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Aktiia secures $42 million in Series B funding round and rebrands to Hilo

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With fresh funding round, the health tech pioneer continues to work toward managing the world’s blood pressure.

LONDON, May 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Aktiia, a blood pressure intelligence platform, announces an oversubscribed $42 million (over CHF 34 million) Series B funding round, co-led by Earlybird Health and Wellington Partners, with new investors Kfund and naturalX Health Ventures, and participation from existing investors redalpine, Khosla Ventures, Molten Ventures, Translink Capital and Verve Ventures. The investment, which has brought the total financing to date above $100 million, will accelerate the company’s mission to manage the world’s blood pressure.

The latest investment builds on a period of significant momentum for the company during which it has achieved several major milestones, including securing CE marking for its innovative mobile phone camera blood pressure monitoring technology, securing regulatory approvals in Canada, Australia and Saudi Arabia, achieving 76% compounded annual revenue growth, and completing a pivotal clinical trial ahead of its U.S. FDA application submission. This Series B funding will fuel continued product innovation, expansion into new markets and the build out of its blood pressure intelligence platform to support enterprise use cases.

Alongside this funding, Aktiia is introducing its new brand identity: Hilo – a rebrand which reflects the company’s global ambition to make cuffless, clinically validated blood pressure monitoring universally accessible and effortless. The transition to Hilo marks an important milestone in the company’s journey, aligning with its vision of healthier blood pressure for all, while continuing to deliver the trusted technology and reports that have been central to its platform.

With more than 120,000 devices sold, Hilo has already established itself as a stand-out in the health tech space. The company has developed a foundation Machine Learning model specifically designed for blood pressure. The model has been trained on tens of billions of optical signals from real-world users and further refined with hundreds of millions of calibration points, strengthening its position as the leader in the emerging cuffless blood pressure monitoring (CBPM) category.

Raghav “Rags” Gupta, CEO of Hilo, commented: 

“This funding round is a testament to the confidence our investors have in Hilo’s groundbreaking technology and our mission to manage the world’s blood pressure via more frequent, convenient and accurate measurements. With billions worldwide suffering from hypertension, only 20% of whom are in control of their blood pressure, the need for innovative, accessible blood pressure monitoring solutions has never been greater. Our rebrand to Hilo represents more than just a name change, it’s a commitment to empowering users around the world with smarter tools to optimise their health. We are grateful to early Aktiia customers for their support and to our investors, new and existing, for their faith.” 

Christoph Massner, Principal at Earlybird Health, who will join Hilo’s Board of Directors, commented: 

Hilo stands at the intersection of medical-grade precision and consumer-centric accessibility. By building on a validated medical device platform and an intuitive, user-friendly design, they bridge the gap between clinical reliability and everyday usability. It’s a rare combination that empowers users to take meaningful control of their health with minimal effort. This is especially critical given the enormous medical need: uncontrolled high blood pressure remains one of the leading risk factors for death worldwide.”

Johannes Fischer, Managing Partner at Wellington Partners, commented: 

“We are excited to co-lead this financing and to be backing Hilo’s innovative technology, which provides groundbreaking advancements to the billions of people with elevated blood pressure today. We believe that real-time and continuous access to blood pressure information will change the way we think about the monitoring and management of one of the most common risk factors to human health.”

About Hilo

Aktiia, now trading under Hilo, was established in 2018 to transform how blood pressure is measured and therefore managed. By integrating advanced AI algorithms with extensive datasets, Hilo’s cuffless blood pressure monitoring (CBPM) products offer convenient, valuable reports to give both individuals and healthcare professionals a useful picture of their blood pressure. The company’s foundation model for blood pressure has been trained on billions of optical signals and hundreds of millions of readings across more than 120,000 users, underscoring its leadership in the CPBM category. The company’s multidisciplinary team, composed of experts with extensive experience in biomedical signal processing, has contributed to over 120 peer-reviewed publications and holds more than 35 patents. Headquartered in Switzerland, Hilo continues to expand its global presence, transforming how blood pressure is understood and managed.

The Hilo system by itself is not intended to make diagnoses. Data should always be used in consultation with your healthcare provider.

