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Before yesterdayGeekWire

Humanly acquires CareerArc to connect recruitment marketing with AI hiring

14 October 2026 at 08:00
(CareerArc, Humanly Logos)

Bellevue, Wash.-based hiring technology company Humanly has acquired CareerArc to merge its artificial intelligence screening tools with software that helps employers attract job applicants.

The deal announced Wednesday brings together Humanly’s automated chat and interview systems with CareerArc’s social media recruiting and career-site mapping platforms.

The transaction follows an aggressive M&A streak for Humanly, which includes its acquisition of employee engagement platform Anthill earlier this year and a trio of other recruiting tech acquisitions in 2025 β€” Sprockets, Qualifi, and HourWork.

Founded in 2018, Humanly builds software designed to automate candidate engagement, screening, and interviewing for high-volume employers.

β€œHigh volume employers have had to piece together their hiring process with a collection of disconnected tools,” Co-founder and CEO Prem Kumar said in a statement, noting that the deal helps bridge the gap by reaching candidates earlier in the search process.

Founded in 2009, Burbank, Calif.-based CareerArc provides recruitment marketing tools β€” including social recruiting software and interactive career-site mapping β€” to help employers reach and convert job seekers.

Its core offerings include HireSocial, a social media recruitment platform designed to automate job postings, and Job Maps, an interactive career-site tool that lets candidates explore open positions visually by location.

Humanly, which is No. 147 on the GeekWire 200 ranked index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups, raised $25 million in Series B funding in April. The startup has raised $52 million to date.

Humanly counts Microsoft, Domino’s, Massage Envy, Worldwide Flight Services, and MGM Resorts and Casinos among its more than 120 customers.

Nine of CareerArc’s 13 employees are joining Humanly, which now employs 50 people.

Seattle VR studio Polyarc, creator of β€˜Moss’ series, closes down after almost 12 years

11 September 2026 at 18:41
(Polyarc games press image)

The Seattle-based video game developer behind the award-winning virtual reality adventure Moss has closed its doors.

The announcement was made via Polyarc Games’ LinkedIn page on Friday afternoon. No specific reason was offered for the studio’s closure.

β€œAfter nearly 12 years riding the joyous rollercoaster of emotions that is making video games, our time together has come to an end,” wrote an unnamed Polyarc representative. β€œThank you to everyone at Polyarc. Our work is now finished.”

Twenty-nine employees will be dismissed due to the studio’s closure, including co-founders Chris Alderson, Danny Bulla, and CEO Tam Armstrong. Polyarc has posted a list of contact information and profiles for all affected employees, in an attempt to help them line up their next positions.

Polyarc’s first and best-known release was 2018’s Moss, where players helped guide a young mouse named Quill through a fantasy world on a journey to save her uncle. It was followed by 2022’s Moss: Book II, a direct sequel that continued Quill’s story, and the 2025 strategy spin-off Glassbreakers.

Polyarc’s most recent release was this year’s Moss: The Forgotten Relic for PC and console, which collected both Moss games into a single non-VR experience.

Armstrong, Bulla, and Alderson founded Polyarc as a startup in 2015. All three were former employees of Bungie in Bellevue, where they’d all worked in different capacities on Bungie’s online shooter Destiny.

Polyarc’s closure comes almost six months after its announcement in March that it’d had to significantly reduce the size of the company, and almost eight months after a wave of layoffs at Meta that forced a major reduction at Bellevue, Wash.-based VR studio Camouflaj (Republique, Batman: Arkham Shadow).

As noted in January, Meta is perhaps the largest current player in the virtual reality sector, largely off the ubiquity of its standalone Quest headsets. When Meta decided to deemphasize its VR efforts in January, reportedly in favor of wearable computing and AI research, it touched off a negative ripple effect throughout the virtual reality field.

There is a chance that Valve’s upcoming Steam Frame may serve as an effective bailout for the VR sector by reigniting consumer interest, but at time of writing, the Frame has no release date. It’s apparently imminent, as suggested by a big leak in August, but there’s nothing definite. If the Steam Machine’s release in June was any indication, however, we can assume the Steam Frame will launch without warning on some random Tuesday morning in the next two months. (Edit, 9/14: Or the following Monday after this was written.)

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