Mission Critical Group appoints Akash Raj as Chief Financial Officer. FRISCO, Texas, Sept. 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Mission Critical Group ("MCG"), a leading provider of integrated electrical infrastructure solutions for mission critical facilities, including data centers, manufacturing plants, and energy infrastructure, today announced the appointment of Akash Raj as Chief Financial Officer. Raj brings more than 20 years of finance and operational leadership experience across high-growth and Fortune 500 companies, with a strong track record of creating enterprise value and driving financial transformation. "Akash is an accomplished finance executive who brings an exceptional combination of strategic, operational, and financial leadership to MCG," said Jeff Drees, CEO of Mission Critical Group. "We believe his experience leading complex organizations and driving financial and operational performance will be a tremendous asset to MCG and our leadership team." Raj most recently served as CFO of RealPage, where he led the company's financial strategy and operations, with a focus on scale and efficiency. He previously served as CFO of WellSky and held senior leadership roles at Motorola Solutions and General Motors across operational finance, M&A, capital markets, and corporate restructuring. "I'm excited to join MCG and work alongside a talented leadership team and organization," said Raj. "MCG has built a strong platform with differentiated capabilities across the mission critical power ecosystem. I look forward to bringing my experience to the team and helping strengthen our financial performance and operational infrastructure to support sustainable business growth and long-term value creation." Raj is a CFA charterholder and earned his MBA from the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. He also holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronics with Distinction from Bangalore University. About Mission Critical Group Mission Critical Group is a leading provider of integrated electrical infrastructure solutions for mission critical facilities, including data centers, manufacturing plants, and energy infrastructure. We design, manufacture, integrate, and service modular power solutions, including switchgear, e-Houses, power skids, backup power systems, and related critical power equipment. Our customers include major technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and energy companies across North America, and we operate more than 18 manufacturing facilities in the United States. For more information, visit missioncriticalgroup.com. Media Contact: Laura Noland Senior Director, Marketing Communications Mission Critical Group [email protected] 407-341-2512

Report: AI landlord EliseAI targets $3.7B valuation with $300M raise from a16z and Bessemer. August 18, 2026 * EliseAI is reportedly in talks to raise $300M at a $3.7B valuation, per Business Insider. * a16z and Bessemer are discussing leading the round. * The company was valued at $2.2 billion in August 2025, a possible 68% jump in a year. EliseAI is in talks to raise $300 million at a $3.7 billion valuation, with a16z and Bessemer discussing a lead role, according to Business Insider. Previously, EliseAI raised $250 million at a $2.2 billion valuation in August 2025. If this new round closes anywhere near what's being reported, the company will have added $1.5 billion in value in 12 months, in a funding environment where many AI startups are struggling to raise at all. From admin assistant to AI unicorn. Minna Song and Tony Stoyanov met at Cambridge as undergraduates. Song later took a job as an administrative assistant at a New York real estate firm, where she watched leasing teams drown in the same handful of tenant questions, over and over, every day. That's the problem EliseAI was built to fix. She and Stoyanov started the company in 2017. The product itself is fairly unglamorous, which might be the point. EliseAI's AI assistants answer prospective tenants by text, email, and phone, book apartment tours, and log maintenance requests. A property manager running several thousand units can let the system sort and route routine maintenance tickets on its own, instead of paying a human to triage each one. In 2023, EliseAI took the same idea into healthcare, aiming it at front-desk and scheduling bottlenecks that look a lot like the ones it had already solved in housing. It isn't the only company chasing that idea. Lette AI is going after the same agentic automation angle against incumbents like AppFolio, Yardi, Entrata, and RealPage, though it's tiny by comparison. Dwelly is automating lettings in the UK, mostly by buying up smaller agencies. Flow, Adam Neumann's post-WeWork venture, hit a $2.5 billion valuation in 2025 with a completely different bet: own the buildings instead of selling software to whoever already runs them. EliseAI's angle is narrower and, arguably, more defensible: sell the automation layer across leasing, maintenance, renewals, and now healthcare, and let everyone else fight over ownership models. The property management software market was worth around $6.53 billion in 2026 and is projected to hit $9.93 billion by 2031, an 8.74% annual growth rate of 8.74%, according to Mordor Intelligence. That's not a huge market by tech standards. It's also one where incumbents like Yardi and RealPage move slowly, which is exactly the kind of gap AI-native challengers like to exploit. The funding so far. The Series E in August 2025 was led by a16z, with Bessemer and Sapphire Ventures also investing. Before that, the $75 million Series D in August 2024 - led by Sapphire - made EliseAI a unicorn at a $1 billion valuation. The company said it passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in early 2025, and headcount has grown from around 150 to more than 300 since the Series D, spread across offices in New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago. Whether any of this happens the way Business Insider describes it is still an open question. What's not in question is that investors keep paying up for companies that promise to make the most tedious parts of running a business disappear, and EliseAI, for now, is one of the ones getting paid the most to try.