Castrol launches ‘Castrol CORE’, an integrated thermal management offer for data centres

SINGAPORE, Sept. 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — In response to rising demand for AI and high-performance computing, Castrol today launched Castrol CORE, a new end-to-end offer for its data centre thermal management business. The offer is designed to help customers manage increasingly complex cooling requirements from early-stage design through to daily operations.

Castrol CORE marks a shift from Castrol’s existing product-led cooling business towards an integrated, service-led approach that brings together a network of product, infrastructure, design and service partners, giving customers a single point of contact across the value chain rather than having to coordinate with multiple suppliers.

Under Castrol CORE, Castrol will work with customers earlier in the development of data centre infrastructure, adding new capabilities in design to its existing support for deployment, start-up, operation and maintenance. The move is based on Castrol’s industry research which found growing demand for integrated thermal management solutions that reduce the complexity of working with multiple technologies and suppliers. The research also highlighted supply chain challenges and the high cost of failure as significant concerns for the industry.

Central to the offer are Castrol’s cooling technologies, which have been tested and validated with leading chip and hardware manufacturers including NVIDIA and Intel. This gives customers confidence that the technology can keep pace with next-generation AI infrastructure. The offer is backed by Castrol’s global technology and testing facilities – including labs in the UK, US, Germany and China, alongside joint laboratories across Asia and a network of service providers across more than 150 countries. The network enables continued on-ground testing, validation and monitoring throughout a facility’s lifetime, and helping customers reduce the risk of costly downtime.

Peter Huang, Global President of Data Centre and Thermal Management at Castrol, said: “Customers are telling us they do not simply want another standalone product. They want experienced partners that can help them solve the complete thermal management challenge. We are bringing together proven technology, global reach and, critically, design expertise so we can work with customers at every stage of a project, giving them the peace of mind to focus on what’s next.”

In Asia Pacific, Castrol has built a regional data centre design team supported by local specialists, reflecting the pace at which the region is adopting new cooling infrastructure. This approach is already being tested in practice: Castrol has completed a proof-of-concept programme with a leading data centre operator in China and is now working with global operators on additional proof-of-concept projects.

Backed by more than 127 years of experience formulating fluids for mission-critical applications, Castrol CORE will initially focus on data centre cooling systems, while providing a platform for Castrol’s thermal management offer to expand into other applications over time.

About Castrol

Castrol, one of the world’s leading lubricant brands, has a proud heritage of innovation and fuelling the dreams of pioneers. Our passion for performance, combined with a philosophy of working in partnership, has enabled Castrol to develop lubricants and greases that have been at the heart of numerous technological feats on land, air, sea, and space for over 127 years. Castrol serves customers and consumers in the automotive, marine, industrial and energy sectors. Our branded products are recognized globally for innovation and high performance through our commitment to premium quality and cutting-edge technology.  

For more information, please visit: www.castrol.com

Castrol CORE is Castrol’s integrated Cooling solution offer, bringing together design expertise, cooling technology and lifecycle services to support customers with mission-critical cooling requirements.

Castrol CORE is designed to support data center cooling system requirements from early-stage design and specification through deployment, start-up, operation, maintenance and ongoing support.

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Cuttack Gears Up for Durga Puja: Over 170 Pandals Prepare for Grand Celebrations

Cuttack: Sept. 28 (UDN): The festive spirit is building in Cuttack as preparations for Durga Puja gather momentum across the city, with more than 170 puja pandals getting ready to welcome devotees.

 Representational Image 

From traditional clay idol-making to mandap preparations, artisans and puja committees are working against the clock to complete arrangements ahead of the festival. Despite interruptions caused by rain, work has continued at several locations, with artisans putting in long hours to meet deadlines.

Artisans Race Against Time

At Professor Pada, preparations are underway for an approximately 18-foot-tall Durga idol, described by the organisers as one of the tallest in the state.

The first phase of clay work has been completed, while artisans are preparing to begin the next stage of idol-making.

At Haripur Dolamundai, meanwhile, craftsmen are working on the bamboo and straw framework of the idol. The first layer of clay is expected to be applied shortly.

For the artisans, idol-making is not merely a profession but a work carried out with considerable devotion.

“I am handling five to six idols. The bamboo work is already done, and now we will proceed with the first and second layers of mud. Working on the Goddess’s idol feels very different from any other task. We work with such devotion that we don’t think of anything else; it is unique and distinct from all our other works,” artisan Debendra Muduli said.

Over 170 Puja Mandaps Prepare

Durga Puja occupies a special place in Cuttack’s cultural calendar, with neighbourhoods across the city preparing elaborate celebrations featuring idols of Goddess Durga and Hara-Parbati.

While idol-making continues, puja committees are also busy preparing their respective mandaps and arranging facilities for devotees.

The scale of the celebrations means preparations extend beyond decorations and religious rituals, with authorities also working on crowd management, security and other logistical arrangements.

Administration Steps Up Preparations

The district administration and Commissionerate Police have begun coordination efforts ahead of the festivities. Meetings with puja committees, peace committees and other stakeholders have been held to discuss arrangements and ensure smooth conduct of the celebrations.

A single-window system has also been introduced to facilitate the process of obtaining permissions required by puja committees.

Authorities are additionally preparing for live coverage of Durga Puja celebrations, allowing devotees to follow the festivities remotely.

With memories of disturbances during last year’s Dussehra still fresh, officials have appealed to organisers and residents to cooperate with the administration and help maintain peace and order during the festival.

Cuttack Awaits the Festive Days

For puja committees and artisans, the countdown has already begun. With work continuing at multiple locations, the city is gradually taking on a festive look.

“We are very happy that the Goddess’s puja will be held with great pomp and discipline. The weather was a bit concerning, but it has improved now. Cuttack is a city of brotherhood, so there won’t be any issues. We will celebrate the puja of the city’s largest idol with peace and order,” Professor Pada puja committee president Bichitrananda Khuntia told OTV.

As the final layers of clay take shape and mandaps prepare to light up, Cuttack is getting ready for another season of devotion, tradition and community celebration.

Responsible Fintech Institute Appoints Four Executive Fellows and Elevates Distinguished Professor Patrick H. M. Loh to Co-Founder

Appointments of Professor Lawrence Loh, Associate Professor Eugene K.B. Tan, Professor Louis Chen and Farah Jaafar deepen RFI’s expertise in law, governance, digital policy and cross-border capital markets

SINGAPORE, Sept. 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Responsible Fintech Institute (RFI) has appointed Professor Lawrence Loh, Associate Professor Eugene K.B. Tan, Professor Louis Chen and Ms Farah Jaafar as Executive Fellows. RFI has also elevated Distinguished Professor Patrick H. M. Loh, who joined as an Executive Fellow in April 2026, to Co-Founder, in recognition of his contributions to the Institute’s strategic direction.

The appointments come as digital finance goes mainstream and regulators, institutions and technology providers seek to ground innovation in digital assets, AI and cross-border payments in sound legal, ethical and governance foundations.

