Clearlake Capital Closes on $14.8 Billion to Capitalize on AI-Driven Transformation and Continue Sector-Focused Investment Strategy

  SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Tuesday, 16. June 2026 AETOSWire 

Fund VIII Reflects Strong Global Investor Support for Clearlake’s Integrated Platform, Operational Value-Creation Model, and AI-Enabled Investment Approach

(BUSINESS WIRE) -- Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. (“Clearlake” or the “Firm”), a global investment firm managing integrated platforms spanning private equity, liquid and private credit, and other related strategies, today announced the successful close of its eighth flagship fund, Clearlake Capital Partners VIII (“Fund VIII”), alongside related co-investment vehicles and separately managed accounts. Together, these vehicles represent $14.8 billion of capital commitments and position Clearlake to continue investing behind the secular trends reshaping industries, including artificial intelligence, software modernization, digital transformation, and operational efficiency.

The successful fundraise comes amid a highly competitive and selective fundraising environment for private markets and underscores continued investor confidence in Clearlake's differentiated sector-focused strategy, integrated investment platform, and proven ability to create value across market cycles. The close was supported by a diverse group of nearly 300 existing and new investors globally, representing six continents and 35 countries, reflecting continued confidence in the Firm’s disciplined investment approach and long-term performance.

“We are grateful for the strong support from both existing and new limited partners around the world,” said José E. Feliciano, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Clearlake Capital. “In an environment where investors are increasingly concentrating capital with scaled, differentiated managers, Fund VIII reflects the strength of our platform, the consistency of our performance, and the enduring partnerships we have built with our investors over the past two decades. We believe our integrated approach, combining deep sector expertise, operational capabilities, and technology enabled value creation, positions us well to capitalize on compelling opportunities for our investors.”

“Periods of disruption often create the most attractive opportunities for value creation,” said Behdad Eghbali, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Clearlake Capital. “We believe our combination of sector specialization, operational expertise, differentiated use of AI, and flexible capital solutions positions us to help businesses accelerate transformation and achieve their next stage of growth. With Fund VIII, we are well-positioned to partner with management teams navigating this evolution and continue delivering long-term value for our investors.”

Fund VIII has already begun deploying capital across investments aligned with Clearlake’s sector-focused strategy and conviction around AI-driven transformation. Through Clearlake AI Labs and external AI partners, Clearlake works alongside management teams to identify and implement high-impact initiatives across operations, product development, customer engagement, and decision-making. Recent investments, including Dun & Bradstreet, Qualus, and ModMed, reflect Clearlake’s focus on partnering with businesses positioned to benefit from technology-enabled transformation and long-term secular growth.

The close follows a period of significant portfolio activity and realized value creation, including approximately $22 billion of realizations over the last five years across investments such as Concert Golf Partners, Brightly, Janus International Group, and Team Technologies, demonstrating Clearlake’s ability to execute its strategy and generate liquidity for investors across varying market environments.

Evercore Private Funds Group acted as the primary fundraising advisor and global placement agent for Fund VIII, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal adviser for the Fund.

About Clearlake

Clearlake Capital is a leading global alternative asset manager founded in 2006 with over $185 billion of assets under management. Clearlake offers a broad range of investment solutions across private equity, credit, infrastructure, secondaries, co-investments, and other related private market strategies. Through Pathway Capital Management, a division of Clearlake, the Firm serves institutional and wealth investors seeking diversified access to private markets. Clearlake seeks to partner with experienced management teams by providing patient, long-term capital to businesses across multiple sectors. The Firm aims to drive value through its active, hands-on operating approach, O.P.S.® (Operations, People, Strategy), which combines deep operational expertise with strategic and talent-focused initiatives. Headquartered in Santa Monica, Clearlake maintains 14 offices across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. For more information, please visit clearlake.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

 

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Contacts

Investor Contact:

Patrick Gilligan

310-400-8844

pgilligan@clearlake.com

Media Contact:

Tasha Pelio

310-400-8879

Tasha.pelio@clearlake.com

 

