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Raise Secures $63 Million to Transform the Payments and Loyalty Industry with Blockchain-Powered Gift Cards

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Strategic Funding Round Was Led by Haun Ventures as the Company Seeks to Revolutionize Consumer Engagement and Drive Innovation in the Multi-Trillion Dollar Gift Card Industry

MIAMI, Feb. 26, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Raise, a leader in the global gift market and pioneer in blockchain-powered payments and loyalty, today announced the successful close of a $63 million funding round. Led by Haun Ventures, the round included participation from Amber Group, Anagram, Blackpine, Borderless Capital, GSR, Karatage, Paper Ventures, Pharsalus Capital, Selini Capital, Sonic Boom Ventures, the Web3 Foundation, and notable angels Tekin Salimi, Raj Gokal, Teddy Gorisse among others. This latest round brings Raise’s total funding to over $220 million, building on prior investments from Accel, Paypal, and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). 

“Raise has redefined how consumers interact with and value gift cards – it’s about loyalty and share of wallet, not just gift-giving,” said George Bousis, Founder and CEO of Raise. “For over a decade, we’ve invested tens of millions of dollars in bringing gift cards and loyalty programs on-chain. Now, we’re making a nin-figure commitment over the next several years to fully realize this vision. Having been involved in blockchain and crypto since its early days, we waited for the right regulatory framework and the technological maturity to support a fully reconfigured, on-chain gift card industry. That time is now – the barriers that once existed are no longer obstacles.”

Raise will use the funding to further develop its proprietary blockchain-backed gift card program, Smart Cards, and expand the Retail Alliance Foundation, its non-profit coalition dedicated to uniting global retailers and brands to create a more secure, interoperable, and fraud-resistant gift card network. Raise has seeded the Alliance and the Raise blockchain network with its intellectual property in partnership with BFG Labs, a wholly owned subsidiary of Raise Holdings Ltd. Raise’s mission is to redefine gift cards as a secure, fully programable retail currency that strengthen trust and fosters deeper engagement between brands and their customers.

Diogo Monica, General Partner at Haun Ventures, commented, “Raise is seizing a massive, outdated market with the right mix of experience, infrastructure, and blockchain expertise. With deep industry ties and a real plan for adoption, this isn’t just a bet on the future of gift cards—it’s an investment in a proven team solving a trillion-dollar problem.”

Raise’s blockchain initiatives kicked off earlier this year with the upcoming integration of DOT Wallet through a partnership with the Polkadot Community Foundation, enabling seamless transactions within their application. Additionally, Raise partnered with WalletConnect to integrate the Raise app with leading digital wallets like Coinbase, MetaMask, Phantom, Trust, and other prominent ecosystems, which will be announced soon. Raise is rapidly expanding its B2B partnerships, engaging with major financial institutions and loyalty programs, including  Citi Bank and BILT Rewards.

In conjunction with the funding round, Raise has also announced the appointment of a new Board of Directors featuring former CLO at Kraken and former President of Blockchain.com, Marco Santori, former co-founder and CEO of Honey, George Ruan, former founder and CEO of GrubHub, Matt Maloney, and Bjorn Wagner, CEO of Parity Technologies. With their expertise and support, Raise is well-positioned to execute its mission to redefine the future of gift cards and drive innovation in consumer loyalty.

With global sales projected to exceed $2.3 trillion by 2030, gift cards have evolved beyond simple transactional tools to become an integral component of the modern retail ecosystem. Since its founding, Raise has facilitated over $5 billion in transactions for its nearly 7 million users and 1,000+ retail partnerships, consistently driving innovation in the industry. The introduction of blockchain-powered gift cards marks the culmination of over a decade of work to reshape how consumers value, use and trust gift cards. 

