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 GM has launched its first major international city for its Maven car sharing product. The service is going live in Toronto, Canada’s largest city by population, with rates beginning at $9 per hour which include gas and insurance coverage. The launch follows a prior pilot in the Waterloo region nearby, but Toronto is the first launch at scale Maven has undertaken outside of the U.S.… Read More

 Starling, the U.K. challenger bank that offers a mobile-only current account, continues to execute on its marketplace banking strategy. Following the required regulatory approval, the Starling Marketplace is adding a number of financial services integrations, spanning pensions, savings, travel insurance and mortgage brokerage. Read More

 Despite the controversy surrounding YouTube celebrity Logan Paul (thanks to a string of videos exploiting an apparent suicide and tasering a rat), the young media personality hasn’t done anything to warrant being kicked off of the platform that made him a star. That’s according to chief executive Susan Wojcicki, who defended her company’s treatment of Paul’s video… Read More

 Finnish fintech startup Zervant, which provides online invoicing software for small business and entrepreneurs across Europe, has raised €6 million in funding. The round was led by Tesi, with participation from Northzone, NFT Ventures, and Conor Venture Partners. Read More

 YouTube Red will expand its subscription service to as many as 100 countries, according to YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki . Speaking at Recode’s Code Media conference in Huntington Beach, Calif., Wojcicki said that YouTube will be looking to expand its Red service “to many more countries”. The subscription service first launched in October 2015 as a $9.99 subscription… Read More

 The fallout from the year’s biggest cryptocurrency hack to date continues. On Monday, Reuters reported that 10 traders who used the Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck are preparing to file a lawsuit with Tokyo’s District Court on Thursday. The plaintiffs will be represented by Hiromu Mochizuki, who has been tweeting some updates about the case. During the aftermath of its recent… Read More

 Apple Music is expanding its subscription music service to 82 new markets — or nearly all of the countries where the service is available, according to people with knowledge of the company’s plans. 79 markets launched today and an additional three markets will go live February 26. Some countries where students memberships — verified by UNiDAYS — are now available… Read More

 Facebook is going to create a new news section in its video streaming platform Facebook Watch to feature breaking news stories. The move, which Campbell Brown, the company’s year-old head of news partnerships, announced onstage at the Code Media conference in Huntington Beach, is part of a broader evolution of Facebook’s news strategy. Read More

 Foxconn, AKA Hon Hai Precision Industry, AKA the company that made your iPhone, is working with digital cinema pioneer RED to create affordable 8K cameras, the company announced. Chairman Terry Gou told reporters in Taipei, the Nikkei’s among them, that the goal is to reduce both the price and the size of such camera systems by two thirds. Read More

 Facebook will begin allowing news publishers to run paywalls inside Facebook’s iOS app starting March 1st. Facebook first started testing paywalls on Android in October, but at the time it couldn’t come to an agreement with Apple about how subscription revenue would be taxed. Today on stage at Code Media, Facebook’s head of news partnerships Campbell Brown said that… Read More

 As Lydia Polgreen sees it, society is currently divided into media haves and have nots, and it’s important for HuffPost to remain mostly free for its readers so that it can serve a group that mostly consumes content for free. Read More

 Overwatch wasn’t what you’d call a “surprise” hit — everyone knew it was going to wipe the floor with its immediate competition. But unlike a lot of games, it still costs money. If you’ve been meaning to give it a shot but don’t feel like shelling out the $40, this weekend the game is free to play on all platforms with no restrictions. Read More

 Homebrew is announcing the close of its third fund. This time they’ve raised $90 million, an increase from $50 million in 2015 and $35 million for its debut fund in 2013. Led by Hunter Walk and Satya Patel, the seed stage venture firm has spent the past five years investing in U.S.-based startups at the onset. Several of its portfolio companies have gone on to raise significant… Read More

 “He wouldn’t have to worry about sending a hookup a picture of his junk! And girls would be way more likely to send him racy photos if they disappeared.” That’s just a taste of juicy details found in “How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story,” a new book coming out tomorrow from former TechCrunch reporter Billy Gallagher. Read More