The Smarter E Europe Sends a Strong Message: the Energy Future Is Renewable

MUNICH & PFORZHEIM, Germany - Wednesday, 17. June 2026

(BUSINESS WIRE) -- Europe is once again facing an energy crisis, another reminder of just how vulnerable our fossil fuel-based energy system is. Yet the current crisis is also accelerating the energy transition and the adoption of electromobility. The objective is to reduce dependence on imports of fossil-based raw materials and thereby increase resilience. This year, The smarter E Europe, Europe’s largest alliance of exhibitions for the energy industry, is sending a strong and clear message with its new special exhibit Renewables 24/7: Renewable energies ensure a secure, reliable and affordable energy supply every day, around the clock. This message is scientifically supported by a new study from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, which will be presented on June 23. From June 23–25, around 2,800 exhibitors will present groundbreaking, market-ready and cross-system technologies for a 24/7 renewable energy supply at Messe München. More than 100,000 visitors are expected.

The new study, Cost-Optimal Transformation of the German Energy System by 2045 – Setting the Course for a Reliable, Resilient and Climate-Neutral 24/7 Energy System, was conducted by Fraunhofer ISE on behalf of The smarter E Europe. Based on facts, it demonstrates that a renewable energy system is reliable, cost-effective, resilient and climate-neutral while promoting growth and prosperity in industrialized nations.

Special exhibit Renewables 24/7

The special exhibit Renewables 24/7 – Secure Energy for a Changing World in hall C5 demonstrates how this vision can be put into practice. It is the standout attraction at this year’s event. The exhibition shows how a renewable energy system functions.

The energy transition is a mindset challenge

On June 23, Michael Kellner (Member of the German Bundestag), Ursula Heinen-Esser (President of the German Renewable Energy Federation, BEE), Prof. Dr. Christian Stöcker (journalist and media researcher) and Luisa Neubauer (climate activist) will discuss how a fully renewable energy system is both technically practicable and socially viable. Hosted by energy expert Dr. Tim Meyer.

E-mobility and grid integration

The Bidirectional Zone is the place to discover how electric vehicles can be used to charge, store and feed electricity back into the grid. Companies operating large fleets benefit from add-on technologies such as smart charging or virtual swarm storage, which allow them to achieve attractive returns on investment.

Green hydrogen: the key to the transformation

At the newly designed Hydrogen Dialogue Forum & Expo exhibition segment ees Europe is placing the topic firmly in the spotlight. On June 24 and 25, the Hydrogen Dialogue Summit at the International Congress Center München (ICM) will explore current trends and challenges in the hydrogen sector. The event is sponsored by Bavarian Minister of State for Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy, Hubert Aiwanger, who will be opening the summit on June 24.

Technology transfer from space

The results of the ees Island Challenge 2026 (BEYOND EARTH) will be presented on the ees Innovation Hub Stage in hall B0. Solutions developed for operation in space conditions can also be applied to critical infrastructure and stand-alone power systems, or microgrids, on Earth.

For more information, please visit:

www.TheSmarterE.de

 

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Contacts

Contact:

Solar Promotion GmbH | P.O. Box 100 170 | 75101 Pforzheim

Horst Dufner | Tel.: +49 7231 58598-0 | Fax: +49 7231 58598-28

dufner@solarpromotion.de

Press contact:

RYSM | Schlesische Straße 26/c4 |10997 Berlin

Roberto Freiberger | Tel.: +49 163 8430 943

roberto.freiberger@rysm.com

Solar Promotion GmbH | P.O. Box 100 170 | 75101 Pforzheim

Peggy Härter-Zilay | Tel.: +49 7231 58598-240

haerter-zilay@solarpromotion.com

Moody’s Launches Decision-Grade AI Skills for Major AI Platforms

 NEW YORK - Wednesday, 17. June 2026 AETOSWire  

Launching today on Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork, with availability expanding across compatible AI platforms

 

(BUSINESS WIRE)--Moody’s Corporation (NYSE: MCO) today announced the release of its first set of AI skills – purpose-built, platform-agnostic instruction kits that encode Moody’s analytical frameworks and connect AI agents to its decision-grade intelligence. Available across compatible AI platforms beginning with Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork, Moody’s skills enable customers to execute complex analytical workflows through a single natural-language request, with outputs grounded in Moody’s proprietary ratings, research, and risk intelligence.

