FranklinWH system can receive financial incentives for helping utilities manage electricity demand during peak periods, while ensuring their homes stay powered during outages. FranklinWH is the first residential energy storage manufacturer to participate in both programs.

“When outages happen in Arizona, especially during the summer, the impact can be immediate and serious,” said Justin Hopkins, senior director of strategic accounts at FranklinWH. “These programs give homeowners a way to stay powered, reduce their bills, and support grid reliability at the same time.”

As electricity demand grows in Arizona due in part to data centers and other high-use facilities, utilities are turning to home batteries to boost the grid when necessary. Virtual power plant programs allow utilities to draw energy from participating batteries when demand spikes, helping stabilize the grid while providing homeowners payment for their shared energy.

Arizona homeowners can also participate in these utility VPP incentives by leasing a FranklinWH battery storage system through Palmetto’s LightReach financing program.

For more information about FranklinWH’s energy storage solutions, visit www.franklinwh.com.

About FranklinWH
FranklinWH Energy Storage is the manufacturer of the FranklinWH System, a next-generation home energy management and storage solution. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, FranklinWH’s team brings decades of experience across energy system design, manufacturing, sales, and installation. The company is AVL-listed with multiple financial institutions and continues to empower homeowners to achieve true energy freedom. Learn more at franklinwh.com.

Media Contact:
Media@franklinwh.com 

To celebrate the final season of Stranger Things, Netflix turned a French streamer into the hero of a film, shot entirely live.

PARIS, Jan. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Netflix is no longer just producing series. To mark the last season of Stranger Things, the platform created “One Last Adventure”, a global experience designed to pull fans out of their living rooms and plunge them into the heart of the show’s universe, in real time.

In France, IDZ delivered one of the most ambitious interpretations of the concept: a film performed and broadcasted live, without a single cut, with streamer Joyca stepping into the lead role of an immersive adventure crafted by IDZ and powered by TVU’s live production tools.

Filming a Movie Without a Safety Net

Picture this: An entire building transformed into the Upside Down. Actors improvising in real time. Joyca navigating puzzles as thousands of viewers follow along. And a race across Paris by bike to reach a cinema filled with fans — all captured in one continuous shot.

“We wanted this to feel like a film, except it was happening live, across two locations, with no second take,” says Filip Trad, the event’s director. “Every transition had to be invisible — switching from a dark set to a street camera, handling live interactions, sound, ambient noise, creator mics… without ever breaking the flow. TVU’s cloud solutions gave us seamless continuity. That fluidity changes everything: it keeps the audience fully immersed, connected to the story from start to finish, as if they were part of it.”

The project was conceived and produced in collaboration with Netflix, IDZ, Webedia, Filmar, TVU Networks, Gaze, Bim Bam, Publicis Consultants, and The Source.

A New Way for Fans to Experience Stories

“One Last Adventure” shows how live storytelling can deepen fan engagement around a fictional universe.

More than promotion, it became a shared moment where viewers weren’t just watching, but living the adventure with Joyca.

Creators are becoming the protagonists of stories that brands build with them, live, directly in front of their communities. Livestreaming doesn’t just offer reach — it creates emotion and connection that traditional formats can’t match.

And the Adventure Isn’t Over

“One Last Adventure” is part of a global series of fan events designed by Netflix to accompany the arrival of the final season of Stranger Things, with immersive experiences happening across several countries in the weeks that led up to the premiere.

In Paris, the story unfolded simultaneously inside the cinema — with the crowd on site — and online, where hundreds of thousands watched Joyca live on Twitch, and on YouTube after the event (watch here).

Driven by strong global momentum, the fifth season of Stranger Things ranks among Netflix’s most-watched English-language series, with more than 105 million views accumulated during its launch period — underscoring the scale of the global community gathered around the show.

