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Amazon launches Alexa-less Fire TV Stick for international users of its Prime video service
We’re approaching one year since Amazon expanded its Prime video service to over 200 countries internationally, and today the company is doubling down on that…
Tencent is reportedly testing its own autonomous driving system
Tencent is making progress on its own autonomous driving system, according to Bloomberg. The report says that Tencent, one of China’s largest tech firms and…
Renault shows off self-driving car that can avoid obstacles as well as pro test drivers
French carmaker Renault has developed technology that enables self-driving cars to avoid obstacles in emergency situations at up to the same speeds as professional test…
ShopBack raises $25M for its cash back shopping service in Southeast Asia
One of Southeast Asia’s lesser-known startups has come out from under the radar today after ShopBack, a cash back-focused e-commerce service, announced it has raised…
Mojiworks raises £2.1M Series A to build games for Facebook Messenger
Mojiworks, the U.K. startup building games for messaging apps, has raised £2.1 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Balderton Capital, with…
Lyft’s chief operating officer will leave by the end of this year
Lyft’s chief operating officer Rex Tibbens plans to step down by the end of the year. The news was first reported by Axios and confirmed…
Crunch Report | Broadcom has its eyes on Qualcomm
Today’s Stories Broadcom offers to acquire Qualcomm for $70 per share Intel and AMD partner on graphics and CPU combo to challenge Nvidia Comcast’s Xfinity…
Microsoft acqui-hires cinemagraphic photo app Swng
Computer vision and clever imaging technology remain hot areas in consumer and enterprise apps, and today Microsoft is picking up a startup called Swng Technologies…
Big tech goes five for five
As October came to a close, three of the five largest American tech companies beat earnings expectations. The quarterly results of Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet were…
Neos launches IoT powered home insurance UK-wide
What do you get if you combine the Internet of Things with the business of home insurance? UK startup Neos is hoping the answer is…
Challenger bank Monzo raises another £71M from Goodwater Capital, Stripe and Michael Moritz
Monzo, one of a number of “challenger” banks in the U.K. aiming to re-invent the current account, continues to be on a roll, both in…
Facebook, WeWork and others use this startup to make swag
Swag, especially good swag, can be important. That’s where Swag.com comes in. The company, which launched 15 months ago, aims to be a way for…
Snapchat isn’t working and users are freaking out
Snapchat is having some technical difficulties with its service and its 173 million daily users are not happy about it. Some people are having trouble sending and…
Salesforce and Google are the latest pals in the cloud
Salesforce and Google inked a deal today that could provide easier integration between Salesforce tools and Google’s G Suite and Google Analytics. It also named…
Tesla electric semi truck reveal confirmed for November 16
Tesla will unveil its electric semi truck on November 16, the company confirmed today via email invites sent to press. The invites feature a full-size…
Tests give iPhone X display top honors, but camera is merely competitive
Lab tests on the recently released iPhone X put Apple’s new flagship in the highest tiers of quality when it comes to the display and…
Boxed shows off the automated tech it uses to ship toilet paper and more
Boxed offers the online equivalent of the bulk shopping offered at stores like Costco. But big discounts aren’t the only thing the company’s focused on.…
Home Loan and Homeownership Benefits for Veterans via AARP Money
How Veterans Can Get Home Loan Benefits. Learn about home loan and homeownership benefits. by Brittany Hackett, AARP, November 6, 2017| Comments: 0. VA Loans for Veterans. Sean Murphy/Getty Images. The government offers various programs and options to help veterans become homeowners. The Department …
Apple has reportedly relocated its international tax residency to Jersey
Last year, the European Union ordered Apple to pay up to $14.5 billion for illegal tax benefits in Ireland. The company has learned an important…