 We knew this day would come sooner or later. Like the cloned velociraptors before it, Boston Dynamics’ newly redesigned Spot Mini has figured out how to open doors — with either its arm or face, depending on how you look at it. The team behind the Big Dog proves that it’s still the master of viral robotic marketing, even after switching teams from Google to Softbank.… Read More

 Chalk one up to the power of media exposure. The team responsible for building Target’s online registry saw Honeyfund appear on “Shark Tank,” and thought it would be cool to integrate the honeymoon registry service into Target’s own. Today, that integration has gone live across Target’s website, mobile web and in the dedicated Target registry app. The retailer… Read More

 According to serial entrepreneur Jeff Cavins, more than 35 million people each year look to rent an RV — 38 percent of them so-called millennials. Yet they often walk away from the experience empty-handed. The reason, he says: there are fewer than 100,000 commercial owned vehicles available from traditional rental services. Cavins says that his San Francisco-based company, Outdoorsy,… Read More

 Essential knew it had a hard road ahead of it. Andy Rubin and company acknowledged as much when they launched a handset aimed at taking on the likes of Apple and Samsung. Given that the company hasn’t issued anything in the way of official numbers thus far, a new batch of numbers from IDC are the best we have to go on at the moment — and things don’t look great. Read More

 You know that feeling of awe and wonder you had when you were a kid and you saw something huge and amazing? My blackened heart hasn’t felt it in years. Turns out all it needed was going to see an historic rocket launch. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch last week was an exhilarating combination of suspense, bureaucracy, and childlike delight at seeing a giant fiery rocket make a big noise. Read More

 Science fiction no more — In an article out today in Nature Biotechnology, scientists were able to show tiny autonomous bots have the potential to function as intelligent delivery vehicles to cure cancer in mice. These DNA nanorobots do so by seeking out and injecting cancerous tumors with drugs that can cut off their blood supply, shriveling them up and killing them. “Using… Read More

 Over the weekend, a little piece of malware was hard at work mining cryptocurrency on government computers. Security researcher Scott Helme first noticed the malware, which he believes was running on more than 4,000 sites, including the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk) and the website for the American court system (uscourts.gov). The malware leveraged the… Read More

 According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple is switching things up for this year’s major updates. Instead of meeting a tight deadline and ticking all the boxes on the checklist, development teams will be able to push back some features if they’re not polished enough. Axios and Bloomberg previously reported that Apple was focusing on stability with iOS 12. You can still expect… Read More

 The Super Bowl is over and the stadiums across the country that once held thousands of fans on any given Sunday will be mostly empty in the off-season, but Tom Brady is still at work. The quarterback who will undeniably go down in NFL history as one of the greatest of all time, is already thinking about his next act. Alongside Michael Strahan (another football great who has made the… Read More

 The Information has a report this morning that Amazon is working on building AI chips for the Echo, which would allow Alexa to more quickly parse information and get those answers. Getting those answers much more quickly to the user, even by a few seconds, might seem like a move that’s not wildly important. But for Amazon, a company that relies on capturing a user’s interest in… Read More

 In a rare move for the online retail giant, Amazon is laying off hundreds of corporate workers in its Seattle headquarters and elsewhere, according to a Seattle Times report. The corporate cuts come after an eight-year hiring spree, taking the company from 5,000 in 2010 to 40,000 in its Seattle headquarters and gobbling up several retail businesses throughout the country. However, according to… Read More

 The obscure Italian coin exchange BitGrail looks to be the latest cryptocurrency cautionary tale. On Friday, the site posted a notice to users informing them that hackers had made off with 17 million units of Nano (XRB), the coin formerly known as RaiBlocks. While Nano was worth as little as 20 cents in late November, prices hovered around $10 late last week, putting the BitGrail losses at… Read More

 Onavo Protect, the VPN client from the data-security app maker acquired by Facebook back in 2013, has now popped up in the Facebook app itself, under the new banner “Protect” in the navigation menu. Clicking through on “Protect” will redirect Facebook users to the “Onavo Protect – VPN Security” app’s listing on the App Store. We’re… Read More

