Palm.hr raises $5M, embarks on MENA growth

A few years ago, Richard Schrems was working as a human resources consultant in Riyadh, and at one point sought to implement a tech-solution for his clients to help them better their huge teams, but couldn’t find a localized solution. Shrems told TechCrunch he needed a system that was employee-focused, but found many of the HR software he interacted...

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Daily Crunch: Global VC firm Partech reaches first close of largest African fund at €245 million

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. What’s up, Crunchy readers! True crime has its grip on us all, and Lorenzo’s review of “Tracers in the Dark” is fascinating. In the book, the author covers how cops go after cybercriminals, and it shows that there is...

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GlossAi’s generative highlights are a glimpse of content’s crowded future

For anyone who wants to get a piece of content they’ve created out there, the number of platforms and formats means it’s not so simple as it used to be. GlossAi is a startup aiming to automate the process using (what else?) AI, and its approach of turning a half hour of content into an infinity of short clips and posts may not be palatable to everyone,...

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Former Affirm exec Silvija Martincevic to lead shift work management platform Deputy

Silvija Martincevic, former chief commercial officer of Affirm, one of the U.S.’s biggest buy now, pay later startups, has been appointed to CEO of shift work management platform Deputy. Based in Australia, Deputy is focused on expanding in the United States and other countries, and Martincevic will oversee its growth strategy. She will also take a...

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Biden to address children’s online safety at State of the Union

President Joe Biden will address the nation on Tuesday evening in the second State of the Union address of his term. Per a release from the White House, the president is expected to weigh in on children’s online safety issues, as well as data privacy. The briefing says that Biden will call on bipartisan lawmakers to ban targeted advertising toward...

9h

Google winds down feature that put playable podcasts directly in search results

Google confirmed it’s putting an end to a feature that allowed users to access playable podcasts directly from the Google Search results in favor of offering podcast recommendations. Officially launched in 2019, the feature surfaced podcasts when they matched a user’s query, including in those cases where a user specifically included the word “podcast”...

10h

OpenAI’s ‘next-generation’ AI model is behind Microsoft’s new search

Microsoft is making a big AI play with its revamped Bing search engine and Edge web browser, both of which are powered by what appears to be exclusive access to the successor to OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT large language model. The new AI is unnamed for now, only described in a blog post as following: …A new, next-generation OpenAI large language model...

12h

Disrupting beauty’s last frontier with Keta Burke-Williams from Ourside

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Keta Burke-Williams, the founder and CEO of Ourside, a direct-to-consumer fragrance company. Keta talked about what got her interested in disrupting the behemoth — and outdated — fragrance industry and what it has been like to develop a...

12h

FTX’s attempts to claw back political donations may target largest recipients, experts say

Over the weekend, FTX and affiliated debtors sent confidential letters to politicians, PACs and other recipients of donations to return the funds given by the formerly massive crypto exchange. It might seem like an odd request, but it was unsurprising to some legal experts who keep tabs on the space. “Given the sheer scale of the political donations...

12h

Zoom layoffs impact 15% of staff

After an unfathomable boom at the onset of the pandemic, Zoom has made the decision to cut 15% of its staff, or 1,300 people. “The uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers, means we need to take a hard – yet important – look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment,” CEO Eric Yuan wrote in a blog...

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