Tiago Maximo’s grandparents were shepherds. They word solid, handmade boots into the fields, trudging through dry grass and mud, over rutted country roads and through barnyards. He brought that tradition – handmade boots for people who appreciate quality – to his business, Urban Shepherd – where sources boots from Portugal to sell to customers in […]
Social planning apps have yet to take the world by storm. A handful of these apps tried and failed years ago, and even Swarm decided to ditch that methodology and focus on location logging. But a new Y Combinator-backed company seems to be picking up traction. And shockingly enough, the winning ingredient seems to be […]
What’s the biggest motivating factor behind automakers embracing autonomous vehicles and self-driving? You might think ‘safety’ or maybe even consumer demand, but in truth the biggest driver might be China and its incentivization programs for automakers. Much like China’s rules for qualifying for subsidies and restrictions on selling vehicles in market have led to automakers […]
[embedded content] Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had a corking set of news to get through, so we rounded up the usual gang (Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself), and brought in Eric Feng from Kleiner Perkins to help us get under […]
Waymo’s autonomous trucking program is coming along – though we haven’t heard much about it since discovering it was a real thing last year, Waymo today announced that it’s launching a pilot program in Atlanta to focus specifically on self-driving trucks and automated logistics. The pilot is being done in partnership with Google, another Alphabet […]
Dropbox is not messing around. Two weeks ago it announced its IPO. Just last week it announced a big partnership with Google and today comes news that it is integrating more deeply with Salesforce. Dropbox and Salesforce have danced a bit in the past as cloud companies tend to do, but today’s announcement is a […]
They say you learn more through failure than success. After building bots for a few years, I’d say I definitely agree. While I’ve had a head start, I know many businesses are thinking about bots for the first time. That’s why I want to share ten things I wish I knew before I started. Learn […]
Nick Halstead’s new startup, InfoSum, is launching its first product today — moving one step closer to his founding vision of a data platform that can help businesses and organizations unlock insights from big data silos without compromising user privacy, data security or data protection law. So a pretty high bar then. If the underlying […]
You probably expect technology to be accessible everywhere. Whether you’re outside on a run, traveling somewhere by train, or in a cafe with limited wi-fi service, you don’t want to stop what you’re doing if you run into connection problems, especially if you’re in the middle of watching YouTube videos. Which is why it doesn’t […]
SoftBank’s Vision Fund invested $300 million into dog walking app Wag earlier this year, and a new deal on the other side of the world is evoking similarities. Mad Paws, an Australia-based startup that offers dog-walking, pet-sitting and other services for the fluffy friend in your life, has pulled in a $5 million investment led […]
Previously, the ECS service scheduler relied on the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) to report container health status and to restart unhealthy containers. This required you to configure your ECS Service to use a load balancer, and only supported HTTP and TCP health-checks. Now, in addition to supporting ELB health checks, Amazon ECS integrates with Docker […]
Boxed, the site for buying food and household items in bulk, has turned down a $400 million acquisition offer from Kroger, Bloomberg reports. Earlier this year, word on the street was that Boxed was in talks with Kroger to be acquired for about $500 million. At the time, other retailers were rumored to also be […]
AWS Service Catalog, used by enterprises, system integrators, and managed service providers to organize, govern, provision, and operate cloud resources on AWS, now allows customers to customize the look and feel of the console. Customers can brand their AWS Service Catalog console to match their internal applications, making the user experience more seamless when moving […]
Redshift Spectrum, a feature of Amazon Redshift, enables you to use your existing Business Intelligence tools to analyze data stored in your Amazon S3 data lake. For example, you can now directly query JSON and Ion data, such as client weblogs, stored in S3 to gain deeper insights from the data. To learn more about […]
This is the best news you’ll hear all day: Super Smash Bros. is coming to the Nintendo Switch this year. Nintendo dropped a new teaser for the game, which is as-yet untitled, during its Nintendo Direct webcast on Thursday. If you’re not familiar with the franchise, you are living a sad, unfulfilling existence. Actually, though, […]
