New ABB and BCG report highlights growing role of direct current technologies in future power systems

• Rapid expansion of AI computing, increasing electrification and rise of renewable energy are driving renewed interest in DC technology as part of future electrical systems
• Both AC and DC systems have strategically important roles in meeting future electricity demand
• Establishing common standards and developing DC-specific skills can help accelerate deployment

ZURICH, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ABB today published a new report, The Strategic Case for Hybrid AC/DC Power: Shaping the Transition to the Next Electrical Architecture, developed in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The report makes the case that direct current (DC) technology is moving from the periphery to the center of industrial, commercial, and digital infrastructure – and that the decisions made by business leaders and policymakers in the next two to three years will determine who shapes that transition and who inherits it.

The future of power distribution is not an either-or choice between alternating current (AC) and direct current, but a hybrid system that combines the strengths of both technologies. While AC will remain the backbone of most transmission and regional distribution networks, DC is expected to play an increasingly important role within facilities where many major energy sources and loads already operate natively on direct current. The fastest-growing technologies, including solar photovoltaic systems, batteries, electric vehicles, AI data centers and many industrial automation systems, are inherently DC-based. As these technologies scale, reducing the number of power conversion steps between generation, storage and consumption can improve efficiency, increase the usable capacity of an existing grid connection and simplify integration.

The report identifies AI data centers as one of the most immediate drivers of DC adoption. As AI workloads continue to increase power density requirements, conventional electrical architectures are reaching practical limits. The report finds that 800 VDC distribution is emerging as the defining architecture for next-generation AI infrastructure, enabling operators to maximize compute capacity within constrained grid connections while improving energy efficiency.

At the same time, the shift is also relevant for a range of other key industries with the research highlighting several opportunities beyond data centers. Automation-intensive manufacturing facilities, commercial buildings and, over the longer term, buildings can also benefit from DC systems or subsystems through lower conversion losses, more effective integration of onsite renewables and storage, and enhanced operational flexibility.

“In a world that will require more power while operating within the constraints of existing infrastructure, enabling broader adoption of DC systems will require stronger collaboration among business leaders, policymakers and technology stakeholders, as well as greater attention to the role DC can play,” said Morten Wierod, Chief Executive Officer of ABB. “For more than 25 years, ABB’s DC solutions have helped customers reduce conversion losses, improve power transfer efficiency and lower electricity demand. To enable broader adoption where the business case is strongest, we need common technologies, harmonized standards, and the workforce capabilities to support implementation at scale. AC and DC each have important roles to play, and together they can help build a more efficient, resilient and future-ready electrical system.”

As part of the report, ABB and BCG address several long-standing misconceptions that have slowed DC adoption concluding that concerns around scale, safety and economics increasingly reflect outdated assumptions rather than the capabilities of today’s technologies. Instead, fragmented standards and a shortage of DC-specific skills are seen as the primary challenges that need to be addressed urgently to accelerate deployment.

ABB was the first company to demonstrate the energy-saving potential of DC in vessels with a DC-based onboard power system that achieved fuel savings of up to 27 percent and launched the industry’s first solid state circuit breaker in 2022. With more than 700 DC-related patents, ABB is now bringing DC distribution to a much broader range of applications, including electric transport, microgrids and data centers. It is also working with industry partners to explore how DC distribution can support low-carbon aluminum production and the production of green hydrogen.

The full report is available at: 

https://www.abb.com/global/en/company/innovation/hybrid-ac-dc-power 

ABB is a global technology leader in electrification and automation, enabling a more sustainable and resource-efficient future. By connecting its engineering and digitalization expertise, ABB helps industries run at high performance, while becoming more efficient, productive and sustainable so they outperform. At ABB, we call this ‘Engineered to Outrun’. The company has over 140 years of history and around 110,000 employees worldwide. ABB’s shares are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (ABBN) and Nasdaq Stockholm (ABB). www.abb.com

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Samarkand to Host the Largest Chess Olympiad in History

LONDON, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On 15 September this year, the 46th World Chess Olympiad will start at the Silk Road international tourism centre in Samarkand. In the history of the prestigious competition, held since 1927, Central Asia will host the chess world’s largest team tournament for the first time.

A total of 398 teams will compete: 208 in the men’s (Open) section and 190 in the women’s section. This will break the record of 380 teams set in Budapest in 2024. The competition will consist of 11 rounds and run until 27 September.

From 10 to 18 September, Samarkand will also host the 3rd Chess Paralympiad. 41 teams will take part — the highest figure in its history.

