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If you’re looking for deals, there are tons of steep discounts available on electronics, fall apparel, furniture, kitchen appliances, and more happening right now. If you’re in the market for a new pair of headphones — or someone you know could use some for work, studying, or gaming — Amazon’s got a great deal on the JBL Tune 670NC Wireless Headphones.

Normally priced around $110, you can get them right now for just $60. That’s a total savings of $50, and they come with some nice quality-of-life features, outstanding battery life, and loads of glowing reviews from all kinds of users, including one who called them “the best headphones I’ve worn in years.”

JBL Tune 670NC Wireless Headphones, $60 (was $110) at Amazon

Courtesy of Amazon

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Why do shoppers love it?

These foldable headphones do just about anything you’d ever want from a pair of wireless cans, from letting you switch between Bluetooth and a classic audio jack to fielding phone calls with their four built-in mics and taking advantage of voice-assistant integration. They’re perfect for enjoying your favorite music throughout the day, they’re comfy enough to wear for 8+ hours at a time, and they’re easy to use with Microsoft Teams, Slack, Discord, and other online conferencing apps. The noise-cancellation ensures you’ll hear and be heard clearly, with minimal ambient distractions.

“The sound is spectacular,” said one reviewer. “The sound quality for work calls is really good, and they’re incredibly immersive while gaming. Listening to music with them is a phenomenal experience. I truly love these headphones.”

Related: Walmart has $180 Bluetooth earbuds with 88-hour playback time for only $21

Details to know

Audio components: 32-millimeter dynamic drivers, plus four microphones.

Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3 and a 3.5-millimeter auxiliary audio cord.

Battery life: Up to 70 hours of playtime (with active noise cancellation off). With ANC on, you can expect about 44 hours of continuous use.

Everyday convenience and versatility are the name of the game with these headphones, which you can pair with your favorite Bluetooth-equipped devices for a strong signal and a good amount of range. Or you can plug them in with a standard 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and enjoy listening the old-fashioned way. On a full charge, they’ll run for up to 70 hours with noise cancellation disabled, or about 44 hours with ANC on. You can fully recharge them with the included USB Type-C cable in about two hours, but even a quick five-minute charge should get you an additional three hours of listening time when you’re in a hurry to get back to your yardwork or another virtual meeting.

You can customize your audio experience with the free JBL Headphones companion app, send and receive phone calls in even the noisiest of environments, and even monitor your own voice output with the VoiceAware function. The headset also features Ambient Aware and TalkThru settings, in case you want to hold a quick conversation with a stranger at the airport or coffee shop without taking everything off.

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Need a trusty pair of on-ear headphones with great sound and a built-in microphone for hands-free calling? Save $50 on a set of JBL Tune 670NC Wireless Headphones at Amazon.

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.

Why we love this deal

Budget tablets have a reputation problem. For years, buying one under $150 meant accepting sluggish processors, grainy displays, and a degraded streaming experience locked to low-resolution playback. The Colorroom Android 15 Tablet, which is now on sale at Amazon for $94, quietly rewrites that script.

Many people believe there’s no such thing as a solid budget tablet, but this one actually fits that description. Sure, it’s no iPad, but if you need a tablet for basic activities like keeping up with email and general web browsing, this one will suit you just fine — although it’s more capable than most to handle your streaming needs, too.

Colorroom Android 15 Tablet, $94 (was $100) at Amazon

Courtesy of Amazon

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Why do shoppers love it?

The headline feature of this tablet is one most shoppers won’t immediately recognize: Widevine L1 certification. That’s the digital rights management standard that unlocks full HD streaming on services like Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Hulu. Most budget tablets ship with Widevine L3, which caps you at blurry standard-definition video, no matter how sharp the screen. The inclusion of L1 here is genuinely unusual at this price point and makes the tablet a legitimate entertainment device rather than a compromise.

The hardware backs that promise up. The 11-inch IPS touchscreen delivers a 1280×800 resolution with solid color accuracy for its class — roomy enough for movies, video calls, and side-by-side app use. Under the hood, an octa-core processor handles the workload, and the 2.0GHz chip offers roughly 40% faster processing than a typical quad-core. Paired with 12 gigabytes (GB) of RAM (including virtual RAM expansion), multitasking stays responsive even when juggling streaming apps, a browser, and a productivity tool simultaneously.