Comcast’s Xfinity internet service seems to be a bit broken nationwide this morning
Having issues with Comcast this morning? You’re very much not alone. Right around 10 am Pacific, we started seeing reports from both coasts that the…
A tale of two chip stocks
Broadcom confirmed this morning that it would offer to acquire Qualcomm in one of the largest tech deals of all time, and one that would…
iPhone X first weekend adoption tops the iPhone 8 models
The iPhone X is already showing strong consumer adoption, according to a new report from Localytics out today, despite the fact that long shipping delays for…
Photoslurp bags $870k for its ‘shop the look’ UGC marketing platform
Bootstrapping Barcelona-based visual commerce startup Photoslurp has taken its first external funding: Announcing €750,000 (~$870k) in pre-Series A financing, led by Spanish VC Inveready Technology Investment Group,…
B&O’s Beoplay E8 totally wireless earbuds really are the total package
Bang & Olufsen’s headphones tend to stand out from the crowd, and their new fully wireless mode, the Beoplay E8, is no exception. The E8…
Hellocar is another UK car buying startup closing doors
The used car market seems ripe for disruption, not least in terms of customer service and creating a better experience online. However, if recent events…
Apple offers more bonds to finance its $300 billion capital return program
Apple just started selling new bonds in order to finance a share buyback program and dividends for shareholders, as Bloomberg spotted in a filing. This…
Google is surfacing Texas shooter misinformation in search results — thanks also to Twitter
Google has once again been called out for algorithmically encouraging the spread of dubious, politically charged speculation and misinformation around a topical news event. Read…
Amazon Cash, the service that lets you use cash to shop Amazon online, arrives at 7-Eleven
Amazon Cash, the service that lets consumers add cash to their Amazon.com balance at brick-and-mortar retailers, is now available at nearly 8,000 7-Eleven convenience stores,…
Google launches Resonance Audio, its new spatial audio SDK
As augmented reality slowly proliferates with the promise of bringing computer interaction into three-dimensional space, platform giants like Google are tasked with bringing every sense…
Album+ organizes photos with A.I. that runs on your phone, not in the cloud
A new iOS app called Album+ is taking advantage of the increased A.I. capabilities and GPUs in modern iPhones to help people better manage their…
Backstage Capital invests $50K in singer Kehlani’s tech startup
Music artist Kehlani is getting into the tech business and she’s tapped Arlan Hamilton’s Backstage Capital for funding. Backstage Capital, the venture capital firm focused…
Pienso raises $2.1M to help non-programmers interact with machine learning models
Though the world could probably use a few more machine learning experts, there are a lot of non-programming specialists whose expertise could directly benefit ML…
The CEO of Cambridge Analytica plans a book on its methods, and the US election
Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica (CA) plans to publish a book on his firm’s approach to online campaigning, and it’s role in the…
IDC forecast predicts strong demand for iPhone X in China
Apple’s return to growth in the saturated China smartphone market was echoed by a report from IDC, out this morning, which attributes the rise in Apple’s…
Intel and AMD partner on graphics and CPU combo to challenge Nvidia
Intel is working with AMD to produce a chip for notebook computers that pairs an Intel CPU with an AMD graphics processor, with a small,…
Ink raises $7M to make printing on college campuses less painful
Ink, a Nebraska-based startup focused on revamping on-campus printing, has raised $7M from VTF Capital, SQN Venture Partners, Invest Nebraska and NE Angeles. This brings total…
Kobalt raises $600M to buy up (and monetize) more music copyrights
Kobalt, the music tech startup that has built a platform for rights holders to track incremental and full plays of music across a wide sea…
Broadcom offers to acquire Qualcomm for $70 per share
Following rumors over the weekend, chipmaker Broadcom has today confirmed it has approached wireless chipmaker Qualcomm with an acquisition offer that values the company at…