Held in historic Samarkand, a city on the UNESCO World Heritage List and one of the key crossroads of the Great Silk Road, the competition combines sport with a platform for cultural diplomacy and international dialogue.

According to the teams’ average rating, the United States is seeded first in the men’s (Open) section. Reigning champion India is seeded second, and Uzbekistan third.

The Uzbekistan line-ups reflect the emergence of a new generation of Uzbek chess. In particular, Nilufarkhon Imomkuziyeva and Khumoyun Begmurodov, both aged 16, will make their Olympiad debut.

In the Uzbekistan men’s team, Javokhir Sindarov (4th), Nodirbek Abdusattorov (7th), Nodirbek Yakubboev (39th) and Shamsiddin Vokhidov (61st) are among the world’s 100 strongest players. That Sindarov and Abdusattorov are among the world’s ten strongest clearly demonstrates the competitiveness of the Uzbek chess school.

Compared with 2025, the Uzbekistan men’s team has risen 15 places in the FIDE ranking among 204 countries to sixth. The women’s team has risen 17 places to 21st.

Alongside the Olympiad, the 97th FIDE Congress will take place in Samarkand from 19 to 28 September. It will also include the FIDE presidential election.

The Olympiad will be another important stage for Uzbekistan’s Javokhir Sindarov. Eight weeks after the Olympiad ends, he will face reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju for the world chess crown. Both will be 20 at the start of the match, scheduled for Geneva from 22 November to 13 December.

Hosting the 46th World Chess Olympiad, the 3rd Chess Paralympiad and the FIDE Congress simultaneously demonstrates Uzbekistan’s capacity to organise major international sporting and intellectual events at a high level.

Full details on the official tournament website: chessolympiad2026.fide.com

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This Ganesh Chaturthi, Let Technology Bring Home Prosperity with Reliance Digital

Celebrate the festivities with discounts of up to ₹26,000 on leading bank cards and exchange bonuses of up to ₹10,000 across Reliance Digital and MyJio stores.

MUMBAI, India, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Ganesh Chaturthi is a time when homes across India open their doors to new beginnings, guided by the blessings of Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. It’s a season of hope, togetherness and fresh starts & and for many families, that often means welcoming something new into the home.

As the festivities begin, Reliance Digital wishes everyone a Ganesh Chaturthi filled with warmth, prosperity, and the blessings of new beginnings.

This year, Reliance Digital, India’s largest consumer electronics retailer invites people to celebrate the spirit of the festival with best offers. Whether it’s upgrading an old device or bringing home a long-awaited gadget, the brand is making the moment a little sweeter with instant discounts of up to ₹26,000 on leading bank cards, along with an exchange bonus of up to ₹10,000 (over and above the value of an old device).

The offers are available across Reliance Digital & MyJio stores. People can also shop online at www.reliancedigital.in or www.jiomart.com.

About Reliance Digital:

Reliance Digital is India’s largest electronics retailer, present in over 800 cities with more than 700+ large-format Reliance Digital stores and 900+ My Jio stores, serving customers in every corner of the country and making the latest technology accessible to all. With over 300 international and national brands and more than 5,000 products at the best prices, Reliance Digital offers the largest selection of models to help customers find the right technology for their lifestyle. The trained and well-informed staff at every store are always ready to guide customers through every detail of each product. Importantly, Reliance Digital provides after-sales service for all its products through Reliance resQ, the service arm of the retailer and India’s only ISO 9001-certified electronics service brand. Reliance resQ is available all week and is fully equipped to provide end-to-end solutions.

For ease of purchase, customers can visit any Reliance Digital store, shop online at www.reliancedigital.in or www.jiomart.com.

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Reliance Digital’s #TakeTheFirstBite Returns with Reimagined “Mr. iSeek New Phone”

MUMBAI, India, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Reliance Digital is bringing back its #TakeTheFirstBite campaign ahead of the upcoming Apple flagship launch, with a witty new creative that gives one of the world’s most famous apple moments a modern twist.

Reimagined, the creative features Sir Isaac Newton as “Mr. iSeek NewPhone,” seated beneath a tree and looking up in anticipation as history repeats itself. A playful nod to the iconic Newton story.