The built-in 8000mAh battery delivers an impressive eight to ten hours of continuous reading or video playback on a full charge. That’s enough to cover a cross-country flight without breaking a sweat. And when you do need to top up, 18W USB-PD fast charging cuts down the wait significantly, though note the fast charger is sold separately.

The base 128GB ROM gives you real room to work with, and a MicroSD card slot expands capacity up to 1 terabyte (TB) for anyone who hoards offline downloads or local media libraries. Face unlock, Wi-Fi 6 support, and Bluetooth 5.0 round out a spec sheet that would have felt premium just two or three years ago.

Details to know

Colors: Blue, light blue, and black, but the light blue is full price.

Size: 11 inches long and 6.5 inches wide.

Features: Unisoc octa-core CPU, 32GB RAM, 128GB ROM, and an 8000mAh battery.

Related: Amazon has a 2-in-1 laptop and tablet for $97 that comes with a 7-piece accessories bundle

More than 1,000 shoppers gave this tablet a five-star rating and say it’s a good value for the price. “This tablet was super easy to set up and super easy to use,” one shopper wrote. “I purchased it because I wanted to use it to pull up YouTube, and it works perfectly. It holds a charge forever.”

A second shopper wrote, “It looks good and feels solid, but is still light. I’ve been using it for four days now and am very satisfied with the picture quality. If you’re looking for a new tablet and want to save some cash, this is a good choice.”

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Urao 10.1-Inch Android 16 Tablet, $90 (was $150) at Amazon 

Relndoo 2-in-1 Laptop and Tablet, $97 (was $108) at Amazon

If you need a tablet to use for browsing, reading, and streaming that won’t break the bank, the Colorroom Android 15 Tablet is an excellent choice, especially while it’s discounted during at Amazon.

The penultimate episode of AEW Dynamite before All In featured multiple heated backstage segments and more Continental Cup Challenge matches.

Taking a look at the field, course, purse, predictions, and picks, for the upcoming BMW Championship. This is the second leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs on the PGA Tour.

TheStreet aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.

Why we love this deal

A good bed setup requires a handful of quality items, and when it comes to cost, it’s typically well worth it to invest to get items that are long-lasting but, more importantly, will help contribute to a good night’s sleep. Comforters and sheets are certainly bedtime essentials, but without a few good pillows like the Emonia Cooling Memory Foam Pillows, your eight hours of slumber can easily become restless, with lots of tossing and turning, as well as sore, stiff necks and upper backs that lead to a very long day the following morning. When you invest in the right pillows, you can rely on them for support and lots of plush filling to keep you comfortable, and when you shop at the right places like Walmart, you can get them on sale for a great affordable price.

The Emonia Cooling Memory Foam Pillows, available in a variety of sizes, are a soft solution particularly helpful for hot sleepers, and the $41 set of two is on sale as part of a Walmart Flash deal for 51% off. Get two of the adjustable pillows, perfect for side, back, and stomach sleepers, for only $20 during this limited sale. 

Emonia Cooling Memory Foam Pillows, $20 (was $41) at Walmart

Courtesy of Walmart

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Why do shoppers love it?

There are a few fun features to these pillows that make them stand out among similar products. For one thing, the plumpness of the pillow comes from the shredded high-density memory foam filling, which can be adjusted. You can remove or add more shredded foam, accommodating for different sleeping positions and body types as well as for your own preferred comfort. Some folks prefer a very fluffy, cushioned pillow while others like a flatter, thinner one. 

Unlike regular filling, the memory foam adds volume, maintains its shape better, and provides consistent cervical spine alignment to reduce neck and shoulder pain. It is also better at adapting to heat and neck contours for a more customized fit. 

In addition to that, the pillow has a special two-sided design that is made with two different fibers to deliver different results. What we mean is that one side, made with bamboo viscose, has more breathability, which promotes airflow, as well as moisture-wicking technology to keep you dry no matter how warm you get, and the other is made with a cooling ice silk material for heat dissipation — perfect for sleepers who run hot throughout the night.

