RTB Digital, Inc. (NASDAQ: RTB) announced today the successful closing of its merger with RYVYL Inc. (NASDAQ: RVYL), and the start of trading of the combined company’s common stock on the Nasdaq Capital Market. RTB is the world’s only full-stack enterprise news platform, and represents what the Company describes as a multi-generational leap forward in technology, designed to transform the global news industry from Web1 to Web4.
“We’ve been building and refining our media platform model for 30 years,” said James Heckman, CEO of RTB Digital. “Our biggest breakthrough came when we joined forces with the founder of DeFi, Eyal Hertzog and his brilliant ‘DeWeb’ team, joining forces as AI technology begins to outsource the value of media at scale.” As our brand suggests, Roundtable is purpose-built for high-end media: we use AI to secure, human-created content, eliminate operational costs, and deliver comprehensive payments through consistent, transparent reporting, ensuring publishers have secure assets while creating new ones.”
RTB’s full-stack business platform integrates AI, DeFi, and Web3 infrastructure to provide technical media – decentralized publishing, data encryption and IP protection, sales, revenue optimization, AI-based business intelligence, management and operations, and custom network applications.
Related: Founders Roundtable, Tech Platform Visionaries Meet, Launch Impossible – AI Powered, DeFi Media Platform at “Possible” 2026 Media Conference
RTB Platform is now live, Serving Hundreds of News Media
The AI/DeFi B2B2C platform is live, generating millions of revenue for business customers — including brand partners like Yahoo and TheStreet — and powering a network of independent sports journalists, including the recent migration of publishers from the top-grossing Sports Illustrated group to Roundtable. The company’s working capital provides a strong, distributed capital base designed to automate payments, modernize publishing infrastructure, and power the next generation of global media products.
Vision: Leading the $200 Billion Premium Media Marketplace from Web1 to Web4
Despite the size of the market, corporate media remains under the structure of the infrastructure, with companies forced to operate in all disconnected systems that hinder revenue collection, audience ownership and efficiency. At the same time, AI platforms are increasingly extracting value and user engagement from the billions invested in human-created content, while anonymous data practices and disparate monetization systems continue to hold back publishers and journalists.
The AI-driven DeFi platform of Roundtable and Web3 is designed to solve this structural gap with a single enterprise integration, including a full media operation stack, positioning RTB as the infrastructure layer connected to the next generation of professional media.
RTB’s first investor and now CFO, Aly Madhavji focuses on blockchain infrastructure investments: “After being active and investing in blockchain infrastructure teams, this is the one that’s different,” Madhavji said at the time of his appointment. “Our platform gives publishers what they’ve needed for years: real-time revenue, transparent reporting, and control over their data, audience, and IP– which is only possible by combining DeFi and AI.”
“Our latest platform combines the founder’s decades of extensive digital media experience, in addition to technology the market has never dreamed of, built by true visionaries in the space,” commented RTB Chairman and co-founder Walton Comer.
Nasdaq listing and merger highlights
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Approval of RYVYL shareholders of combining ~ 99% of votes in favor.
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Full Compliance and SEC approval, and Nasdaq approval of the closing of the merger
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Consolidated Business will operate as RTB Digital, Inc., trading on Nasdaq as “RTB”.
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Share the layout: ~ 13.2 million shares outstanding, with 11.2 million (~85%) under one-year closing, then 12-month issuance. ~ 2 million shares to trade
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Somali position: Balance sheet sufficient to support operations for more than one year
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Organized Partnerships: The company has entered into a yet-to-be-disclosed, binding agreement with a major media company, which includes a $10 million non-refundable deposit; Current strategic partnerships include Yahoo, TheHockeyNews, TheStreet, Arena and the 200 sports team publishers that worked within Sports Illustrated
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Moving forward Strategy. The company plans to implement Heckman’s 35-year strategy of working in the field of partnerships with major media outlets, as well as professional media and sports organizations. RTB’s sales team will include a premium media ecosystem and business model, now powered by what the Company believes is a modern, efficient and economically viable platform.
Leadership
James HeckmanFounder and CEO of RTB Digital. The Roundtable marks Heckman’s 10th major media partnership success, following more than three decades of designing media infrastructure and integrated relationships with many of the world’s leading media brands, including Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Disney, News Corp, SoftBank Group, NFL, Sports Illustrated, TheStreet, Turner, thousands of major US sports teams. Heckman founded Maven/Arena, Rivals.com, Rivals.net Europe, Scout.com and 5to1.com, a business acquired by Yahoo twice and News Corp. He has taken three technology companies public, including RTB. While leading Global Media Strategy at Yahoo, Heckman built the first alliance of AOL, MSN, and Yahoo that evolved into a $200 billion digital advertising marketplace. As Chief Strategy Officer of News Corp Digital, he developed the first data-driven social advertising model and negotiated the landmark $1 billion Google-MySpace advertising alliance, while his strategy team developed Hulu’s original business model. Every major network and platform built by James Heckman since 1990 continues to operate in one form or another today, starting with Rivals.com, the first social networking, subscription and blogging network backed by SoftBank Group, Intel and News Corp.
Eyal Hertzog, The CTO, Co-Founder, is well known as the founder of the basic technology of DeFi (decentralized finance) including automated market making (AMM) and decentralized money pool. He founded DeWeb Ltd which developed the Web3 community, a publishing and monetization platform, working in the DeFi space, which was acquired by Roundtable. Prior to DeWeb, he founded and built the first DeFi company Bancor and the video sharing service MetaCafe, a precursor to YouTube.
Walton ComerChairman, Co-Founder, is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of XBTO Group, and founding investor/advisor in Deribit, which was recently sold to Coinbase for $3B. His extensive experience in quantitative finance includes time as Director of Research for Thornhill Partners, Quantitative Analyst for SAC Capital, and co-founder and Director of research technology company Lucid, while his new AI startup partnered with RTB Digital.
Aly Madhavji, CFO, Co-Founder, is a world-renowned blockchain investor, chartered finance expert, and Managing Partner of Blockchain Founders Fund, which has invested in more than 200 blockchain infrastructure companies in global markets. Madhavji brings a rare combination of institutional finance and deep native blockchain expertise to RTB, and is certified as a CA, CPA, CMA, CIM, MBA from INSEAD (Senior Blockchain Fellow), and a Schwarzman Scholar from Tsinghua University, and served on the Governing Council of the University of Toronto.
Bill SornsinCOO, Co-Founder co-founder Maven/Arena, service 300 brands including SI, History.com, and TheStreet. After Sornsin led MSN’s Core Technology team, he founded Rivals.com and Scout.com, serving as CTO of both. With the 2005 acquisition of Scout by Fox Interactive Media, he joined Fox as VP of engineering and operations for that unit, later served as CTO of online advertising platform 5to1 (acquired by Yahoo!), returned to Scout in 2013 to redesign (acquired by CBS), and now heads RTB Digital operations. Sornsin holds a BS in electrical/computer engineering from the University of Iowa and an MBA from UCLA.
Related: Roundtable CEO James Heckman Announces New CFO Aly Madhavji
Disclosure: This article was provided by Roundtable, article title. Roundtable and its subsidiaries have a direct financial interest in the securities of the company discussed. This communication should not be construed as investment advice.
This story was originally published by TheStreet on May 13, 2026, where it appeared first in the MARKETS category. Add TheStreet as a favorite source by clicking here.