Starting today, AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also known as AWS Managed Microsoft AD, enables you to manage administrative permissions in your managed directory more easily. You can now grant administrative permissions to users from your existing Microsoft Active Directory (AD) by adding these users to the new AWS delegated AD security groups […]
Life has not been pretty for Blue Apron, the meal-kit company that went public last June. Today, Blue Apron’s shares dropped to a record low following Weight Watchers announcing it would launch its own meal kits to be sold in grocery stores. At its lowest, Blue Apron was trading at $2.02 per share. The meal-kit […]
New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival released its Immersive lineup this morning, including 20 virtual reality and augmented reality pieces in the Virtual Arcade, plus five that are part of the Storyscapes competition. The lineup includes some big names from the film world, including Terrence Malick (Together), Laurie Anderson (Chalkroom), Rosario Dawson (BattleScar), Lupita Nyong’o […]
The AWS Solutions team communicates AWS architectural best practices and develops standardized, automated solutions for the platform. Our offerings currently live on the AWS Answers webpage, where customers can browse common questions by category to find answers in the form of succinct Solution Briefs or comprehensive Solutions, which are AWS-vetted, automated, turnkey reference implementations that […]
Earlier this month, Twitter began soliciting proposals from the public to help the platform capture, measure and evaluate healthy interactions. Today, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and other members of the team held a public conversation via Periscope about the company’s new initiative to measure healthy interactions on Twitter. As Twitter previously noted, the goal is […]
Arama Kukutai Contributor Arama Kukutai is a co-founder and partner of Finistere Ventures. More posts by this contributor: Driving new revenue sources through a digital ag revolution Spencer Maughan Contributor Spencer Maughan is a partner at Finistere Ventures. The disruption over the last decade in the retail food value chain gained momentum in 2017 with […]
Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed, secure Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution which runs on AWS. With WorkSpaces, you can provision virtual, cloud-based desktops for your users, providing them access to the documents, applications, and resources they need, anywhere, anytime, from any supported device. Education institutions can use WorkSpaces to deliver critical course software and materials to […]
Samsung’s new Galaxy S9 may not quite live up to the iPhone X when it comes to Samsung’s implementation of a Face ID-style system or its odd take on AR emoji. But that’s not going to matter much to Samsung device owners – not only because the S9 is a good smartphone overall, but because […]
Facebook’s Oculus suffered a prolonged, embarrassing outage yesterday because someone at the company forgot to update a certificate which expired and plunged the company’s network of Oculus Rifts into darkness. For nearly the entire day, users were unable to jump into VR. For gamers it was an annoyance, but with more and more companies looking […]
File Gateway enables on-premises applications to access objects in S3 as files. File contents and metadata are cached locally for optimal performance. The refresh cache operation synchronizes the local cache with S3. The new Amazon CloudWatch Event occurs when a refresh cache operation finishes. Combined with file upload notification events, it enables you to automate […]
Uber has hired Assaf Ronen, Amazon’s now-former vice president of voice and natural user interface shopping, Recode first reported. As SVP and head of product at Uber, Ronen will help Uber “lean in on product this year,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote in a memo obtained by Recode. Ronen is set to replace Uber Head […]
You may remember that in December, a pair of new planets was discovered via machine learning, using NASA data and Google Brain ingenuity. If you’re interested in doing the same, the team behind the system has just released the code they used to accomplish this astronomical achievement, which they call AstroNet. The Kepler space telescope […]
Availability Zones located in AWS Regions (physical locations) consist of one or more discrete data centers, each of which has redundant power, networking and connectivity, and is housed in separate facilities. Each Availability Zone (AZ) has multiple Internet connections and power connections to multiple grids.
