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 […]
Boxed reportedly rejected $400 million buyout offer from Kroger
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 […]
Nintendo is bringing Super Smash Bros. to Switch in 2018
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, […]
Blue Apron stock suffers as Weight Watchers gets into meal kits
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 […]
Tribeca Film Festival unveils its VR and AR lineup
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 […]
Jack Dorsey wants to measure how Twitter affects society
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 […]
Major trends in agtech for 2018
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 […]
Android beats iOS in smartphone loyalty, study finds
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 […]
Oculus issues patch to bring Rift VR headsets back to life after catastrophic shutdown
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 […]
Uber brings on Amazon voice exec to lead product team
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 […]
Discover your own planets Google-style with AstroNet
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 […]
Here’s drone footage of what Disney’s Star Wars Land looks like right now
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; […]
Samsung Galaxy S9: what’s new
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 […]
Lorde can now start posting on Google
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 […]
Netflix CEO predicts $15 billion in revenue this year
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 […]
This startup just raised $5 million to automate the clunky real estate appraisal process
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 promises publishers an alternative to AMP
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 […]
CodeStream wants to move developer chat straight to the source code
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 finally adds @ mention tagging
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 […]
McAfee acquires VPN company TunnelBear
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 […]
FanDuel’s new March Madness game lets casual fans pick teams instead of players
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 developer Cyan teases something for the groundbreaking game’s 25th birthday
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 […]
HTC debuts original Ready Player One content for the Vive
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. […]
RAD is a new system to help the visually impaired play racing games
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 […]
Snap Interactive, quietly settling with Snap over trademark infringement, changes name to PeerStream
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 […]
Ovipost wants to help drop the labor cost of building cricket farms
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 […]
New DDoS extortions hit the Internet
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 […]
The Tesla Model 3 is a love letter to the road
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 […]
Jon Favreau is making a Star Wars show for Disney’s streaming service
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 […]
Announcing TC Sessions: Blockchain on July 6 in Zug, Switzerland
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 […]
YC-backed Ropeo brings on-demand fashion to Latin America
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 secures $1.5M from Firstminute for its ‘modular’ blockchain
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 suspending some users who solicit crypto
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 closes new $60M fund for seed investments
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 […]
Atom Tickets raises $60M Series C for its movie booking app
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 […]
Qarnot unveils a cryptocurrency heater for your home
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 aims to spark innovation in Southeast Asia with its Global Startup Workshop
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 […]
Volkswagen’s SEDRIC self-driving bus is too cool for school
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 […]
Google marks International Women’s Day with a “women led” attribute for business listings
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 […]
Schedule Time for Reflective Thinking Every Week
When you’ve got a packed calendar and an overflowing inbox, it’s tough to find time to think. But improving the quality of your ideas requires unstructured, reflective thinking. This activity helps you examine your assumptions and draw connections between pieces of information. How can you make the time to do it? It depends on your […]
Banking platform solarisBank closes €56.6M Series B from BBVA, Visa, Lakestar, and others
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 […]
Square Cash now supports direct deposits for your paycheck
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 update removes ‘unused’ location requests from iOS 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 […]
Technology infrastructure launchpad The Fabric raises $15 million
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. […]
Travis Kalanick is launching a venture fund
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 […]
Watch a fantastic automotive future unfold at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show
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 Semi does its first production cargo run with batteries on board
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 […]
All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate
