Deel Raises $300 Million Despite Messy Legal Battle with Rival

VCs are surprisingly gearing towards startups that are HR and Job Security related. Few week ago, it was Sorce that broke the internet, this week we had Jack n Jill and Deel making the news. Is there something we don’t know? Maybe Deel’s story will give us an insight!

If you’re one of the people who use Messenger’s desktop app on your Mac or Windows computer, you’ll need to find a new way to chat soon. Meta announced this week that it’s shutting down the standalone desktop applications on December 15.

Once that date hits, you won’t be able to log into the apps anymore. Instead, you’ll automatically get sent to the Facebook website to use Messenger there. It’s a pretty significant change for anyone who prefers using a dedicated app rather than keeping a browser tab open all the time.

The company is giving users a heads-up through notifications inside the app, and Mac users will have 60 days to keep using the app before it stops working completely. After that grace period, the app will be blocked entirely, and Meta is telling people they should just delete it since it won’t do anything anymore.

If you’re on Windows, you can switch to the Facebook desktop app as an alternative. Both Windows and Mac users can also just use Messenger through their web browser on Facebook.com. It’s not quite the same as having a separate app, but it gets the job done.

Meta is strongly recommending that users turn on secure storage and set up a PIN to save their chat history before moving to the web version. You can check if you already have this turned on by going to your settings, clicking Privacy & safety, then End-to-end encrypted chats, and looking at the Message storage section.

This development isn’t completely out of the blue. Last September, Meta actually replaced the native Messenger app with something called a Progressive Web App. Now they’re just taking it a step further and getting rid of the desktop apps altogether. It’s a pretty safe bet that some dedicated users of the desktop apps aren’t going to be thrilled about this change, but it seems Meta has made up its mind about streamlining where people can access Messenger.

Deel, the global payroll and HR company, just landed $300 million in new funding at a valuation of $17.3 billion. What makes this particularly interesting is that the company is currently in the middle of a very public legal fight with its main competitor, Rippling, over allegations of corporate spying. But apparently, top-tier investors aren’t too worried about it.

The Series E round was led by two heavy hitters in the venture capital world: Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Several existing investors also joined in, including Coatue Management and General Catalyst. It’s a strong vote of confidence from some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent names.

The numbers behind Deel help explain why investors are still enthusiastic. The company says it’s been profitable for the past three years and recently crossed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue. In fact, September alone brought in $100 million in revenue, which is a pretty impressive milestone for any company. Deel now works with more than 35,000 customers and handles payroll and HR for over 1.5 million workers across more than 150 countries.

What Deel does is handle the messy, complicated stuff that comes with managing employees all over the world. Different countries have different employment laws, currencies, and regulations, and Deel takes care of all of that for companies so they don’t have to figure it out themselves.

As for the legal drama, Deel and Rippling have been trading lawsuits over accusations that involve corporate espionage and spying. It’s been entertaining for tech industry observers to watch, but it hasn’t put a dent in either company’s ability to raise money. Rippling actually raised $450 million back in May at a $16.8 billion valuation, showing that investors are backing both sides of this rivalry. The California lawsuit is still in the discovery phase and doesn’t have a trial date yet.

In the funding announcement, both lead investors gave Deel glowing reviews. Ribbit’s founder Micky Malka called Deel “a brand companies trust” and said his firm has been a fan for a long time. Ben Horowitz from Andreessen Horowitz said his firm has been “blown away” by Deel’s work building what he called “the best HR platform” for global companies.

So despite the courtroom battles making headlines, it seems the business fundamentals are strong enough that investors are willing to bet big on Deel’s future.

Google just released Veo 3.1, the latest version of its AI video generation tool, and it’s bringing some notable improvements to the table. The update focuses on better audio output, more precise editing controls, and improved results when you’re turning still images into videos.

This is an upgrade to Veo 3, which Google launched back in May. According to the company, Veo 3.1 creates more realistic-looking video clips and does a better job following the instructions you give it. That’s always been one of the tricky parts with AI video tools, getting them to actually make what you asked for.

One of the new features lets you add an object into a video and have it naturally blend into the clip’s existing style, which could be useful for creative projects. Google also says that soon you’ll be able to do the opposite and remove objects from videos in Flow, their video editing app.

Veo 3 already had some handy editing features. You could add reference images to guide how a character looks, provide the first and last frame of a video and let AI fill in everything in between, or extend an existing video by building off the last few frames. Now with Veo 3.1, Google is adding audio to all of these features, which should make the videos feel more complete and polished instead of being silent clips.

Google is rolling out Veo 3.1 across several of its platforms. You’ll find it in Flow (their video editor), the Gemini app, and through their Vertex and Gemini APIs for developers. Flow has apparently been popular since it launched in May, Google says users have created more than 275 million videos on the app so far, which is an impressive number in just a few months.

Apple dropped a big hardware announcement on Wednesday, introducing its new M5 chip and updating three major products to run on it: the iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro. All three devices are now available for preorder and will start shipping and hitting stores on October 22.

The headline feature of the M5 chip is speed. Apple says it delivers over four times the peak GPU performance compared to the M4 chip. The company’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, Johny Srouji, called it “the next big leap in AI performance for Apple silicon,” which gives you a sense of where Apple is focusing its attention these days.

The new iPad Pro is getting some serious upgrades. Apple claims the M5 chip brings up to 3.5 times the AI performance of last year’s Pro model and is 5.6 times faster than the iPad Pro with the M1 chip. Beyond the processor, there’s also a new C1X cellular modem that offers up to 50% faster cellular data speeds, plus a new N1 chip handling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread connectivity. Storage is faster too, and the device can charge up to 50% in about 30 minutes.

This push to make the iPad Pro more powerful makes sense when you consider Apple’s broader strategy. The company is clearly trying to position the iPad as more of a laptop replacement, and the upcoming iPadOS 26 will add features like more intuitive window displays, the Preview app, and better folder organization to make it feel more like using a Mac. The iPad Pro starts at $999 for the 11-inch model and $1,299 for the 13-inch version, available in black and silver.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro is also getting the M5 treatment. Expect up to 1.6 times better graphics performance, higher memory bandwidth bumped up to 153Gbps from the M4’s 120Gbps, and improved storage speeds. Apple is also claiming up to 24 hours of battery life, which is pretty impressive for a laptop this powerful. Pricing starts at $1,599, and it comes in space black and silver.

Even the Vision Pro is getting an update, swapping out its current M2 chip for the new M5. The upgrade improves display rendering by 10%, supports refresh rates up to 120Hz instead of 100Hz, and makes AI-powered features 50% faster. You’ll also get an extra 30 minutes of battery life, bringing it to 2.5 hours for general use and three hours for video playback. Apple is also including a new Dual Knit Band in small, medium, and large sizes for a more comfortable fit. The price stays at $3,499.

Interestingly, this Vision Pro update comes just after reports that Apple is shifting its focus toward developing smart glasses rather than doing a major overhaul of the VR headset. So this M5 upgrade might be a smaller step to keep the Vision Pro current while the company explores other directions in the wearables space.

Deel is the all-in-one Global People Platform that simplifies and streamlines every aspect of managing an international workforce.