If you stand in juuuust the right spot in Disneyland — or if you turn your head at certain times on certain rides — you can get fleeting glimpses into Disney’s upcoming Star Wars Land (or “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge”, as it’s more officially known) as it’s being built. You can’t see much, of course; […]
Want to know whether the Samsung Galaxy S9 is worth picking up when it arrives March 16? Good news: I’ve got 4,000 words on the matter that you can read over here. For those who don’t have the time to take all of that in, however, we’ve also put together this handy guide to the […]
We encourage you to upgrade your RDS for SQL Server database instances at your convenience. You can upgrade with just a few clicks in the RDS Management Console. We have enabled the upgrade paths from SQL Server 2012, 2014, and 2016 to SQL Server 2017; if you’re on SQL Server 2008, please upgrade to any […]
Over the last couple of years, Google has been slowly (very slowly!) opening up the ability for celebrities, politicians, sports teams, museums and local businesses to post social media-like updates directly to its search result pages. Today, after testing this in a few markets over the course of the last year, Google is also opening […]
Streaming giant Netflix is expecting to get even bigger this year. Netflix, which has 117 million subscribers worldwide and brought in $11 billion in revenue last year, expects to hit $15 billion in revenue this year, USA Today reports. That’s based on a prediction Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made at an event this week. Earlier […]
When Noah Isaacs and John Meadows were best friends, growing up in Berkeley, Ca., they dreamed of remaining friends for life. What they didn’t imagine was living together in New York and starting a company together, yet they have. It’s called Bowery Valuation, and it’s aiming to bring commercial real estate appraisals — currently an […]
Google’s AMP project is not uncontroversial. Users often love it because it makes mobile sites load almost instantly. Publishers often hate it because they feel like they are giving Google too much control in return for better placement on its search pages. Now Google proposes to bring some of the lessons it learned from AMP to the […]
There are tons of services out there from Slack to Jira that are designed to help developers communicate with one another about code issues, but there is a surprising dearth of tools that have been purpose-built to provide communication capabilities right in the IDE where developers work. CodeStream, a member of the Y Combinator Winter […]
Snapchat now lets you @-tag someone in your Story, creating a swipe up “more” option that shows the tagged person’s name, handle, Bitmoji, and an Add button so you can follow them too. The feature could let friends call each other out in Stories, or promote their favorite influencers by making it easy for people […]
Security giant McAfee is acquiring Canadian VPN provider TunnelBear. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed. McAfee said that it plans to integrate TunnelBear’s technologies into the company’s own VPN product, Safe Connect. The TunnelBear team will also keep working on TunnelBear products under its own brand. According to the announcement, TunnelBear was a profitable […]
Over the last year or so daily fantasy sports companies like FanDuel and DraftKings have shifted their focus towards building products that are simple enough for even casual sports fans to play. Today FanDuel is announcing their latest product designed for casual sports fans, called Bracket Pick’em. The game is dead simple – users pick five […]
Myst is a strange title: essentially a Hypercard stack so big it had to be loaded on a CD-ROM, it was also one of the most intriguing and visually exciting games to come out in years. It has aged poorly, but Cyan, its developer, may be giving it a fresh coat of paint for the […]
While some don’t care for the hit novel Ready Player One, it’s hard to deny that the book captured the hearts and minds of millions as it climbed the NYT Bestseller’s list in 2011. At the end of this month, a film adaptation of the book, directed by Stephen Spielberg, will be released in theaters. […]
A PhD candidate in Computer Science at Columbia Engineering, Brian A. Smith, created a new system for blind gamers who want to get a little racing in. The system, called racing auditory display or RAD, is truly amazing. It lets the visually impaired play racing games without “seeing” the screen. Instead, the audio output tells […]
Back in 2016 after Snapchat rebranded the company name to Snap Inc to reflect its status as a camera company and more than just Snapchat, an existing publicly-traded business by the name of Snap Interactive filed a trademark infringement lawsuit to bar the change. Snap Interactive’s concern: it was already distributing social network apps and using the […]
Trina Chiasson says a lot of cricket farmers will talk about how figuring out when they are laying their eggs is an art — and she hopes to turn it into a science. She and her co-founder James Ricci started Ovipost, a new startup looking to optimize the right conditions for a cricket grower to […]
A 1.3 Tbps DDoS attack – essentially a massive torrent of data aimed at a single target – nearly took down network provider Akamai on March 1. While the attack itself is notable more interesting is what was hidden inside the attack itself. The attack used a memcached exploit which is a legitimate service on […]