Discover more global “One Last Adventure”
netflix.com/tudum/features/stranger-things-5-events 

Former Philips Emergency Care business becomes first platform company of Emergency Care Holdings, advancing a century-long mission to save lives

BOTHELL, Wash., Jan. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Emergency Care Holdings (ECH), a platform formed by Bridgefield Capital to assemble and grow category-leading companies in the emergency medical products sectors, announced the debut of Heartstream today, a new independent company dedicated to advancing life-saving emergency care technologies.

Heartstream is formed through ECH’s completed acquisition of the Philips Emergency Care business from Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA). The transaction marks the official launch of ECH and establishes its long-term strategy to invest exclusively in emergency care.

“At Heartstream, our mission is to meaningfully increase cardiac arrest survival rates, improve clinical outcomes in emergency care environments, reduce costs for health systems, and ease burdens on healthcare professionals. We have a long history of providing market-leading solutions for AEDs, professional defibrillators, and remote patient monitors, delivering life-saving innovation where and when it is needed most,” said Ryan Landon, CEO of Heartstream. “We strive to make working with us simple, smooth, and effortless for first responders and partners worldwide.”

With a heritage spanning more than 100 years in cardiac monitoring and over 40 years in defibrillator solutions, the Heartstream portfolio today is comprised of innovations stemming from companies like Hewlett-Packard, Agilent Technologies, Royal Philips, Remote Diagnostic Technologies, Goldway Shenzhen, and the original Heartstream company, which was founded in 1992. Throughout its history, the business delivered industry-defining innovations, including the first 12-lead ECG algorithm, the first biphasic defibrillation waveform- now an industry standard- and the first defibrillator to receive over-the-counter designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, expanding access to AEDs where sudden cardiac arrest most often occurs.

Today, Heartstream builds on this legacy as an independent company within the ECH umbrella, continuing to manufacture and market trusted emergency care solutions, including HeartStart AEDs, Tempus and Intrepid patient monitoring systems, and integrated software solutions. The company will operate under a multi-year licensing agreement for use of the Philips brand.

Sudden cardiac arrest remains one of the most urgent public health challenges worldwide. Nearly 72 percent of events occur outside the hospital according to the American Heart Association, and survival rates are less than 10 percent according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, yet fewer than one percent of households have access to a defibrillator.

With renewed operational focus and dedicated investment, Heartstream will prioritize initiatives aimed at expanding access to AEDs in public places and in the home. The company also plans to elevate emergency care with a broader global footprint, stronger supply chain resilience, modernized digital and connected-care solutions, enhanced partnerships with strategic distributors, more customer-centric innovation, and expanded support, services, and clinical education.

“Being part of Emergency Care Holdings positions Heartstream to lead the future of emergency care. ECH brings the focus and capital needed to strengthen our operations and continue working toward our important mission,” Landon added. “At the core of everything we do is deep respect for the people who rely on our solutions — patients, physicians, nurses, paramedics, EMTs, and everyday citizens ready to help when life is on the line. We love what we do.”

About Heartstream

Heartstream is a global leader in emergency medical care, with a heritage spanning more than a century of innovation. From early advances in cardiac diagnostics to the creation of the first modern automated external defibrillator (AED), Heartstream has consistently pioneered lifesaving technologies designed to be accessible, reliable, and easy to use for both professionals and the public.

Formerly Philips’ Emergency Care business, Heartstream currently operates as a standalone company backed by Emergency Care Holdings. Heartstream continues to manufacture and market emergency care products under the Philips brand through a long-term brand licensing agreement.

Guided by a human-centered design philosophy, Heartstream delivers product and commercial solutions that support the full spectrum of urgent medical needs. With a renewed singular focus on patients, clinicians, and first responders, Heartstream is committed to advancing affordable, accessible emergency care- where and when it matters most.

For more information, visit www.heartstream.com.

About Emergency Care Holdings

Emergency Care Holdings (ECH) is a platform developed by Bridgefield Capital to acquire and scale leading companies in the emergency medical products sector.

ECH focuses on sharpening operations, accelerating innovation and expanding access to reliable, life-saving technologies used by first responders, health systems and communities around the world.

