Closed early-access product Relay raises $5M seed round to 'tackle collaborative workflows'

If you’re joining us at Disrupt next week, here’s an incentive for turning up early — we’re recording our podcasts live onstage, and you can be in the audience! Fun fun fun! — Christine and Haje

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Startups and VC

Back in 2019, Microsoft launched Dapr, an open source project that aimed to make it easier for developers to build microservices on top of Kubernetes. Diagrid raised $24 million to launch a fully managed Dapr service, Frederic reports.

DataGrail has always been focused on helping companies comply with the growing world of privacy regulation. Today, it’s building on that with a new automated risk monitoring solution that helps companies build third-party application risk assessments quickly. While they were at it, the startup also announced a $45 million Series C investment, Ron reports.

And here’s a smattering of a few more for your enjoyment and delight:

Dear Sophie: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

In our Dear Sophie column, our friendly immigration lawyer answers a question from Leap of Faith:

“I am considering leaving my current, steady job for a job with a big name in tech. I’m excited, but nervous. I’ve been hearing that you can lose your H-1B status if you are laid off. Is there any way I can protect my immigration status while making a bold job move?”

Three more from the TC+ team, with a sprinkling of lyrics for good luck:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

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Big Tech Inc.

Check out what happened when Taylor’s virtual torso went to Meta Connect 2022, where Meta announces legs (as Lucas reported), and Amanda shows you what you might have missed.

Meanwhile, as we noted above, Microsoft held its Ignite conference today, where Brian, Frederic and Kyle found lots to write on. For example, hybrid work setups, more Apple integrations, avatars for Teams, new Power Automate features, invite-only access to DALL-E 2 for select Azure OpenAI Service customers, automated document and data processing services, updates to Microsoft Edge, new cloud security services and upgrades to Microsoft’s suite of laptops and desktop computers.

In other news:

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