Quip adds an App Store as it pushes toward full-blown collaboration platform
When Salesforce bought Quip, a document-based, mobile-first collaboration tool for $750 million last September, it may have seemed like an odd purchase, but Salesforce and…
ChartMogul grabs $2.2 million to build the financial dashboard of your subscription business
What do you do when you want to create a software-as-a-service startup but it feels like everything has been built already? You build a product…
Salesforce to offer more customized AI with myEinstein
It’s been just over a year since Salesforce introduced Einstein, a set of artificial intelligence technologies that are designed to underlie and enhance the Salesforce product…
Meet TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher at Web Summit on Tuesday
Two Minute Techcrunch! Since it’s impossible, as a journalist, to crawl around all the stands at Web Summit, I thought it would be easier to…
The Jolt is a $500 electric bike for the masses
Electric bikes range in price but the best ones come in just north of $1,000. Now, however, you can own a foldable electric bike with…
I want to hear your pitch in Oman this Thursday
Just a remind that I’m holding one of our patented MicroMeetups in Muscat, Oman on Thursday November 9th from 3pm to 6:30pm. We will meet…
Announcing the TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2017 Agenda
TechCrunch Disrupt is returning to Berlin for the first time since the original Disrupt Europe in 2013. Disrupt Berlin 2017 is one of the largest…
New Samsung ad attacks Apple for 10 years of inferior iPhones
It’s been some time since Samsung mocked Apple with videos on the inferiority of the iPhone — the exploding Note 7 set that argument back…
Kaodim raises $7M for its home services platform in Southeast Asia
There’s more funding for Southeast Asia’s growing local services space after Kaodim, a Malaysia-based startup that operates in four countries in the region, raised $7…
Uber rival Grab crosses 1 billion rides in Southeast Asia
Grab, Uber’s fierce rival in Southeast Asia, announced today that its service has crossed one billion completed rides. The firm hit the milestone on October…
Red Hat starts moving its OpenStack platform to containers
Red Hat is still best known for its Linux distribution, but the company has also long offered its own OpenStack distribution and additional services as well.…
SoftBank increasing Sprint stake after T-Mobile deal called off
The proposed tie-up between two American telecom giants was formally called off this weekend. Sprint and T-Mobile had been negotiations for months but ultimately decided…
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to leave Netflix this December
Catch up while you can — all 12 seasons of the popular FX show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will no longer be available on…
PowerWatch, the body heat-powered smartwatch, starts shipping
As far as gimmicks go, PowerWatch’s is pretty good. After generations of wearables with 24-hour battery lives, the promise of never having to charge your…
WeChat parent company Tencent joins the OpenStack Foundation as a Gold Member
Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings Limited, the parent company behind extremely popular services like WeChat and QQ, today announced that it is joining the OpenStack Foundation as…
OpenStack’s next mission: bridging the gaps between open source projects
OpenStack, the massive open source project that provides large businesses with the software tools to run their data center infrastructure, is now almost eight years…
Jeff Bezos’ guide to life
Here are Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ tips about inspiration, work-life balance, and how to be an inventor. Oh, and how it felt getting doused with…
Venture capitalist David Lee sues former partner Ron Conway for millions
Millions of dollars are at stake in a legal battle between Ron Conway and his former SV Angel partner David Lee, according to a suit filed…
PSA: Don’t train Face ID on your sibling’s face accidentally
Some people are griping about Face ID, noting that sometimes their siblings can open their iPhone Xs using Face ID. There’s a simple reason for…
What’s holding back VR?