Related: Walmart is selling a ‘silky soft’ $130 cooling comforter for 74% off

Suitable for year-round use, this cooling technology helps keep hot air from building up around or underneath you, leaving you feeling comfortable all night long. With your order, you get two pillows, two pillowcases, and a storage bag. 

Details to know

Material: Bamboo viscose, silk, and shredded high-density memory foam. 

Sizes: King, queen, and standard. 

Care: The outer cover is machine washable. The inner liner stays on and closed to keep the memory foam intact and together. 

Shoppers love the two different sides of the pillow, and overall appreciate the cooling feel and moisture-wicking capabilities that it offers. The pillows are very soft and thick, and the adjustable foam is perfect for helping you customize the pillows to feel exactly as you like. They come vacuum-sealed but fluff right up, and the brand actually gives you step-by-step instructions to make sure they quickly get their plushness. “The best pillow ever,” one shopper said. 

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Casa Platino Set of 4 Pillows, $33 (was $50) at Walmart

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Stay comfortable and cool with the Emonia Cooling Memory Foam Pillows. At only $20 for a set of two, we’ll be adding a few of them to our cart.

Natalie Harp, a close aide to President Donald Trump, has surged into the national spotlight over her near-constant presence around the president.

The U.S. solar industry is going through one of the sharpest divisions investors have seen in years.

On one side, companies that put panels on family homes are failing one after another, with more than 100 filing for bankruptcy or shutting down since 2023.

On the other side sits First Solar (FSLR), a company that has almost nothing in common with those installers beyond the word “solar.”

That difference has become one of the most important facts for anyone considering First Solar stock in August 2026. The same forces breaking residential installers are shifting demand toward the exact market First Solar serves.

This article explains what caused the collapse, why First Solar is unaffected, and the risks that could still hurt shareholders.

Why more than 100 residential solar installers have gone under

The failures are concentrated in one place: the rooftop solar market that sells directly to homeowners.

More than 100 U.S. solar companies have filed for bankruptcy or shut down since 2023, according to SolarInsure. The list includes some of the largest installers in the country.

SunPower filed for Chapter 11 in August 2024. Sunnova followed in June 2025. 

Related: 5-star analyst sets jaw-dropping Micron stock price target for 2026

Then came the biggest 2026 casualty: Freedom Forever, the country’s second-largest residential installer, which filed Chapter 11 on April 15, 2026, pv magazine reported.

Together, these collapses have left more than 1.3 million homeowners without their original installer.

What actually broke the rooftop model

Three problems hit at the same time:

Expensive financing. Rooftop solar runs on consumer loans and leases. Higher interest rates made those deals more expensive for buyers and harder for heavily indebted companies to refinance.

Lost tax support. The 30% federal tax credit for homeowners who buy a system (Section 25D) expired at the end of 2025, removing a major reason to sign up.

Weak policy numbers in big states. California’s NEM 3.0 rules cut how much households earn by sending rooftop power back to the grid, which reduced demand in the largest U.S. market.

Wood Mackenzie now projects U.S. residential installation volume will fall again in 2026, on top of a 31% drop already recorded in 2024.

First Solar builds panels for large power plants, not household rooftops, which separates it from the installers now failing.Cheng Xin / Getty Images

How First Solar’s utility-scale focus keeps it out of the wreckage

First Solar does not sell to homeowners, use door-to-door sales teams, or depend on consumer loan platforms.

It builds large volumes of panels for utility-scale power plants, the kind that feed electricity to the grid rather than to a single roof. 

That customer base changes everything about its exposure.

A domestic supply chain that customers now prefer

First Solar manufactures its own thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe) panels, a technology that differs from the silicon panels most rivals import.

Because it produces in the United States, First Solar avoids the tariffs that raise costs for foreign-made silicon modules. 

In August 2026, President Trump added a 15% duty on products made from imported polysilicon, TipRanks noted.

That widened First Solar’s cost advantage over import-dependent competitors.

Booked orders that stretch to the end of the decade

While residential firms deal with canceled contracts, First Solar reported a contracted backlog of 45.1 gigawatts worth about $13.6 billion, with deliveries scheduled through 2030.

That backlog gives First Solar years of visible demand that its bankrupt peers never had.