As Executive Fellows, they will engage regulators and standard-setting bodies, contribute to principles-based industry frameworks, and strengthen RFI’s partnerships across the region.

Welcoming the appointments, Chia Hock Lai, Chairman of RFI, said, “Lawrence, Eugene, Louis and Farah bring deep experience in law, governance, digital policy and capital market development, the disciplines that responsible digital finance depends on. I also congratulate Patrick on becoming a Co-Founder, recognising his central role in building the Institute.”

Professor Lawrence Loh is Director of the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at NUS Business School, where he leads the Singapore Governance and Transparency Index and the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard project. He holds a PhD in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a regular commentator on governance and sustainability for outlets including the BBC, Bloomberg, CNN and The Straits Times.

“Trust is the foundation of every financial system, and it is built on transparency and good governance,” said Professor Lawrence Loh. “I am pleased to help RFI support an industry that grows responsibly and sustainably.”

Associate Professor Eugene K.B. Tan is Associate Professor of Law at Singapore Management University (SMU) and an advocate and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Singapore. Educated at the National University of Singapore, the London School of Economics and Stanford University, where he was a Fulbright Fellow, he specialises in constitutional and administrative law and the ethics and policy of artificial intelligence. He served as a Nominated Member of Parliament from 2012 to 2014 and, from 2019 to 2026, as Singapore’s Representative and Alternate Representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights.

“As AI and digital assets reshape financial services, the key questions are about accountability and public trust, not just technology,” said Associate Professor Tan. “I look forward to helping RFI develop frameworks that are principled, practical and grounded in the rule of law.”

Professor Louis Chen is widely recognised for his contributions to digital governance, sustainable digital economy development and cross-sector institutional collaboration. Through his leadership at the Digital Governance Association (DGA), he has helped advance dialogue on responsible innovation, AI governance and the future of digital ecosystems.

“Trusted digital finance depends on governance that keeps pace with technology,” said Professor Chen. “I look forward to helping RFI bring policymakers, academics and industry together towards a secure, interoperable digital economy.”

Ms Farah Jaafar is a senior executive, board advisor and governance leader with close to 30 years of experience across capital markets, offshore finance, fintech and digital assets. As former Chief Executive Officer of Labuan IBFC Inc., she led the international positioning of Malaysia’s international business and financial centre as a regional hub for cross-border financial solutions. She has chaired risk committees in regulated brokerages and pioneered licensed fintech and digital asset infrastructure in Asia. She chairs the Women in Fintech Group of the Asia Fintech Alliance, which represents fintech associations across 15 Asian markets.

“A rising tide lifts all boats,” said Ms Jaafar. “Digital finance can widen access and create opportunity, but only if it earns the confidence of regulators, investors and the public. I look forward to strengthening that collaboration with RFI.”

Distinguished Professor Patrick H. M. Loh was conferred the inaugural Singapore Distinguished Professor title by Murdoch University, Australia, in 2024. He is Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member at the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at NUS Business School, and Chairman of the Advisory Board at Murdoch University in Singapore. He was awarded the Public Service Star (BBM) and the Public Service Medal (PBM) by the President of the Republic of Singapore.

“The calibre of leaders joining us shows that responsible innovation needs collaboration across law, governance, industry and policy,” said Distinguished Professor Patrick Loh. “I look forward to expanding RFI’s impact across the region and beyond.”

The RFI Executive Fellowship is designed for senior leaders with at least 20 years of experience in executive leadership and a demonstrated track record in shaping financial policy or institutional strategy. Fellows are expected to operate with institutional neutrality while contributing to globally aligned and responsible financial systems.

About the Responsible Fintech Institute (RFI)

The Responsible Fintech Institute (RFI) is a global nonprofit organisation based in Singapore. Its goal is to create a safe, trustworthy and reliable future for digital finance by building the digital utilities that support responsible innovation. RFI brings together public and private sector stakeholders to help build the rules and technology needed for new digital financial tools, and to make the digital asset sector sustainable and inclusive. Learn more at responsiblefintech.org.

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Artmarket.com: H1 2026 Financial Report–One-of-a-Kind AI Systems Intuitive Artmarket® and Blind Spot Will Drive the Next Phase of Growth for “AI-First” Artprice in 2026-2030

PARIS, Sept. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Artmarket.com announces that its 120 pages financial report for the six months ended June 30, 2026, has been made available to the public and filed with the French Financial Markets Authority (Autorité des marchés financiers, or AMF).

The H1 2026 financial report is available on the following websites:

• Artprice.com: www.artprice.com
• Actusnews: www.actusnews.com/fr/

“The launch of Artprice News generated exceptional results in terms of coverage, indexing, and search engine optimization (SEO), particularly in Google AI Overview, which, depending on the country, is becoming the primary way Google users search for information through vertical queries corresponding to new customers (75% to 85%; source: Google).

“This success was supported by an extensive global campaign to attract new readers and customers seeking real-time art market news and event calendars. As a global news agency, Artprice News is now picked up throughout the art press, whose average publication frequency is, at best, weekly.

“At the same time, a major editorial effort produced more than 3,500 multilingual news reports, incorporated by the editorial team with exclusive data from the Econometrics Department. This substantial effort generated exceptional search engine responses and triggered Google Alerts on a massive scale.”

As of June 30, 2026, shareholders’ equity stood at €30.826 million. Artprice owns the world’s largest physical collection of auction catalogs and manuscripts dating from 1700 to the present, most recently appraised at €42 million in January 2025. With this Library of Alexandria and its Intuitive Artmarket© AI system, Artprice will be able to increase the volume of its globally unique data by a factor of up to 25 to 30 between 2026 and 2030, without increasing its expenses, which consist primarily of personnel costs, while generating exponential organic revenue growth.

Artprice by Artmarket’s exceptionally sound management now enables it to lower its break-even point to a remarkable level. Over the years, Artmarket has implemented all the industrial processes needed to keep its average workforce at 49 employees. With Artprice Images® and Intuitive Artmarket®, the group’s total expenses remain virtually unchanged from their 2025 level up to revenue of €90 million, notably through the deployment of its proprietary AI, without any bond financing.

The company has never undertaken a capital increase, with the sole exception of previous exercises of stock options reserved for its employees. This reflects the stated commitment of Artmarket.com’s Board of Directors and its Founder, Chairman and CEO, thierry Ehrmann, to avoid diluting shareholders’ holdings or weakening the share price.

Groupe Serveur, the founding shareholder, remains by far the largest shareholder, holding 30.16% of the share capital and 45.78% of the voting rights, excluding the Ehrmann family’s holdings. No shares have been sold since 2015, a period of 10 years. This reflects its Founder and Chairman thierry Ehrmann’s absolute confidence in and commitment to Artmarket.com stock.

As announced in Artmarket’s second-quarter 2026 press release, published on August 13, 2026, under the headline “Artmarket.com: Q2 2026 Growth, From Artprice’s Gradual Transition to Its ‘AI-FIRST’ Transformation,” thierry Ehrmann, Artmarket.com’s Founder, Chairman and CEO, and his family have complete confidence in the future of Artprice by Artmarket.com, the world leader in art market information, and in the growth of its business. This confidence is supported in particular by the substantial investments in the development of Artprice by Artmarket.com’s proprietary vertical AI systems, “Intuitive Art Market ©” and Blind Spot ©.