For more information, please visit: https://www.raise.com/

About Raise
Raise, a renowned pioneer in the gift card industry, has been at the forefront of innovation since its inception in 2013. The company has facilitated over $5 billion in transactions through its Raise consumer app, exchange (GCX), and B2B (Raise for Business) operations. With over 1,000+ brand partnerships, Raise offers activation and real-time redemption capabilities across a network of over one million stores, websites, and applications. For more information, please visit https://www.raise.com/.

About the Retail Alliance Foundation
The Retail Alliance Foundation is a non-profit coalition committed to revolutionizing the global loyalty economy. The Retail Alliance Foundation strives to create a secure, innovative, and inclusive gift card ecosystem by promoting transparency, advancing technology, and uniting industry stakeholders. Guided by industry leaders, we provide critical funding and resources to initiatives that empower stakeholders and ensure the long-term sustainability of the global gift card industry. Through collaboration and community-driven governance, we’re setting new standards for loyalty while promoting happiness and trust.

For media inquiries, please contact:

raisepr@mgroupsc.com

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SOURCE Raise

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Sungrow Opens Australia’s New Solar & Battery Experience Hub, Bringing the Future of Clean Energy Closer to Home

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SUNSHINE COAST, Australia, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Sungrow, the globally leading PV inverter and energy storage system provider, officially opened its brand new Solar & Battery Experience Hub, marking a significant milestone in the company’s long-term investment in the Australian renewable energy market.

Located on the Sunshine Coast, one of Australia’s most sustainability-focused regions, the Hub is Sungrow’s first solar and battery experience centre in the country. Visitors can explore advanced renewable technologies, see real-time demonstrations, and receive tailored home and commercial energy advice. Serving as an essential bridge to the region, the Hub is dedicated to establishing broad and deep connections with the local community. By partnering with residents, businesses, and non-profit organizations to deliver technical training, sustainability education, and diverse community events, it will work hand in hand to drive the sustainable prosperity of the local community. Meanwhile, powered entirely by Sungrow’s inverter and battery system, the centre serves as a working example of how commercial buildings can operate efficiently and sustainably.

The opening ceremony was attended by Sunshine Coast Mayor Rosanna Natoli, Queensland Government representative Kendall Hatcher MP, local community organisation leaders, prominent figures from the Australian renewable energy industry, and Sungrow Australia executives, highlighting a shared commitment to accelerating the clean energy transition through strong local collaboration.

In the opening addresses, the Mayor affirmed the vital role of the Experience Hub in helping the Sunshine Coast region embrace technological innovation for sustainability. The State Government representative also highly praised the Hub’s outstanding sense of community spirit and the significant, positive impact it brings to local development.

Bringing Renewable Energy to Life 

With more than 600,000 residential and commercial installations across Australia and over 14 years of local market presence, Sungrow has become one of the country’s most trusted and bankable solar brands.

The centre features three immersive experience zones:

Sungrow Journey – showcasing its global innovation, local milestones and long-term commitment to Australia.

Live Experience Area – interacting with Sungrow’s latest residential solar, battery storage and EV charging solutions through live product demonstrations and real-time system management.

Smart Hub Experience – presenting the next generation intelligent home energy management, including battery optimisation, energy monitoring and future-ready smart energy technologies that help households maximise energy independence.

Built with the Community, for the Community

Meanwhile, Sungrow also donated two sets of energy storage systems to local charities, reinforcing its commitment to supporting the Sunshine Coast community.

The Hub will collaborate closely with local elite installers, ensuring visitors receive professional guidance, trusted installation support, and personalised energy solutions. Furthermore, the Hub will continuously host renewable energy event series and specialised workshops tailored for homeowners, first-time homebuyers, commercial developers, corporate partners, educational institutions (including schools, TAFEs, and universities), as well as government and community representatives.

“Sungrow Australia has been a trusted part of everyday life for families, installers, and industry partners across the country. Today, we take an important step forward. More than a physical space, it is a place where people can experience clean energy firsthand, learn from industry experts, and gain the confidence to make smarter energy decisions,” said Neil Yang, Channel Sales Manager at Sungrow Australia. “Following 14 years of continuous support from the local community, we made the significant decision to establish this experience hub on the Sunshine Coast. Our long-term vision is to replicate this model across major towns and cities in Australia, creating more opportunities for renewable energy education, community engagement, local employment, and sustainable infrastructure.”

