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Summary of the news

• Indeed has laid off 15% of its employees, about 2,200 people
• Factor[e] Ventures has launched Delta40, to invest $100,000 to $600,000 in African energy, agriculture, and mobility startups
• TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew will testify before the US congress today.
• The eNaira has seen a 63% spike in transactions

Ecosystem

• Factor[e] Ventures, a team of venture builders that invests in early-stage companies in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, has launched a new venture studio specifically for African startups. The new venture studio, Delta40, will invest $100,000 to $600,000 in African energy, agriculture, and mobility startups, TechCabal reports.

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Policy

• The Federal Government of Nigeria has announced the removal of the planned 5% excise duty for the telecom sub-sector of Nigeria’s Digital Economy Industry in line with the recommendations of the Presidential Review Committee it had constituted to review the applicability of the Duty to the telecom sector which is considered already overburdened with taxation and sundry levies, Technext reports.
• The eNaira has seen a 63% spike in transactions, thanks to the fiat redesign policy, which led to a cash crunch in the nation. According to Technext, Nigerians are now faced with no option but to embrace the earlier "cast away" eNaira. And this has been reflected in a reported surge in the number of transactions executed and wallets opened.

Social Tech

• The American Securities and Exchange Commission has unveiled fraud and unregistered securities charges against crypto founder and Grenadian diplomat Justin Sun, alongside separate violations against the celebrity backers of his Tronix and BitTorrent crypto assets, which included Jake Paul, Lindsay Lohan and Soulja Boy, CNBC reports. “This case demonstrates again the high-risk investors face when crypto asset securities are offered and sold without proper disclosure,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
• OpenAI confirms the source of ChatGPT’s history mixup. CEO Sam Altman tweeted on Wednesday that a bug in an open-source library was to blame for ChatGPT users seeing small snippets of other peoples’ conversations on Monday, The Verge reports. Apparently, a full technical postmortem will be coming later, and a fix to restore the history feature is on its way.

Global News

• Goldman Sachs is experimenting with generative AI tools internally to help its developers automatically generate and test code, the company’s chief information officer, Marco Argenti told CNBC. “You wouldn’t put immediately all your most important workloads there, but the imperative is to really to try to understand the potential,” he said.
• Luno co-founder Marcus Swanepoel has retired as CEO to become the company’s executive chairman in a move to generate funding and prepare for public listings, Technext reports. James Lanigan, the company’s chief operating officer, who has been a functioning staff in the last five years, has been named the new chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange and wallet provider.

• TikTok's CEO, Shou Zi Chew will testify before the US congress today. According to CBS News, he plans to tell a House committee that the social media giant is taking "real action" to address national security concerns from U.S. policymakers and stave off a potential ban in the U.S.

• Indeed laid off 15% of employees, about 2,200 people yesterday, CEO Chris Hyams announced in an all-hands meeting. “With future job openings at or below pre-pandemic levels, our organization is simply too big for what lies ahead. We have held out longer than many other companies, but the revenue trends are undeniable. So I have decided to act now," the CEO said.

Latest in funding

• Factor[e] Ventures launches Africa-focused venture studio
• Dope Security nabs $16M led by GV to build out secure web gateways designed to work on endpoints, not in the cloud

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Other stories we are following

• How social media influenced Nigeria’s 2023 elections
• What Google Bard Can Do (and What It Can’t)
• TikTok CEO’s mission: Fend off a ban. It may be a ‘death wish’
• TikTok CEO Goes to Washington With a Disparate Band of Allies
• Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow
• Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow
• Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation shitshow