When it comes to virtual reality, we’re in a classic tech-industry moment: lots of chatter but seemingly little movement. We hear future-focused cheerleading from all…
Bookeen’s Saga is a middling Kindle alternative with a built-in case
How’s this for a press release headline? “Saga: the e-reader that changes the game of digital reading.” Compelling, right? within the first two sentences, Bookeen…
Hillary Clinton and epistemological collapse
How do you know that Hillary Clinton exists? I’m serious; or, at least, I’m making a point. Bear with me. Think about it. You don’t…
Tech’s favorite royal — Prince Alwaleed bin Talal — has been arrested in Saudi Arabia
In a move sure to shock the business world, Saudi Arabia last night announced the arrest of at least eleven princes, including renowned billionaire investor…
Quantifying the driverless startup boom
For driverless car startups, raising capital seems to happen on autopilot. Investors and acquirers have put billions into the space over the past couple of…
A closer look at the capabilities and risks of iPhone X face mapping
Face ID has already generated a lot of excitement but the switch to a facial biometric does raise privacy concerns — given that the human face…
How littleBits grew from side project to Star Wars
Like many of the most compelling startups, littleBits began life as a side-hustle — no expectations, no early push for venture capital. Just a bit…
Why the ‘end of the startup era’ could be great for entrepreneurs
Three prominent tech thinkers recently declared the end of the startup era, questioned the future of tech innovation generally and heralded the rise of the…
Dispatches from the cutting edge of computer vision
The International Conference on Computer Vision just wrapped up, and at it the finest minds in CV and machine learning compared notes, gave presentations, and…
Amazon to add second Vancouver office and 1,000 more jobs by 2020
While Amazon has yet to reveal where in North America its second headquarters will be, the Seattle headquartered ecommerce behemoth has got Canadians excited by…
Netflix cuts ties with House of Cards actor Kevin Spacey
More fallout from allegations surrounding House of Cards actor, Kevin Spacey: Netflix has said it will no longer work with the actor at all. Read More
4 TechCrunch writers bought the iPhone X. Here are our thoughts
Happy iPhone X day! A few of us over here at TechCrunch received our new toys today and wanted to share some initial thoughts with…
Evolve Foundation launches a $100 million fund to find startups working to relieve human suffering
It seems there’s nothing but bad news out there lately, but here’s some good news — the nonprofit Evolve Foundation has raised $100 million for…
Tusk Ventures has closed its debut fund with $36 million
Bradley Tusk, a former political operative who helps companies launch political-style campaigns, runs several businesses. One of them, Tusk Ventures, has been working with startups for…
Inside Summit Series, the invite-only getaway striving for altruism
“Make No Small Plans” is the Summit Series motto, and it doesn’t. The “Burning Man meets Davos” event company has bought a mountain, rented cruise…
Aquantia up 6% following semiconductor IPO
Tech IPOs have been picking up lately and one lesser-known semiconductor company, Aquantia, made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange today. The company…
StarCraft II will be free to play starting November 14
It was only in April that Blizzard made the original StarCraft free to play, and now the company has done the same for its sequel.…
Meural’s upgraded Canvas is a surprisingly awesome showcase for art
Meural’s second-generation Canvas digital art display is now available, and I’ve been testing one out for the past couple of weeks to see how it…
Original Content podcast: We have mixed feelings about ‘Stranger Things 2’
Stranger Things 2 (as Netflix and the Duffer Brothers are calling the second season of their hit show) has been out for a full week,…
Snap, where are my anibitmoji?
The day we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. Apple’s highly-anticipated iPhone X has made it into the hands of everyday customers. I’m a…
Over 15 Million watched the ‘Stranger Things 2’ premiere by its third day on Netflix
Netflix definitely has a hit show on its hands with the recent release of Stranger Things 2. According to new data this week from Nielsen,…
On iPhone X launch day, Apple draws a crowd
Today, the iPhone X became available in Apple retail stores across the globe. And given the fanfare around iPhone launches for the past decade, we…
Early-bird ticket deadline for Disrupt Berlin extended til 22 November
Friends, if you include yourself among the ranks of world-class procrastinators, we’re here to say that you just got lucky. We’re extending the deadline on…
iPhone X teardown finds major changes inside the gleaming exterior
The iPhone 8 may have been filled with the expected kit, but we’ve all been looking forward to finding out what fun Apple’s engineers had…
Unubo makes it easy to track what you or your startup spends on subscription services