 While a part of the fintech world remains abuzz with crypo-talk, a startup that’s built a business around the more traditional world of payments has raised a significant round of funding as it vies to take on the likes of PayPal, Stripe, Adyen and Dwolla. YapStone, which provides payment services to marketplace-style businesses — customers vary from the likes of HomeAway to… Read More

 The Google Kubernetes Engine (previously known as the Google Container Engine and GKE) now allows all developers to attach Nvidia GPUs to their containers. GPUs on GKE (an acronym Google used to be quite fond of, but seems to be deemphasizing now) have been available in closed alpha for more than half a year. Now, however, this service is in beta and open to all developers who want to run… Read More

 Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), the company’s custom chips for running machine learning workloads written for its TensorFlow framework, are now available to developers. The promise of these Google-designed chips is that they can run specific machine learning workflows significantly faster than the standard GPUs that most developers use today. For Google, one of the… Read More

 The controversial subscription service for movie-goers, MoviePass, is still chasing new customers as it attempts to rapidly grow its user base before its funding runs out. After growing from 1.5 million to 2 million users in less than a month’s time, the company has now teamed up with streaming service Fandor to appeal to potential subscribers with a bundled offer. The two companies… Read More

 Consumer goods giant Unilever, a maker of branded soaps, foodstuffs and personal care items and also one of the world’s biggest online advertisers, has fired a warning shot across the bows of social media giants by threatening to pull ads from digital platforms if they don’t do more to mitigate the spread of what it dubs “toxic” online content — be it fake news… Read More

 Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason are a couple of seasoned billionaire investors, who know a bad deal when they see it, and they definitely don’t like the $6.1 billion deal announced last month to combine Fuji with Xerox. In a blog post published today, they are urging fellow shareholders to reject the offer. You may recall that it was Icahn and Deason, who together own a 15 percent stake in… Read More

 Despite plenty of uncertainty swirling around Instacart and its complex relationship with Whole Foods — now owned by Amazon — investors still seem to not be too worried, and are pouring a fresh big round of financing into the startup that values it at $4.2 billion. Instacart said it raised $200 million in a new funding round this morning led by Coatue Management, as well… Read More

 Stash, the micro-investing app that’s been a hit with first-time investors, announced today it has raised an additional $37.5 million in Series D funding in a round led by Union Square Ventures. Existing investors Breyer Capital, Coatue Management, Entree Capital, Goodwater Capital and Valar Ventures also participated. The company competes with a range of new investment apps –… Read More

 Normally, I wouldn’t be writing about a car seat for TechCrunch but as I’ve been in the market for such an item lately (and have been hit up for all things baby tech as my due date nears) the high-tech Cybex Sirona M with SensorSafe 2.0 stood out. Cybex is manufactured in Germany and is a mostly European brand that’s gaining momentum in the U.S. market. Its newest carseat in… Read More

 Amazon acquired Blink late last year, a maker of affordable, easy to use security cameras powered by AA batteries. The acquisition was reportedly worth around $90 million to Amazon, according to a new report from Reuters, though the terms of the deal were not disclosed by Amazon and it hasn’t provided any comment on the specifics. The Blink acquisition is something that could help… Read More

 XebiaLabs, the Boston-based software startup that helps companies automate DevOps functions, announced a healthy $100 million Series B investment led by Susquehanna Growth Equity and Accel. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $121.5 million. Derek Langone, Xebia’s CEO says they raised the money out of a desire to expand more rapidly. “You always want to raise money… Read More

 Quitting smoking is one of the most difficult things a person can do. But despite the products out there to help, from nicotine patches and gum to ecigarettes to scary PSAs and government programs, few of these products actually get people to the point where they feel confident in their new nicotine-free life. That’s where a new YC-backed company, Quit Genius, comes in. Yusuf Sherwani… Read More

 nOCD, an app created to help people treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, will launch an Android version and add more features after raising a $1 million seed round from early-stage healthcare investment firm 7wire Ventures. Read More

