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ClearGrid, armed with a fresh $10M, is developing AI to improve debt collection in MENA Mar 24, 2025

Show notes

Debt collection in emerging markets often feels outdated, and can be costly — damaging borrower trust. As consumer lending surges and regulators push for fairer practices, legacy collection outfits are struggling to maintain pace. ClearGrid aims to help modernize debt collection — and recovery — with AI.

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Amid calls for sovereign EU tech stack, Evroc raises $55M to build a hyperscale cloud in Europe Mar 21, 2025

Show notes

A Swedish startup aiming to build a hyperscale cloud company in Europe has raised €50.6 million ($55 million) in Series A funding. Evroc, as it’s called, says it’s laying the foundations for a “secure, sovereign and sustainable hyperscale cloud to reimagine the digital future of Europe.”

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Factorial snaps up $120M from General Catalyst to boost its HR sales and marketing Mar 21, 2025

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While Rippling and Deel duke it out in the field and in the courtroom alleging illegal sales and marketing tactics, here’s another way to boost business growth: pick up a massive sum of cash to expand your operations in those areas. Factorial, the Barcelona-based “unicorn” startup that provides an all-in-one HR platform.

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Arcade raises $12M from Perplexity co-founder’s new fund to make AI agents less awful Mar 20, 2025

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Arcade, an AI agent infrastructure startup founded by former Okta exec Alex Salazar and former Redis engineer Sam Partee, has raised $12 million from Laude Ventures. Laude is the new fund launched in 2024 by Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski, the UC Berkeley computer scientist who also co-founded Databricks. This isn’t the only check Laude has cut.

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Rippling sues Deel, Deel denies ‘all legal wrongdoing’, and Slack is the main witness Mar 20, 2025

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It’s gloves off in one of the more tense rivalries in the world of startups. HR company Rippling Monday morning announced a lawsuit against Deel, another big player in the same space. The dramatic 50-page complaint alleges racketeering, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition, and aiding & abetting breach of fiduciary duty.

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Flexport accuses former employees of stealing its source code to create a rival startup Mar 19, 2025

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Flexport accuses Freightmate of being the product of "theft, not ingenuity" in its lawsuit against the startup.

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Photo calorie app Cal AI, downloaded over a million times, was built by two teenagers Mar 19, 2025

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Cal AI has generated over 5 million downloads in 8 months, it says. Founders Zach Yadegari and Henry Langmack are just 18.

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Tern AI’s low-cost GPS alternative actually works Mar 18, 2025

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We’ve all experienced that moment of frustration when the GPS glitches and you miss an exit on the highway. The team at Tern AI, which is building a low-cost GPS alternative, says that’s because the current technology is limited by its reliance on satellite positioning.

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Bria lands new funding for AI models trained on licensed data Mar 18, 2025

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AI-powered image generators, which are at the center of a number of copyright lawsuits against AI companies, are frequently trained on massive amounts of data from public websites. Most of these companies argue that fair use doctrine shields their data scraping and training practices. But many copyright holders disagree.

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Kerry Washington invests in wedding marketplace Cheersy Mar 17, 2025

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Kerry Washington is expanding her angel investment portfolio, serving as lead investor in the pre-seed round of the wedding marketplace Cheersy.

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