SoftBank’s $1.2 billion primary direct investment deal has officially closed, according to Uber itself, which confirmed the deal closure and provided the following statement to TechCrunch via a spokesperson: We’re proud to have SoftBank, Dragoneer and the entire consortium in the Uber family. This is a great outcome for our shareholders, employees and customers, strengthening… Read More
Dell is about to start selling an augmented reality headset that seeks to rival Microsoft’s HoloLens. The $1,495 augmented reality headset dev kit comes from the startup Meta and will soon be available for purchase on Dell’s website. It had previously only been available for order on Meta’s site. Read More
Git may seem like it’s the only version control system out there sometimes. And while it’s definitely the most popular option right now, competing technologies like Subversion and Mercurial still have their fair share of users, especially in the enterprise. It’s maybe no surprise then that Assembla, which offers a version control service for the enterprise with a strong focus… Read More
We’re thrilled to be heading to Dubai, but as it turns out, it will be a little later than expected. Due to scheduling changes, Startup Battlefield Dubai, originally slated for April 2018, will now take place in January 2019. This will give us even more time to make this an incredible event in a truly exciting region for tech and startups. What happens if you’re thinking about… Read More
WhatsApp today officially launched its new WhatsApp Business app in select markets, including Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S., ahead of its planned worldwide rollout. The addition of business profiles and new messaging tools aimed at business customers is part of the company’s broader plan to generate revenue by charging larger enterprises for advanced tools to… Read More
Slack’s ambition to become the default, go-to place for employees chat to each other and link into hundreds of other applications to get work done is getting one more step up today by becoming available on a new platform. From today, Slack will be available as a Snap, an application package that’s available across a range of open-source-based Linux environments. This opens the app… Read More
On the heels of Twitch’s exec shakeup yesterday which saw the Amazon-owned streaming site adding a new COO, the company today announced a multi-year partnership with Disney Digital Network to bring several top creators to its site. The company also debuted new software for all creators that will allow them to broadcast pre-recorded content to their channels. Disney Digital Network is… Read More
Spotify has been working on building out its podcast business, and now offers a large catalog of shows (including our own Original Content, which you should definitely check out). Today, it’s debuting a new “multimedia format” that adds visual elements to podcasts (as well as audiobooks, news bites, and other audio, but for the same of simplicity, let’s just call all… Read More
As rents continue to soar in America’s most desirable cities, companies like New York-based Ollie are angling to transform the real-estate market with an updated version of an old model of co-living spaces. Read More
Microsoft today is unveiling new artificial intelligence technology that’s something of an artist – a “drawing bot.” The bot is capable of creating images from text descriptions of an object, but it also adds details to those images that weren’t included the text, indicating that the AI has a little imagination of its own, says Microsoft. “If you go to Bing… Read More
Fortnite, which has topped 50 million players, has released an update to the game in the form of version V.2.2.0. The patch is significant in that it brings a long-awaited update to the Battle Royale map. Fortnite Battle Royale quite literally takes a page out of the PUBG playbook. In it, 100 players are dropped into a map, where they loot for gear and try to take down the competition. But… Read More
Group Nine Media has hired Stacy Green to lead its human resources team. The company was created at the end of 2016 by the merger of Thrillist, The Dodo, NowThis and Seeker. CEO Ben Lerer said that at the time, he assumed that there would be a “Lego-like” process of combining the best teams from each organization — and since Thrillist had the largest HR staff, it seemed… Read More
In its three and a half years of existence, Carbon has become a leading light in the industry-wide push to bring 3D printing to manufacturing. The company’s proprietary CLIP tech has sped up the process of additive manufacturing by leaps and bounds. It’s also found the perfect partner in Adidas, whose Futurecraft 4D shoes are about as good a poster child for the tech as one… Read More
With HQ Trivia continuing its viral and popular run, and education remaining a perennially strong category in app stores, it was only a matter of time before someone came along that combined elements of both to hitmaking effect. Kahoot, an app based out of Oslo, Norway that aims to teach its users across a wide variety of subjects and ideas by way of quizzes that they take in competition… Read More