 The “endless runner” genre of games seems inherently stress-generating to me, since it implies running, without end. But Alto’s Adventure, the 2015 game from Toronto developer Snowman, provided an endless runner that was actively and profoundly relaxing, thanks to a mellow, immersive soundtrack and graphics that seem drawn from some kind of new-age zen meditation video.… Read More

 In 2011, WeWork ran an accelerator-type program called WeWork Labs. That program was a bit neglected as the company began to focus on other initiatives, such as international expansion, Powered By We, and acquisitions. But today, WeWork is relaunching WeWork Labs, with 27 spaces secured in 16 markets for 2018. WeWork Labs, which will be run by Chief Product Officer Roee Adler, wants to offer… Read More

 Investors in Indonesia have started a new project aimed at digitizing the kiosk shops that adorn the street of capital city Jakarta. Warung Pintar — ‘smart kiosk store’ — helps street vendors revamp their store with a bright and colorful design, and a range of tech that includes a digital POS, free Wi-Fi, an LCD screen, power bank chargers and more. The venture was… Read More

 In this episode of Technotopia I talk to Jeremy Ring, a former Florida state senator and author of We Were Yahoo!, a meditation on his career as one of the first employees at Yahoo. Ring has a lot to say about the search giant – including plenty of complaints about how things were run over the years – and some insights into technology and modern politics. His book is available now… Read More

 Quietly, Apple has been bringing together a number of moving parts in its strategy around virtual and augmented reality hardware; and now one more element of that has come to light. eMagin, a maker of OLED miniature displays, says that Apple, along with LG, Valve, VR entertainment maker Immerex (which now appears to be operating publicly as Luci), and Stillwater Holdings, are collectively… Read More

 Alibaba Group’s entertainment unit has signed a major licensing deal to show many of Disney’s animated series and movies on Youku, its streaming video service, and other platforms it selects. The agreement covers more than 1,000 episodes from Disney series, as well as many of its films, and means Alibaba is now the largest distributor of Disney animations in China. Read More

 Last fall at Oracle OpenWorld, chairman Larry Ellison showed he was a man of the people by comparing the company’s new autonomous database service to auto-pilot on his private plane. Regardless, those autonomous capabilities were pretty advanced, providing customers with a self-provisioning, self-tuning and self-repairing database. Today, Oracle announced it was expanding that… Read More

 The Snap Map is a feature that received a mixed response when it landed in the Snapchat app, since it basically let you see where all your friends on the platform were at any given time – provided they were okay with sharing that info. Now, there’s a version of Snap Map available for anyone to view on the web, but it’s less about checking out where your pals are at, and… Read More

 Uber has added a feature that will force a six-hour offline break whenever a driver on its platform reaches 12 hours of driving time. The feature is similar to one that Uber has in place in a few markets already around the U.S., which differs depending on local regulations, but this will apply across the U.S., and fully block use of the driver app for accepting trips during the six-hour… Read More

 An attacker injected a crypto mining script into a web plugin’s JavaScript library, and some 4,000 websites — a large number of them taxpayer funded — were co-opted into illegal crypto mining… oopsie… Read More

 TechCrunch is bringing Disrupt back to Europe for the sixth time, and we’re delighted to announce that Berlin, the urban heartland of Europe’s startup scene, will once again be Disrupt’s host city in 2018. Save these Disrupt Berlin dates in your diary: 29-30 November 2018 If you ask,  “Why Berlin?” the answer is simple. Not only is Berlin still Europe’s… Read More

 Magic Leap is the gift that keeps on giving. The company has been working for years on augmented reality technologies and raised a gigantic pile of cash on the way. German media company Axel Springer is announcing today that it is investing an undisclosed amount in Magic Leap. The German company is taking a stake in Magic Leap through its Axel Springer Digital Ventures division. In its… Read More

 Burrow, the U.K. startup founded by ex-VC Pradeep Raman and backed by Passion Capital, is shutting down its online mortgage brokerage service, TechCrunch has learned. The move is the result of a change in strategy as the nascent company pivots to a B2B model, offering software tools to lenders, mortgage networks and brokers. Read More

