Author: TechBrunch

Like many immigrants, the New York City skyline was one of the first sights young brothers Eddie and Etrit Demaji saw when they arrived in the United States more than 20 years ago. They and their families fled violence in their homeland of Kosovo, but they still remember the view as the plane flew over them. “The first building we saw was the Empire State Building,” Etritt recalls. The Demaji family soon settled in Detroit, where the brothers completed their education and founded various companies, including the state-of-the-art Kode Labs, which integrates and automates various systems in commercial buildings, including…

While layoffs typically evoke attention and sympathy for the affected employees, rarely does anyone talk about what happens to the recruiters, who are sometimes asked to leave when a company decides to downsize. In fact, tech companies cut up to half of their hiring teams during mass layoffs in 2022 and 2023. Paraform, a recruiting platform for startups, taps a pool of laid-off recruiters who started their own businesses to help startups source talent and access a broader talent network I feel there is an opportunity to do so. To fund its efforts, the company recently raised $3.6 million in…

Adobe said it is building an AI model to generate the video. However, it has not been revealed exactly when this model will be released. Also, little else has been revealed other than the fact that this model exists. Offered as a sort of answer to the models of OpenAI's Sora, Google's Imagen 2, and a growing number of startups in the early generative AI video space, Adobe's model is part of the company's expanding Firefly family of generative AI products. , Adobe's flagship video editing suite, Premiere Pro, will be released later this year, Adobe says. Like many current…

Companies that offer role referral bonuses do so on the assumption that employees are the most knowledgeable about their company's work culture and the requirements of the role. But what happens when companies open up these referral bonuses to people outside the organization? That's the idea behind Draftboard, co-founded by Zach Roseman, former CEO of mobile app development group Mosaic. Draftboard allows employers to post referral bonuses and allow referrals to compete for bonuses as they scour their network for talent. “If you're a large company, you're going to receive thousands of resumes for every role you post,” Roseman told…

Lawhive, a UK-based legal tech company that provides AI-based in-house “lawyers” through a software-as-a-service platform aimed at small law firms, has raised £9.5m in a seed round to expand ( The company raised $11.9 million. A range of AI-driven services for “main street” law firms. So far, most legal tech startups implementing AI have focused on the large and attractive market of “Big Law.” This means large national or global law firms that are enthusiastically implementing AI into their workflows. These include Harvey (US-based, raised $106 million); Robin AI (UK-based, raised $43.4 million). Spellbook (Canadian-based, raised $32.4 million). But startups…

Social networking platform Blue Sky lifted its ban on registration of heads of state over the weekend. This means that different executives can participate on the platform. Brusky's move comes ahead of major general elections scheduled to be held this year in countries such as the United States and India. During Bluesky's invitation-only period last year, the company said it would not allow heads of state to register and asked users to contact the startup before inviting celebrities. “While we appreciate the enthusiasm of everyone who has sent invitations, our current policy does not yet allow us to accommodate heads…

OpenAI is expanding into Japan, opening a new Tokyo office and planning a GPT-4 model specifically optimized for Japanese. The creators of ChatGPT opened their first international office in London last year, followed by a European Union (EU) office in Dublin a few months later. Tokyo will be OpenAI's first office in Asia and fourth office in the world (including its San Francisco headquarters). CEO Sam Altman highlighted Japan's “rich history of people and technology coming together to do more” as one of the reasons for establishing a formal presence in the region. . While the EU is currently driving…

Social media startup ShareChat has been valued at less than $2 billion, down from nearly $5 billion in a new funding round, the 9-year-old Indian company with more than 400 million users told TechCrunch. This was a significant drop for emerging companies. South Asian market. The Bangalore-based startup, which operates a popular social network and short-form video app that supports more than a dozen Indian languages, announced Monday that it has raised $49 million in a transformational round. The company did not disclose the valuation at the time of the funding, but strongly denied that the new valuation was less…

Since 2015, Kenya-based insurtech company Pula has been strengthening access to agricultural insurance for smallholder farmers in emerging markets, protecting them from losses due to pests, diseases, and extreme weather events such as floods and droughts. He is working hard. So far, the insurtech has helped 15.4 million farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America gain insurance coverage, and has launched a $20 million series that will allow it to establish new partnerships including livestock insurance. BIt is attracting even more attention after receiving funding. BlueOrchard, a global investment management company, led the round through its InsuResilience strategy, which aims…

It's a long road from pedal bikes to Formula 1. But that's exactly the leap AI-based startup Neural Concept and its co-founder and CEO Pierre Baquet have made in just his six years. In 2018, the company's fledgling software helped create the world's most aerodynamic bicycle. Four out of ten F1 teams now use an advanced version of the same technology. Along the way, Baquet's company won contracts with aerospace suppliers such as Airbus and Safran, and earned a $9.1 million Series A raise in 2022. Switzerland-based Neural Concepts, which currently employs 50 people, is working towards a Series B…