One day, they may yet turn against us, but for now, they’re still our allies: A drone rescued two teenage swimmers in distress off the course of New South Wales in Australia, according to a new report. The drone spotted two teenagers in trouble around a half-a-mile out from shore, and then dropped a flotation device it carries for the purpose to give them something to hang on to (via… Read More
Amazon has reviewed the proposals from potential candidate cities for its second North American headquarters location, and it found 20 of those the most promising. The mayors of these top 20 cities will now fight to the death in a Battle Royale-style island arena… er wait, no actually they’ll just move on the next portion of Amazon’s submission phase, which includes… Read More
Facebook announced today the addition of Kenneth I. Chenault, CEO of American Express, to its board of directors. His appointment becomes effective Feb. 5, 2018. “I’ve been trying to recruit Ken for years,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a press release. “He has unique expertise in areas I believe Facebook needs to learn and improve — customer service,… Read More
Eyeota is looking to sell audience data to advertisers around the world, and it’s announcing that it’s raised $12 million in Series B funding for further growth. The company was actually founded back in 2010, but it didn’t raise its Series A until two years ago. CEO Kevin Tan admitted that the company had been “difficult for early-stage investors to wrap their head… Read More
Birch Finance, a TechCrunch Disrupt 2016 Battlefield alum, has raised a $1 million seed round from AGP Miami, Kevin Johnson, the former CEO of Ebates and Frank Azor, founder of Alienware. The plan is to grow Birch Finance’s user base and increase its opportunities for monetization. Birch Finance aims to help people make the most of the credit cards in their wallets by telling them… Read More
European automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen plans to offer electric and hybrid electric powertrain options for all of its vehicles by 2025, according to CEO Carlos Tavares. The chief executive also said that PSA will seek to re-enter the U.S. market, according to Reuters, and revealed that they company aims to offer partial autonomous driving features on 80 percent of its car lineup by 2030, with… Read More
Okta and fellow cloud company ServiceNow got together to build an app that helps ServiceNow customers using their security operations tools find security issues related to identity and take action immediately. The company launched the Okta Identity Cloud for Security Operations app today. It’s available in the ServiceNow app store and has been designed for customers who are using both… Read More
Don’t call Fli Charge wireless charging. Fli Charge is conductive charging. It’s just like plugging something into a wall but uses powered surfaces to distribute power. And thanks to proprietary tech, it’s safe to the touch and just as fast as a wall outlet. The company stopped by TechCrunch’s CES 2018 booth to show off their latest generation. It works and… Read More
As the US media, tech world and the powers that be in Washington continue to try to figure out how to tackle things like fake news, the level of discourse, and how to keep the business of publishing from falling off a virtual cliff, one of the media properties that has been instrumental in influencing how news is framed online is making a big change. HuffPost in the US today announced that it… Read More
It’s estimated that over one-third of Americans rent their homes, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council. And half of those people are under 30-years-old. But what’s the best way for this often transient group of people to find a new place to live? Craigslist has been a leader in online rentals, but not everyone is satisfied with the user experience. Apartment… Read More
YouTube appears to be trying to get ahead of any wider societal outcry over (yet more) algorithmically accelerated idiocy on its platform — and is removing Tide Pod Challenge videos. Read More
JD.com, the Chinese e-commerce firm that rivals Alibaba, has continued its expansion in Southeast Asia with an investment in Vietnam-based Tiki, a seven-year-old online retail service. JD.com is leading a Series C investment round in Tiki alongside VNG, the Vietnam-based online media and gaming company that is already an investor. The round itself is undisclosed, but TechCrunch understands… Read More
If you’re having issues with Facebook Messenger on your iPhone right now, you’re not alone. An annoying bug is affecting typing inside the app. Some users on iOS devices are finding that the app is freezing after they type a couple of words in a chat bubble, but other apps are working fine. The glitch obviously makes having conversations through Messenger more than a little… Read More
Ledger just raised an impressive Series B round of $75 million (€61 million), led by Draper Esprit. The startup already raised a $7 million round last year. But the cryptocurrency mania probably made it easy to raise more money. If you have more than a bit of money in cryptocurrencies, chances are you’ve heard about Ledger wallets. The French startup has been designing some of the… Read More
Google and China’s Meituan-Dianping are among the tech giants set to invest in Go-Jek, the Indonesia-based rival to Grab and Uber, a source with knowledge of discussions told TechCrunch. We understand a deal could be completed as soon as next week, though whether Go-Jek announces it is unclear since it has history of not disclosing new investments. Reuters reports that round is worth… Read More