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 reportedly laying off around 100 employees
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 […]
Bitcoin price drops 10% as hackers exploit Binance’s API keys
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 exiting beta, adds new metrics for impressions, unique viewers
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 […]
Get the insider perspective on The Next Stage at Disrupt SF
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 […]
TechCrunch’s Messenger bot gets smarter and more conversational
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 […]
SEC says cryptocurrency exchanges are an unregulated mess
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 works to make some crypto tokens exempt from regulation
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 […]
Here’s the first developer preview of Android P
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 wants to help developers bring their AI models to the desktop
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 Duo video chat app gets video- and voicemail
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 is ‘doubling down’ on originals, planning expansion to Canada and Australia
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 […]
This robot can solve a Rubik’s Cube in .38 seconds
[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 fishing app and social network, raises $13.5M Series B
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 […]
47.3 million U.S. adults have access to a smart speaker, report says
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, […]
Ecobee scores a $61 million Series C with help from Amazon
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 office as a service, is shutting down after Grant Thornton pulls support
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 will become ‘S Mode’ next year
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 snares Kensho for $550 million
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 raises $461 million in fresh funding from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
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 launches a low-cost version of Prime for Medicaid recipients
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 AI to improve drug discovery, raises $45M Series A
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 […]
Facebook adds video chat to Messenger Lite, its pared-down Android app
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 […]
Voicera lands $20 million with help from big-time enterprise investors
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 […]
UK’s Atom Bank raises another $206M led by BBVA for millennial and SMB financial services
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 […]
UK kicks off driverless car law review to get tech on the road by 2021
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 […]
Audi gets in on the flying car action with Airbus and Italdesign
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 […]
Launch at Startup Battlefield Europe: Applications Still Open
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 […]
Google is bringing messaging to its Tez payment app in India
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 […]
Don’t Ignore the Feedback in Nonverbal Cues
In an ideal world, your colleagues would give you direct, honest feedback. But if they’re not forthcoming, often you can find out what someone really thinks by watching their nonverbal cues. Learn to read facial expressions and body language to understand how your words and actions are being received. When people look down or avoid […]
IBM’s PAIRS Geoscope helps developers wrangle geospatial data
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 […]
Paris-based VC firm Ventech is raising a new fund
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) […]
Tinkerer Jonathan Zufi talks about design and Escape From New York
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 […]
Condé Nast Traveler revamps its website and unveils 20 new city guides
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 […]
23andMe gets FDA green light for cancer risk test
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. […]
Coinbase is launching its own cryptocurrency index fund
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 […]
The day that changed your phone forever
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 […]
Target is expanding its Drive Up curbside pickup service nationwide
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 poaches Amazon’s Prime boss
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 […]
New cars from Fiat Chrysler and VW will come with up to 6 months of free Apple Music
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 brings Lens to all Google Photos users on Android
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. […]
Superangel is a new pre-seed and seed fund out of Estonia with company builder ambitions
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 […]
12 questions about the future of HQ trivia and its $15M fundraise
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: […]
Apple’s HomePod gives FKA Twigs psychedelic dance powers in Spike Jonze ad
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 […]
Worklytics wants to cut down on lame meetings and help make teams more efficient
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 […]
Mighty has raised $9M to build a CRM for legal and medical funders
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 raises $3.2M for its A.I.-powered English pronunciation assistant
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 […]