The Ehrmann family and Groupe Serveur, the principal shareholder, are demonstrating their confidence in the expansion of Artprice by Artmarket’s business by increasing their holdings in Artmarket.com through purchases of additional Artmarket.com shares. Naturally, all required disclosures are filed with the AMF and published online within the statutory deadlines, and share purchases are made during permitted trading windows.

These current and future transactions are intended solely to reaffirm the Ehrmann family’s and Groupe Serveur’s confidence in the future of Artprice by Artmarket.com and to provide their full support to Artmarket.com. They are not intended to result in a public takeover offer or public buyout offer (OPA/OPR), contrary to the interpretation that continues to circulate on certain forums. The suggestion that the Ehrmann family is failing to make certain share purchase or ownership threshold disclosures is also incorrect.

The ONDE extranet (Outil de notification et de déclaration électronique, or Electronic Notification and Disclosure Tool) is the AMF’s secure platform for filing disclosures, including directors’ and executives’ transactions, ownership threshold crossings, and other notifications. It accepts current and future filings. The disclosures referred to are as follows:

First disclosure—No. 2026DD1133787 (published on August 17, 2026);

Second disclosure—No. 2026DD1134265 (published on August 20, 2026);

Third, supplementary disclosure—No. 2026DD1134267 (published on August 20, 2026).

In line with this commitment to increasing her stake in Artmarket.com, Ms. Nadège EHRMANN, a member of Artmarket.com’s Board of Directors, sought to acquire additional Artmarket.com shares. As the aggregate value of her various purchases of Artmarket.com shares exceeded the regulatory threshold, she made the required disclosures to the issuer and the AMF in accordance with Article 19 of the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR).

Share purchases also normally follow movements in the share price. For the Ehrmann family, these movements in no way alter its determination to increase its stake in Artprice by Artmarket.com.

Artprice by Artmarket has received the government’s “Innovative Company” designation on several occasions from BPI (Banque publique d’investissement, France’s public investment bank). In this capacity, Artmarket devotes 80% of its resources each year to R&D and to creating value through its new databases. Its Founder, Chairman and CEO, thierry Ehrmann, remains by far the largest shareholder through Groupe Serveur—a fundamental criterion according to Warren Buffett and many European investment funds.

Data centers incorporating AI have generally become an extremely sensitive and critical issue because of their high energy consumption. Artprice by Artmarket, for its part, has developed a range of hardware and software processes, together with a clean-room architecture, that deliver genuine energy efficiency. At equivalent computing power, its energy consumption decreases by 18% each year (see Artmarket.com’s Corporate Social Responsibility Report). This is the philosophy of its principal shareholder, Groupe Serveur, an Internet pioneer since 1987, which has consistently pursued this approach for 39 years.

Since its inception in 1997, Artprice by Artmarket has anticipated the art market’s digital transformation. This transformation is now the only way forward for the art market’s influential players: auction houses, galleries, experts, museums, fairs, exhibitions, and others. There will be no turning back. Leading auction houses, including Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Bonhams, state that in 2027 they will reach their end-of-2030 targets for the shift to online operations.

The shift to online auctions and the substantial increase in time spent at home mean that Internet users need reliable, independent data, such as that provided by Artprice by Artmarket, to participate securely in auctions as sellers or buyers and to stay informed about the art market. All market studies and reports now estimate that there are more than 180 million online art buyers across every continent.

In the first half of 2026, Artprice by Artmarket recorded the highest number of lots sold in the history of auctions worldwide (see the Artprice 2026 Art Market Report).

It should also be noted that every year Artprice adds more than 1.2 million data records to its databases, themselves enriched through 112 referential integrity fields. These include current-year records and additional historical data, incorporating more than 3 million very-high-resolution photographs through Artprice Images. These enhancements are not fully reflected in the company’s recorded assets.

The following background information is intended to address recurring questions from the markets and Artprice by Artmarket’s shareholders.

Artprice’s Board of Directors, its Founder and Chairman, and all its employees are committing all their resources to AI. According to its Chairman: “It is worth clarifying that the rapid evolution of AI engines has led Artprice to reassess its position regarding Perplexity on amicable terms.

“Several major players now stand out: OpenAI with ChatGPT 6; Google, with the DeepMind ecosystem, Gemini Ultra, and Project Astra; as well as Grok, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Mistral, Qwen, Copilot, and Meta. These alternatives are proving much more relevant to Artprice customers’ expectations. In addition, Perplexity’s original innovation has become a feature that users expect from its competitors.

“Perplexity had an immediately understandable value proposition: query the web in natural language and receive an answer supported by sources. ChatGPT integrated its own search capability in October 2024; Google developed AI Mode and then strengthened the connection between its synthesized answers and conversational search (Overview). This convergence is the primary factor. When a feature that once defined a company becomes commonplace, each improvement that company makes generates less media attention.

“Perplexity now has to explain why users should choose it, whereas previously it only needed to explain what it enabled them to do. The battle for distribution has become as important as the battle for quality. This was a major missed opportunity, which Artprice experienced against a backdrop of a significant lack of communication between the two companies: a route to a much wider audience was closed off. The rift with content creators and the media presents the most damaging paradox for Perplexity’s media image, arising from its relationship with the information ecosystem. Perplexity built its value by indexing and synthesizing other people’s work.

“However, the AI market is characterized by considerable volatility: models and versions evolve practically every two weeks. This makes subscription pricing extremely complex when AI providers’ commercial terms are constantly changing. Regular increases in licensing costs and instability in the price of tokens—the units of computation and billing in AI—make it difficult to plan with confidence.

“Artprice requires a stable environment in its relationships with technology partners. Passing monthly price increases on to our subscribers is out of the question. Nevertheless, the company continues to monitor the evolution and future stabilization of these technologies very closely.”

For Artprice by Artmarket, AI will be a revolution “more significant than the smartphone and the Internet,” echoing the statements of all the executives who clearly place artificial intelligence at the center of their priorities through an “AI-First” approach, as do all the leaders of GAFAM—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft.

According to Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, the world leader in database software, with a market capitalization of €414.98 billion, major database publishers with proprietary vertical AI—including Artprice—will dominate the S&P 500 in 2030.

For fiscal 2026/2027, Artprice by Artmarket is seeking the “Innovative Company” designation from BPI for the third consecutive time, supported by the highly sophisticated development of a new proprietary AI system integrated into Intuitive Artmarket® with Blind Spot®.

This segment of the AI economy rests on five pillars of computing history: big data, deep learning, data mining, proprietary algorithms, and, of course, a core business built on selling rigorously vetted information, with standardized data throughout every process. The information produced by Artprice by Artmarket plays a crucial role. Artprice by Artmarket holds full intellectual property ownership of all five pillars, with established copyright and related rights covering all its algorithms, databases, big data, machine learning, and neural networks.