“Moody’s is among the first financial data providers to deliver a full library of skills on an open standard, and today’s launch is just the beginning,” said Cristina Pieretti, Head of Digital Content and Innovation at Moody’s. “AI platforms are becoming the interface for financial decision-making, and the next phase of adoption will be defined by execution. Skills are how we encode Moody’s expertise into that execution layer.”

Skills are emerging as the standard for how AI agents execute specialist work. By publishing its analytical frameworks as skills that run on the platforms where market participants already build and operate, Moody’s is embedding its decision-grade intelligence at the center of how financial analysis is executed across the industry.

Moody’s first wave of skills covers high-priority financial workflows where Moody’s expertise is most concentrated:

Earnings Call Summary – Summarizes earnings call transcripts, covering revenue trends, pricing dynamics, consumer health, tariff exposure, and more.

Peer Analysis – Produces an investor-grade comparison across leverage, profitability, ESG, credit quality, and more.

Public Information Book – Builds a comprehensive dossier on a single entity, spanning financials, governance, competitive landscape, and risk profile.

Rating Pitch – Generates a structured pitch deck covering sector context, rating history, and peer positioning.

Sector Analysis – Combines Moody’s proprietary research with live market intelligence to deliver a full sector-level outlook.

Each skill encodes analytical steps and quality standards to produce outputs that are consistent, sourced, and defensible for high-stakes decision-making in regulated environments. A skill defines how the work is done; Moody's Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers connect it to the data it runs on. MCP is the open standard that lets an AI agent draw directly on Moody's ratings, research, and risk intelligence, so the outputs are grounded in proprietary data rather than general-purpose web content.

A skill teaches an AI agent how to perform a task to a defined standard, captured in a simple, shareable instruction file. Moody's skills are built on the open SKILL.md format, which originated with Anthropic and has since been adopted by platforms like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Because the standard is open, the institutional knowledge encoded in each skill is a durable, portable asset rather than a capability locked to one provider, built once and able to run on any compatible platform.

Moody's plans to expand its library of skills to include credit analysis, lead generation, third-party due diligence, and insurance underwriting – extending its analytical frameworks into more of the high-stakes workflows where financial professionals operate. Each new skill will follow the same open, platform-agnostic standard, ensuring the institutional knowledge remains a durable, portable asset across compatible AI platforms.

To learn more, visit https://www.moodys.com/web/en/us/creditview/blog/moodys-skills.html

About Moody’s Corporation

In a world shaped by increasingly interconnected risks, Moody's (NYSE: MCO) data, insights, and innovative technologies help customers develop a holistic view of their world and unlock opportunities. With a rich history of experience in global markets and a diverse workforce of approximately 16,000 across more than 40 countries, Moody's gives customers the comprehensive perspective needed to act with confidence and thrive. Learn more at moodys.com.

“Safe Harbor” statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995

Certain statements contained in this document are forward-looking statements and are based on future expectations, plans and prospects for Moody’s business and operations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Such statements involve estimates, projections, goals, forecasts, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those contemplated, expressed, projected, anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. Stockholders and investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements and other information in this document are made as of the date hereof, and Moody’s undertakes no obligation (nor does it intend) to publicly supplement, update or revise such statements on a going-forward basis, whether as a result of subsequent developments, changed expectations or otherwise, except as required by applicable law or regulation. Factors, risks and uncertainties as well as other risks and uncertainties that could cause Moody’s actual results to differ materially from those contemplated, expressed, projected, anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements are described in greater detail under “Risk Factors” in Part I, Item 1A of Moody’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, and in other filings made by the Company from time to time with the SEC or in materials incorporated herein or therein. Stockholders and investors are cautioned that the occurrence of any of these factors, risks and uncertainties may cause the Company’s actual results to differ materially from those contemplated, expressed, projected, anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements, which could have a material and adverse effect on the Company’s business, results of operations and financial condition.

 

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Contacts

For Moody’s Communications:

Chris Cashman

Moody’s Corporation

+1 212-553-1461

chris.cashman@moodys.com

Respond.io Raises $62.5M Series B to Scale AI-Powered Customer Conversations Into North America and Europe

 KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Tuesday, 16. June 2026 AETOSWire Print 

62.5M Series B led by Camber Partners, with existing investors participating.