How AI data centers feed directly into First Solar’s order book

Big Tech’s data center buildout has created enormous demand for steady, utility-scale electricity.

Hyperscaler capital spending has been raised to $750 billion for 2026 and is set to cross $1 trillion in 2027.

The Department of Energy projects data centers could account for up to 12% of U.S. electricity demand by 2028.

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Solar installers focused on home-owners cannot supply power at that scale. Utility developers can, and many of them buy First Solar equipment. 

Jim Cramer said in August 2026 that the AI data center trade had regained market leadership. That demand flows toward the utility projects First Solar is built to serve.

What First Solar’s Q2 results say about FSLR stock

First Solar’s second-quarter 2026 numbers show why its position looks solid while rivals fail.

For the second quarter, the company reported $1.06 billion in net sales, a gross margin of about 57%, and earnings of $3.92 per share, which beat Wall Street expectations, Investing.com reported. 

Net income rose about 24% from a year earlier.

Yet the stock has not tracked those results. FSLR closed at $217.85 on Aug. 18, down 20.59% year to date and down 12.64% over the prior five days.

Where the stock sits vs. analyst targets

Wall Street’s average price target sits near $275, which leaves the current price at a clear discount to that consensus.

Two forces explain why the stock has fallen even as earnings stay strong:

Weak sector sentiment. Residential bankruptcies are dragging down the entire clean energy sector, even companies like First Solar that have no rooftop exposure.

Lingering guidance concerns. First Solar shares dropped earlier in 2026 after its 2026 revenue guidance and tariff worries unsettled investors, and that pressure hasn’t fully lifted.

If the market starts separating utility-scale suppliers from struggling residential names, First Solar’s results give it room to recover toward those higher targets.

The risks First Solar investors should weigh before buying

A strong position does not remove risk, and First Solar carries several risks that shareholders should study closely.

1. Heavy reliance on federal tax credits

First Solar’s profits lean hard on government support. The company expects $2.10 billion to $2.19 billion in Section 45X manufacturing tax credits in 2026, according to its SEC filing.

That figure covers a large share of its projected $2.6 billion to $2.8 billion in adjusted EBITDA. 

If the government reduces or ends those credits before 2030, First Solar would lose a big piece of its profit and its current earnings levels would be hard to maintain.

2. Active shareholder lawsuits over tariff disclosures

First Solar faces securities class-action lawsuits with a lead plaintiff deadline of August 24, 2026, a press release confirmed.

The complaints allege management overstated how well the company could handle U.S. tariffs on its factories in Malaysia and Vietnam, which led to costly idle capacity.

3. Project-based revenue and cash flow pressure

Two more items deserve attention:

No recurring revenue. First Solar sells one-off manufacturing orders, so it must keep winning large new contracts to replace completed ones.

Cash under pressure. Its net cash balance fell to $1.7 billion as of June 30, down from $2.4 billion at the end of 2025. The drop was driven by working-capital needs and spending on its new South Carolina facility.

What First Solar’s split from the pack means for investors

First Solar is in a much better spot than the companies going bankrupt right now, and the reasons are simple.

It sells to utility companies, not homeowners. It builds panels in the U.S., so it avoids the tariffs hurting import-reliant rivals. 

It already has 45.1 GW of orders booked through 2030. And AI data centers need exactly the kind of large-scale power First Solar sells.

So don’t judge First Solar by the bad headlines about rooftop installers going under. That’s a different business with different problems.

That said, First Solar still has real risks. It leans heavily on tax credits. It’s facing shareholder lawsuits. And its cash balance has been shrinking.

Here’s what to watch over the next few quarters:

New orders. Is the backlog still growing?

Section 45X tax credits. Any signs they could shrink or end early?

Cash flow. Is First Solar generating more cash, or still burning it on new factories?

Those three things will tell you whether First Solar’s advantages actually show up in the stock price, or stay stuck on paper.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. First Solar shares involve risk, and readers should do their own research or speak with a licensed financial professional before investing.

Related: Bank of America doubles down on Micron stock price for 2026

OpenAI has confirmed that logins and signups on chatgpt.com are failing, with users seeing an authentication key error. Here’s the status and what we know so far.