Artprice owns the world’s largest physical collection of auction catalogs and manuscripts dating from 1700 to the present, . With this Library of Alexandria and its Intuitive Artmarket® AI system, Artprice will be able, over the 2025–2030 horizon, to increase the volume of its globally unique data by a factor of 25 to 30 without increasing its expenses, which consist primarily of personnel costs, while generating exponential organic revenue growth.

As a reminder, Artprice’s late-2024 study ranked it as the “top-of-mind” art market database, and all AI search engines, including Google, Gemini, and OpenAI, unequivocally confirm Artprice as the global reference for art market databases.

An in-depth unaided brand awareness study was prepared in advance to measure Artprice’s presence in academic, scientific, and institutional circles with great precision.

In addition to unaided awareness, Artprice assessed the depth of brand knowledge by asking participants at the International Committee of the History of Art congress for more information about their familiarity with the brand. The question was: “Which art market databases do you know?” Of the 378 people surveyed, 325, or 86%, named Artprice first, making it the “top-of-mind” art market database.

For 29 years, Artprice by Artmarket has held a uniquely dominant position in the global art information market, supported by an exceptional technology infrastructure that processes 55 megabytes of data per second per employee—more than 25 times the European averages, according to a Mazars audit.

This outstanding technical performance is the foundation of Artprice’s ability to integrate and capitalize on the most advanced artificial intelligence technologies.

Artprice’s databases, with more than 918,000 artists listed and over 30 million auction results covering three centuries of art history since 1700, represent the world’s most comprehensive body of art-related information. This wealth of information, enriched by 212 million images and managed through partnerships with 7,200 auction houses worldwide, creates a unique data ecosystem. Combined with real-time research capabilities for artists and artworks, it generates unprecedented synergies.

This physical Library of Alexandria, annotated and analyzed by Artprice’s historians and experts, comprises 212 million images of artworks, including a core collection of 21 million images tokenized by art historians. These images represent the gold standard for deep learning.

Artprice maintains active technology monitoring by systematically subscribing to all AI engines, with maximum usage capacity on practically every AI platform available in the market, ensuring continuous strategic monitoring of developments in artificial intelligence.

This comprehensive evaluation approach, led by thierry Ehrmann, Artprice’s founder and an AI specialist since 1987, with the support of his IT teams, enables Artprice to maintain deep expertise in assessing the performance, accuracy, and reliability of AI platforms.

Analysis of the market for AI in art shows exceptional growth, from a value of $212 million in 2022 to a projected $5.8 billion by 2032, representing annual growth of 40.5%. This market expansion, combined with Artprice’s position as the global leader, creates a favorable economic environment for developing premium subscription offerings.

The Sophisticated Profile of Artprice’s Customers

Artprice’s customers stand out for their exceptionally high level of expertise and their ongoing demand for deeper knowledge. They include fine art experts, auction house directors, private and institutional collectors, art historians, cultural institutions, international museum curators, researchers, and academics specializing in the art market. Together, they represent the intellectual elite of the global art sector. Their advanced academic training and practical experience make them ideally positioned to benefit from AI’s advanced capabilities, provided they receive support in mastering the appropriate tools and methodologies.

The Art Market’s Specific Challenges and AI’s Contribution

The art market has unique characteristics that make artificial intelligence particularly valuable to industry professionals. The complexity of the information to be processed—including artwork histories, market trends, auction data, critical analyses, artists’ biographical information, and socioeconomic contexts—requires research and analytical capabilities beyond traditional human capacity.

Recent developments in the market, marked by the emergence of new collectors (44% new buyers in 2025, according to gallery reports), the rise of AI-generated art, and the transformation of sales methods through growing digital integration, are creating new information needs that only a hybrid approach combining human expertise and artificial intelligence can effectively address.

Integrating this documentary heritage with the capabilities of the two proprietary vertical AI systems will create unprecedented synergies for historical and predictive analysis of the art market. This combination will reveal hidden patterns in the evolution of artistic tastes, valuations, and cultural trends over more than three centuries.

This democratization is part of a broader shift toward a more accessible art market, illustrated by 17% sales growth among dealers with revenue below $250,000 and by the increase in auction sales of artworks priced below $5,000.

This summer, the 1,800-page “world-book,” as Gemini/Google describes it, “Dialogue Between a Thinker and AI,” written by thierry Ehrmann, has become the foundational corpus for a comparative evaluation of readings and critiques produced by nine AI systems: ChatGPT 6, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Mistral, Qwen, Copilot, and Meta.

https://www.dialoguebetweenathinkerandai.com/en/meta-reading/

 

Artprice by Artmarket observes that “Dialogue Between a Thinker and AI,” the work of its Founder, Chairman and CEO, thierry Ehrmann, is taking on a new role beyond its editorial distribution: it now serves as the foundational corpus of an experimental literary benchmark devoted to long-form reading, interpretation, and cross-critique among artificial intelligence systems. This initiative opens a comparative program designed to evolve alongside models, corpora, and evaluation methods.

The 1,800-page work, freely accessible online at no cost as a raw typescript (4.5 MB), has reached 21.9 million English-language downloads, according to initial certified distribution data from Artprice and its many distribution partners, reaching 123 countries in 16 languages and dialects through its partner PR Newswire/Cision. Its CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license allows the work to be shared and distributed—that is, copied, distributed, and communicated through any medium and in any format, with free access and worldwide digital distribution.

Download time is less than 10 seconds in any country, thanks to Gemini/Google, which keeps the work cached: https://www.dialoguebetweenathinkerandai.com/en/

This 1,800-page Hyper Mundi by thierry Ehrmann, “Dialogue Between a Thinker and AI,” devotes nearly 30% of its length to Artprice’s extraordinary odyssey from 1991 to the present.

Through an initiatory journey marked by major arcana—gathered in the seven arcana of Threshold V, “The Global Memory of the Art Market”—this odyssey retraces encounters and enduring relationships with the mentors and pioneers who shaped the modern history of art prices and art documentation: from Enrique Mayer, the spiritual heir, to the archaeology of memory embodied in the Mireur, through the leading builders on the American continent, Thomas Bayer and Peter Hastings Falk, and on to the bridges forged with Asia through Wan Jie, sealing the mutual recognition of two civilizations.

These essential figures, most of whom have since passed away, handed down their intellectual, documentary, and historical legacy by contributing manuscripts, auction catalogs, and notes from experts and auction houses, most of them now gone. In doing so, they definitively established Artprice as the true and ultimate guardian of the global memory of the art market.

Through this monumental work, its author, thierry Ehrmann, Artprice’s Founder and Chairman, demonstrates that he has been working at the very genesis of AI architectures since 1987, drawing on nearly 40 years of pioneering immersion at the heart of networks and the algorithmic world of AI.

This strategic head start, combined with worldwide distribution, enables Artprice to establish itself naturally at the heart of contemporary AI engines as the sector’s primary source of truth and essential reference.

