Connect with us

Technology

FRESHA SECURES $31 MILLION IN FINANCING FROM J.P. MORGAN TO INVEST IN MACHINE LEARNING AND AI POWERED ROBOTICS

Published

on

LONDON, Aug. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Fresha, the leading marketplace platform for beauty and wellness, today announced it has secured a $31 million venture debt facility from J.P. Morgan. This funding will accelerate Fresha’s expansion into new markets and drive the growth of its machine learning capabilities and AI-powered robotics, further advancing its innovative all-in-one platform.

Fresha’s platform empowers beauty businesses, such as salons, barbershops, spas, and aesthetics clinics, to operate efficiently and independently. By offering a subscription-free business software with embedded payment processing and a consumer marketplace, Fresha helps businesses streamline their entire operations and connect with more customers, levelling the playing field for businesses of all sizes.

To date, Fresha has raised over $185 million in venture capital funding, including a $150 million Series C round in 2021 led by General Atlantic. As Fresha approaches profitability, this new relationship with J.P. Morgan will further fuel its ambitions to revolutionise the beauty and wellness space.

Fresha’s platform allows consumers to discover, book, and pay for beauty and wellness appointments with local businesses through its marketplace. Beauty and wellness professionals’ benefit from an all-in-one platform that includes free business software and financial technology solutions to manage their operations seamlessly. This approach aligns with Fresha’s vision of fostering innovation and accessibility across the industry, enabling every business to thrive in a competitive landscape.

The Fresha ecosystem offers merchants everything they need to run their businesses effectively, including appointment bookings, point-of-sale, customer records management, marketing automation, loyalty programs, beauty product inventory, and team management. The consumer marketplace leverages online bookings and automated marketing through mobile apps and advanced integrations with major tech platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and Google, unlocking significant revenue potential for partner businesses. By removing barriers to advanced technology, Fresha ensures that all beauty professionals can enhance their services and expand their reach.

Fresha boasts a network of over 110,000 merchants, with a strong presence in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. The platform’s reach extends across 120 countries, where customers book tens of millions of appointments monthly. To date, Fresha has facilitated transactions worth over $35 billion in gross merchandise volume, showcasing its significant impact on the global beauty and wellness industry. In 2023, the company grew revenues by 67% year-over-year, with a similar level of performance expected in 2024.

“We’re delighted to support Fresha on their continued growth journey,” said Alexandra Wyatt, U.K. Innovation Economy banking at J.P. Morgan. “Fresha is steering the rapidly expanding beauty and wellness space with its innovative technology and strong unit economics. Their unique business model is transforming the industry landscape, and it’s precisely the type of innovation we want to help drive globally.”

J.P. Morgan serves venture-backed and high-growth companies, founders and venture capital firms across the globe in industries like technology, fintech, disruptive commerce and internet, life sciences, climate tech and healthtech. The firm provides deep industry expertise, local support, global products and services and a robust network of investors and partners to meet clients’ commercial, investment and private banking needs.

“We are thrilled to be working with J.P. Morgan,” said William Zeqiri, Founder and CEO of Fresha. “The beauty and wellness industry is a dynamic world, buzzing with creativity, innovation, and an endless quest for service enhancement. Today, there is so much potential to be unlocked. Beauty service providers need a 360-degree view of each client, including booking behaviour, preferences, payment methods, and lifetime value. Extracting insights from every transaction has become a key competitive advantage, allowing our users to offer highly tailored and personalized services.”

Zeqiri continued, “The next exciting frontier for Fresha is expanding our research and development in machine learning and integrating AI into daily business operations. By embracing cutting-edge technology, we are not just enhancing our services; we are creating opportunities and redefining what’s possible. Our vision is a world where innovation and creativity flourish together, driving progress and enabling everyone to reach their full potential. In the not-so-distant future, we envision AI-powered robots working alongside humans in the beauty and wellness space. Robots can handle repetitive tasks, such as managing bookings, mixing colours, welcoming customers, or managing inventory, freeing up valuable time for stylists to focus on personalizing their services and honing their craft.”

About Fresha
Fresha is the world’s #1 beauty and wellness marketplace powered by all-in-one free business software with integrated payments. With over 100,000 partner venues in more than 120 countries, Fresha simplifies business operations and enhances customer experiences. To learn more, visit fresha.com, download Fresha on the App Store and Google Play, or follow Fresha on Facebook and Instagram.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2486639/Fresha.jpg

 

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/fresha-secures-31-million-in-financing-from-jp-morgan-to-invest-in-machine-learning-and-ai-powered-robotics-302227349.html

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Technology

Huawei Cloud Launches Agentic Infrastructure and CodeArts Agent OBT in Thailand, Accelerating Enterprise AI Innovation

Published

on

By

BANGKOK, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Huawei Cloud hosted Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026, bringing together leaders from government, business, industry partners, and the technology community to exchange views on how cloud and AI can support Thailand’s digital economy. During the event, Huawei Cloud announced “Huawei Cloud Agentic Infrastructure: Now Available for Thailand” and officially launched Huawei Cloud CodeArts Agent Open Beta Testing (OBT) in the country.