Coinbase, the white-hot cryptocurrency exchange, is bringing on more engineering talent to help it continue to capitalize on the crypto boom. The company has announced that it’s bringing on the engineering team from Memo.AI, a two-year-old startup that built a Slackbot for helping technical teams manage notes and instructions. Excited to announce the @MemoAIHQ team is joining Coinbase! Read More
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As we learned back at the end of December, Apple has been limiting the maximum performance of iPhones as the batteries within get older. The goal, they’ve stated, is to prevent random device shutdowns as time goes on and the battery’s output starts to wane. But that’s something they ought to have explained better from Day 1 of the software change; most users would never… Read More
YouTube announced today that it’s enlisted the help of basketball star Kevin Durant in a bid to expand original sports content. The Golden State Warriors small forward and business partner Rich Kleiman have signed on to develop programming centered around Durant and fellow professional athletes under the umbrella of their Thirty Five Media video business. Read More
In the past week, five Apple commuter shuttles carrying employees to and from the company’s Cupertino offices have been attacked, several sources tell us. Windows on the buses were shattered by what employees are suspecting was a gun being fired at the vehicles. All five incidents took place off highway 280 near Woodside, Calif. The first attack took place Friday evening, with an… Read More
Although neuroscientists have a general idea of what parts of the brain do what, catching them in the act is a difficult proposition. But UC Berkeley researchers have managed to do it, visualizing based on direct measurement the path of a single thought (or at least thread) through the brain. Read More
If you spend any meaningful amount of time in hotels, you’ll know that many of them are still living in the age of the 30-pin…
Nintendo’s big new surprise interactive experience for the Switch is now official, and it’s basically a maker kit for the portable console which uses cardboard…
Ford’s Chariot shared commuter shuttle service is expanding to its latest new market: Columbus, Ohio. The Columbus launch is in partnership with JPMorgan Chase, and…
Virtual reality: Most people have at least a rudimentary understanding of what the term means. For consumers, VR generally means strapping on a head-mounted display,…
In the latest of a recent spate of bugs plaguing Google’s most recent hardware offerings, a number of Home and Chromecast users have been reporting…
The Last Mile, a coding program that first launched inside California’s San Quentin State Prison, has expanded to its first out-of-state prison. Yesterday, The Last…
Apple has landed its first half-hour comedy series, according to a new report from The Hollywood Reporter out this afternoon. The series, which will be exec…
Instagram now lets some users slap background-less GIFs sourced from Giphy onto their Instagram Stories. Rolling out for wider testing with a Giphy-branded design, the…
COMPAS, a piece of software commonly used in the justice system to predict which offenders will find themselves behind bars again, is no better than…
Twitch today announced its co-founder Kevin Lin will be stepping down from the COO role at the company, amid a series of new executive hires.…
Amazon announced its intentions to launch the Echo down under during its big AWS Re:Invent show back in November. Details were pretty light on the offering…
Apple is about to give the US economy a huge boost in the form a $350 billion five year investment. As part of that, it…
A few weeks back, Apple added “Give me the news” to Siri’s repertoire of tricks in the latest beta version of iOS. The feature comes…
If you’re based in the SF Bay Area, you’re likely familiar with the annual party we host with August Capital every summer. After 12 years,…
Entrepreneur First (EF), the London-headquartered company builder that invests in individuals “pre-team, pre-idea” to help create new technology startups, is continuing to expand internationally. Following…
Google today announced a significant change in how it ranks websites for mobile searches: it will now take page speed into consideration as one of its signals,…
A few months ago Slack launched a beta feature called Shared Channels, which let two organizations share a common channel. So for example a startup…
Facebook’s turning its push for well-being through active, not passive, content consumption into a feature with its new test of “Watch Party”. It allows Group…
Who needs Amazon when you can make your own online distribution channel? At least, that’s the idea behind Grove Collaborative, a natural home care products…
You can’t swing a cat in the Bay Area without hitting some startup accelerator or another, but it can be hard to find one with…
CircleCI was recently in the news because its founder, Paul Biggar, wrote about his experience at the now infamous Silicon Valley sex party that was…
Sketchfab just launched a store so that you can buy and sell 3D models and reuse them in commercial projects. This is a major new…
