Preply, a language learning platform connecting people with tutors, raised $70 million of fresh capital to ramp up its use of artificial intelligence, the company told CNBC exclusively.
The firm, founded in Ukraine but based in the U.S., said it bagged the funds by issuing new equity and debt. Preply’s founders include Ukrainian entrepreneurs Kirill Bigai, Dmytro Voloshyn, and Serge Lukianov.
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The equity portion was led by Horizon Capital, a venture capital firm focused on investing in emerging entrepreneurs, particularly Ukrainians. It was also backed by Reach Capital, Hoxton Ventures and others.
The funding adds to a $50 million Series C funding round Preply raised last year, and takes its total funding raised to over $170 million.
Preply is a marketplace platform that connects people with human tutors to help them learn new languages. Each teacher on Preply shares a profile that tutees can view, and sets an hourly rate for lessons. Preply gets a cut of the hourly rates tutors charge.
Preply also sells to large enterprises such as Datadog, GroupM and Bain, which use it to improve their teams’ foreign language skills. The company is not yet profitable, although revenues grew tenfold in the last three years.
Kirill Bigai, Preply’s co-founder and CEO, said the company would use the funds to “extend our leadership in the [online language learning] category through AI-powered human tutors, providing a learning experience which is quickly becoming a game changer.”
“Though the team today is truly global, as a Ukrainian founded company with significant R&D in Ukraine, this is a milestone to be celebrated. One that echoes the resilience and determination of the Ukrainian tech sector and all Ukrainians,” he added.
The funding comes at a time of tighter fundraising conditions for startups, which are struggling to raise money quite as easily as they did in the 2020 and 2021 boom years of technology triggered by Covid-19 lockdowns and monetary easing.
AI has been a notable exception to that rule, thanks to the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and tools like it. Many startups are raising seismic sums of cash as venture capitalists try to find the companies that will win from the upswell of demand for AI tools.
Preply said it already uses machine learning to better match learners and tutors. Now, it’s incorporating more AI into its offering, having launched an AI assistant to help tutors come up with exercises, grammar explanations, and conversations starters.
It comes as Duolingo, a competitor to Preply, has been incorporating OpenAI’s GPT language processing software to enhance its app’s personalization to users. Shares of Duolingo have more than doubled in price so far this year. Other rivals to Preply include Babbel and Busuu.
It also highlights ongoing interest from tech investors in Ukraine, which has been battered by Russia since Moscow began an invasion of the country early last year. Horizon Capital raised $125 million for a startup fund aimed at backing Ukrainian founders.
Several founders of billion-dollar “unicorns” come from Ukraine, including Grammarly’s Max Lytvyn and Alex Shevchenko, and GitLab’s Dmitriy Zaporozhets. Google, Samsung and Amazon also have research and development centers in the country.
Chief Executive of Apple, Tim Cook gives a thumb’s up during a tour the Apple Headquarters on December 12, 2024 in London, England.
Chris Jackson | Getty Images
Apple has triumphed over an effort from the U.K. government to keep details secret of its appeal against an order to create a “backdoor” to iPhone users’ data.
The U.K.’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal on Monday published a ruling dismissing the government’s attempt to prevent details from a hearing on the appeal from being made public. The government had tried to keep the information secret on the grounds it posed risks to national security.
Judges Rabinder Singh and Judge Jeremy Johnson said in their ruling that the U.K. government’s request to keep details of the hearing private “would be the most fundamental interference with the principle of open justice.”
“It would have been a truly extraordinary step to conduct a hearing entirely in secret without any public revelation of the fact that a hearing was taking place,” they said.
Britain’s Home Office was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
This backdoor would allow the government to access information secured by Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) system, which applies end-to-end encryption to a wide range of iCloud data.
Governments in the U.S., U.K. and EU have long expressed dissatisfaction with end-to-end encryption, arguing it enables criminals, terrorists and sex offenders to conceal illicit activity.
In the U.K., the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016 empowers the government to compel tech companies to weaken their encryption technologies through so-called “backdoors” — a heavily controversial policy for both the tech industry and privacy campaigners.
Apple — which is known for its pro-privacy stance — has pushed back on efforts to weaken its encryption tools, saying this would undermine its security and put users at risk.
As a result of the government’s order, Apple withdrew its ADP system for U.K. users in February. In a blog post at the time, the tech giant said it has “never built a backdoor or master key to any of our products or services and we never will.”
“We are deeply disappointed that our customers in the UK will no longer have the option to enable Advanced Data Protection (ADP), especially given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy,” Apple said in the post.
“Apple remains committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data and we are hopeful that we will be able to do so in the future in the United Kingdom.”
U.S. President Donald Trump’s adviser Elon Musk reacts on the day of a rally in support of a conservative state Supreme Court candidate of an April 1 election in Green Bay, Wisconsin, U.S. March 30, 2025.
Vincent Alban | Reuters
Technology stocks teetered in volatile trading Monday as President Donald Trump stood by his sweeping global tariff plans following last week’s devastating selloff.
The Magnificent Seven stocks — Nvidia, Apple, Meta Platforms, Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet — were largely lower after briefly rallying amid a short-lived broader market attempt to stage a rebound. Stocks temporarily jumped on speculation of a possibly delay in the tariffs, but the White House later dismissed talk of a pause.
The technology sector is coming off a brutal week. The Magnificent Seven stocks collectively shed more than $1.8 trillion in market value during a two-day market selloff, while the Nasdaq Composite recorded its worst week since the onslaught of the pandemic and entered a bear market.
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Trump held firm on his aggressive global tariffs plans over the weekend, with an initial unilateral 10% tariff going into effect Saturday. Wall Street hoped for progress on negotiations between the administration and other countries or news of a possible delay in reciprocal tariffs slated for April 9.
“I don’t want anything to go down, but sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, downplaying the recent market meltdown.
Other technology stocks also looked to build on last week’s pain. Oracle and Palantir Technologies declined more than 2% each.
Some semiconductor stocks also struggled as investors fretted over potential demand destruction stemming from the tariffs. Advanced Micro Devices was last down about 4% each, while Intel declined more than 2%.
Nintendo on Wednesday unveiled details for the Switch 2. It’ll include a bigger screen and controllers and is a faster version than its predecessor, which sold more than 150 million units since its 2017 release.
The Switch 2 will hit store shelves on June 5 for $449.99, up from $300 for the original Switch. Like the first Switch, gamers will be able to use the Switch 2 as both a handheld console and hook it up to a television. Nintendo on Friday said it would delay preorders for the device following President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs.”
The device will launch with the game “Mario Kart World.” Other games comingfor the Switch 2 include “Donkey Kong Bananza,” “Street Fighter 6,” “The Duskbloods” and “Kirby Air Riders.”
Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser sat down with technology correspondent Steve Kovach in a CNBC exclusive interview after unveiling the new console’s details. Bowser touched on the technology boosts in the Switch 2, upcoming games, the future of Nintendo’s efforts in film and entertainment beyond video games, and what Trump’s new tariffs mean for console prices in the U.S.