The 1,800-page print edition will be released in late October in English and French through various bookstore networks around the world. A Simplified Chinese edition will likely also be printed and distributed in China by our state-affiliated partner Artron. Digital distribution through WeChat, with its 1.43 billion active users, has surged across China.

The meta-readings available online form an initial documentary collection unmatched worldwide in scale, making it possible to observe how different systems organize the same work, interpret its structural connections, and discuss analyses produced by other AI systems.

The project takes place at La Demeure du Chaos,/abode of Chaos (dixit NYT), Artprice’s global headquarters, where the convergence of creation, archives, and technology fosters exchanges with visitors and researchers. For thierry Ehrmann, AI’s involvement in literature touches on humanity’s understanding of its own singularity: expression, memory, intention, and responsibility for what it transmits.

The initiative thus extends the principle of the “entrusted pen” (la plume confiée) set out in the book: assistance with wording takes place within a framework of intellectual direction, choices, and oversight assumed by the human author. In the proposed benchmark, this responsibility also extends to designing the tests, examining the evidence, and interpreting the results.

With “Dialogue Between a Thinker and AI,” Artprice has a foundational corpus and an initial public collection of comparable readings. The next step is to transform this experiment into a reproducible framework capable of documenting the progress, limitations, and divergences of systems across successive versions. Literature thus becomes a testing ground where the skills of writers, publishers, humanities researchers, and engineers intersect.

Knowledge, mathematics, and programming tests play a major role in evaluating large language models. Almost all of their benchmarks rely on an expected answer or a verifiable success condition, simply reproducing a binary model.

Literature also involves the continuity of a voice, the construction of a coherent whole, shifts in meaning, and the relevance of an interpretation. These dimensions require multiple evaluation criteria and an examination of the reasoning behind each judgment.

The program centered on the Codex and initiated by thierry Ehrmann belongs to this humanistic field. It takes as its starting point an extensive, multidisciplinary, and multidimensional work at the intersection of the hard sciences, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, art history, and documentary history, together with the successive readings it generates.

This experiment enables Artprice to develop nonbinary benchmarks that are fundamental to measuring progress in the human–machine voice interface. Successive model versions can be tested against an unchanged core set of tasks supplemented by new texts.

This traceability also applies to evaluator models. When an automated judge changes, its new assessments must be compared with its earlier ones on a common set of tasks. New, unpublished tests kept outside public distribution will supplement the open corpora to limit the risk of merely measuring familiarity with previously circulated texts or commentaries.

To expand this approach, Artprice has a documentary library containing hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, auction catalogs, and art books. This collection provides a vast field of study. Documented selections will make it possible to explore different forms of writing and historical periods while preserving the texts’ provenance and terms of use.

This expansion will open up questions specific to Artprice’s business: tracking an attribution over time, distinguishing a source from a commentary, comparing historical descriptions, recognizing changes in vocabulary, or flagging an insufficiently supported connection. The transfer of results to these professional applications will need to be evaluated through domain-specific tests.

For thierry Ehrmann, AI’s involvement in literature touches on humanity’s understanding of its own singularity: expression, memory, intention, and responsibility for what it transmits.

With “Dialogue Between a Thinker and AI,” Artprice has a foundational corpus and an initial public collection of comparable readings. The next step is to transform this experiment into a reproducible framework capable of documenting the progress, limitations, and divergences of systems across successive versions. Literature thus becomes a testing ground where the skills of writers, publishers, humanities researchers, and engineers intersect.

https://www.dialoguebetweenathinkerandai.com/en/meta-reading/

The initial option was to introduce our AI building blocks slowly into our long-established databases while helping users learn how to use them. Although prudent, this approach fragmented users’ perception of the technological revolution underway. AI is no longer an optional component: it has become the primary framework of the global economy.

Gradually injecting AI modules into an infrastructure proven over 25 to 30 years of use is like trying to convert an internal-combustion vehicle with analog controls into a digitally controlled electric vehicle, piece by piece, while it is still on the road. Customers struggle to grasp the quantum leap between the old world and the new, with the risk of an inconsistent user experience. Today, we are choosing clarity and exacting standards: abandoning piecemeal rollouts in favor of a comprehensive, seamless, and fully realized transformation.

This commitment to rigor entails a marginal adjustment to our public deployment timeline, with no impact on our financial trajectory. In a complex global economic environment marked by intense geopolitical tensions and highly volatile energy costs, Artprice by Artmarket’s revenue continues to grow steadily. This exceptional economic foundation gives us the independence and confidence to prioritize operational perfection over haste. This is far removed from the situation of publicly traded companies that incorporate AI into their business models and are constantly seeking equity financing.

The restructuring centers on Artprice’s unique heritage, comprising nearly 180 proprietary databases interconnected in a meta-database with no equivalent worldwide, together with its renowned documentary collection of manuscripts and auction catalogs dating from 1700 to the present, considered unique in the world by researchers and experts.

The first phase of this transformation takes place internally. Every employee in the group, every department, and every production unit is being equipped directly with dedicated AI hardware and appliances. Before making these tools available to subscribers, we are completely redesigning our workflows. Our data collection, standardization, and enrichment pipelines are being fully rewritten to meet deep learning and proprietary algorithm standards.

The platform will be delivered to our subscribers only once the internal value chain has been fully calibrated. Rather than a stack of evolving modules, the database platform will be a complete “AI-First” environment built on our founding pillars: certified large-scale data (standardized big data), deep learning, and algorithmic security.

By choosing this comprehensive, structured transformation, Artprice reaffirms its pioneering role: turning 30 years of global leadership in information into a sovereign decision intelligence engine for the entire global art market.

As the open Internet sinks into entropy and dilution caused by a flood of synthetic data—70% uncontrollable synthetic data as of June 30, 2026, according to Gartner Group and Europol Innovation Lab—companies that own their entire data value chain constitute true citadels of cognitive sovereignty.

Controlling the entire process, from raw data capture (standardized big data) through data mining to the training of deep learning models on tens of millions of unique records protected by patented algorithmic architectures, is no longer simply a matter of managing digital assets. It means establishing a monopoly on ground truth in a given market—in this case, the art market.

The evolution of Artprice’s exclusively proprietary databases into the vertical AI systems “Intuitive Art Market ©” and “Blind Spot ©” is not a simple technical upgrade, but an ontological transformation organized around several strategic dimensions:

According to thierry Ehrmann, Artprice’s founder and Artmarket’s Chairman and CEO, an ontological transformation is a radical change not in an entity’s form, performance, or functions—what it does—but in its fundamental nature, essence, and mode of existence—what it is.

Where conventional evolution improves an existing system, an ontological transformation changes the category of reality to which that system belongs.

Applied to Artprice, its complete control over its vertical AI systems Intuitive Art Market® and Blind Spot®, and its industrial process chains, this transformation manifests itself at three levels:

From an information repository to a cognitive organism: Artprice no longer defines itself as an expert aggregator or a historical database. By integrating vertical AI at the very heart of its sovereign infrastructure, the organization moves from being a knowledge base to becoming an autonomous cognitive architecture.

