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Loora is an AI-powered English learning platform that gives users a personal AI tutor for one-on-one conversations, personalized feedback, and practice centered on real-life situations and individual interests. Alongside its consumer app, Loora offers a B2B product for corporations, governments, and universities. The company has taught more than 15 million learners and supported more than 250 million interactions since launching. Today, Loora also raised $22 million in Series B funding, led by Union Tech Ventures, bringing funding to $43.25 million as it increases access to effective English fluency training.  vgames also participated in the round alongside existing investors Emerge, Hearst Ventures, and QP Ventures. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Loora Co-Founder Roy Mor to learn more.

OpenAI has held preliminary discussions with major investors about a new funding round that could value the artificial intelligence company at approximately $1.2 trillion, according to Reuters.

TrustedHousesitters, a global home and pet-sitting marketplace, has appointed TaskRabbit Chief Product Officer Drew Wrangles as Board Advisor as the company prepares for its next phase of international growth, with the U.S. identified as a priority market.

DrayTek, a global provider of business networking and cybersecurity solutions, has formed a strategic partnership with telecom and cybersecurity software specialist Enea to improve application visibility and threat detection across future DrayTek networking and security platforms.

LNL Capital, a vertically integrated net lease capital platform, has appointed former Ares Management Managing Director Joel Tomlinson as Managing Partner to expand its structured debt and equity strategy across single-tenant retail, industrial and healthcare net lease investments.

Medbridge, a digital health platform focused on clinician education, care delivery and patient engagement, has launched a new Pediatric Clinical Skills curriculum designed to help home health, hospice and private duty organizations train nurses caring for children with medically complex needs.

VerifAIX, an AI-native semiconductor verification company, has raised $5 million in seed funding to develop a verification platform designed to independently determine whether increasingly AI-generated chip designs are correct. The round was co-led by Endiya Partners and Bluehill VC and represents the company's first major institutional financing.

G5 Labs, a spinout from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, has emerged from stealth with $14 million in seed funding to develop a new abstraction layer for AI-native software development that treats natural language as source code.

NewEdge Capital Group has expanded NewEdge Wealth into Minnesota with the opening of an office near Minneapolis led by an eight-person advisory team that previously managed more than $1.25 billion in client assets.

Thryv Holdings has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its print directories business to private equity firm Carolwood L.P. for $142 million in cash, advancing the company's transformation toward an AI-powered software business focused on local service companies.

Planted, a company developing robotic systems and software to accelerate solar power deployment, has raised $31.8 million in new funding to expand its autonomous construction fleet and launch Sage, its next-generation field robot. The round was co-led by Piva Capital and RA Capital Management Planetary Health, with participation from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Gigascale Capital, Google and Khosla Ventures.

Camtasia, TechSmith's video creation and screen recording platform, has launched a ChatGPT plugin that can transform screenshots into AI-generated instructional videos, giving users a new way to create training and tutorial content directly from a conversational workflow.

LPL Financial announced that financial advisors Bill Wagner, CFP, RICP, Scott Sennett and Andrew Kocukov of Horizon Wealth Management Group have joined its broker-dealer and Registered Investment Advisor platforms. The Wichita, Kansas-based team reported serving approximately $385 million in advisory, brokerage and retirement plan assets and joins LPL from Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network.

Honeycomb Insurance, a technology-enabled property and casualty insurer specializing in landlords and condominium associations, has expanded into Tennessee and South Carolina, increasing its presence across the Southeast and bringing additional insurance capacity to markets facing growing wind, hail, tornado and liability risks.

InspereX, a technology-driven distributor of fixed income, structured products, ETFs and alternative investments, has surpassed $5 billion in impact investments underwritten and distributed through its platform.

Thrive, a global technology outsourcing provider specializing in AI, cybersecurity, cloud and managed IT services, has expanded its NextGen managed services platform with new security architecture powered by Elastic and Cato Networks. The investments are designed to strengthen Thrive's Managed Detection and Response capabilities, improve threat visibility and introduce a more modern Zero Trust approach to secure access for mid-market organizations.

Yardi has acquired Sidero Labs, the infrastructure software company behind Talos Linux and Omni, in a transaction that gives Sidero Labs the backing of a much larger enterprise software organization while preserving the open-source model that has helped Talos gain adoption across tens of thousands of Kubernetes clusters. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

New Forests has appointed Sam Rorabaugh as Global Head of Investments, placing the North American investment executive in charge of coordinating investment activity across the firm's global natural capital platform.

Carne Group has appointed Keshava Shastry as Chief Capital Markets & Distribution Officer as the fund-services company expands its capabilities across ETFs, private markets, product structuring, distribution and tokenized financial infrastructure.

Sullivan & Cromwell has opened an office in Abu Dhabi and rehired Ahmed T. el-Gaili as a partner to lead its Middle East practice as the law firm expands around increasing sovereign capital, private equity and infrastructure activity across the region.

K&L Gates has added a six-partner team from Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, significantly expanding its Corporate, Intellectual Property, Litigation and Labor and Employment practices across San Francisco, Palo Alto and Houston.

Latham & Watkins has added Patrick Hennessy as a partner in its London Real Estate Practice, strengthening the firm's capabilities at the intersection of real estate and private equity.

Redwood Trust has priced an upsized $185 million offering of 7% convertible senior notes due 2030, raising additional capital to refinance existing convertible debt, repurchase shares and support its housing finance businesses.

Tenable Holdings has priced an upsized $725 million offering of 0.25% convertible senior notes due 2031, with proceeds earmarked for a major share repurchase, repayment of term loans and additional strategic flexibility.

CPP Investments and Brookfield Asset Management have launched the Maple Fund, a new cooperation framework that could deploy up to C$50 billion of equity into large-scale infrastructure projects and strategic industries across Canada.

Vivo Capital has appointed Neetesh Kumar as Managing Partner as the approximately $7 billion healthcare investment firm expands its U.S. buyout and private equity strategy and establishes a presence in New York.

Vance Street Capital has appointed Katherine "Kate" Dowley as Head of Investor Relations as the middle-market private equity firm continues expanding its institutional capabilities following more than $2 billion of total capital raised.

Permira has appointed former Microsoft Developer Division President Julia Liuson as a Senior Adviser to its Technology team, adding more than three decades of software, developer tools, cloud and artificial intelligence experience as the investment firm pushes its portfolio companies toward AI-native operating models.

Quorum has appointed Bob Ghafouri to its Board of Directors as the AI-powered public affairs software company accelerates development of agentic AI capabilities for government affairs teams. Ghafouri brings more than 25 years of experience developing and scaling digital and AI businesses.

Zurich has selected Alex Wells as CEO of Zurich U.S., promoting the veteran commercial insurance executive after he helped generate double-digit growth in the insurer's Middle Market business. Wells takes over following the departure of Sierra Signorelli and will lead Zurich's U.S. operations effective immediately, subject to customary approvals.