Another day, another new AI agent harness is released.Only this time, it’s one that aims to solve a growing enterprise problem as AI agents proliferate: enabling greater developer control of agents and tools, while reducing cost. TrueFoundry, a San Francisco B2B machine learning startup co-founded in 2021 by former Meta engineers, has released its own custom TrueForge harness under the permissive MIT License on Github. Thus, it can be used with any of a developer (or their parent enterprise’s) preferred AI models, forked, modified, self-hosted and incorporated into commercial products. The company states in a blog post that when it used TrueForge paired with the open source GLM-5.2 LLM to successfully complete 11 of 14 tasks on DevRev’s Enterprise-Bench — testing multi-step tool use across CRM, issue tracking, and document management systems — it cost 75% less than achieving the same results with Anthropic’s Claude Managed Agents harness powered by Claude Opus 4.8 ($2.90 compared to $11.80). Using the same model in each harness, Opus 4.8, TrueFoundry still claims a cost savings of roughly 30% using TrueForge compared to Claude Managed Agents ($8.50 vs $11.80). Why is TrueFoundry giving this powerfully efficient harness away for free? “We’ve had this ask from a bunch of customers,” said Anuraag Gutgutia, TrueFoundry’s co-founder and COO, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “You have an ability where you bring in agents and MCPs — can we also get something where you can actually launch these managed agents? I think that is the need we are satisfying. It is not a replacement. People will use this alongside other harnesses, like the cloud-managed ones or the commercial-provider-managed ones, but this will serve as a way for people to use them in a vendor-neutral way and also at a lower cost.”Indeed, TrueFoundry already offers a paid “AI Gateway” for enterprises centrally controlling model and MCP access, credentials, permissions, budgets and observability. TrueForge, by contrast, handles what happens above that gateway: the loop that lets a model repeatedly reason, call tools, receive results and continue working until a task is complete.For enterprise developers, the practical proposition is that they can start locally with a single command and SQLite, then move the same agent harness into a shared deployment using Docker Compose or Helm with Postgres and Redis. TrueFoundry explicitly warns that the local configuration is intended only for use on a developer’s machine, not as an internet-facing production service.Gutgutia said the company ultimately wants its AI Gateway to become the common layer beneath whichever agents and harnesses an enterprise chooses.“There will be a set of companies that will use our harness as the way to launch managed agents,” he said, while others may continue using Claude, other open-source harnesses or internal systems. “But all that traffic should still be flowing through our gateway.”Context management is where TrueForge tries to cut wasteTrueForge’s architecture centers on context engineering — controlling how much information gets sent back into the model on every step of an agent run.That includes delaying the loading of MCP tool schemas until they are needed, delegating isolated tasks to subagents, moving oversized tool results into files instead of stuffing them into the active context window, processing structured results through code, and automatically compacting long-running conversations.The documentation sets the default compaction threshold at 50,000 tokens, though it can be changed per agent.TrueForge also treats the sandbox differently from runtimes that keep an agent inside an isolated environment throughout its run. The core agent loop remains on the TrueForge server; a sandbox is provisioned as a tool only when the agent needs to execute code or work with files. TrueFoundry says that reduces unnecessary compute and allows a server to run more agents concurrently.The company argues those choices directly reduce model spending.How TrueForge compares to Claude Managed Agents and other leading orchestration harnessesType / focusTrueFoundry TrueForge: General-purpose production agent harness designed for enterprise deployments.DeepSeek Harness: Open-source agent harness, currently positioned as a developer preview.OpenAI Codex CLI: Coding-focused agent harness designed primarily for software-engineering workflows.LangChain Deep Agents: General-purpose agent harness built on LangGraph.Anthropic Claude Managed Agents: Fully managed production agent runtime operated by Anthropic.LicenseTrueFoundry TrueForge: MIT.DeepSeek Harness: MIT.OpenAI Codex CLI: Apache 2.0.LangChain Deep Agents: MIT.Anthropic Claude Managed Agents: Proprietary.PriceTrueFoundry TrueForge: The open-source harness itself is free. Model, sandbox and infrastructure costs are separate. TrueFoundry also offers an optional commercial governance layer through its broader platform.DeepSeek Harness: No harness license fee. Users separately pay for whatever model providers and infrastructure they use.OpenAI Codex CLI: The CLI is open source. Underlying model/API or subscription costs are separate, OpenAI says around $100–$200 per developer per month, although actual spending varies substantially with model choiceLangChain Deep Agents: Open source, with model and infrastructure expenses separate. LangChain also offers optional commercial services through LangSmith.Anthropic Claude Managed Agents: Claude tokens consumed plus $0.08 per running session-hour, with runtime metered to the millisecond.Model flexibilityTrueFoundry TrueForge: Vendor-neutral and designed around bring-your-own-model support.DeepSeek Harness: Multi-provider and not restricted to DeepSeek models.OpenAI Codex CLI: Supports configurable inference endpoints, including OpenAI-compatible services and local-model options.LangChain Deep Agents: Broad multi-provider support through the LangChain ecosystem.Anthropic Claude Managed Agents: Claude-centric.DeploymentTrueFoundry TrueForge: Can run locally as a single process with SQLite, then move into a production deployment using Docker Compose or Helm with Postgres and Redis.DeepSeek Harness: Designed for local or self-hosted operation.OpenAI Codex CLI: Primarily a local CLI experience, alongside OpenAI-hosted Codex products and services.LangChain Deep Agents: Can be self-hosted or deployed through LangChain and LangSmith infrastructure.Anthropic Claude Managed Agents: Anthropic manages the runtime and infrastructure.Key featuresTrueFoundry TrueForge: MCP and tool orchestration, subagents, human