 On the heels of LimeBike’s expansion into e-bikes, as well as competitor Spin’s expansion into Razor-like electric scooters, LimeBike is unveiling its own take on e-scooters. LimeBike is also officially deploying its e-bikes in Seattle. “This is an exciting and competitive landscape,” LimeBike CEO Toby Sun told TechCrunch. “What you are beginning to see is that… Read More

 Alibaba has furthered its physical retail footprint after it invested another billion dollars into projects to develop its so-called “new retail” strategy which combines online and offline. The Chinese firm, the dominant e-commerce player in its country, gobbled up a 15 percent stake in Beijing Easyhome Furnishing for RMB 5.45 billion, or around $867 million, and pumped $486… Read More

 You probably know Chamillionaire from the song “Ridin,’” but did you know the Grammy Award winner is also a successful startup investor? He has had several favorable outcomes, including Cruise, which sold to General Motors and Maker Studios, which was bought by Disney. Now he’s trying his hand at a startup of his own. If you’re a Chamillionaire superfan, you may already… Read More

 Instagram is testing a feature that will show users when someone else takes a screenshot of their story. Users included in the test are getting a warning that the next time they take a screenshot of a friend’s story the friend will be able to see it, as shown below: Good bye freedom to screenshot IG stories. Thank you, Instagram for the warning. pic.twitter.com/y0pEaVR0Jq —… Read More

 This week’s episode is all about the future. Thanks to technology, the highest capacity rocket platform ever, the Falcon Heavy, blasted into space. Meanwhile, down here on Earth, Uber is working to make urban air travel a thing, and companies are developing products and conducting studies that can detect diabetes, just by wearing the Apple Watch. This is the world we live in. On this… Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Denis Pombriant, Doc Searls, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Saturday, February 10, 2018. G3: Promises Promises — Mary Hodder, Elisa Camehort Page, Lisa Padilla, and Tina Chase Gillmor. Recorded live Thursday, February 8, 2018. @stevegillmor, @dsearls, @kteare, @DenisPombriant, @fradice Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor… Read More

 I watched the Falcon Heavy launch this week. Not as an accredited journalist, from an observation tower, but as one of the masses on Alan Shepard Beach twelve miles south. Watched it arc across the sky; watched the two boosters return safely to the landing pads like a video game; heard the sonic booms. And then, over the next few days, I watched the opprobrium rain down: the clearest sign… Read More

 This past week, as we watched SpaceX launch its absolutely massive Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, many of us wondered if it would make it off the launch pad. So did Elon Musk. National Geographic just posted some incredible behind-the-scenes footage of the launch, capturing everything from about 15 seconds prior to takeoff to his moment of realization that the mission was a huge success. Read More

 Robots are great at doing what they’re told. But sometimes inputting that information into a system is a far more complex process than the task we’re asking them to execute. A team of researchers at Brown University and MIT is working to develop a system in which robots can plan tasks by developing abstract concepts of real-world objects and ideas based on motor skills. Read More

 Why sexting and a Stanford class led a group of former fraternity brothers to create Snapchat. Read More

 Human resources has to be one of the greatest bait-and-switch professions one can join today. HR departments position themselves with a forward-facing fluffy image, whether improving the productivity of workers through training and development programs or perhaps righting the yawning inequality gap in America by encouraging diverse hiring standards. Unsurprisingly, the field often attracts… Read More

 In the world of venture capital, the prospect of a successful “exit” looms large in the minds of investors. A VC’s business model is less about the money that goes into a startup than it is about what comes out. It’s true that most companies fail to exit gracefully, and of those that do, surprisingly few exit by going public. Read More

 It’s that time of year again. Samsung is getting ready to unpack some shiny new high end smartphones at the world’s biggest mobile confab. And Android fans are getting ready to cheer… Read More

 elf-driving and electric flying cars are coming. What this means for our cities in the future is unclear, so I chatted with Uber Head of Policy of Autonomous Vehicles and Urban Aviation Justin Erlich to learn more. Erlich previously worked under Attorney General Kamala Harris, where he focused on emerging technology and the key policies that the government will want to have in place to… Read More