Tesla’s Model 3 is making progress heading out to customers (though not as much as either Tesla or those on the waiting list would like) and as a result, we got a chance to spend some time in one of the new production models that just rolled off the line. The Model 3 is a […]
Disney plans to include Star Wars and Marvel TV shows as part of the lineup in its upcoming streaming service, but details about those shows have been scant until today, when the company announced that Jon Favreau will be writing and producing a live action Star Wars series. While Favreau is best-known for directing films like […]
Blockchain is potentially the most disruptive new technology since the internet itself, and that’s why TechCrunch is proud to announce our first event dedicated entirely to blockchain, crypto and the future of the internet. Building on the hugely successful Disrupt San Francisco 2017 event, which included discussions on blockchain startups, cryptocurrency and ICOs with guests […]
As ecommerce grows here in the United States, there are still some significant hurdles for the Latin American market. Credit card penetration is lower than the U.S. and there isn’t the same infrastructure for shipping, meaning that returns are far more tedious. That’s where Ropeo comes in. Ropeo was founded by Alejandro Casas, Santiago Gomez, […]
Luther Systems, the London based enterprise blockchain technology startup founded in 2016 by a former Stanford PhD and ex-Tesla and Apple engineer, has secured $1.5m seed round back in a round led by Firstminute Capital. The startup says it employs blockchain and smart contracts to solve complex large-scale business inefficiencies across number of industries. The […]
Twitter is taking some steps to combat cryptocurrency scammers on its platform. But these are best classified as ‘baby steps’ at this point. The company does not currently have a specific ad policy relating to cryptocurrency and ICO related ads — which Facebook banned in January. “We allow ads that don’t violate the Twitter Advertising rules,” […]
India’s Prime Venture Partners has refueled its tanks for more angel investing after it announced a new fund of INR 400 crore, or around $60 million. Started by three managing partners — serial entrepreneurs Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya and Amit Somani — in 2011, this fund represents the third (and largest) investment vehicle for the firm. Its previous […]
When Backlinko released its analysis of 10,000 Google Home voice queries — we were fascinated. After all, we do spend a good chunk of time around here thinking, talking, and writing about voice search. Heck — I even filled my home with three different smart speakers to see which one worked best. And when it […]
Atom Tickets, an app that combines online movie ticket booking with social features, said today that it has raised a $60 million Series C led by Fidelity Investments, with participation from returning investors Lionsgate, Disney and Twentieth Century Fox Film. All three studios contributed to Atom Tickets’ $50 million Series B, which was announced two […]
To understand how Instagram’s algorithm works, it’s important to consider the purpose behind it: the algorithm aims to delight you. If it doesn’t show you interesting and engaging content, you’ll exit the app. The algorithm needs to keep you scrolling. How does the Instagram Algorithm work? When deciding how high your post should show up […]
French startup Qarnot unveiled a new computing heater specifically made for cryptocurrency mining. You’ve read that right, the QC1 is a heater for your home that features a passive computer inside. And this computer is optimized for mining. While most people use laptops, back in the golden days of computer towers, you could heat a […]
MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s most hallowed educational institutions is turning its attention to Southeast Asia where it hopes to plant the seed of innovation among a new generation of potential entrepreneurs. That’s through MIT’s Global Startup Workshop (GSW), a 20-year-old conference on innovation and technology, which is headed back to Southeast […]
Getting your kids to school might be a lot easier in an autonomous future – Volkswagen brought its SEDRIC multi-passenger autonomous concept shuttle back to the Geneva Motor Show for a second year in a row to show you exactly how. The SEDRIC School Cool Bus concept vehicle is done up in scholastic yellow, with […]
To mark International Women’s Day, Google will start letting business owners identify their listings as “Women led” on Google My Business. Once enabled, this means their business entry on Google Maps or Google Search will display a female symbol captioned “Women led” alongside other attributes, or badges which give users more information at a glance […]
SolarisBank, the Berlin-based “banking platform” co-founded by fintech company builder Finleap, appears to be on quite a roll. The company, which now claims nearly 60 corporate clients who offer various financial services powered by solarisBank, has closed €56.6 million in Series B funding in a round that includes a number of new strategic and financial […]
It seems like each new feature Square adds to its Cash app brings it one step closer to being a de-facto bank account for its users. Case in point, the app just rolled out support for ACH direct deposits, meaning users can now get their paycheck or other deposits put directly into their Cash app […]
MoviePass has issued an update for its iOS app that removes “unused app location capability,” apparently a response to widespread concern after the company’s CEO said: “We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards.” An earlier statement from the company was “exploring utilizing location-based marketing,” though the […]