James Dyson on why not every device needs to be connected
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 […]
The Ring Floodlight Cam is an outdoor security slam dunk
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’s hybrid Polestar 1 available for pre-order next week
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 […]
Amazon Prime boss leaves company
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 […]
A brief history of Dropbox
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 launches site search as a service tool
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 […]
FreedomPop moves into financial services, in partnership with Prudential
Ahead of a big fundraising to fuel its mobile ambitions, “free” mobile service startup FreedomPop is taking an unexpected strategic side-road to expand into a completely different area: financial services. The company is licensing its customer conversion platform to Prudential, which plans to use it to up-sell existing customers to more of its products. FreedomPop […]
Grabr gets $8M to connect travelers with space with those longing for products abroad
You might get to actually save money while you’re traveling if you just leave some free space in your bag — or not pay for that travel at all — if Daria Rebenok’s plan plays out. As avid travelers, and ones longing for products from home they can’t get abroad, she and Artem Fedyaev decided to start […]
Google’s keyboard app Gboard now works in Chinese, Korean and more
Despite declining consumer interest in third-party keyboard apps, Google is continuing to develop Gboard, its alternative keyboard app for mobile devices. Today, it’s greatly expanding Gboard reach, with the addition of 20 more languages – including, notably, traditional and simplified Chinese as well as Korean. The new languages are arriving first on the Gboard app […]
Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers
Uber’s autonomous trucks are now doing actual work for customers via Uber Freight, Uber’s commercial cargo shipping on-demand app. The first runs are being done in Arizona, with regular hauls operating with both human drivers and autonomous trucks working in tandem. How it works is that Uber will load up the freight on a conventional, […]
Dyson’s Cyclone V10 cordless vacuum spells the end for corded cleaning
The Dyson Cyclone V10 cord-free vacuum that Dyson unveiled today at an event in New York is a new milestone for the company’s strong line of battery-powered vacuums. In fact, it spells the end for plug-in models, even for holdouts who’ve been reluctant to ditch their big bulky continuous power versions. Dyson’s Cyclone V10 has […]
Dyson’s new Pure Cool fans are better at both purifying and communicating
Dyson has a few new products it’s revealing today, including the latest Pure Cool line of purifying fans. These fans have built-in air purifying technology, which can detect and weed out pollutants, particulate matter and more of the nasty stuff we sometimes breathe in that we probably should not be breathing in. The new fans […]
Leap.ai looks to instantly match job-seekers with employers with just a few questions
Searching for a new job can be a daunting process — especially if you aren’t sure what you’re great at — and even finding the right companies and what jobs are out there is probably enough to make you freeze for a second. Leap.ai, an intelligent recruiting platform, is looking to make life a little […]
Data.world introduces enterprise data collaboration platform
Imagine a tool that’s a kind of Facebook for data inside large organizations. You could build data projects and teams, upload and share data sets, then discuss your raw data and findings with colleagues in a community setting. That’s precisely what Data.world, an Austin startup, released today. Data is the lifeblood of most modern organizations […]
Amazon brings Whole Foods deliveries to Atlanta, an HQ2 contender, plus San Francisco
Just a month after Amazon began to offer Whole Foods grocery deliveries via its Prime Now service in a handful of cities, the company announced today it’s expanding that service to two more key markets, San Francisco and Atlanta. The latter city is especially interesting, given that it’s on Amazon’s shortlist of potential HQ2 picks. […]
The Moleskine PEN+ ELLIPSE lets you record your scribblings right into your pen
Moleskine, to the uninitiated, makes notebooks and stationery popular with artistes, travelers, and folks who jot down poetry in between sips of chai latte in some delicate cafe in Kreuzberg. They are rugged little things that resisted the encroachment of high tech but now, thanks to the PEN+ ELLIPSE, you can turn your musings into […]
Pardot Spring Release New Feature Round-up
With our new features launch this Spring, we’re ready to help marketers make more informed decisions, strengthen their account-based marketing strategies, and offer more personalized experiences to their customers based on a deeper understanding of their data. We know that today’s buyers are more connected than ever before. And, in order to engage with buyers […]
WeWork acquires SEO and marketing company Conductor
WeWork is acquiring Conductor. The two businesses might not seem like an obvious fit. Why would a coworking giant buy a company that’s best known for search engine optimization? Well, Conductor co-founder and CEO Seth Besmertnik said that he and WeWork CEO Adam Neumann went to college together, and they’ve “kept reconnecting and reconnecting over […]
Mobcrush flips the switch on monetization with new ad platform
Mobcrush, the unified mobile gaming streaming service for Facebook, Twitter, Twitch and YouTube, is shaking its moneymaker for the first time with the unveiling of its advertising platform. “There’s what you’re able to do while begging for tips and subscriptions and then there’s being able to connect with real brands,” says Mobcrush’s shade-throwing founder Royce […]
