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Pencil Finance announces US$10 million for student loan financing backed by Animoca Brands and Open Campus

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SINGAPORE, April 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Pencil Finance, the student loan real-world-asset (RWA) protocol on EDU Chain that is co-incubated by Animoca Brands and HackQuest, today announced that Open Campus and Animoca Brands have deployed US$10 million in liquidity as loan collateral to facilitate DeFi student loans on the Pencil Finance platform.

Pencil Finance is a decentralized lending protocol designed to bring student loan financing on-chain, transforming how student debt is serviced. It connects global investors with trusted student loan originators through tokenized loan bundles.

EDU Chain is a Layer 3 blockchain on Arbitrum Orbit that is designed for consumer-facing education apps and on-chain education finance (EduFi). EDU Chain is powered by the EDU token (EDU) which is listed on Binance, KuCoin, Gate.io, Bithumb, MEXC, Bitmart, and various other exchanges.

Open Campus, which is the foundation behind EDU Chain, and Animoca Brands have contributed US$10 million as liquidity to Pencil Finance to be used as loan collateral. The goal is to expand access to education financing through blockchain technology.

Recent policy changes in the U.S. could put millions of borrowers at risk of defaulting on their student loans, highlighting the urgent need for accessible, transparent, and efficient financing solutions for the student loan market, which is estimated to be worth around US$3 trillion globally (Market Research Future, April 2025).

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said: “Blockchain is redefining how education is funded and developed. By bringing student loans on-chain, this initiative seeks to boost transparency, efficiency, and Web3 adoption for potentially hundreds of millions of students globally, while also increasing financial literacy. We believe this will have very significant implications for the US$3 trillion student loan market.”

Frank Li, co-founder of Pencil Finance, said: “Blockchain technology allows us to reimagine student lending from the ground up. By bringing loans on-chain, we deliver transparency, efficiency, and access at a global scale, helping students everywhere unlock new educational opportunities.”

Harry Zhang, co-founder and CMO of HackQuest, said: ‘This milestone demonstrates the real-world impact of blockchain in education. On-chain loans empower students and open new opportunities for investors.”

Through Pencil Finance’s student loan RWA protocol, whitelisted users can provide liquidity to loan pools. Whitelisted users can choose to deploy capital to a Senior Tranche or a Junior Tranche for higher returns with first-loss risk. Pencil Finance enables loans to be deployed, and repayments to be managed, transparently on-chain.

Pencil Finance issued its first loan this week; the recipient is HackQuest, which will use the loan proceeds to incentivize student developers learning about EDU Chain on the HackQuest platform.

About Open Campus

Open Campus is a community-led DAO that is building an on-chain education network to empower both educators and students. Core contributors to the Open Campus DAO include Animoca Brands, TinyTap, NewCampus, RiseIn, and HackQuest. Together, they are working with Open Campus to enhance the education system for teachers, learners, and institutions by using innovative blockchain protocols and funding initiatives. Open Campus has launched EDU Chain, a Layer 3 blockchain on Arbitrum Orbit designed for consumer-facing education apps and on-chain education finance (EduFi), powered by the EDU token.

About Animoca Brands

Animoca Brands Corporation Limited (ACN: 122 921 813) is a Web3 leader that leverages tokenization and blockchain to deliver digital property rights to consumers, helping to establish the open metaverse and its associated network effects. It has received broad industry and market recognition including Fortune Crypto 40, Top 50 Blockchain Game Companies 2025, Financial Times’ High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific, and Deloitte Tech Fast.

Animoca Brands realizes its mission via three integrated business pillars: operating Web3 businesses to advance blockchain adoption with native projects such as Moca Network, Anichess, The Sandbox, Open Campus, NEOM Web3 initiatives, and a regulated stablecoin project in partnership with Standard Chartered and HKT; providing digital asset advisory services including tokenomics advisory, liquidity provisioning, and institutional research to help external Web3 projects grow; and investment management, with a portfolio of investments in over 540 companies including industry leaders Pudgy Penguins, Yuga Labs, Axie Infinity, Polygon, Consensys, Magic Eden, OpenSea, Dapper Labs, YGG, and many others.

For more information visit www.animocabrands.com or follow on X, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok.

About HackQuest

HackQuest is the gateway to the Web3 development world, providing a comprehensive, one-stop educational infrastructure that minimizes friction and helps onboard developers and non developers to the world of Web3. HackQuest believes that improving Web3 developer education is key to driving mass adoption.