Mr. Sunny Shang, President of Huawei Cloud APAC, outlined the company’s commitment to working with customers and partners to build an AI-driven digital future for Thailand. Regarding the government’s direction, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society emphasized the acceleration of digital transformation through national AI policies, public-sector adoption, and stronger public-private collaboration.

The public-sector highlighted how AI can improve government operations and make public services faster and more convenient. NECTEC also presented a Government AI case study covering the development of AI infrastructure and platforms, as well as AI chatbots and intelligent assistants designed to support government officials and improve services for citizens.

Building the Foundation for the Agentic AI Era

Mr. Surasak Wanichwatphibun, CTO of Huawei Cloud Thailand said Huawei Cloud will continue to strengthen its technological capabilities and build a robust computing infrastructure to drive AI innovation across enterprises.

At the center of the announcement is Agentic Infra, a new infrastructure designed specifically for developing and deploying AI agents. It supports efficient token generation, unified scheduling of general-purpose and AI computing resources, continuous learning, and secure and autonomous agent operations.

Mr. Surasak introduced four new features under Agentic Infra:

UnifiedBus-based AI Cluster Service (AICS), which supports highly efficient token generationAgentic Memory Storage Service (AMS), which delivers PB-scale memory storage to address a key bottleneck in agent memory, enabling long-horizon tasks and facilitating continuous learning.AgentSphere, which offers a secure and autonomous runtime environment for AI agentsCCE VolcanoNext, which enables unified scheduling of general-purpose and AI computing resources

CodeArts Agent OBT Launches in Thailand

Another major highlight was the launch of Huawei Cloud CodeArts Agent OBT in Thailand, giving local developers and enterprises an opportunity to experience Huawei Cloud’s coding agent and provide feedback before its wider release.

CodeArts Agent combines IDE functionality, autonomous development capabilities, and coding models. It supports project-level code generation, code completion, R&D knowledge Q&A, and unit test case generation.

The platform also applies Specification-Driven Development (SDD) to help development teams maintain code quality from the requirements stage through to final delivery.

It is worth mentioning that this release also introduces the Agent Team mode, which can automatically form a development team, enabling multiple agents to collaborate concurrently and execute tasks simultaneously.

By reducing repetitive tasks, CodeArts Agent can help developers work more efficiently and allow organizations to bring digital products and services to market faster.

The OBT launch forms part of Huawei Cloud’s efforts to support Thailand’s developer community and make AI-assisted software development more accessible to organizations of different sizes.

Strengthening Security for Enterprise AI

Mr. Surasak also emphasized security, stability, and quality as key priorities for enterprise AI adoption. As cyberattacks become increasingly automated and AI-driven, Huawei Cloud has upgraded its security services in two areas: protecting AI systems and using AI to strengthen cyber defense.

Its model lifecycle security solution covers AI infrastructure, training data, model inference, and agent applications.

For enterprises concerned about data sovereignty and privacy, Huawei Cloud provides dedicated security zones that allow customers to independently manage their encryption keys while preventing platform administrators from accessing customer data. Software-hardware integration and hardware acceleration are also used to maintain encryption performance without compromising service efficiency. Huawei Cloud has also introduced Data Capsule technology, which ensures that data can only be used within authorized environments and automatically becomes invalid if moved outside a designated security zone.

Showcasing AI Use Cases Across Industries

Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026 also featured AI and cloud use cases from organizations in Thailand. These included the development of AI platforms and intelligent assistants for the public sector, the use of AI coding and large language models in banking, and AI-powered learning and skills development platforms for the HR sector.

Huawei Cloud and its partners also shared how ecosystem collaboration can help solve industry challenges and accelerate AI adoption among enterprises.

About Huawei Cloud Thailand

Huawei Cloud Thailand is a leading cloud service provider committed to accelerating Thailand’s digital transformation under the mission of “In Thailand, For Thailand.” According to the latest report from Gartner, Huawei Cloud is ranked No.3 by revenue in Thailand’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market, solidifying its position as one of the most trusted and fastest-growing international cloud providers in the country.

As the first international public cloud vendor to establish local data centers in Thailand, Huawei Cloud now operates three Availability Zones, ensuring high reliability and low-latency connectivity for local users. Leveraging Huawei’s 30-plus years of expertise in ICT infrastructure, it integrates cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud-Native 2.0, and Big Data technologies to empower over 40 government agencies and thousands of enterprises across the Kingdom. By building a robust digital ecosystem and fostering local talent, Huawei Cloud aims to drive Thailand’s “Digital Economy” forward, bringing cloud and intelligence to every corner of the country for a fully connected, intelligent future.