Respond.io is profitable with $35M ARR, 169% year-over-year growth, and a 30% profit margin.

New capital will fund expansion into and mergers and acquisitions within North America and Europe.

 

 

(BUSINESS WIRE)--Respond.io, a customer conversation management platform, today announced a $62.5 million Series B round led by Camber Partners, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and existing investors.

What respond.io does

Respond.io enables mid-market B2C businesses to grow revenue from high volumes of customer chats and calls. It unifies WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Messenger, LINE, Telegram, WeChat, voice calls, email, web chat and 16 more integrations into a single platform with AI agents, automation, and CRMs. This turns fragmented customer conversations into a measurable revenue engine, purpose-built for real-world scale and complexity.

The company serves industries where customers initiate conversations before buying, booking, or committing, including education, healthcare, automotive, retail and travel. The platform powers 2 billion messages per quarter for more than 10,000 businesses in over 180 countries, including Toyota, British Airways, Radisson, Hertz, and Decathlon.

Respond.io generates $35M in annual recurring revenue, growing 169% year-over-year, at a 30% profit margin. It is ISO 27001 certified, GDPR compliant, and an official Meta Business and TikTok Marketing Partner.

Why Camber Partners

The funding was led by Camber Partners, a New York City-based growth equity firm that invests in only a handful of capital-efficient software businesses per year, with a pre-fund portfolio that includes Dropbox, PandaDoc, and Pipedrive. Camber brings deep operational engagement to their partnerships, including support in go-to-market, data science, and talent. As a US-based firm with European market experience, the relationship maps directly to respond.io's geographic expansion plans.

"When we started talking to Camber Partners, that conversation felt different," said Gerardo Salandra, CEO and co-founder of respond.io. "We built respond.io over nine years across markets most competitors never entered and did it profitably. Camber Partners and other investors backed us because they understand what that means: real product-market fit, with great unit economics, and a business that raises to accelerate, not to survive."

"Respond.io spent nine years building the infrastructure for high consideration, AI-native customer conversations - and they did it profitably in diverse markets. They have an exceptional team that has leveraged AI to accelerate rapidly. We believe respond.io is positioned to lead this category at a global scale," said Scott Irwin, founder and partner, Camber Partners.

From omnichannel inbox to native AI infrastructure

Respond.io launched in 2017 to solve a straightforward problem: customers were moving to messaging apps, but businesses struggled to respond from separate channel inboxes. The founding team built a platform that consolidated fragmented conversations into a single platform with automation and routing.

As frontier LLMs matured, the team realized this foundation was exactly what autonomous agents needed to operate on to enable rapid revenue acceleration for the high-consideration businesses they serve. Respond.io had spent years assembling the infrastructure — every major messaging channel, voice, email, CRM integrations, compliance controls — and accumulating the kind of operational depth that comes only from years of running high-volume conversations. This enabled it to roll out native AI technologies that meaningfully address real business needs.

This advantage is structural and compounds over time. Processing more conversations than any comparable platform creates a data flywheel — aggregate intelligence about how businesses actually deploy AI in high-volume messaging, the patterns that work, the edge cases that don't — that continuously shapes how respond.io's AI features are built and improved. Newer or lighter platforms building on the same frontier models cannot buy these operational signals or guarantee the same 99.999% uptime at the volumes AI brings. Today, Respond.io’s AI Agents engage thousands of leads daily, qualify them and close B2C sales autonomously, handing off to human operators with full context for edge cases.

The speed of respond.io’s innovation attracted some of the largest partners in the ecosystem. Meta and TikTok chose respond.io for early rollouts of WhatsApp Business Calling API, TikTok Business Messaging, and TikTok Messaging Ads — making it one of the few platforms offering end-to-end integrations for both messaging and calling.

"Most businesses still treat customer conversations as a cost to manage. The ones winning right now treat them as the revenue channel they actually are, and they're automating everything that doesn't require a human so the humans can focus where they add the most value,” Salandra said. “We see it in our customers every day — we have case studies showing AI Agents are handling 600% more leads with conversation rates as high as 84%.”