About Pencil Finance

Pencil Finance is a decentralized lending protocol focused on bringing real-world student loan financing on-chain. It connects investors with verified student loan originators, turning student debt into a transparent, investable asset class. Pencil uses blockchain infrastructure, a dual-tranche capital structure, and smart contracts to deliver structured, risk-adjusted returns backed by real-world student loan portfolios, enabling sustainable yield generation with tangible social impact.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2675873/Animoca_Brands_Pencil_Finance.jpg

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SOURCE Animoca Brands

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Bloomberg Introduces Spread-to-Benchmark Quoting for EUR and GBP Portfolio Trading Baskets

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LONDON, June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Bloomberg today announced the launch of Spread-to-Benchmark quoting and trading for Euro (EUR) and Sterling (GBP) denominated portfolio trades through its Portfolio Trading Basket Builder (PTBB). The new functionality expands the range of quoting protocols available for European credit portfolio trading and reflects growing client demand for spread-based execution workflows, alongside increased dealer support for the convention across EUR and GBP markets.

Spread-to-Benchmark quoting is a well-established protocol for USD credit portfolio trades and is used by market participants to evaluate and execute portfolio trades. By extending this workflow to EUR and GBP portfolio trades, Bloomberg enables clients and dealers to transact using a familiar spread-based methodology across additional credit markets. 

The introduction of Spread-to-Benchmark quoting for EUR and GBP baskets reflects increased client interest in evaluating portfolio trades through a spread-based lens and the growing adoption of spread-based execution workflows in European credit markets. The workflow provides market participants with an additional framework for assessing the relationship between credit spread risk and underlying government bond yields when pricing and executing portfolio trades. 

Additional Workflow Flexibility 
The workflow complements Bloomberg’s existing portfolio trading capabilities, which support the full range of market-standard quoting conventions, including Price, Yield, Spread-to-Benchmark and Spread based workflows that reference Bloomberg’s evaluated pricing service (BVAL). This gives clients flexibility to compare and execute portfolio trades using the quoting methodology that best aligns with their investment objectives, execution preferences and internal risk management processes. 

“European credit clients continue to look for execution workflows that reflect how they evaluate risk and monitor portfolio trading outcomes,” said Harry Street, Global Head of Credit and Equities Trading Product at Bloomberg. “By expanding dealer support for Spread-to-Benchmark quoting for EUR and GBP baskets, Bloomberg is broadening the range of workflow options available to clients trading European credit portfolios.” 

“Portfolio trading workflows in fixed income continue to become more sophisticated as institutional investors look for ways to evaluate execution quality in changing market conditions,” said Kevin McPartland, Head of Market Structure & Technology Research at Crisil Coalition Greenwich. “Spread-based quoting helps market participants more clearly distinguish between the impacts of credit spread and underlying rates movements when determining how best to execute a portfolio trade.” 

Bloomberg’s Electronic Markets solutions are used by leading financial institutions to trade efficiently in over 175 markets around the world. More than 9,000 client firms use Bloomberg Electronic Markets to access industry-leading depth and breadth of liquidity across asset classes from over 800 dealers globally. Bloomberg Electronic Markets provides market participants with comprehensive solutions across the trading lifecycle, including robust price transparency, analytics, automation and execution, powered by Bloomberg’s high-quality, multi-asset class data and tools.

About Bloomberg
Bloomberg is a global leader in business and financial information, delivering trusted data, news, and insights that bring transparency, efficiency, and fairness to markets. The company helps connect influential communities across the global financial ecosystem via reliable technology solutions that enable our customers to make more informed decisions and foster better collaboration. For more information, visit Bloomberg.com/company or request a demo.

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SOURCE Bloomberg L.P.

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Dr. Sunho Kang, a senior battery-technology executive with leadership experience at major global battery and EV manufacturers, joins TeraWatt Technology as Head of Product and Technology

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SAN FRANCISCO, June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — TeraWatt Technology Inc. (Headquartered in California, USA) is pleased to announce that Dr. Sunho Kang has joined the company as Head of Product and Technology.

Dr. Kang is a globally recognized battery-technology executive with more than 25 years of leadership experience spanning the United States, Asia, and Europe, and a distinguished track record of advancing innovations from laboratory research through gigafactory-scale production. He has held senior executive positions at world-leading organizations including Samsung SDI, Apple, and Volkswagen Group of America, and brings deep expertise in lithium-ion battery materials, cell engineering, and product industrialization across a broad range of applications, including electric vehicles and energy storage systems.

At TeraWatt, Dr. Kang will lead global product development and the commercialization of TeraWatt’s battery technology platform, aiming to accelerate the delivery of TeraWatt’s competitive products as well as the technology and commercialization roadmap including manufacturing scale-up.