approval checkpoints, persistent sessions, context compaction, large-result offloading, Code Mode, generative UI, tracing and a sandbox-as-a-tool architecture.DeepSeek Harness: Pluggable models, tools, session storage and agent loops, along with sandboxing, permissions, approval gates and skills.OpenAI Codex CLI: Agent loop, repository and file operations, shell execution, MCP tools, sandboxing, permissions, approvals and context management.LangChain Deep Agents: Planning, subagents, skills, filesystem-based context management, persistent memory, human-in-the-loop controls, MCP support and multiple sandbox backends.Anthropic Claude Managed Agents: Managed execution environments, persistence, tools, sandboxing and infrastructure for long-running agents.Key differentiatorTrueFoundry TrueForge: Its strongest distinction is the combination of an open-source, vendor-neutral harness with a clear path from local development to a shared production runtime, plus an optional enterprise governance plane through TrueFoundry.DeepSeek Harness: Emphasizes deep modularity. Major parts of the runtime, including models, tools, storage and the agent loop, are designed to be replaceable plugins.OpenAI Codex CLI: Stands out as a highly developed software-engineering-specific harness rather than a general-purpose enterprise agent server.LangChain Deep Agents: Benefits from the broader LangChain and LangGraph ecosystem and offers a mature open-source path for building general-purpose agents.Anthropic Claude Managed Agents: Minimizes operational burden by having Anthropic manage the runtime, but trades that convenience for tighter model and platform coupling.Open source does not automatically mean governedFor enterprise buyers, one of the most important distinctions is between TrueForge by itself and TrueForge connected to TrueFoundry’s commercial AI Gateway.The open-source harness can run independently. But it does not magically inherit an organization’s enterprise access policies on its own.“If you are using just the open source version of our agent harness, yes, you will need to put the right controls therein or in front of some other internal control system,” Gutgutia told VentureBeat.When paired with TrueFoundry’s gateway, the company says agents can inherit the identities and access controls already attached to models, MCP servers, tools, skills and other agents. Gutgutia described the gateway as the place where enterprise SSO, identity providers and granular permissions can be centrally enforced rather than reimplemented separately for every agent.That distinction is likely to be important for platform engineering teams evaluating the project. TrueForge is free software; TrueFoundry’s governance layer is the commercial control plane around it.TrueFoundry says NetApp was a beta user of the harness and contributed requirements during development. Gutgutia said NetApp’s IT organization has used the technology for incident response and faster ticket triage, while also exposing internal agents as self-service tools for developers. He also identified Automattic as an early user.Background on TrueFoundry and its business to dateTrueFoundry was founded in 2021 to help enterprises deploy and operate machine-learning models, including Kubernetes-based model serving, training and infrastructure management.Its three co-founders — Nikunj Bajaj, Abhishek Choudhary and Anuraag Gutgutia — previously worked at Meta and WorldQuant, respectively. Gutgutia said the founders’ common experience was working around mature systems where infrastructure and controls were designed to prevent costly mistakes — an idea they believed would become increasingly important as AI moved into production inside large companies. As generative AI spread through enterprise software, TrueFoundry expanded from that MLOps foundation toward managing LLM applications and, increasingly, the models, tools and agents around them. By 2025, the company had made its AI Gateway a central part of the business: a layer sitting between enterprise applications and model providers that handles routing, authentication, access controls, observability, budgets, guardrails and failover.That evolution has been backed by roughly $21 million in outside financing. TrueFoundry raised a $19 million Series A in February 2025 led by Intel Capital, with participation from existing investors Eniac Ventures and Peak XV’s Surge, as well as Jump Capital and angel investors including Gokul Rajaram and Mohit Aron. The round brought total financing to about $21 million, according to Intel Capital’s announcement. At the time, TrueFoundry said its customer base had grown fourfold year over year and that it was managing more than 1,000 clusters for machine-learning workloads.The business has since become increasingly oriented around large-scale enterprise AI traffic. In VentureBeat’s January 2026 coverage of TrueFoundry’s TrueFailover launch, the company said it had more than 30 paid customers worldwide, had exceeded $1.5 million in annual recurring revenue during the prior year and was processing more than 10 billion requests per month through its AI Gateway. Customers and deployments cited by TrueFoundry have included NetApp, Siemens Healthineers, ResMed, Automation Anywhere, Nvidia, Games24x7 and others; Gutgutia also named NetApp, Siemens, Synopsys and Automation Anywhere among Fortune 1000 organizations working with the company in his interview with VentureBeat. TrueFoundry has also been expanding through acquisition. In June 2026 it acquired UK-based Seldon AI, a longtime MLOps vendor whose Seldon Core software has been used for production model serving and inference.As the acquisition shows, rather than treating traditional ML, LLMs, tools and agents as separate infrastructure categories, TrueFoundry is trying to put them behind a common deployment and governance layer. TrueForge extends that strategy upward into the agent runtime itself. Until now, TrueFoundry’s commercial center of gravity has largely been the control plane underneath enterprise AI workloads — deciding which users and applications can access which models and tools, routing requests, enforcing policy, monitoring spend and keeping services available. TrueForge gives the company an open-source runtime above that layer where agents can actually execute. Gutgutia described the relationship as complementary: organizations can run TrueForge independently or continue using other agent harnesses, while TrueFoundry’s longer-term business opportunity is to provide the common governance and infrastructure underneath whichever agents enterprises choose.