A New Era of Home Energy Future

The Sungrow Solar & Battery Experience Hub represents a new way for Australians to engage with renewable energy. As Australia continues its transition towards a low-carbon future, Sungrow remains committed to investing in local innovation, strengthening industry partnerships and creating meaningful connections with communities. By bringing clean energy closer to people, the Experience Hub transforms renewable technology from something customers simply purchase into something they can experience, understand and trust.

To learn more about the Sungrow Solar & Battery Experience Hub, visit: www.sungrowpower.com/au/en/aus-sungrow-solar-battery-experience-hub

To book an appointment, please call 0472 787 829 or email hello@sungrowpower.com.au.

Luly Wang
luly.wang@sungrow-hq.com

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SOURCE Sungrow Power

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Tencent Cloud Unveils a Major Upgrade to Its Agent Development Platform, Launching an Enterprise-Grade AgentOps Platform to Bring AI Agents into Production at Scale

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SHANGHAI, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of global technology company Tencent, today announced a major enhancement to its Agent Development Platform (ADP) International Edition, evolving it into a comprehensive, enterprise-grade AgentOps platform designed to help enterprises move AI agents from experimentation into production at scale. The enhancement was unveiled at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai and is now available to customers worldwide.

Delivered in ADP’s 4.0 international release, the update introduces two headline capabilities — the Smart Desk and Claw Mode, powered by the Agentic Loop. Together with Connector, Skills, Knowledge Base, MCP and Agent Portal, ADP 4.0 now connects the entire enterprise agent lifecycle — from building and connecting, to distribution and governance — giving enterprises a single foundation to develop, deploy and manage AI agents reliably and at scale.

Today, enterprises seeking to rebuild their operations with AI Agents often face three critical challenges:

Individual pilots are easy to initiate but difficult to scale;Powerful models are challenging to integrate with existing legacy systems;Deployed Agents present difficulties in security governance and cost control.

Tencent Cloud ADP 4.0 addresses these challenges systematically by unlocking long-horizon, self-coding capabilities for complex tasks through Claw Mode, connecting enterprise systems and capability assets through nearly 40 Connectors and over 150 Skills, while moving security governance upstream to the very source of development. This enables enterprises to rapidly develop Agents while keeping them running in real business environments in a stable, secure, and controllable way.

To date, Tencent Cloud ADP has been deployed across retail, finance, government, manufacturing, and other industries, where teams have used AI Agents to support on tasks such as intelligent Q&A, customer service, marketing content generation and business analysis.

How Smart Desk Serves as a Unified Agent Entry Point

The newly launched Smart Desk serves as the unified, user-facing entry point of Tencent Cloud ADP 4.0, addressing two needs at once: enterprises can build Agents at scale, while employees can complete everyday tasks with a single sentence. Within the same workspace, users can build scalable Agents for their organization using natural language, or handle personal tasks just as they would with an everyday office assistant. Agent capabilities can also be integrated into existing enterprise systems—office software, ERP, CRM, customer service, and more—so that Agents “grow” on top of existing workflows without tearing anything down.

Smart Desk dramatically cuts the cost of building. Setting up a knowledge-based intelligent Q&A assistant once required manually configuring more than a dozen parameters. Now a single sentence can complete the entire configuration automatically, enabling it to go live within minutes. For more complex workflows such as multi-intent customer service, users simply describe the logic, and the system automatically generates a complete flow—intent routing, knowledge-base Q&A, human handoff, and more—packaged and ready to import. When a single Agent isn’t enough, users can orchestrate a collaborative team of Agents with a single command, with the system automatically assigning responsibilities, prompts, and task handoffs. The Smart Desk also integrates with the Skills Marketplace, packaging mature capabilities—such as contract review, financial analysis, and invoice entry—into reusable enterprise-grade Skills that can be shared and continuously refined across the organization. In doing so, Smart Desk brings “usable by everyone” and “enterprise-grade control” together in a single entry point.

