Loora Raises $12M to Break Down Barriers to English Fluency with Generative AI

The funds will be used to deepen the company's conversational AI technology and expand its global team and operations, allowing more people to easily learn English to advance their personal and professional lives

TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Loora, the generative AI English language learning company, announced today that it raised $12M in a Series A financing round from lead investor QP Ventures, with participation from new investor Hearst Ventures and existing investors Emerge and Two Lanterns Venture Partners, among others. The new funding, which comes just eight months after Loora's launch from stealth with a $9.25M seed funding round, will enable the company to expand its team, advance the proprietary AI capabilities fueling its mobile app platform, and extend its market reach to new audiences in the coming months.

The global English language learning market is expected to grow to over $70B by 2030, driven in part by a continued interest in gaining English fluency to unlock professional and socioeconomic opportunities as well as the rise of AI-backed language learning solutions to accommodate this growing audience. However, most available solutions are inherently limited in their ability to engender English fluency: Tutors are expensive and have limited availability, and most existing language apps – including those utilizing AI – are geared towards beginners or casual learners. This leaves serious learners striving to become fluent in English at a loss for effective and accessible solutions.

Loora provides English language learners with an app-based platform that harnesses AI specifically built, trained, and optimized for gaining practical fluency through personalized learning. The platform offers virtual language coaching 24/7 with real-time pronunciation and grammar feedback on conversations about any topic, at an affordable cost. Loora's conversational AI allows learners to practice and hone their English skills using the subjects and situations that matter to them, whether that be role-playing real-life scenarios like job interviews, having technical conversations about a topic they're passionate about, or practicing engaging social interactions in English. This empowers Loora's learners to access more pathways for advancement in both career and social environments.

"Gaining English fluency can drastically improve people's prospects, whether they're looking to advance in their professional or personal lives. We're excited to have quickly built a reality in which Loora is utilizing AI for good, enabling our rapidly growing community of learners across the globe to improve their lives with this new technology," said Roy Mor, CEO and Co-Founder of Loora. "Building AI that can guide and support learners throughout their journey to achieving English fluency in an effective, engaging, and personalized way is a significant technological endeavor. We are grateful to have such incredible investors supporting us as we work to constantly improve our technology and expand its reach to even more individuals, professionals, and organizations."

In 2023, Loora achieved over 8X increase in ARR and 2X improvement in user retention. Fueling the company's rapid growth is its unique AI training methodology and proprietary data, which continuously improve its core models.

"We invest in exceptional teams with audacious ideas that have far-reaching impact, and Loora fits the bill perfectly with its distinctive application of AI to English language learning that enables true conversational fluency at scale," noted Daniel Robins at QP Ventures. "Loora's team has been innovating in AI long before it became popular and have therefore been able to create a prominent and deeply differentiated solution that captures all the advantages and nuances of being tutored by a native English speaker, while making language proficiency accessible, affordable, and achievable with technology. They are natural partners for us and we're thrilled to join forces with them."

Loora, which already has thousands of paying subscribers across the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, is available for download in the App Store. The company plans to use the recent funding to accelerate the growth of its team and operations, deepen the solution's underlying AI technology, and expand its service to reach Android and enterprise users in the coming months.

"Hearst Ventures continues to support and invest in the Israeli tech ecosystem, and we are very excited about our recent investment in Loora. We invested globally in several startups that are leveraging AI and ML to disrupt specific verticals," said Gil Canaani, Managing Director at Hearst Ventures. "We have been tracking Loora's team since they started and were highly impressed with the depth of the technology and consumer experience they offer, leveraging LLMs to provide an engaging, fun and highly sophisticated AI-driven English language learning solution."  

About Loora

Founded by Roy Mor and Yonti Levin in 2020, Loora harnesses the power of generative AI purpose-built to make English fluency attainable and accessible. Engaging with the virtual language coach's conversational AI is tantamount to practicing with a native English speaker, but on the learner's own terms. Loora is available 24/7, provides feedback on grammar, pronunciation, and accent without judgment, and is significantly more affordable than a private tutor, enabling users to practice at their leisure, to speak with confidence, and to unlock professional and personal growth opportunities. For more information visit, https://loora.ai. To download Loora, click here.

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SOURCE Loora