For more information, please visit Huawei Cloud Thailand online at

https://www.huaweicloud.com/intl/th-th/ or follow us on:

https://www.facebook.com/HuaweiCloudTH

https://www.youtube.com/@HuaweiCloudAPAC

 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/huawei-cloud-launches-agentic-infrastructure-and-codearts-agent-obt-in-thailand-accelerating-enterprise-ai-innovation-302833957.html

SOURCE Huawei Cloud Thailand

Continue Reading

Technology

Huawei Cloud Launches Agentic Infrastructure and CodeArts Agent OBT in Thailand, Accelerating Enterprise AI Innovation

Published

on

By

BANGKOK, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Huawei Cloud hosted Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026, bringing together leaders from government, business, industry partners, and the technology community to exchange views on how cloud and AI can support Thailand’s digital economy. During the event, Huawei Cloud announced “Huawei Cloud Agentic Infrastructure: Now Available for Thailand” and officially launched Huawei Cloud CodeArts Agent Open Beta Testing (OBT) in the country.

Mr. Sunny Shang, President of Huawei Cloud APAC, outlined the company’s commitment to working with customers and partners to build an AI-driven digital future for Thailand. Regarding the government’s direction, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society emphasized the acceleration of digital transformation through national AI policies, public-sector adoption, and stronger public-private collaboration.

The public-sector highlighted how AI can improve government operations and make public services faster and more convenient. NECTEC also presented a Government AI case study covering the development of AI infrastructure and platforms, as well as AI chatbots and intelligent assistants designed to support government officials and improve services for citizens.

Building the Foundation for the Agentic AI Era

Mr. Surasak Wanichwatphibun, CTO of Huawei Cloud Thailand said Huawei Cloud will continue to strengthen its technological capabilities and build a robust computing infrastructure to drive AI innovation across enterprises.

At the center of the announcement is Agentic Infra, a new infrastructure designed specifically for developing and deploying AI agents. It supports efficient token generation, unified scheduling of general-purpose and AI computing resources, continuous learning, and secure and autonomous agent operations.

Mr. Surasak introduced four new features under Agentic Infra:

UnifiedBus-based AI Cluster Service (AICS), which supports highly efficient token generationAgentic Memory Storage Service (AMS), which delivers PB-scale memory storage to address a key bottleneck in agent memory, enabling long-horizon tasks and facilitating continuous learning.AgentSphere, which offers a secure and autonomous runtime environment for AI agentsCCE VolcanoNext, which enables unified scheduling of general-purpose and AI computing resources

CodeArts Agent OBT Launches in Thailand

Another major highlight was the launch of Huawei Cloud CodeArts Agent OBT in Thailand, giving local developers and enterprises an opportunity to experience Huawei Cloud’s coding agent and provide feedback before its wider release.

CodeArts Agent combines IDE functionality, autonomous development capabilities, and coding models. It supports project-level code generation, code completion, R&D knowledge Q&A, and unit test case generation.

The platform also applies Specification-Driven Development (SDD) to help development teams maintain code quality from the requirements stage through to final delivery.

It is worth mentioning that this release also introduces the Agent Team mode, which can automatically form a development team, enabling multiple agents to collaborate concurrently and execute tasks simultaneously.

By reducing repetitive tasks, CodeArts Agent can help developers work more efficiently and allow organizations to bring digital products and services to market faster.

The OBT launch forms part of Huawei Cloud’s efforts to support Thailand’s developer community and make AI-assisted software development more accessible to organizations of different sizes.

Strengthening Security for Enterprise AI

Mr. Surasak also emphasized security, stability, and quality as key priorities for enterprise AI adoption. As cyberattacks become increasingly automated and AI-driven, Huawei Cloud has upgraded its security services in two areas: protecting AI systems and using AI to strengthen cyber defense.

Its model lifecycle security solution covers AI infrastructure, training data, model inference, and agent applications.

For enterprises concerned about data sovereignty and privacy, Huawei Cloud provides dedicated security zones that allow customers to independently manage their encryption keys while preventing platform administrators from accessing customer data. Software-hardware integration and hardware acceleration are also used to maintain encryption performance without compromising service efficiency. Huawei Cloud has also introduced Data Capsule technology, which ensures that data can only be used within authorized environments and automatically becomes invalid if moved outside a designated security zone.

Showcasing AI Use Cases Across Industries

Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026 also featured AI and cloud use cases from organizations in Thailand. These included the development of AI platforms and intelligent assistants for the public sector, the use of AI coding and large language models in banking, and AI-powered learning and skills development platforms for the HR sector.

Huawei Cloud and its partners also shared how ecosystem collaboration can help solve industry challenges and accelerate AI adoption among enterprises.

