The company has bought Searchlight, a startup and recruitment platform that uses artificial intelligence-based technology to source talent.
The plan will be to use Searchlight’s tech to build new AI products for Multiverse to expand its professional training services.
After that, the plan will be to wind down Searchlight’s recruitment services as they focus on Multiverse’s business.
Some people will use AI to speed up what they do; others will claim that AI is taking over certain jobs altogether.
“From the start, Anna and Kerry have been thoughtful about building Searchlight’s AI models to complement their vision,” Keith Rabois, who led the Series A, said in a statement provided to TechCrunch.
Oculus’ Rift prototype felt like just such a device when it first crossed my radar more than a decade ago.
“After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences.
Should anyone doubt the company’s commitment to the concept, it rebranded itself as “Meta”, killing off the Oculus brand the same afternoon.
In spite of the $500 billion rebrand, Zuckerberg and co. never did a particularly good job defining the metaverse.
That’s roughly 21x the price it paid for Oculus, not adjusting for inflation.
Canva has typically targeted the beginner for their products, but company co-Founder Cliff Obrecht sees the acquisition opening the door to more advanced users.
“Canva needed products with more complex capabilities to go up against Adobe,” Wang told TechCrunch.
In a blog post on the Affinity website, CEO Ashley Hewson tried to allay customer fears about the change.
“In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels.
With Affinity, Canva gains 3 million users worldwide along with 90 employees who will be joining the company.
Borderless Capital, an investment firm that specializes in web3, announced Tuesday that it is acquiring CTF Capital, a quantitative trading and asset management firm headquartered in Miami, with technology and operation teams in Latin America.
With this acquisition, Borderless Capital will add AI-infused quant trading expertise to its own business.
After combining with CTF Capital, Borderless will have over $500 million in assets under management (AUM).
All the existing funds managed by CTF Capital will be merged into Borderless’s Multi-Strategy Fund V LP., launched last year with $100 million under management today.
“Borderless already has significant exposure through several portfolio companies from this geography [Latin America].
Zscaler, a cloud security company with headquarters in San Jose, California, has acquired cybersecurity startup Avalor 26 months after its founding, reportedly for $310 million in cash and equity.
But what sets Avalor apart is the ability to handle data from virtually any source in any format, and its unique set of vulnerability risk management and prioritization tools.
Prior to the Zscaler acquisition, Avalor managed to secure $30 million from investors including TCV, Salesforce Ventures, Jibe Ventures and Cyberstarts.
And Raz sees Zscaler taking the business — and its ~80-person team spread across the U.S. and Israel — further.
As Crunchbase’s Chris Metinko noted earlier today, Zscaler’s acquisition — along with others in the cybersecurity space — could help spark activity in a slow-to-stagnant cyber M&A market.
Earlier this year, Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor launched a new company, Sierra with the goal of building these flexible AI agents.
“We believe that somewhere between 70% and 90% of interactions are going to be through AI agents in the future.
And Ultimate has done a really nice job solving up to 80% of interactions via their AI agents,” Eggemeier told TechCrunch.
He says that while the plan is to incorporate Ultimate technology into the Zendesk platform, they will continue to offer stand-alone products to other companies.
Ultimate launched in 2017 and raised $27 million, per Crunchbase.
Employee-focused mental health company Journey is acquiring Felt, a startup formerly known as Mine’d that specializes in matching individuals with therapists using artificial intelligence.
Journey, which offers a mental health employee assistance program used by companies like Walgreens and Universal Music Group, says the acquisition aligns with its mission to revolutionize employee well-being and mental health support while leveraging the power of AI.
While Felt’s technology was initially designed for a consumer-facing app, it will be integrated into Journey’s backend product.
Journey CEO and founder Stephen Sokoler told TechCrunch that Felt’s technology will be integrated into the company’s Proactive EAP platform.
The company plans to pair Felt’s AI-based technology with its existing human-enabled therapist pairings in order to better match employees with therapists.
Founded in 2006, over the years Lensrentals got the edge over BorrowLenses, both in terms of number of staff and overall number of customers.
We look forward to all BorrowLenses customers getting to experience what I mean by that,” says Beckman.
Similar to Lensrentals, BorrowLenses boasts an extensive inventory.
BorrowLenses has established a strong presence in certain regions, complementing Lensrentals’ national reach.
Of course, Beckman told TechCrunch that Lensrentals was kept on its toes by the competition from BorrowLenses.
On Tuesday, the HR startup announced it is acquiring African-based payroll and HR software and services company PaySpace in a deal that marks its largest acquisition to date.
Financial terms of the PaySpace acquisition were not disclosed.
Separately, San Francisco-based Deel also revealed Tuesday that it has crossed $500 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), organically, outside of this acquisition.
With the various buys, Deel claims that it now owns the full HR stack — entities, local teams (legal, HR payroll), and local payroll engines — across six continents.
Theirs is one of the best technologies we’ve ever seen … We had to do a lot of convincing.”In a written statement, PaySpace Director Clyde van Wyk said: “Like PaySpace, Deel strives to evolve its offering through disruption.
So it is with Nuview, a startup aiming to map the world from space using lidar, who announced today that its acquisition of analytics platform Astraea.
In a recent interview, Nuview CEO Clint Graumann also declined to specify how many of Astraea’s employee’s would be joining the company.
Nuview is relatively young to be executing on an acquisition; Graumann founded the company in January 2022, and has raised at least $15 million to date.
“I’ve always seen Earth observation companies who try to build every capability from the ground up, struggle,” he said.
Spoc”, though Graumann declined to specify whether Nuview had booked a firm launch date for that demonstration mission.