The thought behind #TakeTheFirstBite is simple: when something this eagerly awaited is about to drop, everyone wants to be among the first to get their hands on it. Through the creative, Reliance Digital builds anticipation around the wait itself, while creating an unmistakable visual connection to the product category, reinforcing Reliance Digital’s position as the first and the only destination to grab the most awaited Apple’s drop. The OOH is designed to make people stop, look twice and smile, using humour and cultural familiarity to turn the anticipation of the Apple launch into a story of its own.

More details on the launch will follow post 9^th September, post 9:30p.m.

About Reliance Digital:

Reliance Digital is India’s largest electronics retailer, present in over 800 cities with more than 700+ large-format Reliance Digital stores and 900+ My Jio stores, serving customers in every corner of the country and making the latest technology accessible to all. With over 300 international and national brands and more than 5,000 products at the best prices, Reliance Digital offers the largest selection of models to help customers find the right technology for their lifestyle. The trained and well-informed staff at every store are always ready to guide customers through every detail of each product. Importantly, Reliance Digital provides after-sales service for all its products through Reliance resQ, the service arm of the retailer and India’s only ISO 9001-certified electronics service brand. Reliance resQ is available all week and is fully equipped to provide end-to-end solutions.

For ease of purchase, customers can visit any Reliance Digital store, shop online at www.reliancedigital.in or www.jiomart.com  

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Bybit AI Is Live: One Intelligent Conversational Layer to Redefine Financial Experience

Bybit democratizes access to enterprise-grade AI across trading, account management, and customer service

DUBAI, UAE, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Bybit, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, announced the official launch of Bybit AI, a conversational assistant that unifies the exchange’s core services, starting with trading and customer support, within a single chat interface inside the Bybit app.

Bybit AI lets users describe what they need in plain language. The assistant interprets user intent and executes the requested action on the user’s behalf, functioning as an intelligent co-pilot for everyday trading and account management.

Chat to Trade: A New Financial Experience

“Bybit AI is an important part of our roadmap for the New Financial Platform,” said Ben Zhou, Co-founder and CEO of Bybit. “We want to make it easier for users to access the financial services they need in one place. As we continue to develop Bybit AI, users will be able to use it to find and access a wider range of products and services on Bybit. The idea is simple: you tell Bybit AI what you want to do, and it helps you find the right products and services to get it done, like having a team of financial experts right in your pocket.”

Bybit AI replaces the fragmented experience of navigating web pages, menus and dashboards with a single, continuous conversation. Instead of hunting for the right tool for each task, from checking a portfolio balance to placing a trade to submitting a support ticket, users simply state their request in natural language and Bybit AI carries out the underlying action within the chat. Bybit built the product architecture on a clear principle: infrastructure should provide the underlying connections, while individual business lines plug into a single interface, so the exchange’s many services present themselves to users as one continuous assistant rather than a collection of disconnected products.

Bybit also revealed a roadmap to bring its services together through Open API, connecting trading, earn, loans, card and customer support in a more unified experience. “We are not looking to add another dashboard or bolt on another chatbot,” said Rockman Zhang, CTO at Bybit. “The goal is to make it easier for users to find what they need and take action in one place, with a simple interface that brings the right products and services together.”

In the initial rollout, Bybit AI is deployed for all users across two main modules:

• One AI assistant for all needs: Bybit AI will cover key features and essential features across Spot, Futures, and Options trading, Bybit Earn, Copy Trading, Trading Bot, Loan, P2P, Bybit Card, Spot X, access to the Rewards Hub, and notification and subscription management.
• Intelligent support: Bybit’s customer service gets an upgrade while retaining the human touch, with Bybit AI working alongside professional human agents to optimize user experience. Smarter customer support will be integrated directly into Bybit AI, ensuring customer queries are resolved faster, better, and more effectively.

To deploy Bybit AI, eligible users should first activate the feature, which will create a dedicated Bybit AI sub-account. Bybit approached its flagship AI system on a security-first architecture. The sub-account is isolated from the user’s main balance to avoid any potential AI risk, and unlocks instant onboarding with no API key or manual setup required.

Livestream: Bybit AI Demo

Ben Zhou, Co-founder and CEO of Bybit, will officially unveil Bybit AI and demonstrate the game-changing co-pilot on September 9, 2026 at 08:00AM UTC live on Bybit. To sign up for the livestream and see Bybit AI in action, viewers may visit: How it works: Bybit AI Livestream.

Bybit AI reflects Bybit’s ambition to position itself as a New Financial Platform built for the AI era, applying artificial intelligence not as an added feature but as the connective layer across trading, wealth management and everyday account activity. The launch marks an early step in a longer roadmap toward AI-native financial services, with Bybit positioning conversational intelligence as core infrastructure.