American love for sandwiches is best presented in “Friends” when the lovable Joey shows he is ready to take a bullet to save his favorite meatball sub. 

While most of the consumers certainly wouldn’t risk their lives for any kinds of sub, the scene perfectly exaggerates the deep, primal bond Americans have with sandwich culture. In fact, roughly 47% of American adults consume at least one sandwich on any given day, according to a landmark USDA Dietary Data Brief. 

Moreover, despite the inflation and the pressure it is putting on consumers’ wallets, the industry is still doing well, according to data from IBIS World. 

“Sandwich and sub restaurants continue a strong post-COVID recovery in 2023 despite inflation’s hit to consumers’ wallets,” reads the report. 

This however, is not enough to make all of the estimated 33,000 sandwich and sub restaurants in the U.S. resilient to economic challenges and immune from making a business mistake. That’s why Blimpie, an iconic sandwich chain that once boasted around 2,000 shops across the country, is now down to 91. 

Blimpie keeps downsizing, and just recently it completely exited Connecticut. 

Blimpie closes its last Connecticut location, thankful for every customer, every order 

Blimpie was born in 1964, when people were crazy about the Beatles and Muhammad Ali was the Heavy Weight Champion of the world, reads the company’s official description.

Fast forward 62 years and more than 1,000 closures, and Blimpie has just closed its last shop in Connecticut, exiting the Nutmeg State entirely. While the chain has a long tradition of more than 60 years, its presence in Connecticut is about 50 years long, according to several reports. 

