Published to Whisper Club: August 10, 2026ID: TBW2096
Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
This Whisper Report investigates what the most underrated UAV use case in industry. Filmed at Commercial UAV Expo 2025 in Las Vegas, it examines how drone applications are expanding in ways many organizations are overlooking. Experts explore where these capabilities are delivering unexpected value across industries. Cited experts: Dustin Brewer Zepher, Josh Woodruf AirData UAV, Kaitlyn Albertoli Buzz Solutions, Robb Monkman Teal.io, Antonio Ruan Starling, Ross Davis blueflite, Kevin Teen Aloft, Vic Moss DSPA, Bill Reynolds Central UAS Technologies, Thad King Multicopter Warehouse, Sara Abdi Parallel Flight Technologies, Federico di Napoli FlyingBasket.
“Ai4 2026 experiencing over 50% growth and welcomed more than 12,000 in the enterprise AI ecosystem to Las Vegas. Over 100 countries were represented amongst attendees and 400 exhibitors. Vendors, startups, and practitioners discussed what it takes to move artificial intelligence beyond experimentation. Conversations across the show floor touched on governance, deployment, security, agents, data accessibility, software delivery, and business process transformation as organizations continued evaluating paths toward large scale adoption.”
A community of over 12,000 came together in Las Vegas for the 9th annual Ai4 event. Attendance grew by over 50% at the 9th annual event. Vendors grew from 250 in 2025 to 400 in 2026.
Start-ups were also present growing from 25 last year to 66 this year.
Cautions
Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
It’s wonderful when an individual AI pilot works, maybe even delivers business value to a department. Getting that solution to deploy corporate wide is very different. Engineers that have worked in the largest organizations always smile when they see the demos and chuckle inside as looks great but what about at my scale. For those seeking industrialized AI delivery, ModelOp is a delivery engine meant to overcome frictions that occur during integration. It’s purpose is to enable those organizations to take the idea and realize it in production for the entire organization.
Governance was on the mind of many. Actualyze AI was founded by repeat founders who have spent their careers in large scale infrastructure and transformations. They focused their solution on protecting data, models routing, financial spend, and the type of infrastructure a technology requires to become part of enterprise IT.
For business work flows that make a difference, Evalueserve wants to remind you, don’t start with the technology to enable scale. Their organization focuses on business workflows that make a difference. They serve life sciences, healthcare, manufacturing and consumer good verticals. While many solutions leverage AI, many metrics such as cost and quality do not require AI. Never approximate when math can get you the precise answer.
One critical aspect of reliability is the infamous undo button or some method of recovery. There is rule in cybersecurity to assume when not if; as such one must prepare for how to recover when it goes wrong. It may be quite wise to adopt this stance in AI as well. Rubik is all about deploying agents – safely. They provide capabilities for agent monitoring, control, and something new – rewind agents. As one might suspect this includes the ability to back-up and recover from agent behavior. In their world, no agent permanently wiped out my database or the code we wrote – it can be recovered.
When you have a complex web of services, models, or agents. Understanding the complex web of dependencies is critical for operations with any type of reliability. The infamous Solar Winds incident let everyone know that the software supply chain and its dependencies are critical for security and stability. The solution turned out to be something in the industry referred to as SBOM for software bill of materials – expanding on the shipping term. Now Lineaje has thought of this problem and created a solution for AI and AI agents. Their solution provides dependency crawler, checks and suggests upgrades for compatibility and provides what they like to call security layer for agent builders.
Some environments are tougher than your average environment such as those that have required decentralization or compartmentalization of information such as government and military environments and related applications. Axonis was in expo hall to serve you. They also create a trail of decisions. Not about insights but rather save the final decision made by humans and AI. They like to think of it as a creating a feedback loop for audit and training models on past decision. They referred to it as metadata on data; we have shared this approach before. The hash of an image matched against the hash of what is in front of someone for authentication during our coverage of ISC West.
Not all AI solutions involve Large Language Models or LLMs. Modulate is a voice ai platform that provides all your common conversational understanding requirements for any conversational need. Like the advice provided in Whisper Report: Which spatial computing use case will scale fastest?, Modulate is growing through a pivot to APIs. By leveraging an architecture of highly specialized models, each trained for a narrowly defined purpose, a given application can combine them in a manner that fits its environment. Their architecture leverages these specialized models to monitor conversational tone and provide insight into intent, meaning, emotion, and context. Together they refer to their architecture as an ensemble listening model to understand and identify user behavior. This AI architectural approach of leveraging several specialized machine learning models is one that provides a high degree of success and has a long track record of enterprise results at scale.
