Edtech startup Ahura AI announced on 5 November that it has raised US$3 million in a seed round with participation from CP Ventures, 2.12 Ventures and others. Concurrently, the startup has also appointed Alex Tsado (above, left) as COO and De Kai Wu (above, right) as Chief Technology Advisor.

Ahura was co-founded by CEO Bryan Talebi and new COO Alex Tsado. Its platform uses AI to provide one-on-one e-tutoring, on the basis that e-learning will be the main method of training in years to come, particularly for displaced individuals.

Before taking on the COO role, Tsado was closely involved with impact investment and AI advocacy. He co-founded South Africa-based Alliance4AI to help drive the adoption of AI for development and sits on its board. He is also a board member of Data Science Nigeria. As Ahura's COO, he will In his new role, he will manage the company's business and product development teams.

Wu is a Distinguished Research Scholar at UC Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute. He built the world’s first public web translation service in 1995 at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and subsequently worked on machine learning, particularly language processing technologies, for much of his career. In 2019, Google appointed him as one of eight inaugural members of its AI Ethics council, the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council.