<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Arcol, a collaborative building design platform, has raised USD 3.6 million in seed funding from Cowboy Ventures and a group of individual investors including Dylan Field (CEO, Figma), Lauren Martin (head of corporate development and strategy, Figma), Tooey Courtemanche (CEO, Procore), and Amar Hanspal (former CEO, Autodesk). The round follows Arcol&rsquo;s USD 1.5 million pre-seed funding round last year and brings its total funding to over USD 5 million.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        The fresh funds will be used to accelerate product development and hire leadership team members and other employees. The product is expected to go into a closed alpha in the next few months, a private release for ~20 customers in May, and a full public release before the end of 2022.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/17/arcol-aims-to-do-for-building-design-what-figma-did-for-ui-design/">
      TechCrunch
    </a>
  </p>
</div>


Remote Work Tools

Collaborative building design platform Arcol raises USD 3.6 million in seed funding

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 <p>Kittl, a graphic design platform, has formed a partnership with type design and technology company Monotype to incorporate high-quality fonts into Kittl's creative platform.</p>
 <p>The collaboration will involve the integration of 135 Monotype fonts like Avenir Next, Futura Now, and Helvetica Now Variable into Kittl's platform. As part of this partnership, Kittl will develop new templates that utilize these fonts, thereby providing its users with ready-to-use design assets.</p>
</div>

Monotype partners with Kittl to integrate 135 fonts to enhance graphic design platform capabilities

<div>
 <p>Canva faced a global outage, restricting users from editing and accessing their projects. The reason for the disruption is not yet known but was resolved within the day.</p>
 <p>The outage triggered a "504 Gateway Time-out" error, prohibiting users from reaching their saved projects. This delayed essential tasks. Once resolved, users could freely edit, save, and download their projects.</p>
</div>

Canva restores services after global outage impacting design functionality

INCUMBENTS_PRESENT

<div>
 <p>RingCentral has formed a partnership with Verint, a company specializing in customer experience (CX) automation. This enables RingCentral to incorporate Verint's workforce engagement and customer experience automation solutions into their RingCX platform.</p>
 <p>Thanks to this partnership, RingCX's customers will gain access to Verint’s range of solutions that includes quality management, interaction analytics, forecasting and scheduling, AI automation, intelligent virtual agents, and knowledge management. The goal here is to boost employee productivity, enhance customer experiences, and lower operational costs.</p>
 <p>By teaming up with Verint, RingCentral can consolidate its position in the mid and enterprise market segments by providing a comprehensive customer experience platform. Meanwhile, Verint will be able to broaden its market presence by leveraging RingCentral's customer base and partner network.</p>
 
</div>

RingCentral partners with Verint to enhance solutions for RingCX customers

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

<div>
 <p>Raycast has rebranded its Floating Notes feature to Raycast Notes, offering various enhancements while retaining the floating window functionality. Now available to Raycast users, this feature brings several updates.</p>
 <p>Raycast Notes now provides auto-resizing windows, the ability to switch between notes via search, and supports markdown formatting. The feature is accessible for note creation, browsing, deep linking, quick linking, exporting files in multiple formats, and retrieving recently deleted notes, either through command shortcuts or the window's toolbar.</p>
 <p>Raycast suggests the revamped notes feature can effectively serve as an inbox for ideas, links, and text template storage. The tool also boasts intelligent text conversion, allowing users to paste content as Markdown in certain apps, while preserving rich text formatting in others.</p>
 
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
 </b> This latest product update marks the first major enhancement following its most recent funding round. In <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/34222"> September 2024 </a> , a Series B funding round secured EUR 27 million (~USD 30 million), with funds allocated to advance product development for Windows and iOS.</p>

Raycast upgrades its notes feature with new functionalities for improved note-taking

<div>
 <p>Microsoft has launched an AI-powered text editing functionality known as Rewrite in its basic text editor Notepad. The feature, currently in preview, is available to Windows Insiders in the US, France, UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany, with a Microsoft account sign in requirement.</p>
 <p>Rewrite permits users to alter highlighted text using a dialogue box, which offers three AI-created alternatives. It enables users to change text length, rephrase sentences, and adjust the tone of their content through a right-click.</p>
 <p>This cloud-based service will enhance Notepad's text editing abilities, says Microsoft. Notepad has recently been updated with spell check and autocorrect features. The company is also debuting AI picture editing functionalities in Paint, such as Generative Fill and Generative Erase, differing in accessibility for Windows Insiders.</p>
 
