The World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation’s (“IFC”) $50 million equity investment represents the final tranche of the approximately $1.6 billion raised from global investors to complete the funding of the Middle East’s largest polysilicon manufacturing facility.

IFC has now arranged and mobilized more than 30% of the total capital raised, a strong endorsement of United Solar’s operating and commercial sustainability and its adherence to the highest international standards.

The investment reinforces United Solar’s position as FEOC-compliant supplier of fully traceable, high-purity polysilicon to the world’s tier-one solar manufacturers.

SOHAR, Oman, July 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — United Solar today announced the financial close of its previously announced $50 million equity investment from IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. The financial close completes the company’s $1.6 billion capital raise from a consortium of global investors.

United Solar’s state-of-the-art 100,000-ton-per-year polysilicon facility in Oman’s Sohar Free Zone began operations in January 2026 and is expected to ramp up to 100kT by the end of 2026. The plant represents the world’s most advanced polysilicon production facilities, the foundational material for the global solar photovoltaic (PV) value chain.

With this close, IFC has arranged and mobilized more than 30% of the total capital raised for the project. The direct equity commitment from IFC represents United Solar’s governance, environmental and social standards, traceability, and long-term commercial viability — the benchmarks that customers and regulators increasingly demand of polysilicon suppliers.

Critically for buyers in the United States and other advanced markets, United Solar is a FEOC-compliant producer of high-purity polysilicon. With production in Oman and the Oman Investment Authority (OIA) as its single-largest shareholder, United Solar provides tier-one cell and module manufacturers with a fully traceable supply—one that supports eligibility for clean-energy incentives and the diversified, resilient supply chains the industry is racing to secure.

The close builds on OIA’s anchor equity investment through its Future Fund Oman, which signaled strong sovereign confidence in United Solar. IFC’s commitment now completes a capital structure that has drawn leading global institutions to the company.

At full capacity, the facility is expected to enable the production of approximately 40 gigawatts of solar modules annually, enough to power up to 12 million homes, while avoiding an estimated 8.8 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year. The plant is set to create nearly 3,000 direct and indirect jobs and advance Oman’s economic diversification agenda.

“The closing of IFC’s investment completes our approximately $1.6 billion capital raise and is a powerful endorsement of United Solar’s standards, governance, and long-term commercial strength,” said Binyam Giorgis, Group CFO of United Solar. “With the backing of the World Bank Group, and on the foundation laid by the Oman Investment Authority, we are delivering world-class, fully traceable polysilicon that tier-one manufacturers need — and doing so as an FEOC-compliant producer they can rely on as they build resilient, diversified supply chains.”

“This equity investment completes our landmark support for the Middle East’s largest and only operational polysilicon manufacturing facility,” said Ulyana Dovbush, IFC’s Regional Industry Manager for the Manufacturing, Agribusiness, and Services in the Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. “Aligned with Oman’s vision, this investment will help create thousands of jobs, attract foreign direct investment, accelerate economic diversification, and strengthen the role of the private sector in driving sustainable growth beyond oil.”

About United Solar
United Solar is a leading producer of high-purity polysilicon — the essential material used in the manufacture of solar panels — operating one of the world’s most advanced polysilicon manufacturing facilities in Oman. The company uses cutting-edge processes and modular plant design to deliver cost-competitive polysilicon at scale, while meeting rigorous international standards for quality, traceability, and environmental responsibility. United Solar is committed to building a secure, resilient, and globally competitive solar supply chain.

Media Contacts
United Solar Media Relations
Jessi Zhang
Secretary of the Board
Jessi.Zhang@unitedsolarholding.com

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/united-solar-secures-ifcs-backing-for-feoc-compliant-polysilicon-completing-1-6-billion-capital-raise-302818687.html

SOURCE United Solar Holding Inc.

Recap includes AI cyber risk, software supply chain attacks, SaaS trust failures, zero-day exploits, and community support

ORLANDO, Fla., July 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ThreatLocker today released highlights of the company’s cybersecurity research, threat analysis, industry commentary, and community outreach from June.

“AI driven cyber threats continued to generate significant attention in June, but most of the attacks we looked at came back to the same issue: trusted access being misused,” said Danny Jenkins, CEO & Co-founder of ThreatLocker. “Attackers do not need everything to be vulnerable. They need one trusted path that gives them room to maneuver.”

Cybersecurity Trends and Industry Commentary

ThreatLocker examined how frontier AI models such as Claude Mythos and Claude Fable 5 are changing the way vulnerabilities are discovered and weaponized. The company cautioned that AI should not be treated as a separate category of risk; it is another way attackers can abuse trusted access. Five Eyes guidance on agentic AI threats was also reviewed, which pointed to Zero Trust as a practical way to place boundaries around AI systems and limit what attacks built with AI can access or execute.

Jenkins also spoke publicly about the limitations of restricting access to frontier AI models, noting that cybercriminals and foreign adversaries are unlikely to be stopped by limits on one model when stolen accounts, foreign models, and open-weight tools remain available. Additionally explored was how China’s GLM-5.2 shows how open-source AI is changing the cyber threat landscape, and how the LLMShare campaign exploits ChatGPT to deliver malware.

ThreatLocker Analysis of Supply Chain and Third-Party Risk

Researchers from the company continued to analyze supply chain attacks and third-party risk, with several June incidents showing how trusted repositories, software, and SaaS integrations can be abused.

The team examined how Red Hat npm packages were compromised with a credential-stealing worm, and how the Miasma worm targeted Microsoft and compromised 73 GitHub repositories. Both incidents highlighted the risks facing development environments where trusted packages can become part of the attack path.

