But look beyond the hype and high-profile deals like the one between OpenAI and PwC last week, and you’ll see that the world is already years into using customer-facing, no-code AI tools for extracting information and working faster.
The deal underscores not just the opportunity around increasing demand for AI in the B2B market, but also a wider trend in enterprise IT.
Eigen and Sirion are not disclosing the financial terms of the deal, but below is relevant context that tells some of the story.
London-based Eigen is led and co-founded by Dr Lewis Liu, an Oxford PhD who studied both art and physics.
It says that it works with over 250 large enterprises manages more than 7 million contracts worth $800 billion.
Consolidation is afoot in the world of HR services, with larger players snapping up interesting, smaller startups en route to more robust unit economics and providing one-stop shops for customers looking to cut down on suppliers.
In the latest development, Deel — the $12 billion HR business out of Paris — is scooping up Zavvy, a Munich-based AI-based “people development” startup building tools for personalized career progression, training, and performance management.
Finally, Deel will also make its existing Deel HR tool, which was free for organizations of up to 200 users, now “free” for existing customers regardless of their size.
Originally Deel approached Zavvy with a partnership proposal before making an offer to buy it outright.
By Zavvy’s and Deel’s accounts, the former company has not found it hard to build its business in a tighter market.
Paris’ commercial court has accepted Cooltra’s offer to acquire Cityscoot.
These two companies provide shared electric mopeds that you can unlock and ride to go from one place to another.
At the same time, foreign micromobility companies also started to look at Paris as a potentially interesting market, including Cooltra and Yego.
Cityscoot, Cooltra and Yego won a tender process organized by the city of Paris to limit mopeds to three operating licenses.
Cooltra’s mopeds will also get new stickers to show that Cityscoot and Cooltra are now the same service to ease the transition.
As 2023 comes to an end, it is only natural to reflect on what happened in the markets we cover.
But when it comes to cannabis, the answer is “not much,” which won’t help cannabis startups that are already facing a challenging funding environment.
Namely, 2023 wasn’t the year that Germany legalized adult recreational cannabis use.
That matters because that’s not what the legal cannabis market once anticipated, and whenever there is misalignment between reality and what investors expected, especially when public companies boosted said expectations, it is rarely good news.
“Companies have spent significant capital in preparation for a sizable commercial market in Germany.