Entering North America and Europe

Respond.io built category leadership across APAC, LATAM and EMEA — markets where mobile messaging is the primary commercial channel — and reached profitability doing so. The capital from this new round will accelerate the company’s expansion in North America and Europe, where social commerce on TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp is growing, and mid-market B2C businesses are increasingly running the same types of revenue-critical conversations that respond.io has powered for years.

"The customer conversation management space is at an inflection point," Salandra said. "North America and Western Europe are moving toward leveraging conversations as a competitive advantage to generate revenue, using similar workflows we've already built and tested in markets where this shift happened first. We know how to serve these businesses, and with this funding, we now have the resources to reach them faster."

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and Chairman of Endeavor Catalyst commented: "We are thrilled to be investing in respond.io in this new round. Respond.io is exactly the kind of company we are proud to support — founders building profitable infrastructure in emerging markets and scaling them into the world's largest economies. So proud to have them in the Endeavor Catalyst family!"

About respond.io

Respond.io is a customer conversation management platform that unifies messaging, calls, email, and CRM to help mid-market B2C businesses drive revenue from customer conversations. The platform powers 2 billion messages per quarter for 10,000+ businesses in over 180 countries and territories with 99.999% platform uptime. Respond.io is ISO 27001 certified, GDPR compliant, and an official Meta Business and TikTok Marketing partner. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, it raised US$7 million in Series A funding in 2022. For more information, visit https://respond.io.

 

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respond.io

pr@respond.io

 

RealTime Reservation Acquires STAY to Create Leading Global Guest Experience Platform Serving 2,000+ Properties Across 75+ Countries

 Wavecrest Growth Partners invests to enable combination and support growth of the combined company

 

(BUSINESS WIRE)--RealTime Reservation (RTR), the industry leader in dynamic hospitality booking technology for onsite activities, amenities, and ancillary revenue management, today announced its acquisition of STAY, creating a global end-to-end guest experience platform for the hospitality industry. The combined company will serve more than 2,000 hospitality properties across 75+ countries throughout North America, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. The combination significantly expands RTR's international footprint and strengthens its position as a leading provider of guest engagement, ancillary revenue, and guest experience technology.

The transaction was supported by a strategic investment from Wavecrest Growth Partners (“Wavecrest”), a Boston-based growth equity firm focused on high-growth B2B software, AI, data, and technology-enabled services companies. Together, the combined platform connects the entire guest journey – from booking and pre-arrival planning to in-stay engagement and service delivery.

"The hospitality industry is moving toward a more connected, guest-centric experience, and together we are uniquely positioned to help hotels deliver it," said Shawn Tarter, CEO of RealTime Reservation. "By combining our platforms, we can provide operators with a unified solution that drives revenue, improves efficiency, and enhances the guest experience from booking through departure. What began as a shared vision several years ago has now become an opportunity to deliver that vision at a global scale."

The combined company will serve many of the world’s leading hospitality brands, including Hyatt, Radisson, RIU, IHG Hotels & Resorts brands (IHG), and Barceló, among others. By bringing together RealTime Reservation’s pre-arrival commerce and ancillary revenue platform, with STAY’s in-stay guest engagement capabilities, hospitality operators gain a more comprehensive solution to manage guest interactions, personalize experiences, drive incremental revenue, and streamline service delivery throughout the guest journey.

"From the beginning, we shared a belief that the future of hospitality lies in delivering a more connected and personalized guest experience," said Joan Lladó, President, Europe, STAY. "By joining RealTime Reservation, we gain the scale, resources, and complementary technology needed to accelerate that vision and deliver even greater value to hotel operators and guests around the world."

Looking ahead, the combined company plans to accelerate product innovation, deepen platform integrations, and expand its global presence to help hospitality operators. STAY will continue to operate as part of the combined platform under the leadership of Joan Lladó, ensuring continuity for customers while advancing the companies' shared vision for the future of hospitality technology. By bringing together pre-arrival commerce, ancillary revenue optimization, and in-stay engagement capabilities within a single platform, RealTime Reservation and STAY are well-positioned to support the evolving needs of hotels, resorts, and hospitality brands worldwide.

