South African tech talent marketplace OfferZen is one of the beneficiaries of the growing global demand for tech workers: It confirmed to TechCrunch that it has raised €4.5 million ($5.07 million) in Series A funding from South African investment company Base Capital. This is OfferZen’s first round of funding since Philip Joubert, Malan Joubert and Brett […]
Jobandtalent raises $500M Series E to keep scaling its ‘workforce as a service’ marketplace
Spain’s Jobandtalent, a “workforce marketplace”-cum-digital temping agency which uses AI to match workers to casual labor gigs in sectors like warehousing, ecommerce and logistics, has closed a $500 million Series E round of funding led by Kinnevik and with what it bills as a “significant” follow on by SoftBank VisionFund 2. Existing investors including Atomico, […]
Even after 40 years the response to Aids in many countries is still held back by stigma | Hakima Himmich and Mike Podmore
It is hard to protect yourself from HIV when having sterile syringes or condoms can lead to arrest: discrimination is restricting progress in eliminating HIV Forty years after the first cases of Aids were discovered, goals for its global elimination ha…
Dunkirk’s camps – in pictures
Guardian photographer David Levene visited northern France after twenty-seven people drowned in the Channel last week as they attempted to make the perilous crossing from France to Britain across busy shipping lanes in a dinghy that deflated in the ope…
Fresh from a $10M round, Plan A launches SaaS tool for ESG reporting aimed at startups/VCs
With key ESG reporting regulations such as the EU Taxonomy and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) covering more than 75 percent of European companies, across the EU and the UK, the regulatory environment is evolving fast. Non-financial data, such as carbon emissions, is catching up with financial reporting burdens. And it’s not just the […]
Energy Dome uses CO2 for long-term power storage for solar energy
Longer-term energy storage is a drag, and a lot of battery tech has been focusing on “how quickly can we charge these batteries so I can drive my EV for another couple of hundred miles.” That’s a fundamentally different problem than trying to capture the power of the sun for 12 hours, before releasing the […]
Abacum, a SaaS for finance teams, adds $25M in Atomico-led Series A
Abacum, a SaaS maker geared toward upgrading mid-sized companies’ financial planning and analysis tools, has fast-followed the $7 million seed it raised earlier this year (April) with a $25M Series A round. The latest funding brings its total raised to date to $32M. The Series A is led by European VC Atomico, with participation from […]
Irish virtual sports giant’s new startup bets big on rugby in bid for US market share
A fantasy sports exchange founded by Irish betting veteran Paddy Power is bringing NFT-enabled live trading to rugby fans in a bid to expand globally. American Sports Exchange (ASX Sports), just signed a deal with New Zealand digital media company RugbyPass to use its data to allow fans to participate in ASX’s virtual stock market […]
UK’s antitrust watchdog orders Facebook to sell Giphy
In a significant push against big tech’s ability to maintain market dominance through sheer buying power, the UK’s competition watchdog has ordered Facebook (now Meta) to reverse its acquisition of animated GIF platform, Giphy — confirming the Financial Times‘ earlier reporting. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said its phase 2 investigation cemented its earlier […]
Partech raises $750 million growth fund
Paris-based VC firm Partech has announced the closing of the fundraising of its new growth fund. Partech Growth II is the firm’s second growth fund. And the team managed to raise $750 million. As a reminder, Partech Growth I was a smaller fund with €400 million under management, which represents $460 million at today’s exchange […]