The metamorphosis of data: art market data changes its mode of being. From a static, descriptive archival trace, it becomes a dynamic, predictive, living semantic matrix capable of contextualizing and analyzing the market in real time.

The ontological sovereignty of the process: ownership of the entire industrial chain—from proprietary raw data to the vertical language model, without application-level dependence on third parties—guarantees systemic self-sufficiency. AI is not a tool grafted onto the model: it becomes the very substance of how Artprice operates.

Historically, the value of these databases rested on the depth of their indexing and the precision of their search engines. Integrating proprietary vertical AI transforms passive yet incorruptible data into active decision intelligence, while general-purpose large language models (LLMs) suffer from hallucinations caused by the porous nature of their training corpora.

Vertical AI backed by a sovereign data chain operates in an ultra-secure, closed-loop environment. The system does not generate plausibility; it produces explainable certainty supported by meticulously precise traceability.

User interaction is evolving from the query-response model toward complex agentic automation. Artprice’s subscribers no longer look for a matching record or a historical statistic; they commission an autonomous Artprice agent, trained exclusively on this data heritage, to carry out arbitrage, simulate forward-looking scenarios, or model risks with exceptional precision. Vertical AI becomes an augmented collaborator that extracts the underlying value from the millions of data pairs accumulated over decades by Artprice by Artmarket.

As the marginal cost of creating generic content collapses toward zero, the relative value of historical, certified, nonreplicable databases grows exponentially (FT). Companies controlling this sealed data chain hold the digital world’s only unpolluted “crude oil wells.” Their subscription model no longer sells access to information, but the privilege of access to an information asymmetry that is critical to strategic, financial, or operational decision-making, through an annual subscription priced very reasonably at €1,600 to €2,500.

These citadels will not isolate themselves completely, but will evolve their access models. The future lies in deploying predictive APIs and inference subsystems that can integrate directly into institutional clients’ workflows. Instead of delivering raw data, Artprice will distribute an embedded intelligence component, making its algorithmic ecosystem indispensable and intrinsically linked to its subscribers’ mission-critical processes.

Every query and every analysis conducted by Artprice’s privileged users within this vertical AI system, in turn, enriches the data structure itself through continuous fine-tuning and metadata enrichment. This feedback mechanism creates an unassailable technological flywheel: the more experts query Artprice’s databases through AI, the more the AI refines its semantic and predictive understanding of the market, continually widening the gap with any emerging competitor.

In short, these exclusively proprietary databases will cease to be perceived as digital libraries and become sovereign inference engines. By controlling both the fuel—tens of millions of certified data records—and the engine—vertical AI and its proprietary algorithms—these companies are doing more than evolving. They are redefining the very nature of paid strategic intelligence, establishing data exclusivity as the supreme standard of the algorithmic era.

With the enormous head start secured by our two proprietary AI systems—Intuitive Art Market and Blind Spot—we have taken the necessary step back to make a very slight adjustment to our launch timeline. This strategic shift addresses a fundamental requirement: finalizing a premium subscription in which technological power disappears entirely behind absolute ease of use.

The overriding priority is to encapsulate algorithmic complexity completely between our data production pipelines and the customer-facing experience. Subscribers should no longer have to manipulate complex filters or settings; dialogue between our members and our sovereign AI systems must be natural and seamless.

In the art market’s specialized ecosystem, this fluidity demands extreme rigor: the AI must master industry terminology and operate in more than 40 languages while respecting art history’s golden rule, which strictly prohibits translating artwork titles. Preserving the original nomenclature and complying with our long-established protocols remain nonnegotiable.

This professionalization of AI use in art creates new career opportunities while preserving the importance of traditional art education.

The success of this collaboration opens opportunities to expand into other specialized fields of knowledge, broadening both companies’ influence beyond the traditional art market. France’s Minister of Culture has officially recognized thierry Ehrmann’s La Demeure du Chaos—”Abode of Chaos,” as The New York Times calls it—located at the heart of Artprice’s headquarters, as a total work of art. That recognition, together with its role in the strategy for developing sovereign AI, suggests potential government support for extending this model of collaboration.

Copyright 1987-2026 thierry Ehrmann www.artprice.com – www.artmarket.com

Artprice’s econometrics department can answer all your questions relating to personalized statistics and analyses: econometrics@artprice.com

Find out more about our services with the artist in a free demonstration: https://artprice.com/demo

Our services: https://artprice.com/subscription

 

About Artmarket.com:

Artmarket.com is listed on Eurolist by Euronext Paris. The latest TPI analysis includes more than 18,000 individual shareholders excluding foreign shareholders, companies, banks, FCPs, UCITS: Euroclear: 7478 – Bloomberg: PRC – Reuters: ARTF.

Watch a video about Artmarket.com and its Artprice department: https://artprice.com/video

Artmarket and its Artprice department were founded in 1997 by thierry Ehrmann, the company’s CEO. They are controlled by Groupe Serveur (created in 1987). cf. the certified biography from Who’s Who In France©:

https://imgpublic.artprice.com/img/wp/sites/11/2025/11/2026_Biographie_de_Thierry_Ehrmann_WhosWhoInFrance.pdf

Artmarket is a global player in the Art Market with, among other structures, its Artprice department, world leader in the accumulation, management and exploitation of historical and current art market information (the original documentary archives, codex manuscripts, annotated books and auction catalogs acquired over the years) in databanks containing over 30 million indices and auction results, covering more than 918,800 artists.

Artprice Images® allows unlimited access to the largest art market image bank in the world with no less than 181 million digital images of photographs or engraved reproductions of artworks from 1700 to the present day, commented by our art historians.

Artmarket, with its Artprice department, constantly enriches its databases from 7,200 auction houses and continuously publishes art market trends for the main agencies and press titles in the world in 121 countries and 11 languages.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/artmarketcom-artprice-and-cision-extend-their-alliance-to-119-countries-to-become-the-worlds-leading-press-agency-dedicated-to-the-art-market-nfts-and-the-metaverse-301431845.html

Artmarket.com makes available to its 9.3 million members (members log in) the advertisements posted by its Members, who now constitute the first global Standardized Marketplace® for buying and selling artworks at fixed prices.

There is now a future for the Art Market with Artprice’s Intuitive Artmarket® AI.

Artmarket, with its Artprice department, has twice been awarded the State label “Innovative Company” by the French Public Investment Bank (BPI), which has supported the company in its project to consolidate its position as a global player in the art market.