Website: www.hilo.com

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Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2678060/Hilo_Logo.jpg

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SOURCE Aktiia

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LYKSTAGE Launches Patented Video Platform That Pays Creators and Viewers — Now Live Across Five Countries

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MUMBAI, India, April 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LYKSTAGE, a video-sharing platform owned by LYK Inc., a Delaware-based entity, and founded by New York-based entrepreneur Adris Chakraborty, is redefining how the creator economy works — with a patented monetization model no other platform can legally replicate.

Built by a technology team in India under Manhattan Tech Ventures, LYKSTAGE runs on a patented Watch-Time Monetization Model that fundamentally changes who earns from video content. Creators earn whenever their content’s watch time gets monetized — no subscriber minimums, no waiting periods, and no thresholds to cross before earning begins.

What makes the model unprecedented is that viewers earn too. Logged-in viewers are rewarded whenever their watch time gets monetized — when they watch content uninterrupted and the ad served during viewing is fully consumed. When that happens, the creator earns, the viewer is rewarded, and the platform earns. Every reward is funded by actual ad revenue — not venture capital subsidies. The model is entirely self-sustaining.

The platform serves both skippable and non-skippable ads, determined by an ad server algorithm that optimizes based on viewing patterns and content traction. For advertisers, impressions are served intelligently — matching the right ad format to the right moment, delivering higher completion rates and genuine attention.

LYKSTAGE is now live across five markets — India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the UAE — and available on Samsung TV, LG TV, Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, desktop, mobile web, and native apps on both the App Store and Google Play Store.

Adris Chakraborty, a Kolkata-born Columbia Business School alumnus based in the US since 2003, co-founded Mediamorphosis Advertising & Technology Inc. in New York in 2006 with his spouse and business partner Poulami Mukherjee. The company expanded to the UK in 2012, followed by Manhattan Communications in India — building a multicultural advertising group spanning five countries with over 100 clients, providing LYKSTAGE with built-in advertiser relationships and market intelligence.

The platform has crossed over one million users across all markets, with more than 20,000 creators on board and growing across all five countries — achieved with minimal paid marketing.

LYKSTAGE is a transparent, patented system where the people who create the value are the ones who earn from it.

Sign up at:
Android – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lykstage.app
Apple – https://apps.apple.com/in/app/lykstage-video-streaming/id6754064834

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2960187/LYKSTAGE_Logo.jpg

 

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Towngas and Tencent forge strategic partnership to drive “Energy + Tech” smart digital transformation

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HONG KONG, April 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited (Towngas) and Tencent have signed a strategic partnership agreement in Hong Kong. The two companies will collaborate extensively on unified cloud resource management, digital platform development, large artificial intelligence (AI) models and applications, customer engagement enhancement, and R&D tool synergy. Together, they aim to drive the smart digital transformation of the energy sector.

The partnership dates back to 2020, when Towngas Lifestyle, the extended business division of Towngas, first teamed up with Tencent Cloud. In 2021, Towngas Energy, the Group’s renewable energy arm, worked with Tencent Cloud to build a smart energy ecosystem, which currently supports over a hundred integrated energy projects for the business segment. In 2023, Towngas Lifestyle and Tencent Cloud entered into a comprehensive strategic partnership spanning cloud platforms, big data, AI, and customer engagement, delivering one-stop lifestyle solutions to 46 million household customers across Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. This latest agreement marks a comprehensive, group-level strategic partnership between Towngas and Tencent. It is designed to pool their resources, achieve cross-divisional synergy, drive quality and efficiency gains, and accelerate AI innovation.

Over the past six years, this collaboration has yielded remarkable results. Powered by Tencent Cloud, Towngas Lifestyle has upgraded the digital foundation and driven application innovation for its Towngas Lifestyle Cloud (TLC) platform. Furthermore, leveraging Tencent Cloud’s TBDS (Tencent Big Data Suite), it built the Towngas Analytics Platform (TAP), which currently supports big data applications for over 70 affiliated city-gas companies as well as its Hong Kong operations.

In terms of AI applications, Towngas Lifestyle has capitalised on Tencent’s AI computing power and large model technology to launch innovative tools such as smart safety inspections and AI service agents, significantly boosting the efficiency of frontline staff at gas companies. To better serve its customers, the company has deeply integrated Tencent’s WeCom to improve customer outreach. On the R&D front, Towngas Lifestyle has widely adopted Tencent’s AI development tools to streamline workflows. Moreover, the partners have successfully replicated their mainland successes in Hong Kong, completing the cross-border deployment of the TAP platform and advancing the upgrade of the city’s business systems.