If you have an enterprise software development team and are seeking an AI Powered DevSecOps Platform meet Digital AI. Their environment is specifically focused on regulated industries. They purported clients such as the Top 10 banks in N. America and Europe, and the top 5 Global airlines, top 4 N. American Insurance Companies. Their use of AI is very purposeful, is strictly to enhance delivery and planning capabilities to accelerate delivery.
Department strictly focused on marketing and customer data? Kana.ai marketing operating layer was designed for you. Kana provides an agentic End to end solution for marketing that moves to where the customer data’s resides offering a continuous agentic layer across marketing stack. The named elements of the marketing stack they service include: strategy planning, audience building, activation, and measurements such as MTA – multi-touch attribution and MMM Marketing Mix Modeling.
Two hurdles frequently stand in the way of AI’s success. On one hand, corporations may have their history locked up on physical books. On the other hand, organizations creating models need data to train and a controversial method of scanning physical books is involved. One reason for the controversy is that the organizations are breaking the spines to digitally scan them. Both hurdles can be solved by ARC document solutions. Another hurdle for capturing data, particularly notes are notes on the go. If find yourself want to take notes on the go or for when you are not in front of your computer, Ninja Concepts AI note takers offer you different options to fit your needs.
This enterprise AI gathering focused on adoption, implementation, governance and business outcomes. This wasn’t about the clouds and sizzle, more about show us real impact. Attendance shot up more than 50% from last year’s crowd of 8,000 to more than 12,000 attendees this year! Over 100 countries were represented and expo hall exploded from 250 exhibitors to 400! Due to their explosive growth there were some growing pains. The registration lines for some attendees was reported in excess of 90 minutes. Navigation was a bit tougher than usual as the convention put the show carpet over a large majority of the navigational booth numbers making finding vendors very very difficult. I had not witnessed this error at other events at that location previously. In addition, perhaps due to the explosive growth, the connectivity was exceptionally challenging at the same level or worse than CES. At that same time, the energy and excitement easily matched and dare I say, exceeded CES this year. At one point I recall literally realizing I could not feel my face from so much smiling. Enjoy the walkabout to and through expo hall. We always try to bring you fresh vendors in our coverage but you will recognize many brands in the walkabout from our coverage of other data related events such as the Informatica World, or our coverage of Put Data First.
We conducted research for Six additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: Ai4 2026 Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be sited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition.
The video will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the Ai4 live in Las Vegas?”.
The Ai4 will once again return to Las Vegas and will be held at the Venetian Expo on August 4-6, 2027.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
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“This Whisper Report investigates what the next SolarWinds-level breach waiting to happen may be. Filmed at Black Hat USA 2025 in Las Vegas, it examines how rapidly evolving technologies are introducing new risks that organizations may not yet fully understand. Experts explore where these emerging vulnerabilities could surface at scale. Cited experts: Jonathan Rende Checkmarx, James Spiteri Elastic Security, Alex Lanstein StrikeReady, Brian Mehlman Cyber Innovate, Thomas Roccia Microsoft, Ariful Huq Exaforce, David DellaPelle Dune Security, Saket Bajoria Safe Security.”
Published to Whisper Club: June 29, 2026 ID: TBW2198
Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
ABSTRACT
“This Whisper Report investigates what licensing trend will reshape retail in 2027. Filmed at Licensing Expo 2026 in Las Vegas, it explores how emerging models are changing how brands connect with consumers and drive retail outcomes. Experts examine why traditional approaches are giving way to more immersive and conversion-driven strategies. Cited experts: Andrew Lieb JRL Group, Elizabeth McLead Screeny, Ashley Siler LMCA.”
Published to Whisper Club: May 26, 2026 ID: TBW2133
Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Abstract:
“This Whisper Report investigates What’s the killer XR use case no one sees coming? Across CES, three very different XR stories emerged — one surprising, two accelerating. Together they reveal why XR’s real breakthrough may not be where everyone expects. Cited experts: Paul Standford, Haply; David Sniderman, Mapbox; Daisuke Takoze, Gakugeki.”
“Licensing Expo 2026 brought together enterprise visitors focused on brand licensing, IP management, and merchandising strategy as Las Vegas hosted global retail, media, and marketing conversations shaping how brands extend, protect, and monetize intellectual property through AI, partnerships, and fan-driven experiences in an increasingly digital, connected marketplace for future growth and competitive differentiation across industries.”
