Month: June 2026

Infigo, a global provider of enterprise-grade web-to-print software, has announced significant Q2 growth driven by rising demand for automation, personalization, and digital ordering across the $125B US commercial print industry.

 Infigo has achieved nearly 10% year-to-date growth, adding to its existing 4,500+ active e-commerce storefronts. The success comes as print providers shift to automated production to minimize manual intervention and dramatically reduce time-to-delivery.

The company’s Q2 highlights also include a continued expansion across North American enterprise print markets, ongoing investment in AI-driven automation and product development, and increased adoption across commercial print, labels and packaging, and regulated industries.

“Customers tell us they’ve reduced 50 hours of manual work per week with Infigo’s streamlined workflows and system integration,” says Douglas Gibson, CEO and founder. “The shift in the print industry has been fast and surprisingly easy, which is the best proof that printers and creatives are seeing a strong future with greater efficiency and speed to market. The industry desperately needs to adapt to the creative possibilities that their customers expect today.”

Expanding with AI and automation

Infigo continues to expand its AI-driven capabilities through dedicated engineering investment. This supports faster release cycles, enhanced workflow automation, and deeper system integrations across enterprise print environments. Demand for print services remains strong, too. Infigo is giving the industry new tools to enable it to be even more relevant and in demand.

“It’s now or never. Legacy workflows unable to meet today’s expectations for e-commerce-like speed, personalization, and automation need to adapt. And the great news is now that’s not hard or expensive to do,” adds Gibson.

According to Gibson, the industry is evolving through three core layers: storefront, automation, and intelligence. These allow print providers to go beyond basic online ordering to fully connected operational environments that streamline production and optimize customer experience. Infigo sits at the center so customers connect storefronts to production workflows and layer intelligence on top of automation.

In early May, Norwegian battery cell producer Morrow Batteries filed for bankruptcy. A year earlier, it was Sweden’s Northvolt. Some 17 European battery production projects have been cancelled or delayed.

Slower than expected EV sales and competition from low-cost Chinese and Korean suppliers has dimmed Europe’s hopes of building a homegrown industry to supply batteries for electric vehicles.

But the economics are different in another corner of the battery market – for stationary storage systems for renewable energy from wind and solar. In Europe, billions of dollars of fresh investment are flowing to European battery makers for systems that can store excess energy and release it when intermittent sources are not producing.

Wind and solar produced more power than fossil fuels for the first time last year; renewables now generate close to half of all EU power. The shift to wind, solar and other clean energy accelerated first with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2023 and more recently with the spike in oil and gas prices caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz because of the war with Iran.

The new generating capacity is creating energy imbalances and price volatility, including negative pricing when renewables are over-producing. The continent is racing to deploy utility-scale battery energy storage systems, or BESS. By 2024, BESS sales were growing twice as fast as EV sales.

Europeans have “woken up to the idea that we are not energy independent,” says Wiebe Visser of Dutch impact investing platform CarbonEquity. “It’s not only energy independence, it’s also just pure economics.”

“If you have cheap generation, like you have in the Nordics with hydro or with wind, or in Spain with solar, if you put a battery next to it, it’s a great economic case,” Visser told ImpactAlpha.

Tech sovereignty

Europe has many of the right ingredients for investors. FieldFisher, a London-based law firm, forecasts that battery storage capacity in Europe will increase sixfold to more than 100 gigawatts by 2030 on increased demand for clean energy.

On a “beautiful, sunny and windy” day recently in Bucharest, wind and solar generation “working at full speed,” recalls Gregory Poilasne of San Diego-based Nuvve which has more than a dozen battery energy storage projects in Austria, Romania, and Bulgaria. As part of its pivot to Europe, Nuvve said it has developed a pipeline of one-gigawatt in battery energy storage projects, backed by OMNIA Global, the family office of Swiss entrepreneur Daniel Hansen.

Electricity prices fell below zero from 11AM to 2PM. “With the balancing of the grid, plus the arbitrage…you have a value of $5,000 per megawatt per year,” Poilasne told ImpactAlpha. Under those conditions, BESS projects have a “very short” payback period and “can generate a lot of value for shareholders.”

Most fourth graders are just discovering what hobbies they enjoy but our next A-MAY-ZING Kid is already earning national recognition for his extraordinary musical talent.

Isaiah Joshua Felix is a fourth grader at California Virtual Academies who was recently named a national finalist in the K12 Talent Showdown after impressing judges with his opera performances.

Isaiah Joshua Felix joined host Jessica Wills to share his journey, his love for music, and the big competition ahead.

While Gabriel “Gabby” Ortizo of Granada Hills doesn’t come from a musical family, music ran deep in his veins. At the tender age of six, he played several instruments and composed songs.

Now the 17-year-old got his chance to show off those gifts the afternoon of May 29 at graduation ceremonies held at El Camino College in Torrance.

He played an electric guitar to his compositional take on “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the USA’s national anthem.

Once Gabby learned he was chosen to perform at the college graduation and given an opportunity to shine, he felt driven and excited. “I just wanted to make the people around me really proud and … just give everybody a graduation to remember,” he said.

His other musical talents include playing the piano, the drums and bass. He began his musical journey at his family’s church at age six when he developed a strong passion for the electrical guitar. The passion continued after enrolling as a fourth grader at iQ Academy of Los Angeles, an online public school.

The structure of online learning gave him the time and space to develop his musical talents while working part-time at his aunt’s small business. He’s been in teacher Lily Greggio’s homeroom class the past four years.

“I don’t have enough good things to say about him,” Greggio said. “He’s an amazing student and has been focusing on improving his musical abilities. (He’s) honing his craft and (now) will be working on it for his college career.”

Greggio said Gabby consistently turns his school work on time, takes pride in it and submits high-quality work.

At just 16 years old, Samuel Carranza is graduating near the top of his class with a 4.0 GPA, college credits, and a clear vision for his future all through online education.

For Samuel, the road to success wasn’t always easy.

His school day begins at home, where online learning at IQ Academy in Los Angeles became the foundation of his academic achievements. But just a few years ago, he found himself struggling in school and unsure of what the future might hold.

“When I was in middle school, I was actually failing all my classes because ever since COVID, I’ve been online,” Carranza said.

Rather than allowing those challenges to define him, Samuel decided to set a goal for himself.

“It’s been a goal I’ve had since 9th grade,” he said. “It’s something me and my family talked about, and I was like, ‘I want a goal,’ and my goal was to graduate maybe a year early or two years early.”

Determined to make that happen, Carranza took advantage of online coursework, dual-enrollment opportunities, and a flexible learning schedule that allowed him to move ahead academically while still pursuing his interests outside the classroom.