For more information, visit www.emergencycareholdings.com.

Independent Testing Highlights Top-Performing Consumer Security Solutions

INNSBRUCK, Austria, Jan. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — AV-Comparatives, the internationally recognised independent authority in cybersecurity testing, has published its Consumer Summary Report 2025, presenting a comprehensive overview of the performance of leading consumer security products for Windows. The report summarises a full year of rigorous, scientifically sound testing designed to help consumers identify effective and reliable cybersecurity solutions.

The Consumer Summary Report consolidates results from AV-Comparatives’ 2025 Consumer Main-Test Series, in which 19 widely used security products were evaluated. Testing covered real-world protection against live internet threats, malware detection capabilities, resistance to advanced attacks, system performance impact, and the frequency of false alarms. All tests were conducted using transparent methodologies under real-life conditions, ensuring unbiased and reproducible results.

Key Findings

Top-Rated Products 2025
Products that demonstrated consistently high performance across all test categories received AV-Comparatives’ prestigious Top-Rated Product Award. For 2025, these were: Avast Free Antivirus, AVG AntiVirus Free, Bitdefender Total Security, ESET HOME Security Essential, G DATA Total Security, Kaspersky Premium, and Norton Antivirus Plus.

Category Awards
To recognise excellence in specific areas, AV-Comparatives awarded Gold, Silver, and Bronze distinctions across individual test categories:

• Real-World Protection: Gold – Norton; Silver – Bitdefender; Bronze – Avira, Kaspersky, McAfee
• Malware Protection: Gold – Kaspersky; Silver – G DATA; Bronze – Bitdefender
• Performance (Low System Impact): Gold – Avast & AVG; Silver – Norton; Bronze – McAfee
• Advanced Threat Protection: Gold – Bitdefender & ESET
• False Positives: Gold – Kaspersky; Silver – Total Defense; Bronze – Bitdefender

These awards reflect not only strong protection capabilities, but also a balanced approach to usability and system efficiency — essential factors for everyday users.

User Experience Review
In addition to technical testing, the report includes a structured user-interface review for each product, evaluating installation, configuration options, alerts, and overall ease of use. This ensures the assessments reflect both security effectiveness and real-world practicality.

Independent Guidance for Consumers

“The 2025 Consumer Summary Report demonstrates that many vendors continue to deliver a very high level of protection,” said Andreas Clementi, CEO and Founder of AV-Comparatives. “Our goal remains to provide independent, transparent testing that enables consumers to make well-informed security decisions based on reliable data.”

The Consumer Summary Report 2025 is available for free download at
https://www.av-comparatives.org/tests/summary-report-2025/

Castle Island Ventures leads the Series A with participation from Coinbase Ventures ahead of an early 2026 product launch.

NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Project Eleven, the leader in post-quantum security and migration for digital assets, today announced a $20 million Series A funding round led by Castle Island Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Fin Capital, Variant, Quantonation, Nebular, Formation, Lattice Fund, Satstreet Ventures, Nascent Ventures, and Balaji Srinivasan.

The round comes as post-quantum cryptography becomes a planning priority for government and industry. Advances in quantum computing could eventually weaken elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), the public-key standard used by networks such as Bitcoin, prompting a staged transition across an ecosystem that secures more than $4 trillion in digital assets.

Project Eleven is building the tools to make complex, multi-year migrations practical for networks and institutions, including readiness assessments, migration test environments, and deployment sequencing.

“As quantum capabilities advance, the stakes couldn’t be higher. We can’t afford to ignore this existential risk posed to the digital asset ecosystem,” said Alex Pruden, CEO and Co-Founder of Project Eleven. “Trillions in value depend on these cryptographic assumptions. Networks like Bitcoin take years to upgrade because they’re governed cautiously by design. We’re focused on making the transition practical now, so the industry can migrate deliberately instead of improvising under pressure.”

“Useful quantum computing is the biggest and most complex threat public blockchains have ever faced,” said Nic Carter, General Partner at Castle Island Ventures. “Project Eleven is building the practical bridge from research to real-world deployment.”