“RealTime Reservation and STAY are unique, purpose-built platforms addressing a large and increasingly important priority for the hospitality industry: helping operators drive incremental ‘non-room’ revenue while maintaining a high-quality guest experience,” said Vaibhav Nalwaya, Managing Partner of Wavecrest Growth Partners. “The combination brings together two highly complementary products, exceptional teams led by visionary founders, and a shared customer-centric vision to create what we believe will be the leading end-to-end guest experience platform for hotels and resorts globally. We are excited to partner with Shawn, Joan, and the combined team to support the company’s next phase of growth.”

For more information, visit https://www.realtimereservation.com/press-2/

High-res images can be found here.

About RealTime Reservation

RealTime Reservation is an institutionally-backed, high-growth hospitality tech company that enables the world’s leading hotels and resorts to manage the full guest journey through a unified hospitality platform. From reservations and pre-arrival planning to on-property experiences, RealTime enhances the guest experience, increases ancillary revenue, and streamlines the management of amenities, activities, and services. RealTime also helps hospitality operators deliver seamless digital engagement through branded mobile and web experiences, allowing guests to access services, interact with the property, and transact effortlessly throughout their stay. For more information, visit realtimereservation.com.

 

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Contacts

Cessie Cerrato

Cessie C. Communications

Cessie@cessiec.com

786-295-0493

IFF and ISIPCA Mark 10 Years of Joint Scent Design and Creation Master’s-Level Program

 A pioneering perfumery program that develops industry-ready talent

(BUSINESS WIRE) -- IFF — a global leader in flavors, fragrances, food ingredients and health & biosciences — celebrates the 10th anniversary of its industry-leading accredited master's-level program for scent design and creation, developed in partnership with ISIPCA, the world-renowned school for careers in perfume, cosmetics and food flavors. Since its launch in 2016, the IFF ISIPCA program has trained more than 180 professionals from 40 countries, with 130 graduates to date, and a 100% job landing rate up to six months after graduation.

“Over the past decade, IFF ISIPCA has built a strong pipeline of diverse, high-potential fragrance experts, combining creative excellence, scientific expertise and a global perspective,” says Valery Claude, program sponsor and senior vice president of digital for IFF Scent. “The future looks bright with the next generation of scent talent who are poised to drive innovation across the industry.”

IFF ISIPCA is a breakthrough graduate program that offers a point of entry for careers in the field of scent. Combining IFF’s more than 135-year creative legacy and science-led innovation with ISIPCA’s academic excellence, the specialized scent design and creation program has expanded access to perfumery careers. The program prepares students for roles across fragrance development, marketing, sales and perfumery creation, helping build the future of fragrance.

The accredited program selects candidates based on olfactory ability, academic strength and individual talent — without requiring a scientific background — bringing greater diversity of perspectives to fragrance creation. Graduates have gone on to careers across the fragrance ecosystem, including at IFF (in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas) and in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) organizations, demonstrating the program’s impact.

“The program trains profiles that combine creativity, olfactory culture and technical expertise,” says Nicholas Salado, general director, ISIPCA. “It supports talents that are now fully integrated into the industry, aligned with its evolving challenges and dynamics.”

As the industry evolves, education, knowledge transfer and sustained innovation remain at the foundation of the IFF ISIPCA program. The 10-year anniversary milestone reflects IFF’s commitment to investing in the future of fragrance and driving innovation in olfactory experiences that make a meaningful impact for customers and consumers.

Welcome to IFF

At IFF (NYSE: IFF), we make joy through science, creativity and heart. As the global leader in taste, scent, food ingredients, health and biosciences, we’re innovating for the future. Every day, we deliver groundbreaking, sustainable solutions that elevate products people love—advancing wellness, delighting the senses and enhancing the human experience. Learn more at iff.com, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

© 2026 by International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. IFF is a Registered Trademark. All Rights Reserved

 

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Contacts

Judith Gross, VP, Communications & Branding

Department: Scent

Email: scentmediarequest@iff.com

 

New CSC Report Illustrates How AI Is Affecting Enterprise Security Leaders

 

WILMINGTON, Del. - 

CISO Outlook 2026 report indicates 73% of security leaders view AI as an opportunity rather than a risk, however traditional and AI-driven cyber threats persist

(BUSINESS WIRE) -- CSC, an enterprise-class domain registrar and world leader in mitigating brand, fraud, domain, and domain name system (DNS) threats, today released new research on how chief information security officers (CISOs) are adapting to an evolving artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem while managing traditional cyber threats, such as DNS outages. According to CSC’s CISO Outlook 2026 report, 73% of respondents say AI presents more of an opportunity than a risk for cybersecurity. However, these security leaders continue to face challenges in addressing attacks, including AI-powered domain generation algorithms (DGAs), which 86% of respondents cite as a threat.