Conference
Licensing Expo 2026 had over 410 companies exhibit at this year’s gathering. Over 130 of the exhibitors were experiencing their first ever Licensing Expo event.
Over 12,500 industry professionals attended spanning retailers, manufacturers, brands, and marketers. Over 78 countries were represented among the 28% of global visitors.
Cautions
Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
Movie theaters hosting YouTube Live streams and replays? Screeny is looking to help fans of the same channel get together and enjoy content together In Real Life (IRL). If you have ever wanted to meet new friends and enjoy some really amazingly popular influencer content, the answer might just be your closest movie theater!
While many licensing products have been upgraded to include AI features, MyMediabox is an AI-first platform. Designed with AI in mind at the beginning, AI is not a clumsy bolt-on within the platform but carefully leveraged for results. These results come in the form of rapid feature expansion and operational efficiency for users. Product reviews and style compliance a burden? No more. Requiring advanced natural language search? In their AI-first world, you get efficient workflows.
If you simply need a US Agent to facilitate merchandise licensing partnerships, Creative Licensing Corporation is able to assist – globally. Working with an incredibly diverse portfolio, JRL Group was onsite with their 27 years’ experience. Featuring clients from famous motorsport brands, corporate brands, to educational brands, JRL Group is prepared to make the difference. If you view licensing as a strategic tool, LMCA would like to share their 40 years of experience with you. Their client-first strategy starts with the business needs. Those needs then turn into a strategic plan with tactical goals to execute against.
Are you a brand owner who needs help with copyrights and patents? Need help with licensing agents, and licensees who use the brands? Dependable Solutions has all your brand needs covered throughout the lifecycle of a brand. They can assist at the copyright and patent stage of branding. Likewise they have licensing agents who can represent the brand outbound and licensees that desire to use brands. In addition, they handle the end-to-end management of the brand approvals, distribution, royalty tracking, and forecasting.
Bringing 30 years’ experience, Octane5 describes their impact as licensing ecosystem wide. They serve the consumer, licensee and the licensor. In the management arena they cover the marketplace to contracts, approvals, royalties, and audits. No matter which direction, Octane5 believes they offer best in class in every direction.
Breaking all previous records, Licensing Expo 2026 had over 410 companies exhibit at this year’s gathering. Over 130 of the exhibitors were experiencing their first ever Licensing Expo event. The 12,500 industry professionals spanning retailers, manufacturers, brands, and marketers. Over 78% countries were represented among the 28% of global visitors. Interestingly over 49% of the visitors hold global decision-making power. Enjoy our video of getting to the exhibit and the walkabout in the event space. Given the complex licensing and the high value brands, we were not allowed to do an Expo Hall walkabout. The Mandalay Food Court for all to enjoy.
We once again live streamed from on site on Tuesday requesting assistance on your favorite videos for my syndicated segment on the May 25th nationally broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.
We conducted research for additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: Licensing Expo 2026 Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be sited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition.
The video edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the Licensing Expo live in Las Vegas?”.
Next Year’s Conference The Licensing Expo will once again return to Las Vegas and will be held at the Mandalay Bay on May 25-27, 2027.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
This Whisper Report investigates What’s the next gaming tech that will change how we play? Drawing on signals from the gaming floor, the analysis hints at emerging technologies quietly reshaping production, interaction, and player intelligence. Cited experts: Justin Cosnett (Continent 8 Technologies), Will Shuckburgh (eCOGRA), Chris Chuang (Relay), Wanor Franca (CCT), Erik Regan (Plotline), Matt DeLaura (Seon), Phil Simpson (fullstory).
The event featured over 12,000 transportation stakeholders, 2400 fleet operators and over 400 exhibits.
Cautions
Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
Just because a technology can do something in general doesn’t mean it will work in your environment or in a governed fashion. It is critical to validate a technology including its false positive and error rates.
Voltra enables end-to-end energy management via a software solution. This solution integrates into your charging infrastructure, cellular connectivity, battery storage, and solar generation. The data from this integration is leveraged for advanced diagnostics and streamlined deployment.
FractalEV charges and optimizes your fleet. You no longer have to use an unintelligent charging station for your fleet. FractalEV integrates asset management tooling directly into the charging hardware station. This integration enables management of power loads and data across multiple units. As a Level 2 hardware manufacturer, your fleets will be fully charged overnight as is required at the enterprise level.