The Fabric, an early stage investment company developing new infrastructure technologies, has raised $15 million for its third investment vehicle. Announced at the Montgomery Summit in Santa Monica, Calif., the new financing came from Verizon Ventures (the investment arm of TechCrunch’s parent company’s parent company) and March Capital Partners a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm. […]
Instant access policy updates are available on all supported Elasticsearch versions (1.5, 2.3, 5.1, 5.3, 5.5 and 6.0) and in all supported regions. Amazon Elasticsearch Service is available in 17 regions globally: US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (Oregon, N. California), AWS GovCloud (US), Canada (Central), South America (Sao Paulo), EU (Ireland, London, Frankfurt, […]
Every marketer has a story about getting penalized by Google. Although many websites have evidently been punished (not just by big algorithmic updates, but also by one of the 400,000 tiny manual actions Google takes), the average marketer or webmaster hasn’t noticed when they have. According to Kissmetrics, only 5% of penalized websites are […]
Travis Kalanick, the controversial co-founder and one-time chief executive of Uber is launching a new investment fund called the 10100 Fund. According to an announcement on his Twitter account, the new fund will focus on “large-scale job creation”. Investment areas are to include real estate, e-commerce, and emerging innovations in China and India. It’s the […]
The 2018 Geneva Motor Show is just getting started for the general public, but the press days are wrapped and we’ve seen a ton of stuff. There’s a lot on TechCrunch to look back at if you’re curious about highlights, but the video above also provides a look at some of the more interesting, out […]
Tesla is putting its new electric Semi to work, with its first run as a ‘production’ vehicle – for a familiar client. Tesla itself is the customer, as the trucks were equipped with trailers loaded up with battery packs fresh from the Gigafactory assembly line, heading to the Tesla Fremont car factory in California. Elon […]
With the new AWS Service Catalog AutoTags, provisioned resources will be tagged with the unique identifiers for Portfolio, Product, and User. This provides a set of tags that reflect the AWS Service Catalog structure of portfolios, products, and users that customers have configured in the catalog. AutoTags do not count against the customer’s 50-tag limit. […]
You can deploy the connector from your own AWS account in less than an hour. After deployment, you can easily establish near real-time managed feeds for selected data, get your data to Amazon S3, keep it current, and explore and analyze your data with AWS analytics services such as Amazon Elasticsearch (Amazon ES) with Kibana […]
Someone at Oculus screwed up pretty badly today, an expired certificate appears to have soft-bricked all of the company’s Rift VR headsets with users still unable to fire up software on the devices with no word of an incoming fix from the company yet. Issues were first reported several hours ago on Reddit, where a post on […]
Snap is laying off around 100 employees that are part of its engineering staff, according to multiple reports from CNBC and Cheddar. The company expects to lay off as much as 100 people in the engineering department, according to those reports. It’s another sign of potentially re-aligning efforts as it looks to remake itself into […]
Welcome to another rollercoaster day for the cryptocurrency community. In just a few minutes, bitcoin price crashed from $10,740 to $9,690, which represents a 10.8 percent crash. As always, it’s a bit hard to know for sure what’s happening. But one company in particular is having a bad day. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has spotted some […]
YouTube Studio, the video sharing network’s revamped channel management system, launched into beta last June, will now become the default experience for creators. The company announced today that YouTube Studio will began to reach many creators in the weeks ahead, though the option to switch back to the Classic view will remain available. The public […]
TechCrunch’s Disrupt events are known for big launch announcements, like the first public rollout of Dag Kittlaus’ Siri-killer Viv, as well as ground-breaking interviews with the top figures in the start-up and technology world, like Marc Benioff, Vitalik Buterin, Diane Greene, Ann Wojcicki, and hundreds more. Those interviews and TechCrunch’s storied Startup Battlefield, devour three […]
The best bot on Messenger just got better. We’ve teamed up with Chatfuel and Bitext to add Bitext’s NLP Middleware to the TechCrunch Messenger bot. This enhanced version adds functionality for conversational interaction, improved natural language understanding, and unique features like negation understanding. You can check out our new and improved Messenger bot here. To get […]
Previously, you had to write compliance checks as scripts in Systems Manager to receive configuration compliance information. Now, you can use InSpec to create custom configuration compliance profiles, written in InSpec’s human readable Domain Specific Language (DSL). You can also use prebuilt profiles created by the InSpec community. For example, you can run scans using […]