Last fall at Dreamforce, Google and Salesforce announced a partnership. Today, the two companies unveiled the first pieces of that agreement. For starters, Google Analytics…
Google’s Project Fi cell service never played the “unlimited data” game that most carriers in the U.S. like to play (and which is never truly…
Google today launched a new tool for G Suite admins that gives them a better view of the state of their organization’s security. The new…
Amazon has quietly launched a new feature that’s seemingly aimed at helping the retailer better compete with discount shopping apps such as Wish and others.…
The Associated Press is partnering with Arkadium to use InHabit, an interactive content tool launched last year. Arkadium’s goal for InHabit is to automatically add…
Archimedes once said “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world.” For Thinknum, a data startup, that saying should go “Give…
What do you get when you smush a bunch off live heart cells, specialized biomaterials, and electrodes into a tiny, stingray-shaped package? If you said…
Amazon Studios has today announced that it has greenlit The Tick Season 2. The series is yet another rendition of the animated version that ran…
Self-driving technology provider Aptiv and ride-hailing company Lyft ran a pilot program of self-driving, on-demand ride hailing during CES in Las Vegas this year, offering…
The crypto crash that began two days ago accelerated yesterday and today, with essentially all top 100 coins down anywhere between 15-30 percent. The total…
Google today announced the alpha launch of AutoML Vision, a new service that helps developers — including those with no machine learning (ML) expertise —…
Want a way to workout and earn some coin? Sweatcoin has risen to the top of the App Store for helping folks get something more…
One of the primary advantages of cloud computing has always been the ability to scale up to meet short-term needs and scale back when that…
One of the more unexpected sights within the United States Capitol lies just outside the Old Supreme Court Chamber. There you can find a plaque…
One of the most prominent seed investors in Utah, Kickstart Seed Fund, has closed on its fourth fund at $74 million — nearly doubling from…
Anomali, a threat detection and mitigation company, announced a hefty $40 million Series D investment today led by Lumia Capital. The company was previously known…
Content, as they say, is king — but these days, that may be true only for as long as you can figure out a good…
China’s Didi Chuxing unveiled its bike-sharing platform today and, as expected, it looks like a very aggressive move to protect its position. When Didi first…
Swedish startup Natural Cycles, which offers an app-based product which it bills as a ‘digital contraceptive’, has been reported to Sweden’s Medical Products Agency (MPA)…
Grab, Uber’s main rival in Southeast Asia, is continuing to develop its mobile payment strategy after it announced the acquisition of India-based startup iKaaz. The…
How do you compete with the world’s largest chat app in its strongest market? Hike, the Indian messaging app valued at more than $1 billion,…
Fintech startup Revolut is launching international medical and dental insurance. You can subscribe using the company’s app for £1 per day or more depending on…
Bitconnect, the lending and exchange platform that was long suspected by many in the crypto community of being a Ponzi scheme, has announced it’s shutting…
A month after announcing plans to open its first AI lab in China, Google is expanding again through a move into Shenzhen. The U.S. tech…
In an effort to regain advertisers’ trust, Google is announcing what it says are “tough but necessary” changes to YouTube monetization. Read More
TWiT, officially known as This Week in Tech, is suing Twitter. The audio and video media platform alleges breach of written contract, breach of oral…
The Awl, the hard-to-classify site that published compelling personal essays, media commentary and much more, announced today that it will be shutting down at the end…
On Tuesday, the Senate undertook a cloture vote to end debate on a bill that would renew a controversial legal loophole that provides U.S. intelligence…
Curve, the London fintech startup that offers a platform that lets you consolidate all your bank cards into a single Curve card and app to…
Seems DJI was keeping its powder dry last week at CES. The drone giant announced a pair of camera gimbals at the show, but the…
After years of drought and parched conditions, the U.S. tech IPO market could see a number of well-known players push forward with their debuts in…
Marketron, a company whose software helps radio and TV broadcasters manage their advertising, has a new owner and a new CEO. The company announced this…
Anthony Levandowski might have thought things couldn’t get much worse. But a new lawsuit filed Levandowski’s former nanny suggests that the exact opposite is true.…
A lawsuit filed today by the attorneys general of 22 states seeks to block the Federal Communications Commission’s recent controversial vote to repeal Obama era…
Graham Younger, a former executive vice president of Box and longtime enterprise software executive, is joining the human resources services provider Namely as its new…
I know this trailer is meant to evoke a connection with all the dumb shit I remember from elementary and high school, and it does.…
