MarketingMuses

 Goxip, a Hong Kong-based social shopping service, has raised $5 million to branch out into influencer marketing. The investment was led by Meitu, the $6 billion Hong Kong-listed company that develops selfie apps and selfie-optimized phones, with participation from Hong Kong conglomerate Nan Fung Group via its inaugural Mills Fabrica Fund. Others who took part include a trio of young female… Read More

 Strava, the popular app for tracking running, cycling and swimming, is not the most obvious go-to for exposing national secrets, but a heatmap of activity from users has been found to unearth the locations of U.S. military bases worldwide. The company’s review of 2017 showed all routes taken by its users across the world. It was released back in November 2017, but it came to the fore… Read More

 Google has confirmed its investment in Go-Jek, the hail-railing service that rivals Uber and Grab in Indonesia. TechCrunch reported the investment last week, which was made alongside China’s Meituan-Dianping and Singaporean sovereign fund Temasek. The trio were part of a final tranche of a $1.2 billion round that Go-Jek began negotiating on last April, with commitments from the likes… Read More

 As the popularity of cryptocurrencies has grown, so has the banking industry’s interest in blockchain for fintech, with an increased and focused push on bank-backed blockchain projects. Read More

 Pre-seed has risen in prominence in recent months due to the growing gap between what founders are seeking at the seed stage and what the market is offering, yet conversations around pre-seed come with preconceived notions and false assumptions about the companies and investors who care about early stage funding. To break down these misconceptions, we’ve assembled a list of 5 common… Read More

 Bodle Technologies is a startup spun out of Oxford University, that is developing a new type of ‘reflective’ display technology that promises to use a lot less power. In fact, in some states the screen tech may require almost no power at all. Read More

 Facebook announced on January 11 that it would change its News Feed algorithm to prioritize posts from friends and family over public content. Say goodbye to never-ending sponsored posts from Tasty, CNN, and other brands that have embraced the platform. Time to say hello to more personal posts featuring commenting and sharing from your friends. Sounds like the original version of Facebook… Read More

 Intel is not having that great of year thus far in the face of a slew of information about security flaws in it hardware coming out — and you can add another new report from The Wall Street Journal today, which suggests that Intel didn’t immediately notify the U.S. government of the issues, to that list. The Journal is reporting that Intel notified some of its customers of the… Read More

 Don’t have a TV or just want to watch Kesha, Cardi B and Lady Gaga walk the red carpet from the comfort of your laptop? Thanks to modern tech, that’s possible tonight. James Corden kicks off the 60th annual Grammy awards this evening, Sunday, January 28, at 7:30 pm EST/4:30 pm PST, which is set to run for three and a half hours (though, fair warning, these types of awards shows… Read More

 At first, I wasn’t impressed by The Shape of Water‘s visual effects. That might seem like a strange thing to say about a movie whose effects  have been nominated for multiple awards (though not an Oscar, despite the film’s 13 nominations). What I mean is this: When I was watching, I never wondered about the technology behind the merman — the sometimes-monstrous… Read More

 One of the great entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, passed away today. As Reuters pointed out in its short biography, Kamprad created a store — as a teenager mind you — that today has more than 400 locations, revenues of $62 billion, and a cultural ubiquity that very few consumer products could ever hope to attain. Having read the IKEA story… Read More

 I don’t like tech conferences. I mean, of course I don’t, they’re not meant for people like me. I’m an introvert, so I find them exhausting, and am (presumably) less likely than an extrovert to meet interesting or contributory people. I read much faster than people talk, so they’re not a good way for me to learn things. But there’s more to my dislike than… Read More

 So that flamethrower that Elon Musk teased The Boring Company would start selling after it ran out of its 50,000 hats? Yeah, it’s real – and you can pre-order one now if you want need a ridiculous way to spend $500. Musk revealed the flamethrower on Saturday, after some digging tipped its existence late last week. The Boring Company Flamethrower is functional, too, as you can see… Read More

 If hardware is hard, robotics are next to impossible. Even so, Sphero managed an impressive feat over its first five years, growing from a small startup with a glowing, smartphone-controlled ball into the maker of the most talked about piece of merchandise for cinema’s biggest blockbuster franchise. But last week, it became clear that not all was rosy with the company, as they cut 45 jobs. Read More

 Facebook Messenger was down for me for about an hour earlier this week. My MacBook Pro randomly kernel panics overnight and restarts. Slack was down, and Github, and AWS. A little more than a year ago, Dyn went down, throwing the DNS layer of the internet into a tailspin. Practically every chip made by Intel has serious security flaws. Equifax leaked 143 million accounts. Tokyo-based… Read More

 SpaceX has set February 6 as the target for its Falcon Heavy launch, the first ever test flight of the new, high-capacity rocket that the company is building to allow it to send nearly three times as much payload per mission into orbit. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted the target date on Saturday, adding that there will be plenty of viewing opportunity for the public from the nearby causeway.… Read More

 Elon Musk, a charismatic entrepreneur, is nothing if not audacious. You’d expect the board of Tesla Industries to shape a CEO compensation plan that suits its outsized leader, and boy, did they ever. But a look at Tesla’s newly announced pay plan reveals many elements that should cause shareholders to raise their eyebrows and pause. Read More