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a warning on cryptocurrency exchanges. The SEC says that many exchanges are currently unregulated and can do whatever they want with your money. As an investor, you should be extremely careful. As a company running an exchange, you should expect a crackdown soon. The SEC first assumes […]
Wyoming, a wide-open state with plenty of free wind power, is continuing to be a surprising leader in cryptocurrency legislation. To wit: their recent passing of H.B. No. 0070, a bill that allows the sale of “open Blockchain tokens” to be exempt from regulation and money sending legislation. These tokens are very specific in their […]
Just like in the last two years, Google is using the beginning of March to launch the first developer preview of the next version of Android. Android P, as it’s currently called, is still very much a work in progress and Google isn’t releasing it into its public Android beta channel for over-the-air updates just […]
Microsoft today announced its AI Platform for Windows developers, a new set of tools that will soon help developers to bring the machine learning models they trained in the cloud to their desktop apps. The AI platform in Windows 10, which will launch with the next major version of Windows, will make use of the […]
Google’s messaging strategy may still seem chaotic to many, but the basic tenet of how it wants the public to think about Hangouts, Hangouts Meet, Hangouts Chat, Allo and Duo is that Allo/Duo are for consumers and Hangouts Meet/Chat are for business users. Hangouts itself is meant to… actually, I don’t know what it’s meant […]
CBS All Access, the network’s over-the-top streaming service for cord cutters, will invest in more original programming, as competition in the market heats up thanks to upcoming entries from Viacom and Disney on the horizon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS All Access is now promising six or seven new original programs will be on […]
AWS Snowball is a data transport solution that accelerates moving terabytes to petabytes of data into and out of AWS using storage appliances designed to be secure for physical transport. Using Snowball helps to eliminate challenges that can be encountered with large-scale data transfers including high network costs, long transfer times, and security concerns. Beyond […]
[embedded content] When future generations look back on 2018 what will they remember? Not much, I suspect, except for this amazing robot that can solve a Rubik’s cube in .38 seconds. The video, above, shows the cube in an unsolved position and then the actuators jump into action, slamming squares into place like some kind […]
Fishbrain, the Sweden-made mobile app and social network for sport fishing, is disclosing $13.5 million in Series B funding. The round is led by B Capital Group, the VC fund founded by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, with participation from SoftBank Ventures Korea, and existing investors Northzone, and Industrifonden. The new cash injection, which brings total […]
Nearly one in five U.S. adults today have access to a smart speaker, according to new research out this week from Voicebot.ai. That means adoption of these voice-powered devices has grown from around 1 percent reach among U.S. adults to nearly 20 percent in just two years – or 47.3 million U.S. adults. To clarify, […]
Smart thermostat maker Ecobee just wrapped up a $61 million Series C, bringing the Toronto-based company’s total funding to $146 million. This latest round features investments from Energy Impact Partners, Thomvest, Relay Ventures and, most notably, Amazon’s Alexa Fund, which has taken a particularly interest in the company’s products of late. No surprise, really. Ecobee […]
Geniac, the London-based startup that provided an “office as a service” for small and medium-sized businesses, is soon to enter the deadpool. TechCrunch has learned that majority owner Grant Thornton, the international professional services company, has made the decision to shutter Geniac as of April 5th. Customers were informed at the beginning of this month […]
Windows 10S is, in the simplest terms, Microsoft’s Chrome OS competitor. A spiritual successor to RT, the operating system is a slimmed down version of Windows 10 with added security (by way of locked down app installs) and lower hardware requirements designed to be run on sub-$300 systems that can be purchased in bulk by […]
S&P Global announced today that it will acquire Kensho, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup that has concentrated on artificial intelligence and analytics for big financial institutions. The total value of the deal is $550 million in a mix of cash and stock. Kensho, which counted S&P Global as a client/partner and an investor, launched in 2013 and […]
Magic Leap still hasn’t released a product, but they’re continuing to raise a lot of cash to get there. The Plantation, Florida-based augmented reality startup announced today that it has raised $461 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment arm, The Public Investment Fund. The Saudi Arabian fund contributed $400 million of the raise, with […]
Amazon announced this morning it will offer a low-cost version of its Prime membership program to qualifying recipients of Medicaid. The program will bring the cost of Prime down from the usual $10.99 per month to about half that, at $5.99 per month, while still offering the full range of Prime perks, including free, two-day shipping […]
Atomwise, which uses deep learning to shorten the process of discovering new drugs, has raised a $45 million Series A. The round was led by Monsanto Growth Ventures, Data Collective (DCVC) and B Capital Group. Baidu Ventures, Tencent and Dolby Family Ventures, which are all new investors in Atomwise, also participated, as well as returning […]