Unubo, a new U.K. startup soft-launched a couple of months ago, is pretty meta: a software-as-a-Service to help you track the cost of SaaS and…
Amazon Fresh is shutting down in some neighborhoods, including ones in San Francisco
Amazon is pulling the plug on Fresh, its grocery delivery service, in parts of nine states throughout the country, Recode reports. So, if you live…
Niantic acqui-hires Evertoon to add a social network to Pokémon Go and other apps
Niantic, the company behind the hit mobile game Pokémon Go and its predecessor, Ingress, announced today it has acquired the team from the startup Evertoon…
Twitter posts a new version of its rules with updated sections on abuse, spam, violence and more
Twitter today published a new version of its rules, in an effort to further clarify its policies about abuse, spam, self-harm and other topics, as…
WhatsApp’s hour-long outage today was global in scale, likely caused by software bug
Did WhatsApp go down for you earlier today? You weren’t alone. The Facebook-owned messaging service experienced a roughly hour-long global outage on Friday, which led…
Hevo Data gets $1M in seed funding to streamline data integration
Going from food delivery to data integration might seem like an unlikely progression for a startup team, but it was a natural fit for Hevo…
Lazy Jar’s app makes you pay for not exercising enough
Want to exercise more, but lack motivation? An app called Lazy Jar, aimed at Fitbit owners, may be able to help. The app actually penalizes…
Sources: Snap has acquired Metamarkets for less than $100M to step up its ad tech play
As Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, gears up to report its quarterly earnings next week, it looks like the company is making some moves…
Let’s meet in Muscat
I’ll be rolling through Oman next week for a conference and I thought it would be fun to see what the region has to offer.…
Snapchat fell out of the top 10 for first time this year in Q3
Snapchat’s mobile app fell out of the top 10 for the first time this year during Q3 2017, according to a recent report from Sensor…
Query friends or fans with new GIF and photo Facebook Polls
Facebook Questions first launched in 2010 as a Quora wannabe before shifting into lighter-weight polls, but Facebook shut the feature down in 2012. Apparently it…
Beheld is a new startup that lets you scan, send, and print yourself
Kat Kinkead and Peter Weijmarshausen met at their old company, Shapeways. Weijmarshausen recently stepped down as CEO and was looking for something cool to do…
Equity podcast: Apple and Tesla report earnings, and IPOs are back
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a treat due to the…
Apple’s revenues in China are growing again
Apple’s blockbuster Q4 pushed the company’s valuation to $900 billion, but it also saw the firm return to growth in key market China following a…
N26 is launching its bank in the UK in 2018
Fintech startup N26 is announcing yet another international expansion move. The company plans to launch its bank of the future in the U.K. at some…
Adobe and Microsoft expand partnership with Adobe Experience Manager and Dynamics 365 integration
Adobe and Microsoft expanded their continuing partnership today when they announced that they are making it easy to share data between Adobe Experience Manager, a…
Globality raises $35 million for its marketplace to connect small companies with big business
Small business has long been held as a key driver of the global economy, but these businesses often don’t have access to large multinational companies…
BMW, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen team up on high-power charging network
BMW Group, Daimler, Ford Motor Company, and the Volkswagen Group (with subsidiaries Audi and Porsche) will join up to create a high-power charging network for…
Mapbox acquires Mapdata to help it expand into AR maps
Two weeks after announcing $164 million in funding, mapping data startup Mapbox has made its first acquisition. The company has acquired MapData, a neural network-based…
Early-bird ticket pricing for Disrupt Berlin ends tonight
This is it, folks. At midnight tonight, Berlin local time, the countdown clock for early-bird tickets to Disrupt Berlin runs out. And when that countdown…
Apple’s record services revenue suggests growth in ApplePay, Apple Music
Everyone’s favorite almost-trillion-dollar company reported fourth quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday. And while much of the attention was on stellar iPhone sales, Apple…
Paytm brings messaging features to India’s top digital wallet app
Paytm, India’s top digital wallet and payment service, has introduced a chat feature to amp up its appeal among an increasingly competitive market. The new…
Xbox One X review: This is the ultimate Xbox
This is the Xbox One X. It’s the fastest and smallest Xbox and the first to offer games in 4K. At $499 the higher resolution…
DoubleDutch CEO Bryan Parker is out after a couple of months
Live engagement marketing platform DoubleDutch has replaced CEO Bryan Parker, who was appointed from COO to CEO just two months ago, TechCrunch has learned. Lawrence…
Crunch Report | Bitcoin Passes $7,000… Oh My!
