The round, for which Goldman Sachs International acted as sole placement agent, will be used to accelerate product development, expand Preply's AI and data capabilities and fuel international growth as the company seeks to reshape education through personalised, tutor-led learning supported by artificial intelligence. Founded as an online language tutoring marketplace, Preply now connects more than 100,000 tutors with learners in 180 countries, offering one-to-one lessons across more than 90 languages.
The infusion of money will provide the company with "the runway to complete development" of the Nova rocket and demonstrate its capability through its first flights, said Andy Lapsa, the company's co-founder and chief executive, in a news release characterizing the new funding. Stoke is working toward a 2026 launch of the medium-lift Nova rocket. The rocket's innovative design is intended to be fully reusable from the payload fairing on down, with a regeneratively cooled heat shield on the vehicle's second stage.
AppZen is the AI-native platform for autonomous finance. Powered by proprietary ZenLM models and the Mastermind AI Automation Platform, AppZen's domain-trained AI Agents streamline end-to-end workflows across T&E, accounts payable, and corporate card programs, transforming finance teams. More than 500 global enterprises, including over 65 of the Fortune 500, rely on AppZen to automate transaction processing and reduce costs, delivering over $2 billion in savings and enabling finance teams to reallocate up to two-thirds of their manual workload to higher-value activities.
EFFECT Photonics has raised an additional $24M in its Series D financing round, bringing the total raised in the round to $62M. This funding milestone highlights the strong market demand for their optical solutions.