How Upgraded Claw Mode Resolves Complex, Long-Horizon Tasks

For complex tasks that lack fixed rules, span long chains, and resist form-based configuration, Tencent Cloud Agent Development Platform (ADP) 4.0 adds a fourth building mode—Claw Mode. It can create Agents that autonomously write and run code in a cloud sandbox, call enterprise Skills, and execute long-running tasks. Once created, these Agents can be integrated into business systems via API/Web interfaces and reach employees and customers through channels such as LINE and Telegram. Creators do not need to fill out any forms; they simply describe their needs in natural language, and the platform automatically generates prompts, mounts knowledge bases, configures tools, and orchestrates workflows.

ADP 4.0 also supports two-way invocation between Agents and Workflows: Workflows handle steps with clear-cut rules, balancing stability with predictable token consumption. When unstructured judgment or open-ended tasks arise, they invoke a Claw Mode Agent to fully leverage the model’s capabilities. This gives enterprises the flexibility to integrate deterministic processes with intelligent decision-making.

Connecting Enterprise Systems, Knowledge, and Tools to Embed Agents into Workflows

To address the pain point of “powerful models that cannot reach enterprise production systems,” ADP 4.0 uses Connector, Skills, plugins, Knowledge Base, and MCP to turn an enterprise’s scattered business resources into callable and reusable AI assets.

The Connector framework offers nearly 40 curated Connectors in the first batch, supporting integration with high-frequency systems such as CRM, ERP, ticketing, customer service, knowledge bases, and document systems, and covering mainstream international SaaS applications like Google Workspace, Confluence, and Jira. Agents can directly read, retrieve, and perform operations such as querying, analysis, generation, and routing.

The upgraded Skills Marketplace now supports 150+ Skills. Business teams can package custom Skills into shared enterprise plugins that enter the enterprise zone for use only after passing security checks and approval.

More than 50 scenario-based templates and industry-curated applications shorten the path from zero to one. The upgraded Model Marketplace enables enterprises to select leading international models alongside their own self-hosted models, with native compatibility for the OpenAI standard protocol.

In addition, ADP 4.0 supports multiple entry points—platform, browser, Office, Chat channels, and API/SDK—embedding Agents into employees’ daily work scenarios.

End-to-End Governance from Development to Launch: Clearing the “Security Gate” Before Production

To tackle the challenge of “Agents that run but whose security and cost cannot be controlled,” ADP 4.0 moves governance upstream to the source of development, building a security control system that spans the full Agent lifecycle around permission management, Skills governance, runtime observability, and deployment compliance.

For permission management, ADP 4.0 supports a layered architecture at the enterprise, workspace, and application levels, combined with a Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) role-permission matrix to achieve dual-dimension isolation of functional and data permissions. For Skills governance, custom Skills must pass security checks—static code scanning, data-access review, outbound-network review, dependency allowlisting—and multi-level approval before entering the enterprise zone to become shareable and schedulable enterprise assets. For observability and governance, enterprises can use Agent Portal to centrally manage Agents across platforms and scenarios, and use business and resource dashboards to monitor key metrics such as call volume, response quality, operating cost, and errors in real time, enabling rapid issue identification and optimization.

Wu Yunsheng, Vice President of Tencent Cloud and Head of the Tencent Cloud Agent Development Platform, emphasized that enterprise-grade Agents are not merely about who can build them the fastest, but rather about who can keep Agents operating on the front lines of business in a stable, secure, and sustainable manner. ADP aims to provide enterprises with a production-ready AgentOps foundation—one that enables them to build Agents quickly, connect these Agents to systems and distribute them to the front lines, and operate them continuously under a framework of permissions, security, evaluation, and observability, truly unlocking productivity value.