#Bybit  / #NewFinancialPlatform 

About Bybit

Bybit is The New Financial Platform.

We believe every person should have access to every financial opportunity on earth. That’s why we’re building the first intelligent platform that connects anyone, anywhere to the world’s finance.

Trusted by more than 80 million users worldwide, Bybit brings together investing, trading, payments, and wealth-building in a single secure and intelligent ecosystem. Through the combination of AI-powered technology, deep global liquidity, robust security, and transparent operations, Bybit makes global finance more accessible, efficient, and empowering for everyone.

Built for everyone. Powered by intelligence. Open to the world.

Learn more at Bybit.com

For more details about Bybit, please visit Bybit Press

For media inquiries, please contact: media@bybit.com

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Hylenr Technologies Finds Rare-Earth Signatures, Opens New Technology Pathway Through Nuclear Fusion

HYDERABAD, India, Sept. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Indian deep-tech company Hylenr Technologies has reported evidence of elemental formation, including rare-earth species, inside engineered Lattice structure systems — opening a radically different pathway toward nucleosynthesis and strategic-material production.

The findings are part of Hylenr Technologies’ work during the last 10-plus years on Nuclear Fusion technology based on Lattice confinement fusion and have also collaborated and validated with leading international research institutions.

A part of this work, titled ‘Nuclear Signatures in a Hydrogen-Loaded Ni–Pd Lattice Confinement System,’ was presented earlier this month at the 27th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ICCF-27) at Niagara Falls, Canada.

From Nuclear Energy to Nucleosynthesis

Nucleosynthesis is the process by which atomic nuclei are transformed to create different elements.

In nature, this occurs inside stars, supernovae and other extreme astrophysical environments, where enormous temperatures, pressures and energy densities drive nuclear reactions.

On Earth, producing or transforming elements through nuclear processes typically requires large-scale nuclear reactors, particle accelerators or high-energy experimental infrastructure.

Hylenr Technologies’ results demonstrate a fundamentally different pathway for nuclear processes and nucleosynthesis within engineered solid materials. In hydrogen-loaded metal lattices, interactions between hydrogen, lattice defects, vacancies and the local electronic environment create highly confined conditions capable of enabling nuclear processes within the material itself.

This shifts the idea of element formation from enormous high-energy systems toward compact, engineered Nuclear energy.

Signatures of 32 Elements Detected

Across approximately two years of material-analysis work, Hylenr Technologies has detected signatures corresponding to 32 elements in post-operation samples, spanning light elements, heavy elements, noble gases Like Helium Neon and Argon. Furthermore, strategically important rare-earth species including Yttrium, and actinides including Uranium. Signatures are reported against pre-operation baseline characterisation of the same Catalyst material sample acting as control, and each is corroborated by more than one of the independent techniques below.

The observations have been studied using multiple independent analytical techniques, including:

• Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX)
• X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS)
• Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES)
• Wavelength-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (WDX)
• Residual Gas Analysis (RGA)

Made, Not Mined

Rare-earth elements sit at the centre of many of the world’s most strategically important technologies.

They are critical to permanent magnets, electric vehicles, robotics, wind turbines, electronics, aerospace systems, defence platforms and advanced manufacturing.

“Yet their global supply chain remains highly concentrated, creating strategic dependence for countries seeking to scale clean energy, defence manufacturing and next-generation electronics,” stated Ram Ramaseshan, Co-founder and Board Member, Hylenr Technologies.

Hylenr Technologies’ work points toward an entirely different model: produce selected elements through engineered nucleosynthesis rather than extract them exclusively from geological deposits.

For India, this could create a new technological pathway toward critical-material sovereignty across defence, electronics, electric mobility, renewable energy, space and advanced manufacturing.

For the world, it raises the possibility that future access to strategic elements may depend not only on where they occur naturally, but on our ability to engineer the nuclear environments within materials to create them.

“What makes this finding exciting is the possibility of bringing together Nuclear Fusion Energy and Rare Earth materials within one engineered nuclear platform,” said Siddhartha Durairajan, Co-founder and Board Member of Hylenr Technologies.

“For thousands of years, access to an element has been determined by whether nature concentrated it somewhere in the Earth’s crust. We are working toward a very different future — one in which we can engineer the material environment required to create selected elements.”

Investor Relations

invest@HylenrTechnologies.com

www.HylenrTechnologies.com

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