Bitcoin passes $7,000, VMware acquires VeloCloud and TransferWise closes on a $280 million investment. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Pimax is raking in millions for an ‘8K’ VR headset to take on Facebook and HTC
If you’re paying attention to the virtual reality market, 2017 would appear to be a pretty awful time to start growing a VR hardware startup.…
Developer community Stack Overflow lays off reportedly 20% of staff as it refocusses business
Some changes are underway at Stack Overflow, the online community where some 50 million developers and others converge to talk programming and many other things.…
Fifteen-year-old Black Duck Software gets its exit, selling to Synopsys for $565 million
Black Duck Software, a 15-year-old company whose products automate the process of securing and managing open source software — including detecting license compliance issues —…
Qualcomm sues Apple, alleging it shared chip code with Intel
Qualcomm has levied another lawsuit against Apple, this time alleging that the iPhone maker took advantage of its “unprecedented access” to Qualcomm’s code to aid…
Vetted buys VetPronto in yet more on-demand consolidation
Consolidation continues to dog the world of on-demand startups — literally and figuratively. In the latest development, Vetted, a startup focused on veterinary services is…
New technology puts the AI in aid for US veterans
As part of their latest endeavor to improve care for our country’s combat vets, the Department of Veterans Affairs has invested in a rapidly advancing…
Logitech is experimenting with a keyboard built for Virtual Reality
As simple as it seems, dealing with the keyboard is of the weirder challenges that many notice the first time they check out virtual reality.…
Local news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist shut down
DNAinfo and Gothamist have both shut down, a week after reporters and editors at the local news sites unionized. Their archives seem to have disappeared —…
YouTube Kids update gives kids their own profiles, expands controls
YouTube Kids, the kid-friendly, more filtered version of YouTube first introduced in 2015, is getting a notable upgrade. The updated app is adding several new…
Apple taps $900B after a blowout fourth quarter
Apple is continuing its run toward $1 trillion today, as a huge fiscal fourth quarter sent the stock to new highs and helped its market…
Tosca Musk raises $4.75M for Passionflix, a streaming service that’s all about romance
We’ve seen streaming services focused on art movies, horror movies and comedy (R.I.P. Seeso) — so why not romance? That’s the thinking behind Passionflix, a startup…
Apple delivers on its much-hyped promise to Wall Street in spades
As Apple looks to set itself up to Wall Street as the de-facto standard of what a smartphone can — and should — look like…
Super Mario Odyssey is the US’s fastest-selling Mario of all time
Nintendo’s having a good year, and it looks like the latest Mario is set to make it even better. Super Mario Odyssey is the fastest-selling…
Sidewalk Labs could pilot city-changing tech in Toronto sooner than you think
Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs smart city subsidiary is working with the city of Toronto to help plan a brand new community, but nothing’s set in stone…
Pandora shares down 6% after posting earnings
Music streaming business Pandora reported earnings after the bell on Thursday. Adjusted earnings per share were negative six cents, better than the negative eight cents…
WeWork will open a new SF HQ in the Salesforce Tower
WeWork has money to blow, so the $20 billion startup is putting some of it toward a second headquarters — this time in San Francisco…
End-of-Life Decisions: Plan Now! via AARP Money
Nov 2, 2017 … Or consider a revocable trust. Chat with your agent about even small money decisions, in order to get in the habit. Any financial advisers should have someone to contact if you start doing odd things (for example, making big gifts to a hired caretaker). Get more saving and investment tips in the AARP Money …
Five Bad Money Habits That You Can Fix Right Now via AARP Money
5 Bad Money Habits You Can Fix. A new book by a behavioral economist explores how and why we spend. by Allan Roth, AARP, November 2, 2017| Comments: 0. Five Bad Money Habits You Can Fix. Getty Images. The best way to stop making money mistakes is to stop and think about how you spend. Most of us think we …
Cisco Spark Assistant bringing voice commands to meeting hardware
Anyone who has used modern meeting software knows it’s still fraught with challenges trying to get everyone into the meeting, futzing with the hardware or…
Smart toy startup Elemental Path introduces the STEMosaur, a robot kids can put together
Elemental Path has come a long way since it debuted its first Cognitoy at Disrupt in 2016. The smart toy maker debuted on Kickstarter with…