Artprice by Artmarket publishes its 2025 Global Art Market Annual Report, published in March 2026:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-art-market-in-2025

Artprice by Artmarket publishes its 2025 Contemporary Art Market Report:

https://www.artprice.com/artprice-reports/the-contemporary-art-market-report-2025

Summary of Artmarket press releases with its Artprice department: https://serveur.serveur.com/artmarket/press-release/en/

Follow all the Art Market news in real-time with Artmarket and its Artprice department on Facebook and Twitter:

www.facebook.com/artpricedotcom/ (more than 6.3 million subscribers)

x.com/artmarketdotcom

x.com/artpricedotcom

Discover the alchemy and the universe of Artmarket and its Artprice department: https://www.artprice.com/video

whose head office is the famous Museum of Contemporary Art Abode of Chaos dixit The New York Times / La Demeure of Chaos:

https://issuu.com/demeureduchaos/docs/demeureduchaos-abodeofchaos-opus-ix-1999-2013

Madame Rachida Dati, French Minister of Culture, has granted official recognition to thierry Ehrmann’s Abode of Chaos as a ‘total work of art’, the global headquarters of Artprice by Artmarket.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/madame-rachida-dati-french-minister-of-culture-has-granted-official-recognition-to-thierry-ehrmanns-abode-of-chaos-as-a-total-work-of-art-the-global-headquarters-of-artprice-by-artmarket-302409684.html

La Demeure du Chaos/Abode of Chaos – Total Work of Art and Singular Architecture.

Confidential bilingual work, now made public: https://ftp1.serveur.com/abodeofchaos_singular_architecture.pdf

    • L’Obs – The Museum of the Future: https://youtu.be/29LXBPJrs-o

    • https://www.facebook.com/la.demeure.du.chaos.theabodeofchaos999 (more than 4.1 million subscribers)

    • https://vimeo.com/124643720

 

Contact Artmarket.com and its Artprice department – Contact: Thierry Ehrmann, ir@artmarket.com

 

 

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OCI Global Reports H1 2026 Results

AMSTERDAM, Sept. 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ —

Hassan Badrawi, CEO of OCI Global commented:

“During the first half of 2026, OCI advanced the final stages of its strategic review. We completed the sale of our global ammonia distribution and terminal business to AGROFERT, handed over Beaumont New Ammonia to Woodside and monetized our entire investment in Methanex. In June, we reached agreement with AGROFERT for the sale of an initial 50% interest in OCI Nitrogen, expected to close in the second half of 2027, together with a mechanism for the subsequent sale of the remaining interest. The agreement provides a pathway for OCI Nitrogen to transition to a strategic owner with an established position in European nitrogen markets, supporting continuity for its employees, customers and operations.

Alongside these developments, and with the consent of the directors appointed by the Enterprise Chamber, we have convened an extraordinary general meeting at which shareholders will be asked to approve the proposed combination with Orascom Construction. The offer period for NNS’s recommended public cash offer for all OCI shares commenced on 15 September 2026, providing shareholders with a cash exit alternative, subject to the terms and conditions of the offer.

Throughout this process, our priorities remain maintaining operational discipline at OCI Nitrogen amid challenging market conditions, managing the Group’s remaining assets and obligations and completing the transactions required to conclude OCI’s strategic transformation.”

Basis of preparation

As of 30 June 2026, OCI’s remaining assets and liabilities, including OCI Nitrogen (“OCIN”), are classified as held for sale in connection with the proposed combination with Orascom Construction PLC (“Orascom Construction” or “OC”). With no continuing operations remaining, the Group’s results are presented entirely within discontinued operations, including results of disposed businesses up to their respective completion dates. The H1 2025 income statement and cash flow comparatives have been re-presented accordingly.

OCI has discontinued alternative performance measure (APM) adjustments, reflecting their reduced relevance to management’s assessment of underlying operating performance and strategic decision-making.

For further details of the Group’s financial performance and position, please refer to OCI N.V.’s published Semi-annual Report H1 2026, included as an appendix to this press release. 

Key Financial Highlights

H1 2026 Key Highlights

• OCI Global (Euronext: OCI) reported net profit attributable to shareholders of USD 1 million in H1 2026, compared with USD 343 million in H1 2025. The H1 2026 result includes a USD 238 million gain on the disposal of OCI Ammonia Holding (“OCI AH”), largely offset by an impairment charge at OCI Nitrogen. The prior-year result included a USD 688 million gain on the sale of OCI Methanol.
  
  
  
  
• The OCI Nitrogen segment reported revenue of USD 534 million in H1 2026, compared with USD 566 million in H1 2025^[1]. Operating profit increased to USD 53 million from a loss of USD 21 million in the prior-year period, reflecting favorable market conditions in the beginning of the period, as more fully described below. Despite positive earnings during the first half of 2026, OCI Nitrogen reported negative free cash flow of USD 2 million. More recently, OCI Nitrogen has experienced increased margin pressure as higher European TTF gas prices have coincided with declining product selling prices and weaker demand in certain end markets. As a result, operating performance in July and August 2026 deteriorated materially relative to the levels achieved in H1 2026. Management estimates adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow for July and August 2026 of approximately USD 8 million and negative USD 16 million, respectively. Management’s outlook for the remainder of 2026 reflects a continuation of these less favourable market conditions.
  
  
  
  
• OCI Nitrogen reported a net loss attributable to shareholders of USD 175 million in H1 2026, compared with a net loss of USD 12 million in H1 2025.
  
  
  
  
• Prior to its classification as held for sale on 1 June 2026, OCI Nitrogen recognised a non-cash impairment charge of USD 215 million, which resulted in a June 30 carrying value of USD 123 million after management concluded that the carrying amount of the business exceeded its fair value less costs of disposal. The assessment reflected the impact of sustained geopolitical tensions, including elevated European natural gas prices, volatility in nitrogen markets and significant disruption at major on-site customers, which reduced customer operating rates and ammonia offtake.
  
  
  
  
• Total corporate costs within Corporate Entities were USD 58 million in H1 2026, compared with USD 69 million in H1 2025. A substantial portion of H1 2026 costs related to strategic transactions, legal and advisory expenses, Enterprise Chamber proceedings and other costs associated with the Company’s ongoing transformation.

Net Cash Highlights

• As of 30 June 2026, held-for-sale net cash was USD 1.05 billion. This compares with a net cash position of USD 695 million on 31 March 2026 and net debt of USD 54 million on 31 December 2025. The increase during H1 2026 primarily reflects receipts relating to the handover of Beaumont New Ammonia, net proceeds from the OCI AH disposal and the sale of Methanex shares. This was partially offset by corporate cash outflows, including one-off items, and a net cash outflow at OCI Nitrogen.

Key Strategic and Business Highlights

Proposed Combination with Orascom Construction and NNS Cash Offer

• OCI continues to progress its proposed combination with Orascom Construction, announced on 9 December 2025 (the “Combination”). The Combination would establish an Abu Dhabi-anchored infrastructure and investment platform, combining OC’s construction and concessions expertise with OCI’s capital base and investment experience.
  
  
  
  
• On 14 September 2026, NNS Holding (Cyprus) Limited (“NNS”) published its AFM-approved offer memorandum for its voluntary all-cash public offer to acquire OCI shares at EUR 4.10 per share, cum dividend (the “Offer”). The acceptance period opened at 09:00 CEST on 15 September 2026 and remains open, with a scheduled closing deadline of 17:40 CET on 17 November 2026, unless extended. The Offer has no minimum acceptance threshold and is subject to the terms and conditions set out in the Offer Memorandum.
  