To thoroughly understand the CISO perspective on today’s cybersecurity landscape, CSC surveyed 300 senior executives—including CISOs, chief technology officers (CTOs), chief information officers (CIOs), and heads of cybersecurity—in Q1 2026.

Key findings from the CISO Outlook 2026 report include:

Respondents ranked the top three threats in 2025 as: 1) domain/DNS hijacking and subdomain takeover attacks; 2) cybersquatting, including typosquatting and online counterfeits; and 3) ransomware and malware

Only 14% of respondents say they are “very confident” in their company’s ability to mitigate domain attacks, with one in 10 respondents believing that major businesses and organizations are “significantly underprotected” against DNS outages

Ninety-eight percent of respondents are concerned about the risks of giving third-party AI-based systems—including large language models (LLMs)—access to company data

Seventy-nine percent say they are “concerned” or “very concerned” that suppliers’ and partners’ AI tool use poses a cybersecurity risk to their organization, yet almost three-quarters (70%) of respondents say their organizations apply risk controls only to key suppliers

Looking to the rest of 2026 and beyond, respondents expect social media impersonation and defamation to pose the greatest cybersecurity threat, ahead of domain and DNS hijacking, subdomain takeover attacks, and cybersquatting

Many CISOs are putting their positive AI outlook into practice, leveraging new tools to take on the proliferation of cyber threats. More than half (57%) of survey respondents confirmed that they use AI-based monitoring and enforcement solutions, and 44% use AI-based solutions for threat detection and fraud prevention. Both these figures increased from last year, when 50% used AI-based monitoring and enforcement and 36% used AI for threat detection and fraud, demonstrating that the technology is playing an increasingly positive role in managing threats internally.

“As cybercriminals continue to leverage AI in new ways to launch targeted and widespread attacks, including those that specifically exploit domains, CISO strategies for domain risk need to evolve to keep pace with the increasing complexity of these threats,” states Ihab Shraim, chief technology officer of CSC’s Digital Brand Services. “In 2026, CISOs and security leaders must prioritize securing fundamental digital building blocks for their enterprises, like DNS, which are now considered critical infrastructure but have often been overlooked. Agentic AI could further accelerate this risk by enabling bad actors to automate reconnaissance, impersonation, and domain-based attacks at scale, making proactive domain security and monitoring more urgent for enterprises.”

To learn more about CISOs’ top concerns and priorities for 2026 and to download the full report, visit cscdbs.com/en/resources/ciso-outlook-2026-report/. For more information on how CSC supports CISOs and security teams with domain security and management, visit cscdbs.com.

About CSC

CSC is the trusted security and threat intelligence provider of choice for the Forbes Global 2000 and the 100 Best Global Brands (Interbrand®) with focus areas in domain security and management, along with digital brand and fraud protection. As global companies make significant investments in their security posture, our DomainSec℠ platform can help them understand cybersecurity oversights that exist and help them secure their online digital assets and brands. By leveraging CSC’s proprietary technology, companies can solidify their security posture to protect against cyber threat vectors targeting their online assets and brand reputation, helping them avoid devastating revenue loss. CSC also provides online brand protection—the combination of online brand monitoring and enforcement activities—with a multidimensional view of various threats outside the firewall targeting specific domains. Fraud protection services that combat phishing in the early stages of attack round out our solutions. Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, USA, since 1899, CSC has offices throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. CSC is a global company capable of doing business wherever our clients are—and we accomplish that by employing experts in every business we serve. Visit cscdbs.com.

 

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Contacts

For more information:

W2 Communications

CSC@w2comm.com

CSC News Room