Learn more about Tencent Cloud ADP: Build AI Agents with RAG+LLM, Workflow & Multi-Agent Capabilities

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About Tencent Cloud:

Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and cybersecurity. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, real estate, retail, travel, and transportation.

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SOURCE Tencent Cloud

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Coda Launches Playbook on Turning Linkouts into a Growth Channel

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SINGAPORE, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Coda, a global leader in digital monetization and distribution, launched Beyond the App Store: A Publisher’s Guide to Direct Linkouts and Out-of-App Monetization, a new white paper showing mobile game publishers how to turn linkouts into a scalable revenue channel.

For years, anti-steering restrictions limited publishers’ ability to direct players from inside their games to external purchasing options. Legal and regulatory changes in the United States and Japan have opened that channel, giving publishers more control over where transactions happen, what value players receive and how recovered margin is reinvested.

The opportunity is significant. Publishers can use the improved economics of out-of-app payments to offer better prices, bonus currency, exclusive items or loyalty rewards, while investing more in content, acquisition and retention.

However, designing the journey from the app to the web requires precision. The right audience, offer and checkout experience determine whether a linkout converts and creates incremental value.

Drawing on Coda’s experience supporting more than 300 publishers, including gaming giants like Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts, the white paper sets out a practical framework built around these core questions:

Who should see the linkout?When should they see the linkout?What should they be offered?How should the choice be presented?

“Publishers can now take greater control of the purchase journey and decide how recovered margin is put back to work,” said Zac Liew, Chief Commercial Officer at Coda.

“The real opportunity is not simply moving a payment outside the app. It is using linkouts to create better player value, improve conversion and grow the economics of a game.”

The paper recommends starting with engaged players, repeat buyers and higher-value spenders, while ensuring every linkout offer provides a clear advantage over its in-app equivalent.

It also highlights the infrastructure required behind the link, including payment routing, local payment methods, tax, fraud, compliance and reconciliation.

Coda Links gives publishers the infrastructure to put that strategy into action. It intelligently routes players from the app to the most relevant payment experience, while Coda manages the payments, tax, fraud and compliance required to operate at scale.

Linkouts are already delivering significant results:

In one Coda Links deployment for a major US publisher, intelligent routing increased webstore revenue by 17% and first-time purchase rates by 78%.In another Coda Links deployment, providing players with direct webstore access increased transactions by 25%.

For publishers, the priority now is to apply the right strategy at scale and capture more value from every player transaction.

Beyond the App Store: A Publisher’s Guide to Direct Linkouts and Out-of-App Monetization is available at: https://www.coda.co/resources/out-of-app-monetization-guide/

Learn more about Coda at: coda.co

About Coda

Coda is a global leader in monetization, distribution, and commerce, trusted by the biggest names in gaming, entertainment, and technology, including Activision, Electronic Arts, Riot Games, Ubisoft, and Moonton. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Singapore, Coda operates with 600+ employees worldwide, with core hubs in Asia and Europe. Coda combines payments, commerce, distribution, and rewards to drive global revenue growth for brands and publishers.

Coda’s products include Codapay, which provides access to 400+ payment methods across 80+ markets through a single API integration; Coda Webstore, which powers fully customised direct-to-consumer storefronts; Coda Consumer Platforms including Codashop, Recharge.com, and Startselect.comCoda Distribution, which extends reach through a network of commerce partners; and Giftcloud, a UK-based rewards business serving enterprise customers across Europe.

Coda is backed by Apis Partners, Insight Partners, Smash Capital and GIC, and has been named an APAC High Growth Company (2023) by Financial Times, one of Granite Asia’s NextGenTech 30 (2024), a payments leader on Fortune’s Fintech Innovation Asia list (2024), and listed among The Straits Times Fastest Growing Fintechs (2024). For more on Coda, visit coda.co.

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