  
  
  
• OCI published its position statement on 15 September 2026, setting out the directors’ respective assessments of the Offer. The Independent Directors^[2] unanimously recommend the Offer, on its terms and subject to its conditions, and continue to recommend the Combination. Their assessment was informed by independent advice, including Alvarez & Marsal’s solvent wind-down analysis and Rothschild & Co’s fairness opinion. They consider the Offer financially more attractive than a solvent wind-down but do not express a preference between tendering shares into the Offer and participating in the Combination. Shareholders are encouraged to make their own assessment, taking into account their individual circumstances and investment objectives.
  
  
  
  
• The directors appointed by the Enterprise Chamber (the “EC Directors”) support the availability of the Offer as a cash alternative for shareholders, while maintaining a neutral opinion on the offer price. Their support does not constitute a recommendation to shareholders to tender their shares. Having assessed the Combination in conjunction with the Offer, the EC Directors consider that the two propositions together give adequate and reasonable weight to the interests of OCI’s minority shareholders. Their assessment was supported by separate financial and legal advice, including AXECO’s fairness opinion.
  
  
  
  
• With the consent of the EC Directors, OCI has convened an extraordinary general meeting for 30 October 2026 (the “EGM”) to discuss the Offer and vote on the resolutions relating to the Combination. The resolutions relating to the Combination are subject to the conditions described in the EGM documentation, including conditions relating to the Offer. Further details are provided in the EGM agenda, explanatory notes and OCI’s position statement.
  
  
  
  
• Following the hearing on 20 August 2026 in the proceedings initiated by VEB and certain other shareholders, OCI is awaiting the Enterprise Chamber’s decision, which is expected by 7 October 2026. These shareholders did not seek interim measures aimed at postponing, prohibiting or otherwise preventing completion of the Combination.
  
  
  
  
• Completion of the Combination is currently expected in Q4 2026, subject to shareholder approval and satisfaction of applicable transaction conditions.

OCI Nitrogen

• On 1 June 2026, OCI entered into an agreement with AGROFERT pursuant to which AGROFERT will acquire an initial 50% interest in Nitrogen Intermediate Holding B.V., the parent company of OCI Nitrogen B.V (“OCI Nitrogen”). Completion of the initial transaction is expected by H2 2027, subject to regulatory approvals, OCI shareholder approval and other customary closing conditions. The agreement also provides OCI with a put option and AGROFERT with a call option over the remaining 50% interest in OCIN, exercisable from two years after completion of the initial transaction.
  
  
  
  
• OCI Nitrogen was classified as held for sale as of 1 June 2026, and the results of the European Nitrogen segment, including the Ammonia Distribution business, are presented as discontinued operations in accordance with IFRS 5.
  
  
  
  
• Nitrogen market fundamentals were generally supportive through April 2026, when pricing moderated from peak levels reached earlier in the year. Market conditions deteriorated following the escalation of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, which drove a significant increase in European natural gas prices without a corresponding increase in nitrogen product prices. As a result, a substantial divergence emerged between gas input costs and selling prices for the remainder of the period. These market conditions have persisted into Q3 2026. Average European natural gas prices in Q3 2026 to mid-September were approximately 40% higher than in Q2 2026, while average ammonia and CAN prices were approximately 20% and 10% lower, respectively, and significantly below the peaks reached in April.
  
  
  
  
• In response to the current margin environment, OCI Nitrogen has reduced production at certain facilities and curtailed ammonia production where economics do not support full operating rates. Major on-site customers have also operated at significantly reduced rates during the period, contributing to lower ammonia offtake, reduced asset utilisation and materially higher per-unit operating costs.
  
  
  
  
• Conditions in the melamine market have been particularly challenging, with weakened demand, lower operating rates and continued pressure on profitability. On this basis, OCI Nitrogen has prioritised production of higher-return products, including UAN and AdBlue, and continues to assess alternative operating configurations for its melamine assets.
  
  
  
  
• In addition to challenging market conditions, earnings were affected by operational disruptions at certain production facilities and major on-site customers during the period. OCI Nitrogen continues to operate in a highly cyclical and operationally leveraged environment, where relatively small changes in natural gas costs, product pricing, plant reliability and customer operating rates can have a disproportionate impact on profitability, cash generation and valuation.

Beaumont New Ammonia

• On 25 March 2026, OCI completed the handover of Beaumont New Ammonia to Woodside and received the USD 470 million deferred consideration, representing 20% of total transaction proceeds, less amounts withheld in respect of outstanding construction obligations, certain closing-related adjustments and remaining estimated close-out costs. OCI has since substantially completed the project close-out process, including the settlement of all subcontractor claims. OCI continues to estimate total project costs through completion at approximately USD 1.8 billion, consistent with Q4 2025. This total budget is inclusive of all close-out costs and the H2 2026 final settlement.

OCI Ammonia Holding

• On 31 March 2026, OCI completed the sale of its entire equity interest in OCI AH to AGROFERT, receiving initial cash proceeds of EUR 297 million (USD 342 million). The transaction remains subject to customary post-closing adjustments, with completion of the settlement process expected in H2 2026. OCI does not currently expect those adjustments to have a material impact on future cash flows.

Methanex Investment

• During H1 2026, OCI fully monetized its holding of 9,944,308 Methanex shares through a series of block sales, generating total cash proceeds of approximately USD 543 million after customary fees and expenses. The shares represented approximately 12.9% of Methanex’s outstanding share capital when received as consideration for the sale of OCI Methanol in June 2025. The net weighted average sale price was USD 54.56 per share, 21% above the reference share price used in the OCI Methanol transaction announced in September 2024.

Fertiglobe Contingent Consideration and Liabilities

• There have been no material developments that impact the Fertiglobe contingent consideration. Accordingly, the provision remains unchanged from the position reported in the audited 2025 annual accounts. The Board continues to believe that the provision of USD 361.6 million represents the best estimate of OCI’s potential exposure.

Other Information

Notes

This report contains unaudited first half financial highlights of OCI N.V. (“OCI Global”, “OCI”, the “Group” or the “Company”), a public limited liability company incorporated under Dutch law, with its head office located at Honthorststraat 19, 1071 DC Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

OCI Global is registered in the Dutch commercial register under No. 56821166 dated 2 January 2013. The Group is primarily involved in the production of nitrogen-based fertilizers and industrial chemicals.

Auditor

The information contained in this Results Report has not been audited. The accompanying Semi-Annual Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements have been reviewed, but not audited, by the Company’s independent external auditor.

Market Abuse Regulation

This press release contains inside information as meant in clause 7(1) of the Market Abuse Regulation.

About OCI Global

Learn more about OCI at www.oci-global.com. You can also follow OCI on LinkedIn.

OCI stock symbols: OCI / OCI.NA / OCI.AS

^[1] Financial performance for OCI Nitrogen in H1 2025 includes the results of OCI Ammonia Distribution B.V. prior to its carve-out in August 2025 and is therefore not fully comparable to H1 2026.

^[2] “Independent Directors” means OCI’s directors other than Nassef Sawiris, Nadia Sawiris and the directors appointed by the Enterprise Chamber, and includes the Company’s executive director.

 

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