ThreatLocker also analyzed the Mastra supply chain attack, including why the supply chain attack wasn’t about AI, but rather access, permissions, and account hygiene.

Additional analysis covered the Klue SaaS supply chain compromise, where attackers reportedly used long-lived OAuth tokens tied to Klue’s integration infrastructure to reach customer environments, including Salesforce. In a follow-up piece on what the Klue breach reveals about SaaS trust, ThreatLocker noted that the incident was not about a Salesforce vulnerability, but about the reach attackers can gain when a trusted third-party integration is abused.

Understanding New Exploits and Patch Pressure

The Threat Intelligence also tracked new exploit activity throughout June. The team was the first to validate that RoguePlanet, a Microsoft Defender zero-day, granted SYSTEM privileges on fully patched systems. The company also analyzed GreatXML and the WinRE trust boundary behind BitLocker, and continued examining what YellowKey and GreenPlasma reveal about trusting native Windows security.

These findings showed that patching remains essential, but it cannot be the only line of defense. As a result, ThreatLocker published guidance on balancing security, stability, and speed in patch management, emphasizing the need for controls that limit unauthorized execution and behavior while organizations test and deploy updates.

Education and Community

As part of its ongoing commitment to cybersecurity education, ThreatLocker hosted the webinar “MFA is not enough: How to stop phishing and session hijacking attacks”. The session explored how attackers steal credentials, hijack sessions, and bypass traditional access controls, and why organizations need to verify devices in addition to users, and limit access after login.

The organization also participated as a vendor at RejectionCon, where vendor fees helped support The Rural Tech Fund, generating an $80,000 donation to help expand access to technology education for students in rural classrooms across the United States.

About ThreatLocker:

ThreatLocker is a global cybersecurity leader that stops cyberattacks before they happen. The company’s Zero Trust Platform prevents breaches from both known and unknown threats by allowing only explicitly trusted software and activity across endpoints, networks, and cloud systems. Built to deploy quickly and scale across complex environments, the platform reduces operational overhead while keeping business running uninterrupted. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, with offices in Dublin, Dubai, and Brisbane, ThreatLocker protects over 70,000 organizations worldwide.

Contact:press@threatlocker.com, 321-515-3813

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/threatlocker-highlights-key-cyber-threat-activity-and-research-from-june-2026-302818685.html

SOURCE ThreatLocker, Inc.

New learning platform launches for the Semiquincentennial with growing cast of historical figures.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — As America celebrates 250 years of independence, Amira Learning, the leader in agentic learning for K-12 reading, introduces The Story of America: Fireside, an interactive tool for history instruction that lets students ask questions—virtually— to the people who shaped American history.

Fireside brings historical figures into the classroom for spoken interviews led by the students themselves. Responses are grounded in the letters, speeches, journals, and verified resources of figures including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail Adams, Sacagawea, and Frederick Douglass.

The name nods to FDR’s fireside chats — radio addresses in which the president talked through the country’s hardest issues in plain language. Fireside introduces that same idea to classrooms, but this time, students bring the questions.

Video: https://vimeo.com/1205560971

Breaking a Classroom Paradox

Fireside launches at a moment of urgency for U.S. history education. Nearly 2/3 Americans between 18 and 29 can’t identify why the American colonies declared independence, according to a 2025 Cato Institute survey. On the most recent NAEP U.S. history assessment, only 13% of eighth graders scored at or above proficient — the lowest proficiency rate among any subject NAEP tested that year; 40% scored below basic, up from 29% a decade earlier.

“We hear from teachers that students encounter online sources that can’t always be trusted, but trustworthy textbook sources don’t hold students’ attention,” said Chris Blevins, SVP of Fireside. “Fireside breaks that paradox — engaging enough for teenagers, sourced tightly for social studies teachers.”

Built on the Record, Not on Algorithms

Fireside’s design departs sharply from generative AI tools. Responses from historical figures are grounded in verified sources from the Library of Congress and other vetted institutions, then reviewed by human content experts and published to the platform. If the historical record is silent on a question, the figure says so rather than fabricating an answer.

How It Works

“History becomes real—when a student asks Thomas Jefferson what he’d change about the Declaration, or asks Frederick Douglass how he found courage—students stop being spectators and start being part of the story. That’s when real learning happens,” Blevins said.

Fireside is structured around three pillars of historical thinking:

Student-led inquiry. Students drive live, spoken interviews rather than work through a worksheet — choosing questions themselves.Sourcing. As they interview, students learn to evaluate primary sources for bias and perspective.Standards-anchored writing. After interviewing, students take a position on a historical question and defend it in a short written assignment, building historical thinking and argumentative writing skills aligned to state Social Studies and ELA standards.

Teachers retain full visibility into student performance, and the Story of America platform integrates with existing district technology for seamless setup and single sign-on for students and teachers.

Launched for the 250th. Built for the Full American Story.

Fireside launches as America celebrates the 250th anniversary of independence. But it is ultimately designed to support U.S. history classrooms year-round.

“You can start the year with Jefferson drafting the Declaration and end with Dr. King on the National Mall,” Blevins said. “Fireside meets teachers where their curriculum is. The founding era is where we begin. It’s not where we end.”

New figures from the Reconstruction, labor movement, women’s suffrage, immigration history, and the civil rights era will be added throughout 2026-2027.

Fireside is available now for middle and high school U.S. history classrooms: thestoryofamerica.us/fireside.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/with-story-of-america-fireside-students-speak-directly-with-people-who-shaped-america-302818700.html

SOURCE Amira Learning