Degreed gets $42M to help build a tool to help employees learn the right skills
When an employee is looking to advance in their career, where they work might have a kind of strict hierarchical path for the role they’re in and what titles come next — but there’s a good chance that employee might want to try something new without leaving their company. Instead of going from just an […]
Justworks raises $40M to build a simpler business operations suite
Isaac Oates runs a startup that’s looking to be a complete suite of operational tools like human resources and payroll for businesses — but he and his team initially didn’t get why users kept asking better reporting tools over and over again. It’s indicative of the constant push-and-pull startups and founders face when having to […]
Bumble is becoming the LA Clippers’ jersey sponsor
The latest company to sponsor an NBA team by putting a patch on a jersey is…Bumble, the female-led dating and networking app. The company’s logo will now be appearing on the jersey of the LA Clippers. The deal brings some serious brand recognition to the four-year old dating app, which is now adding between 75k-100k […]
Snyk snares $7 million Series A to help developers deliver open source components securely
Open source libraries provide a tremendously valuable resource for developers, but in today’s rapid fire application development environment, it’s not always a simple matter to make sure you’re using secure code. Snyk, a software service startup wants to help developers find and fix vulnerabilities in their open source code before it goes into production. The […]
Coursera teams with 5 universities to expand its full masters and bachelors degree programs
With traditional university programs getting more expensive and competitive, we’re seeing a boom in the number of alternative programs that are taking advantage of the internet and more flexible teaching and learning formats to fill the gap in the market. The latest development comes from Coursera. Today, the online education startup with 31 million students and […]
The X-ONE H1 is a new hybrid smartwatch for the fancy traveler
Since the dawn of smartwatches the fancier watch lovers among us have wanted a mechanical watch with all the features of a smart watch. A few comers have attempted this nearly impossible feat and now the X-ONE H1 is now giving it a try. The X-ONE H1 has an internal mechanical movement that powers the […]
UiPath confirms $153M at $1.1B valuation from Accel, CapitalG and KP for its “software robots”
Last week, we reported that UiPath, a startup out of Romania building AI-based services for enterprises in the area of robotic process automation (RPA) — helping businesses automate mundane tasks in back-office IT systems — was about to close a big round, upwards of $120 million at a $1 billion-plus valuation. Today, the company is […]
Now you can visit Disney Parks in the US through Google Street View
Special for kids — and importantly parents of kids — now you can get designs on visiting Disney — and dropping a small fortune in the process — thanks to Google Maps after it added Street View images for 11 Disney Parks. The feature looks to cover parks in the U.S. only at this point, […]
Renault’s EZ-GO envisions walk-on, walk-off urban EV mobility
Renault’s EZ-GO is less concept car than a full transportation service concept design. The vehicle revealed at the Geneva Motor Show this week is a fully autonomous electric car that can’t travel fast, but that does fit as many as six passengers through a big, almost garage-like door that opens up to load people and […]
Honda intends to actually put its retro Urban EV concept on sale in 2019
Honda’s adorable little Urban EV Concept stole hearts at last year’s Frankfurt Motor Show, and at the Geneva Motor Show this week, the automaker confirmed that it’s making a production version of the car, with a target street date of late 2019 for the cute little guy, though it’ll be a European exclusive at first. […]
Porsche’s Mission E Cross Turismo is the EV crossover you want
Porsche unveiled a new concept version of its forthcoming Mission E all-electric car today at at the Geneva Motor Show. The Mission E Cross Turismo is a crossover utility vehicle with all-wheel drive, four doors and a larger cargo capacity for making sure you have plenty of room to stow your skis before you hit […]
WHOOP raises $25 million to tell everyone from athletes to execs about their health
WHOOP, the company behind the Tesla of health tracking and sports performance wearables, has raised a whopping $25 million in a new round of funding. The round was comprised of a slew of prominent investment firms and individual investors including the Durant Company, the National Football League Players Association, former NBA commissioner David Stern, Twitter […]
Take a look at the production version of the PAL-V Liberty flying car
Flying cars aren’t as out of reach as you might think – the PAL-V Liberty, for instance, is a real physical thing you can see and touch at the Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland. The production version of the aerocar is on display for the first time ever at the show, and we got a […]
Volkswagen’s I.D. Vizzion electric sedan aims for 2022 production
Volkswagen’s big centerpiece for this year’s Geneva Motor Show is the I.D. Vizzion, the latest in its I.D. EV lineup and the car that’s designed to lead the pack as a premium offering. Volkswagen talked a lot about the Vizzion’s future-focused design and features yesterday during a special pre-show press unveiling, but on Tuesday it […]