About Huawei Cloud Thailand

Huawei Cloud Thailand is a leading cloud service provider committed to accelerating Thailand’s digital transformation under the mission of “In Thailand, For Thailand.” According to the latest report from Gartner, Huawei Cloud is ranked No.3 by revenue in Thailand’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market, solidifying its position as one of the most trusted and fastest-growing international cloud providers in the country.

As the first international public cloud vendor to establish local data centers in Thailand, Huawei Cloud now operates three Availability Zones, ensuring high reliability and low-latency connectivity for local users. Leveraging Huawei’s 30-plus years of expertise in ICT infrastructure, it integrates cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud-Native 2.0, and Big Data technologies to empower over 40 government agencies and thousands of enterprises across the Kingdom. By building a robust digital ecosystem and fostering local talent, Huawei Cloud aims to drive Thailand’s “Digital Economy” forward, bringing cloud and intelligence to every corner of the country for a fully connected, intelligent future.

For more information, please visit Huawei Cloud Thailand online at

https://www.huaweicloud.com/intl/th-th/ or follow us on:

https://www.facebook.com/HuaweiCloudTH

https://www.youtube.com/@HuaweiCloudAPAC

 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/huawei-cloud-launches-agentic-infrastructure-and-codearts-agent-obt-in-thailand-accelerating-enterprise-ai-innovation-302833957.html

SOURCE Huawei Cloud Thailand

Continue Reading

Technology

Loomis Interim Report January – June 2026

Published

on

By

STOCKHOLM, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ —

Continued strong growth and record operating margin (EBITA %)

President and CEO Aritz Larrea comments:

“We delivered another very strong quarter reflecting the continued execution of our strategy and the strength of our diversified model. Revenue reached SEK 7.9 billion with a currency-adjusted growth of 9.1 percent. Both segment USA and segment Europe and Latin America contributed to the performance driven by continued strength in our International and Automated Solutions business lines. Operating income (EBITA) exceeded 1 billion SEK and we increased our EBITA margin by more than 1 percentage point year–over–year to 14.0 percent.

Our financial position remains strong. Supported by robust cash flow generation and a solid balance sheet, we continue to invest in long-term growth opportunities, pursue value-creating acquisitions, and maintain our commitment to delivering attractive returns to shareholders.”

Quarter 2, April – June 2026

Revenue for the quarter was SEK 7,891 million (7,407). The currency-adjusted growth was 9.1 percent (4.8), of which organic growth was 6.7 percent (3.8) and acquisitions contributed 2.5 percent (1.0). Including the exchange rate effect, the total growth was 6.5 percent (-3.0).Operating income (EBITA) 1) for the quarter was SEK 1,102 million (944) and the operating margin (EBITA) increased to 14.0 percent (12.7).Operating income (EBIT) before items affecting comparability for the quarter was SEK 1,062 million (882) and operating margin (EBIT) before items affecting comparability was 13.5 percent (11.9).Income before taxes for the quarter was SEK 869 million (664) and profit for the period was SEK 608 million (478).Basic earnings per share for the quarter were SEK 9.09 (7.01) and diluted earnings per share were SEK 9.06 (6.99).Cash flow from operating activities 2) was SEK 683 million (550) in the quarter. The cash flow from operating activities for the rolling twelve months was 95 percent (105) of operating income (EBITA).Net debt in relation to EBITDA was 1.60 times (1.75) in the quarter.Loomis expanded its presence in Latin America through the acquisition of Transportadora del Interior in Argentina and the announced acquisition of Hermes Transportes Blindados in Peru.

1)  Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Amortization of acquisition-related intangible fixed assets, Acquisition-related costs and revenue and items affecting comparability.
2)  Cash flow from operating activities is exclusive of impact from IFRS 16.

Report presentation today at 10.30 a.m. (CEST)

The report will be presented in a webcast conference today at 10.30 am (CEST) by President and CEO Aritz Larrea and CFO Johan Wilsby.

To follow the webcast, please follow this link.

The presentation materials and a recorded version of the conference will be available on https://www.loomis.com/en/investors/reports-and-presentations/ following the presentation.

For more information, please contact:

Jenny Boström
Head of Sustainability and IR
ir@loomis.com
+46 79 006 45 92

Fredrik Hammarbäck
Media and External Communications Manager
media@loomis.com
+46 76 311 56 29

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/loomis-ab/r/loomis-interim-report-january—june-2026,c4377246

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/51/4377246/4201809.pdf

Loomis Interim Report January – June 2026

https://mb.cision.com/Public/51/4377246/940bbe0a24c483c8.pdf

Loomis Interim Report January – June 2026 – press release

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/loomis-interim-report-january–june-2026-302833961.html

SOURCE Loomis AB

Continue Reading

Trending