The last Blimpie in Connecticut located at 1001 Day Hill Road in Windsor, is officially listed as closed on the chain’s website. 

More Restaurants:

52-year-old international restaurant chain closing all locations

46-year-old casual dining chain closes underperforming locations

Classic burger chain has closed down all its restaurants

The note on the door of the establishment also notes its permanent closure. The location served as a co-branded Blimpie and Surf City Squeeze, reported reported CT Insider. 

“After proudly serving the community, this Blimpie and Surf City Squeeze location has permanently closed. We are incredibly grateful for every visit, every order, and every customer who made us part of their day. Thank you for your loyalty and support. We invite you to continue enjoying the fresh flavors you love at another Blimpie or Surf City Squeeze location,” reads a note on the door of the restaurant posted by Connecticut Scoop on Facebook.

As per restaurant’s data, there are no more Surf City Squeeze locations in the state. Connecticut residents who want to treat themselves with a Blimpie sandwich will need to reach Bronx, while the closest Surf City Squeeze is in Teaneck, New Jersey. 

Blimpie closes its last Connecticut location, thankful for every customer, every order. RiverNorthPhotography / Getty Images

What has caused Blimpie’s fall from grace and closures of so many locations 

Blimpie once had a strong presence across Connecticut. Now, the fast-food chain only has 91 locations in the U.S., according to data from ScrapeHero.

There are several reasons that have contributed to Blimpie’s decline: 

Overexpansion across unconventional areas: Among factors that impacted Blimpie’s downfall are “poor management decisions and overexpansion in poorly chosen areas,” according to the Takeout. The outlet further details how the company tried to dominate across unconventional spaces and failed to achieve good enough profit margins. 

Inconsistent quality: Stores suffered from a lack of uniformity, with many ignoring health codes, brand standards, or cleanliness, which hurt the brand’s reputation, according to Encyclopedia.com.  

Intense competition: Blimpie just couldn’t keep up with the rising competition from Subway, Jimmy John’s, Jersey Mike’s, and Quiznos, writes the Takeout. 

Multiple ownership changes: Acquisitions by Kahala Corp in 2006 and later MTY Food Group led to shifting corporate strategies and reduced marketing support.

Related: McDonald’s says it alienated its most loyal customers 

 Why consumers care about Blimpie

While consumers can choose from over a thousand sandwich and sub chains across the United States, three operational and historical features set Blimpie apart.

Out-of-the-box thinkers

Blimpie was a fast food innovator, being first in the franchise segment to convert stores to non-conventional locations in gas stations, train stations and also first to target the lower calorie menu options and use that as the focus of marketing the brand, according to a franchise analysis by Franchise Marketing Systems (FMS). 

“Blimpie even utilized vending machines to sell the popular sandwiches, there were very few franchise brands who were ever as creative and out-of-the-box thinkers as Blimpie had been,” reads the FMS analysis.

Made-to-order Italian deli build (‘Blimpie Best’)

While chains like Subway rely heavily on pre-portioned, standardized meat stacks, Blimpie anchored its core brand identity on authentic Italian deli builds.

Its flagship sub, the Blimpie Best, combines four distinct cured meats: slow-cured ham, salami, capicola, and prosciuttini, paired with provolone cheese, as detailed in Blimpie’s Official Catering and Menu Specifications.

Commitment to slicing meats to order

Executive Q&A documentation from parent company Kahala Brands / Blimpie Franchise from 2016 highlights that slicing meats and cheeses directly in front of the customer was one of a core operational differentiator:

“I’ll keep talking about our freshly sliced process because it’s such a differentiator for us and our customers. They like seeing the sandwich prepared in front of them with fresh ingredients.”

While consumers shared mixed opinions on the quality of Blimpie’s offering over the last 10 years or so, a number of them shared their nostalgic memories, saddened that the chain is closing more stores. 

“I miss this place SO MUCH. I had the perfect, most delicious sandwich order. A few years ago I found what had to be one of the last remaining Blimpies in Boise Idaho, of all places. I almost ran in. Somehow remembered my order. It tasted just as delicious as it had ten years prior, which seems like a minor miracle in this age of enshittification,” wrote Reddit user Schmidaho. 

Related: 114-year-old bakery chain closes 19 locations