 First names, foods and animals have been quite popular lately with founders choosing startup names. Meanwhile, other naming styles are getting more fashionable. We take a look at what’s hot now and what might be in vogue next. Read More

 Atlanta-based Cardlytics made its public debut on Friday, closing the day at $13.37, just a little above the IPO price of $13. The company sold 5.4 million shares, raising $70 million. Cardlytics works with financial institutions like Bank of America and 2,000 others to run cash back programs. It partners with brands across restaurant, retail, travel, grocery and home subscription categories… Read More

 After barring Logan Paul earlier today from serving ads on his video channel, YouTube has now announced a more formal and wider set of sanctions it’s prepared to level on any creator that starts to post videos that are harmful to viewers, others in the YouTube community, or advertisers. As it has done with Paul (on two occasions now), the site said it will remove monetization options on… Read More

 “How fast do I need to be growing to be interesting to a venture investor?” This is a question we get asked all the time by CEOs, and we realize “it depends” is not the most actionable answer to give. Instead, we have come up with a simple model that allows us to give a clear numerical answer to this question. Read More

 The Cloverfield Paradox is the kind of movie where a character will straight-facedly declare: “This dimension is eating us alive!” The first trailer for the film hit during the Super Bowl, and Netflix released the movie itself as soon as the game was over. Paradox takes the vaguely-connected Cloverfield franchise into space, where an international team of scientists (including… Read More

 Maybe you’re sitting at a MacBook or other modern PC right now, typing away in near silence on a keyboard that provides no real satisfying response to your human fingers. Maybe, once in the distant past, you remember when keyboards offered something in return: A “click clack” that stood as an auditory proof of productivity. If you miss that and want it back, the new Azio… Read More

 Schools are often late to taking advantage of new technologies, so today still do much of their business over paper forms. One pain point in particular – for school administrators, teachers and parents alike – is handling permission forms for activities and field trips. A young startup called Script aims to help. Schools can use Script’s app to manage the entire trip… Read More

 Tuesday’s Falcon Heavy launch made history, not only becoming the highest capacity rocket platform since the Saturn V but accomplishing the first double autonomous booster landing. And that’s just the start of what could prove to be an epic year for SpaceX — if Elon Musk’s ambitious timeline isn’t delayed, say by high winds. Read More

 Researchers at Newcastle University, U.K. believe they’ve discovered a differently evolved form of stereo vision in mantises. The research team studied the phenomenon in the insects precisely as one would hope — by attaching a pair of tiny 3D glasses to their bug eyes. Read More

 Hulu Original Hard Sun is streaming starting on March 7, and the show looks great based on this trailer. It’s a combination speculative fiction/detective show, based on a rare PRE-apoclaptic premise: The world is ending in five years, but it seems like much of the tension of this show might revolve around who knows that – and who doesn’t want anyone to find out. The show is… Read More

 Facebook isn’t one to be outdone by Apple’s recent big content spending: It’s purchasing a 10-episode, straight-to-series half-hour drama-comedy series produced and starring Elizabeth Olsen. The production also includes Lizzy Weiss on board as showrunner, Kit Steinkellner as creator and lead writer and Master of None‘s James Ponsoldt as a directly and executive producer… Read More

 Evan Spiegel secretly tried to hire away the team at Secret, but the price was too high. That’s according to three sources familiar with the deal who spoke to TechCrunch. The information expands and clarifies a report from the new book about Snapchat’s origin story coming out next week called “How To Turn Down A Billion Dollars” by former TechCrunch writer Billy… Read More

 The courtroom has been cleared, the lights are off in the spillover room on the 19th floor and the initial takes are in on the Uber vs. Waymo trial. Uber will give Alphabet, the parent company of both Waymo and the search giant Google, some $244 million worth of stock, and agree to ensure that no Waymo intellectual property will make its way into Uber autonomous vehicles. While Uber has… Read More