After bringing its pared-down Android app Messenger Lite to mature markets like the US and UK last autumn, Facebook is expanding its features to ramp up engagement. Today, the company announced that it is adding video chat into the mix. Messenger Lite, first launched in 2015 was initially part of an effort from Facebook to build more […]
It seems that everyone agrees that meetings are a time suck. There have been many attempts to use technology to make it easier to organize and run them, but Voicera, a Bay area startup, is attacking the problem from a different angle. It wants to make it simpler to record meetings and pull out action items […]
Atom Bank, the startup based out of Durham, England that operates a mobile-only bank targeting consumers between the ages of 18 and 34, has raised another big round of funding. The company today announced another £149 million ($206 million) in funding to double down on its existing business — focused currently on savings accounts, mortgages […]
In the search for top talent, every recruiter prefers an informed candidate. Why? Informed candidates make the hiring process easier by asking smarter questions, doing the necessary research on the company, and tailoring their expectations to the role they’re applying for. So how can these job-seeking unicorns be spotted? Here are a number of indicators […]
In 2021 the UK government intends the country to be well on its way to a driverless future. No, not a cheap joke about Brexit — yesterday it announced a three-year regulatory review to “pave the way for self-driving cars”. This follows the budget, in November, when the government announced a tranche of funding for technology innovations […]
“I’m not comfortable putting my name on this.” I received this comment once from a colleague at a previous employer, responding to an article I wrote for him under his byline. But when I dug in, I found that his issue with the piece were a few small errors that were easy to fix. Sweeping […]
The Geneva Motor Show is home to many supercars and outlandish apparitions, but the collaboration between Italdesign, Audi and Airbus on the Pop.Up Next flying car concept is one of the more out there. It’s an updated version fo the Pop.Up that Italdesign and Airbus brought to the show last year, this time including an […]
TechCrunch is proud to bring Startup Battlefield Europe to Paris in partnership with VivaTech, which takes place on May 24th – 25. Thousands of founders, business leaders, investors, academics, students, and media will descend on the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles to see the future of tech. And TechCrunch will be there searching for the first winner […]
Messaging and payments continue to converge in India after Google added chat features to its Tez payment app in India. The move follows the introduction of peer-to-peer payments inside WhatsApp in India, its largest country worldwide with over 200 million users, last month and it now allows users of Tez to communicate directly with contacts […]
IBM today announced PAIRS Geoscope, a new experimental cloud-based service that makes it easier for developers to work with large amounts of geospatial data from across a wide variety of sources. The service handles ingesting, integrating and managing the data and allows developers to focus on their queries. Indeed, it’s the part of the service […]
Ventech has been around for 20 years, which is the equivalent of 80 years in tech time. And the VC firm is still going strong as it just announced the initial closing of a new fund. The firm has raised $170 million (€140 million) and wants to reach the $250 million hard cap (€200 million) […]
This week on Technotopia I talked to Jonathan Zufi, creator of the LifeClock One, a replica of the watch worn by Snake Pliskin in Escape From New York. Zufi loves design and his insight on what makes something a timeless classic – even when it comes to computer hardware – is fascinating. Zufi is also […]
Amazon Aurora combines the performance and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. It provides up to five times better performance than the typical MySQL database, together with increased scalability, durability, and security. For more information, please visit the Amazon Aurora product page, and see the AWS Region […]
Travel websites get redesigned all the time, but you just need to visit the homepage to tell that the team at Condé Nast Traveler has something different in mind. Instead of a standard river of articles, or a menu for navigating to different sections and travel destinations, there’s just a declaration in large text: “To all […]
Genetic testing powerhouse 23andMe announced today that it’s officially received the FDA go-ahead to launch a direct-to-consumer testing kit for genes linked to various forms of cancer. The forthcoming kit, which will be made available without a prescription, tests for BRCA1 and BRCA2, which are linked to higher risk of ovarian, break and prostate cancer. […]
When you’re the runaway leader in a growing industry you typically have two opinions: A) Stay in your lane and let other companies pop up to solve the industry’s problems. B) Try to offer as many products as possible and own the entire customer experience from A-Z (no Amazon pun intended). If there’s any doubt which option […]