MirraViz wants to bring an end to gamers screen peeking. The startup’s display technology lets different people watch different things on the same projector screen…
Chinese automaker Chery will be building cars with Level 3 autonomous features powered by supplier ZF’s ProAI platform, which itself uses Nvidia GPUs for its…
Lyft today announced it’s expanding its Concierge program – the service that allows organizations to schedule rides for other people – to more business customers.…
No one who’s used a long-running government website expects such things to be fancy — just functional. But there’s a limit to what can be…
Ferrari is going to going to build an EV that will aim to have no peer – including from the likes of Tesla. Fiat Chrysler…
Amazon’s Fire TV is getting an update that will help viewers better discover live TV programming, and even be able to tune into live channels…
AWS Lambda, Amazon’s serverless platform, now features support for functions written in Go, the increasingly popular programming language that was originally developed at Google. This announcement doesn’t…
Last spring, YouTube rolled out a massive update to its desktop site that included a redesign, faster underlying framework, and the addition of a dark…
Sequoia Capital, the top-tier venture firm, has just closed on a $180 million new fund called Sequoia Scout III that’s focused exclusively on seed-stage opportunities.…
With all the hype surrounding artificial intelligence, you would be forgiven for thinking that developing the algorithms powering deep learning are where the toughest challenges…
The app economy is continuing to grow, with the worldwide revenue from app stores expected to top $110 billion this year, according to recent estimates…
Uber has confirmed it will cap the amount of hours drivers on its platform in the UK can be logged in to accept trips. After…
The Tesla Model 3 might be off to a slower production start than the company would’ve liked, but there are big improvements coming for the…
Cloud hosting company DigitalOcean is launching some new price offerings today. In particular, the company is also upgrading its basic $5 droplet instances with better…
The latest entry in Huawei’s on-going struggles to come to the U.S. proved to be one of the more unexpected and engaging CES storylines last…
As a hard-core rocker and roller I find that my gear has to be ready to rock and/or roll at a moment’s notice. There is…
French startup Forest just raised a $3.7 million seed round (€3 million) from Connect Ventures and Xavier Niel, with Taavet Hinrikus also participating. Pietro Bezza…
Delivery logistics platform Bringg announced today it has raised another $12 million in Series B funding, bringing the total round to $22 million. The round, which…
Diane Greene, who heads up Google’s cloud unit, often marvels at how much her company invests in Google Cloud infrastructure. It’s with good reason. Over…
“The app became too cluttered,” Facebook’s head of Messenger David Marcus announced today in a post of plans for 2018 including “massively simplifying and streamlining…
Earlier this month, I wrote that crypto companies are going to become investors in 2018. I didn’t quite imagine that happening as quickly as mid-January,…
Instacart has today announced the acquisition of Unata, a Toronto-based company that offers a platform for both grocers and consumers to interact digitally. The terms…
Social Bicycles, now officially known as Jump Bikes, has just closed a $10 million Series A round led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Sinewave…
Cloud providers love to brag about their customer wins and Amazon got a big one today when it announced that Comcast had chosen AWS as…
Lyft has a new report out detailing its ‘economic impact’ for 2017, and the document includes a lot of stats on its performance throughout the…
After a big fundraise and subsequent reorganization last year at Coursera — which saw a change of CEO, as well as the departure of its COO, CFO,…
Wichita police have arrested a 25-year-old online troll who calls himself SWAuTistic, charging him with involuntary manslaughter after sending police to a Kansas address. When…
BMW has acquired Parkmobile, an app that provides guidance and services for those looking for parking in North America, including on-street and garage parking payments…
Companies like New Relic and AppDynamics have been offering applications performance management solutions to help operations teams track external performance issues for years. Nyansa (pronounced ‘knee-ans-sah’)…
WhatsApp appears to be testing a new feature aimed at trying to limit the spread of chain letter style spam messages on its platform. Read…
Look away now if you own bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. This won’t be breaking news to you if you are invested, but today has seen…
Apple is now facing questions about how it slows down older iPhones in China. The Xinhua state news agency reported yesterday that the Shanghai Consumer…
In a move that represents further consolidation in the crowdsourced in-store data gathering space, London-headquartered BeMyEye has acquired U.K. rival Task360. Similar to BeMyEye, the…
Airbnb has today announced a new feature that will help users manage their payments on the platform. The feature, aptly albeit unimaginatively named Pay Less…