 SpaceX made history earlier this week with its Falcon Heavy launch: The Falcon Heavy is now the largest active rocket in terms of cargo capacity, and is able to propel over 140,000 lbs of cargo to lower Earth orbit, or smaller loads all the way to Mars and beyond. The launch was incredible to witness live, and watching the feed is cool enough, but we were actually there on site as it took… Read More

 If you were an early Internet kid you’ll recall a little app called WinAmp that was, in short, the best MP3 player ever made ever. The little program looked like skeuomorphic stereo receiver with a full range of equalizer sliders and included an important MP3 that explained WinAmp’s primary mission: whipping the llama’s ass. A programmer named Jordan Eldredge has created… Read More

 A new report offers a few more details as to what Disney has in store for its upcoming Netflix rival. The company last August had announced plans to debut its own streaming service in 2019 with content like Star Wars and Marvel movies, Disney studio and Pixar films. This week Deadline offered a sneak peek into the service’s initial slate of content, which will include four to five… Read More

 We all know about the unicorns of the startup world — fast-growing companies that appear to be on the road (or have already arrived at) valuations of $1 billion or more — and we hear a lot about the unfortunate ones that either run out of money or fail for another reason. But what about the startups in the middle — reasonably good companies that aren’t going away… Read More

 Lyft has teamed up with Black Girls Code, a non-profit organization dedicated to getting more black girls involved in computer programming and technology, to make the non-profit organization one of its Round Up & Donate partners. Since launching the Round Up & Donate program eight months ago, Lyft riders have donated over $4 million to causes. Other partners include SickKids… Read More

 Is there room in the market for yet another streaming service? Viacom thinks so. The company, on its earnings call on Thursday, said it’s planning to launch its own ad-supported streaming service by September 2018, the end of its fiscal year. The service will include “tens of thousands of hours of content” from across Viacom’s library. Viacom had hinted about its plans… Read More

 Whether you’re trapped on a futuristic island prison full of blood-thirsty gang members or simply stuck in a two-hour meeting, the LifeClock One might be the watch for you. Inspired by the movie Escape From New York starring Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, the watch is an homage to Plissken’s wrist-worn LifeClock, a device that would trigger the an injection of micro-explosives in… Read More

 Uber has agreed to settle the lawsuit brought against it by Waymo for theft of some of the company’s trade secrets. As part of the settlement Uber has agreed to work with Waymo to ensure that the company’s LIDAR and software represents just the work of Waymo engineers. The agreement also comes with a financial settlement that is 0.34% of Uber’s equity, valued at Series G-1… Read More

 Right now if you want financial guidance and planning help you basically have two options – shell out thousands (or more) a year for an old-school Wall Street-affiliated advisor, or test your luck with one of the free financial planning chatbot startups that have been popping up over the past few years. Neither of these are ideal for most people; traditional advisors give good advice but… Read More

 Aurora, the self-driving startup founded by Google self-driving car project alum Chris Urmson, along with Tesla Autopilot developer Sterling Anderson, CMU robotics expert and Uber vet Drew Bagnell, and a team of industry experts, will be making the autonomous smarts for Byton’s forthcoming electric vehicle. Byton, a startup that had a splashy debut at CES earlier this year.… Read More

 Facebook will award up to $1 million to five community leaders and $50,000 to 100 more to fund their ideas for how to strengthen people’s online and offline connections. Facebook will also hire double the number of engineers currently working on safety-related causes in its London office. These were a few of the big announcements made at today’s Facebook Communities Summit Europe.… Read More

 A so-called ‘Starman,’ which is a life-size mannequin wearing a production version of the SpaceX crew spacesuit; a miniature car created by Hot Wheels to commemorate the Roadster and its primary passenger; and something called an Arch (pronounced “Ark”), which is not so easy to summarily describe. The Arch on board is a data crystal (sort of like a Jedi Holocron if… Read More

 Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today we’re doing another Equity Shot, a short topic-centered episode where we assemble the troops to dive into one particular thing. Or, in this case, two particular things. Matthew Lynley, myself, and Katie Roof gathered to pick over Snap and… Read More