If you are moving to electrification, it is not just your fleet that needs updating. You must update your facilities. That update will require the assistance of a professional engineer. Fortunately, ACT Expo had professional engineering firms on hand such as Colliers Engineers. Colliers Engineering specializes in local coordination including the critical steps of coordination with the local municipalities and jurisdictions, an often-forgotten step.
Total cost of ownership of your fleet weighing you down? Burns & McDonnell would like to help you through any power transition to maintain business advantages. With 130 years as an engineering construction firm, they are a top power contender across the USA. From coast-to-coast they have worked with utilities leveraging offices in all 50 states and across Canada.
Triz Engineering is offering what they call, “Engineering Certainty” through an OEM vehicle designed for you from the ground up. This customized commercial vehicle is designed to fit your needs and processes. The resulting product is designed to meet your requirements as opposed to imposed requirements. This enables the vehicle to simply slip into your fleet issue-free.
If you are a smaller to mid-size OEM or even a start-up and in search of an electrification control unit, Ecutron was in Expo Hall. Ecutron was excited to share that their flexibility in terms of cost and timelines enables them to even serve the start-up market. To top it off, their support assists customers in successfully moving through the entire process.
In need of a natural gas fuel system? Hexagon was excited to share their system for heavy-duty trucks. Specifically, the range enables most sleeper cab use cases with travel up to 1200 miles or 1900 kilometers on a single fill. With flexible installation, Hexagon can go behind the cab OR on the rails depending on the exact truck leveraged. We were also able to capture an exclusive summary of when Hexagon discussed leveraging the right fuel for the right applications.
After 40 videos including a livestream and over a dozen fact checks, our coverage of ACT Expo 2026 closes. ACT Expo featured over 12,000 transportation stakeholders including 2400 fleet operators and over 400 exhibits. Registration and badge pick-up was quite efficient even as Expo Hall was ready to open. The event was hosted in West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Enjoy the walkabout to and through expo hall. ACT Expo made the choice to allow one of the few rooms with an overhead view of the entire expo hall to be used as the press room. Enjoy the View!
Those at the booth excitedly shared, there was no fluff at the event. Everyone who they met and spoke with was there to do business. While no details specific attendance numbers were shared at press time, the hosting organization excitedly shared there were a lot of people. The body language seemed to indicate a lot more than expected. Perhaps, recent historical events creating a surge in demand for fleets to consider advanced clean technologies. One of the more interesting features was the ride and drives. Located around the LVCC West Hall Vegas Loop Drive, it was fascinating to watch with all the huge truck cabs driving around in circles.
We always try to bring you fresh vendors in our coverage. Given we always lean towards the enterprise, you will recognize many brands in the walkabout from our coverage of other events that had some related technology such as the Manifest 2026, SEMA AAPEX, and even CES. For research on really-large vehicles, we recommend our coverage of CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2026.
We once again live streamed from on site. On Tuesday requesting those attending to find me to answer future Whisper Report Questions, to introduce all to TBW Advisors LLC, and requesting assistance. Specifically, I requested assistance on your favorite videos for my syndicated segment on the May 9th nationally broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.
We conducted research for four additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available with the video version to be distributed via YouTube Whisper Club upper tier membership area on our YouTube Channel.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: ACT Expo 2026 Playlist in its entirety. The playlist will be sited in the end screen, description, and as a pinned comment of the video edition.
The video edition will conclude with gratitude towards those that contributed and a montage of responses to Bonus Question, “What’s the best part about attending the ACT Expo live in Las Vegas?”.
The ACT Expo will once again return to Las Vegas and will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center on May 17-20, 2027.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
This Whisper Report investigates What Fintech problems are you solving in 2026? Drawing insight from on-the-ground conversations at Fintech Meetup 2026, it surfaces the pressures shaping next‑gen financial platforms and the bets leaders are quietly making. It previews how scale, trust, and automation collide before outcomes are obvious. Cited experts: Peter Daunton (Sokin), Kunal Datta (Unit21.ai), Jack Chawla (interface.ai), Liam Reaume (Sardine).
“This Whisper Report investigates when clinical artificial intelligence becomes unsafe, signaling where scrutiny, safeguards, and infrastructure begin slipping across clinical environments. Readers will discover the pivotal checkpoints leaders watch to protect patients, preserve trust, and steer responsible adoption without stalling innovation. Cited experts: Hal Wolf, HIMSS; Scott Francis, Ricoh Document Scanners; Joe Graw, ImageTrend; Braheem Santos, Schneider Electric.”