</div>

Microsoft adds AI-powered text editing to Notepad

<div>
 <p>Miro, a visual collaboration platform, plans to lay off 275 employees, 18% of its workforce. The objective is to streamline its operations and reduce organizational complexity.</p>
 <p>Reportedly, the company is shifting its focus from rapid expansion to sustainable growth due to competition in the productivity software market. Andrey Khusid, the CEO, acknowledges internal structural issues such as role duplications and excess layers hindering execution as major factors for the restructuring.</p>
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
 </b> This is Miro's second round of layoffs, following a <a href="https:<br>
//miro.com/blog/a-message-from-our-ceo/"> 7% reduction </a> (119 positions) in February 2023. The reductions were aimed at managing costs and adjusting to shifting market conditions.</p>

Miro lays off 18% of staff to streamline operations

<div>
 <p>The cloud communications platform provider, RingCentral, has introduced an AI assistant feature for all RingEX customers. This assistant, integrated into the existing platform, aims to improve communication features by offering capabilities like real-time note creation during phone calls, and assistance in text and chat writing with polishing and translation. It also includes a meeting summarization feature.
</p>
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
 </b> The launch of the AI Assistant follows a growing industry move to integrate AI into business communication tools. In <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/35189"> October 2024 </a> , Zoom launched AI Companion 2.0 to enhance workplace productivity and in <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/33681"> September 2024 </a> , Slack launched AI agents and workflow builders to improve workflow efficiency.</p>

RingCentral releases AI assistant to enhance communication features

<div>
 <p>Google has extended its AI-powered email writing assistant, "Help me write", to Gmail on the web. This feature is only available for Google One AI Premium subscribers and Gemini add-on Workspace users.</p>
 <p>The assistant aids in composing emails from scratch and suggests ways to formalize, elaborate, or condense messages. Moreover, a new “polish” shortcut that can improve grammar, style, and word choices is being introduced for drafts that are more than 12 words long.</p>
 <p>On mobile devices, this shortcut will take the place of the existing "Refine my draft" feature, automatically enhancing messages when swiped. Users have the option to further alter their messages through other AI editing tools provided by Google.</p>
 
</div>

Google expands 'Help me write' AI tool to Gmail web version

<div>
 <p>Read AI, an AI meeting assistant, has successfully raised USD 50 million in Series B funding. The investment round was led by Smash Capital and included contributions from existing investors Madrona and Goodwater Capital.</p>
 <p>In light of the funding, the company aims to speed up product development and expand its workforce from 40 to 100 employees by Q1 2025. The invested capital will also be used to support the provision of free products. This includes a new Chrome extension that presents features such as schedule display, meeting report and insights generation, and a quick add-to-meeting option.</p>
 
</div> <p><b>Analyst QuickTake:<br>
 </b> This round comes six months after Read AI's USD 21 million Series A funding in <a href="https:<br>
//sp-edge.com/updates/28110"> April 2024 </a> . Since then, Read AI has experienced growth , adding over 100,000 new accounts across enterprises and individual users.</p>

Read AI raises USD 50 million in Series B funding to improve product offering and expand workforce

<div>
 <p>Unified communications provider AudioCodes has extended support for its Meeting Insights solution to include Zoom and Microsoft Teams. This version is accessible to both old and new customers. </p>
 <p>The AI-enabled Meeting Insights offers features such as meeting summaries, action item extraction, and speaker-identified real-time transcription. It also provides a searchable meeting repository compatible with both Teams and Zoom. The solution includes convenient integration via forwarded invitations and distribution of meeting reports through email. </p>
 <p>AudioCodes asserts that this solution allows institutions to centralize data from all meetings across platforms, thus avoiding data silos. It also claims that it offers high-level security measures like data encryption, role-based access control, and compliance with various regulations such as GDPR, CPRA, and CCPA.</p>
</div>

All Updates

Collaborative building design platform Arcol raises USD 3.6 million in seed funding

Monotype partners with Kittl to integrate 135 fonts to enhance graphic design platform capabilities

Canva restores services after global outage impacting design functionality

RingCentral partners with Verint to enhance solutions for RingCX customers

Raycast upgrades its notes feature with new functionalities for improved note-taking

Microsoft adds AI-powered text editing to Notepad

Miro lays off 18% of staff to streamline operations

RingCentral releases AI assistant to enhance communication features

Google expands 'Help me write' AI tool to Gmail web version

Read AI raises USD 50 million in Series B funding to improve product offering and expand workforce

AudioCodes Meeting Insights adds Zoom meeting support

Remote Work Tools

Collaborative building design platform Arcol raises USD 3.6 million in seed funding

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