Project Eleven is collaborating with the Solana Foundation and other leading protocols and Layer 1 ecosystems on post-quantum readiness planning and technical work.

The company raised a $6 million seed round in June 2025 led by Variant and Quantonation, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Nebular, and Formation. Project Eleven plans to unveil its next major product release in early 2026, adding capabilities for institutions, protocols, and end users looking to future-proof long-lived cryptographic systems.

Alex Pruden and Nic Carter are available for interview.

About Project Eleven
Project Eleven builds resilient infrastructure and tooling for the post-quantum era. The company develops scalable solutions that strengthen security across a rapidly evolving quantum threat landscape. With deep expertise in cryptography, blockchain, and financial systems, Project Eleven bridges advanced post-quantum research with real-world implementations that prepare the digital asset ecosystem for the future. For more information, visit www.projecteleven.com.

Media Contacts
Aubrey Strobel / Elena Nisonoff, Halcyon Communications
projecteleven@halcyonpr.xyz

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — BizCard, an AI-powered digital business card platform designed for distraction-free, in-person networking, announced that during its recent Product Hunt debut, it was ranked #2 Product of the Week for the first week of January 2026, and #1 Product of the Day on Dec. 29, 2025.

The recognition reflects a broader shift among professionals toward networking tools that prioritize presence, particularly for real-world environments such as conferences, trade shows, and professional meetups.

BizCard combines a physical, E-ink business card with AI-driven profile management, voice-based AI assistance, and intelligent note-taking—allowing professionals to exchange information naturally in person, without phones, QR codes, or app switching.

Rethinking Networking in a Phone-First World

Each year, more than 32,000 expos take place globally, attracting over 60 million unique attendees. Yet despite the scale of in-person events, networking experiences have become increasingly fragmented. Traditional paper business cards are static, wasteful, and difficult to manage. QR-code-based exchanges require participants to unlock phones, navigate apps, and momentarily disengage from face-to-face conversations.

As AI tools become more powerful, in-person interactions have quietly become more distracted.

BizCard was created to address this tension by enabling information exchange without interrupting human presence.

A Distraction-Free Offline Networking Tool

At the core of BizCard’s offline experience is a distraction-free E-ink business card, paired with optional NFC-enabled accessories such as wristbands. With a simple tap, users can share their professional profile, links, and notes without unlocking a phone or breaking eye contact.

Profiles can be updated digitally and customized for different events, industries, or audiences, eliminating the need for reprints while keeping the physical interaction intentional and focused.

AI That Works After the Conversation

While BizCard emphasizes screen-free experience at the moment, its platform is powered by AI designed to enhance communication efficiency after the exchange.

After each interaction, BizCard’s AI can automatically organize contacts, capture structured conversation notes, generate summaries and reminders, and support personalized follow-up workflows, including voice-based assistance.

By shifting AI-driven capabilities to after the conversation, BizCard allows professionals to stay present during interactions while reducing the administrative burden that typically follows events.

“As AI and automation accelerate, the real challenge is not adding more technology to human interactions, but knowing when to remove it,” said Jack Kam, Co-Founder of BizCard. “BizCard is designed to keep in-person moments human, while letting AI handle the work that happens after the conversation.”

During its Product Hunt launch, BizCard engaged actively with the global maker and professional community, answering questions about hardware design, product philosophy, and real-world usage at live events.

Early feedback highlighted strong interest from professionals who are seeking more present, human-centered ways to network and follow up meaningfully after in-person interactions.

BizCard’s Product Hunt page can be viewed at https://www.producthunt.com/products/bizcard-3

Start creating your AI BizCard: https://card.biz/download?ref=producthunt

About BizCard

BizCard is an AI-powered digital business card platform designed to help professionals build better connections online and offline. By combining intelligent profile management with distraction-free hardware, BizCard enables more authentic, efficient, and human networking experiences.

Learn more about BizCard: https://card.biz