Dr. Kang commented:

“I am thrilled to join TeraWatt Technology as Head of Product and Technology. TeraWatt’s innovative battery platform presents a tremendous opportunity to push the boundaries of lithium-ion technology, and I look forward to working with the team to accelerate product development and commercialization to deliver meaningful impact.”

TeraWatt Technology founder CEO Ken Ogata, Ph.D. commented:

“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Kang as our Head of Product and Technology. His deep expertise in battery materials, cell engineering, and productization will be instrumental in accelerating TeraWatt’s product roadmap and technology leadership. Together with Dr. Kang, we will continue to drive our mission forward.”

About TeraWatt Technology Inc.
TeraWatt Technology Inc. is a California-based company that produces lightweight, high-power, and safe next-generation lithium-ion batteries.

Company Overview
Name: TeraWatt Technology Inc.
Representative: Co-founder and CEO Ken Ogata
Headquarters: 28 Geary St, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94108, United States
Founded: January 2020
Established: December 2019
URL: https://www.terawatt-technology.com/

 

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SOURCE TeraWatt Technology Inc.

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Tencent Cloud and Soniox Announce Strategic Partnership: Combining Advanced Speech-to-Text (STT) Technology with Global Real-Time Infrastructure

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HONG KONG, June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of global technology company Tencent, today announced a strategic partnership with Soniox, a San Francisco-based speech AI company that specializes in developing high-accuracy, low-latency speech AI solutions. The collaboration integrates Soniox’s speech-to-text (STT) technology with Tencent Cloud’s Real-Time Communication (TRTC) enterprise-grade global infrastructure, enabling enterprises to build and deploy multilingual voice AI applications across 200+ countries and regions.

Elevating Enterprise Voice AI at a Global Scale

In enterprise voice AI deployments, latency directly affects user experience and application reliability. The integration of Soniox’s high-accuracy, low-latency STT with TRTC’s global transmission infrastructure reduces latency across the entire pipeline, creating a comprehensive end-to-end solution for enterprises deploying conversational AI applications worldwide.    

Soniox is the voice platform for every language. Unlike legacy speech AI, which was built primarily for English-speakers, Soniox delivers native-speaker accuracy across 60+ languages. Its technology can handle mid-sentence language switching — a user can switch between English and Chinese in a single utterance, and Soniox will capture every word with complete accuracy. All of this works through a single API that works for both speech-to-text and text-to-speech.

By integrating TRTC, the partnership leverages an enterprise-grade real-time communication backbone featuring more than 3,200 global nodes, sub-300 ms worldwide latency, and advanced capabilities such as AI noise suppression and weak-network resilience. These capabilities enable conversational AI applications to operate reliably across diverse network environments, including regions such as Southeast Asia and Africa.

With the roll out of this partnership, developers can integrate the Soniox STT API directly within the Tencent Cloud console. Whether targeting English-speaking markets or supporting languages such as Arabic, Hindi, and Malay, enterprises can build global voice applications — including intelligent customer service, voice assistants, real-time translation, and meeting transcription — to address the demands of expansion into emerging markets and multilingual scenarios.

Wison Xie, Head of Product at Tencent RTC, stated: “Tencent RTC has always been committed to providing reliable real-time communication infrastructure for global enterprises. Our partnership with Soniox brings together our strengths in enterprise-grade audio transmission and Soniox’s advanced speech recognition technology. Together, we are making it easier for businesses to deploy accurate, low-latency voice AI applications across any language and any market.”

Klemen Simonic, CEO at Soniox Inc., stated “At Soniox, our mission is to help businesses understand every word, in any language, with native speaker accuracy and exceptional speed. Partnering with Tencent Cloud combines our speech AI with world-class real-time infrastructure, enabling enterprises to build voice AI experiences that scale globally with low latency and reliability.”

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 network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.

About Tencent RTC:

Tencent RTC provides real-time communication solutions, including audio/video calling, live streaming, and in-game voice. With enterprise-grade security, AI-powered enhancements, and a global network of over 3,200 nodes, Tencent RTC powers mission-critical communication for customers worldwide.

About Soniox:

Soniox is a next-generation voice AI company bringing about the end of English-first speech AI. Most people on the planet did not grow up speaking English and often mix languages mid-sentence; and yet legacy speech AI was built for just English. Soniox is different: native-speaker accuracy across 60+ languages, true mid-sentence language switching, and flawless alphanumeric recognition that legacy providers still can’t match. For developers building global apps, Soniox is the only option. Try it for yourself at soniox.com.

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SOURCE Tencent Cloud

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