Mr Peter Wong Wai-yee, Managing Director of Towngas, said: “Tencent’s leading position in AI and digital technology is obvious to all. Since 2020, the two parties have established a strong partnership, expanding from Towngas Lifestyle’s extended business to cooperation on the smart energy platform for the renewable energy segment, and gradually extending from the mainland to Hong Kong. As an enterprise with a 164-year history, Towngas has grown to possess a customer base of over 120 million since entering the mainland gas utility business in 1994. Facing such a massive number of customers, data security is of paramount importance. How to build a secure and efficient system for management and service has become a critical issue for business development. We are confident in joining hands with Tencent to co-build a secure and efficient digital system, comprehensively elevate the customer service experience and operational efficiency, and jointly pioneer more possibilities for ‘Energy + Tech’.”

Mr Dowson Tong, Senior Executive Vice President of Tencent and CEO of Tencent Cloud and Smart Industries Group, stated that as a household brand in Hong Kong, Towngas’s “customer-centric” service philosophy aligns closely with Tencent’s corporate mission of “Value for Users, Tech for Good”. Over the past six years, Tencent has engaged in deep collaboration with multiple segments under Towngas, empowering businesses with technology to achieve precise operations. Tencent looks forward to taking this exchange as a new starting point, further consolidating the “Cloud + AI” technological foundation based on existing cooperation, and deeply integrating Tencent’s digital capabilities with Towngas’s rich application scenarios. Through technological innovation, the goal is to achieve better customer service delivery and enhance operational efficiency, exploring a new path to sustainable development for the smart upgrade of the energy industry while ensuring data security and user privacy.

Looking ahead, the two companies will continue to deepen their collaboration in migrating core businesses to the cloud, co-building digital platforms, deploying large models and AI applications, and enhancing customer engagement. This will not only deliver a superior experience for gas customers but also set a benchmark for the high-quality transformational development of the energy industry.

 

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SOURCE Tencent Cloud

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DMEGC Solar Achieves EcoVadis Gold Medal, Underscoring Its Commitment to ESG Excellence

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JINHUA, China, April 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On April 15, DMEGC Solar, a global leader in magnetic materials and renewable energy solutions, achieved a milestone breakthrough in sustainable development. With outstanding performance in environmental protection, social responsibility, and other key areas, the company earned a Gold Medal from the internationally recognized rating agency EcoVadis, scoring 82 points. This places DMEGC Solar in the top 3% of all rated companies worldwide, surpassing 97% of participants.

EcoVadis is a globally leading sustainability assessment platform, having rated over 150,000 companies across more than 250 industries and 185 countries. Its evaluation framework covers 21 indicators across four core themes: Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement. The platform aims to assess the sustainability performance and social responsibility of companies within global supply chains.

DMEGC Solar participated in the assessment at the group level rather than as a single factory, demonstrating outstanding strength across all four dimensions. In the Labor & Human Rights dimension, the company has established a comprehensive employee rights protection system, strictly implemented occupational health and safety standards, and promoted employee development and career growth, ranking in the top 1% of its industry.

In the Sustainable Procurement dimension, the company has built a full-chain green supply chain management mechanism, collaborating with core suppliers to create a “cooperative carbon reduction” ecosystem. Initiatives such as packaging material recycling, green electricity usage, and localized collaborative production have enabled a low-carbon, traceable supply chain, also ranking in the top 1% of the industry.

Coupled with strong performances in environmental governance and business ethics, the company achieved an impressive score of 82, surpassing 97% of evaluated companies and earning the Gold Medal. This distinction places DMEGC Solar at the top in the global solar module manufacturers to receive such recognition.

This Gold Medal rating will for sure strengthen the company’s competitiveness in overseas markets. On one hand, its industry-leading ESG performance helps meet policy requirements related to sustainable supply chains, enhancing both the premium pricing of its products in international markets and its ability to secure orders. On the other hand, this recognition will boost customer and partner trust in the company’s brand, supporting the expansion of market share for its core products—such as photovoltaic modules, residential energy storage systems, and magnetic materials—while consolidating its market leadership.

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