Whether you’re a developer who’s working on mobile apps, or just someone enjoying the millions of apps available for your phone, today is a very special day. It’s the 10-year anniversary of the original iPhone SDK. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that this release changed a lot of people’s lives. I know it […]
Drive Up is Target’s latest attempt to blur the lines between online ordering and brick and mortar. Customers order things through the company’s app, drive up to a store, and employees will bring the purchases out to their car — the very literal embodiment of meeting customers halfway. After beta testing the offering in its […]
Airbnb is bringing on Greg Greeley, Amazon’s current VP of Prime & Delivery Experience, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote in a blog post today. His first day at Airbnb will be March 18. At Airbnb, Greeley will be responsible for leading the home-sharing startup’s Homes unit. The Homes unit entails Airbnb’s standard offering as well […]
Two major car manufacturers, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Volkswagen, announced today they will begin to offer free Apple Music subscriptions of up to six months to customers purchasing new vehicles with CarPlay starting on May 1, 2018. The offers are meant to help boost Apple Music subscribers, and arrive shortly after rival Spotify filed to […]
Google Lens, the company’s visual search engine that can recognize what’s in your images and scan business cards, among other things, is now rolling out to all Google Photos users on Android. This marks Google’s first major expansion for Lens, which was previously only available to those who had access to the latest Pixel phones. […]
A new micro VC fund backed by a host of well-known names in the Estonia tech scene is de-cloaking this week. Dubbed “Superangel“, the new fund is targeting a final closing of €20 million but has already raised €12 million. It will make pre-seed and seed investments of between €50,000 and €250,000 on average per […]
HQ is redefining mobile, creating through its twice-daily trivia games a sense of urgency that pierces the monotony of our social feeds. Now it’s raised a big round of funding to turn its scrappy operation into the Jeopardy from tomorrow. But just like its 12-round games, we’ve got 12 questions (and some answers) for HQ: […]
One thing thing the Amazon Echo and Google Home can’t do: deliver room-melting superpowers. Sure, Siri functionality is still pretty limited at launch, but who’s going to argue with the efficacy of a smart speaker that imbues the listener with matter altering abilities resulting in an epic dance battle with one’s own reflection? All lofty […]
If you’ve ever been stuck in a boring meeting, chances are you might spend the time busy answering messages from email or Slack — or even just browsing around the Internet while you wait for it to finally end. And there are a lot of factors that go into making that meeting boring, from the […]
What’s better than building a company in a fast growing industry? Building a service provider for all the other companies in that fast growing industry. While Mighty started as a plaintiff financing platform it’s shifted to a a software company that’s building an “operating system for legal and medical founders”. Essentially the startup has created […]
ELSA, an app whose name stands for “English Language Speech Assistant” (and not the popular Disney character!), has raised $3.2 million for its A.I.-assisted language learning platform that teaches people how to speak English. Unlike other courses that focus mainly on teaching grammar and vocabulary, ELSA uses artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology to help […]
Dyson referred to today’s event in New York as the company’s “biggest launch, ever,” unveiling a new vacuum and air purifier that have all the sort of pricey premium components we’ve come to anticipate from the UK company. Namesake James Dyson was on hand at the event, giving a bit of a history lesson on the […]
A good home security camera is easy to install while offering surprising peace of mind. The Ring Floodlight Cam, $249 and available now, offers both. The camera mounts where your old floodlight would have been – if you have a standard outdoor electrical box it will connect right into your current setup and it even […]
Volvo turned its race-tuning sub brand Polestar into its own company with a focus on electric performance last year, and at the Geneva Motor Show this week it revealed the Polestar 1 GT, a hybrid electric car that’s designed to go toe-to-toe with Tesla for performance-loving customers eager for alternative powertrain options. In person, the […]
Greg Greeley, Amazon VP of Amazon Prime and delivery experience, is leaving the company after 18 years of work at Amazon, he posted on LinkedIn last night. During his time at Amazon, he held a number of senior leadership positions. Greeley is credited for helping create Amazon Prime and previously built Amazon’s European business. In a […]
Dropbox first appeared on the startup scene with its debut at Y Combinator Demo Day way back in the summer of 2007. Since then, the company has grown to hundreds of millions of users and to a value of more than $10 billion dollars — putting it in a cherry position for a much-anticipated initial […]
Lucidworks has been helping large organizations like Reddit with complex content build search tools that reach across massive content stores, but the company wanted to make the underlying search technology available to a wider market. Today, it released Lucidworks Site Search, a cloud service that enables companies to embed Lucidworks search in any application or […]