 We aren’t so much seeing through a lens darkly when we log onto Facebook or peer at personalized search results on Google, we’re being individually strapped into a custom-moulded headset that’s continuously screening a bespoke movie — in the dark, in a single-seater theatre, without any windows or doors… Read More

 Big IPOs by the best-known brands tend to dominate attention in startup circles. But when it comes to delivering significant returns on invested capital, it’s often lower-profile companies that come out on top. We look at some of the top-returning large exits, first for tech and Internet companies, and then for life sciences. Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Esteban Kolsky, Denis Pombriant, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, January 26, 2018. G3: White Roses — Halley Suitt Tucker, Francine Hardaway, Maria Ogneva, and Tina Chase Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, January 26, 2018. @stevegillmor, @dsearls, @ekolsky, @kteare, @DenisPombriant Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor… Read More

 Welcome back to another glorious episode of CTRL+T. This week, Henry Pickavet and I explore Amazon’s new cashier-less stores that promise no waiting in line — except to get in — and Uber’s newest C-level executive hire. Later in the episode, I rage with Safiya Umoja Noble, a professor at the University of Southern California and author of “Algorithms of… Read More

 Founders are extraordinary busy, even for their own investors. A decade ago, they might have had relationships with a handful of VC partners as they scaled their businesses and raised additional rounds of capital. Today, it is hardly rare to see as many as fifteen or twenty investment firms and angels listed on the cap table following a seed round. If you add up all the partners at those funds,… Read More

 From the furore engulfing the FCC this last year you might think that the agency had accomplished little but appalling privacy advocates and dancing for its patrons, the telecoms. But as is often the case, small works were overshadowed by more controversial items. Ajit Pai has released a list of “accomplishments,” such as they are, reminding us both of the FCC’s hard work and… Read More

 Dental care can be costly and hard to access, especially if you live in a rural community or a third-world country. In fact, the biggest barrier to dental care is cost. This is according to the American Dental Association, which says many rural areas lack access to dental professionals.  Read More

Google experiments in local news, MoviePass pulls out of AMC theaters and the Kalanick-Benchmark lawsuit has officially been dismissed. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 A Japanese cryptocurrency exchange has claimed it lost more than $400 million in tokens following an alleged hack on its service. Coincheck said Friday that some 500 million tokens of NEM, worth around $400 million at the time of writing, according to comments at a press event attended by Bloomberg. NEM, the tenth largest cryptocurrency based on total coin market cap, is a distributed… Read More

 HQ Trivia, the number one trivia app in the Apple App Store, has removed the minimum $20 balance to cash out. The company made the announcement earlier today on Twitter. Because the prize money is divvied out among sometimes hundreds of winners, people don’t often walk away with much money from a single game. Up until now, that has meant people were left with less than $20 in their… Read More

 With the Superbowl just a few weeks away, the world of football has some relatively unexpected news. Madden NFL, one of the most popular gaming titles in the world, is going even more mainstream. ESPN2 and Disney XD will broadcast Madden e-sports tournaments thanks to a new deal inked by EA, Disney, and the NFL. Madden NFL 18 is one of the top ten best selling games in the last 12 months, and… Read More

 Twitter has added a new advertising product to its lineup. The company announced today it’s offering brands the ability to sponsor Moments – the “Stories”-like feature that includes a series of tweets, often including images, GIFs and video – from select publishers. The first Sponsored Moment is already live, Twitter says, and the feature is now broadly available… Read More

 Facebook Live is launching monetization for video gameplay streamers, allowing users to tip creators a minimum of $3 via the desktop site. The amount Facebook will keep from these tips that it calls “fan support” isn’t clear yet. And right now, the contributor of the tips doesn’t get any special call-out or privileges, though Facebook tells me its considering… Read More

 We are still in the early days of cryptocurrency — or at least that’s what all of the startups that are jumping into this space NOW hope. And when there’s a gold rush, there’s plenty of money to be made by selling shovels (or ASIC rigs) to miners. It’s no surprise, then, that we are now seeing the emergence of a new class of B2B startups in crypto, too. Read More

 MoviePass, the monthly subscription service for seeing movies in theaters, has pulled out of 10 high-traffic AMC theaters, as a negotiating tactic with the theater chain. AMC, so far, has shown no interest in working with MoviePass or sharing revenue with the service for the foot traffic it brings to theaters. For instance, in a call with analysts in last year, AMC’s chief executive… Read More

 The HomePod is much smaller than I remember. I hadn’t seen one since June, when Apple announced the speaker back at WWDC. Apple pushed back its projected December launch date because the company needed, “a little more time.” That time, it seems, has finally arrived, and I spent a bit more time with the smart speaker this week. Read More

 Ozark launched on Netflix back in July — before we’d even started Original Content, our podcast covering the latest streaming news, shows and movies. However, TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook was a big fan, so at her urging, we all checked out the series, which stars Jason Bateman as a financial advisor who moves to the Ozarks with his family (including his wife, played by Laura… Read More

 Local news is kind of a mess. While the global platforms have been exploding, making it easier to follow events at a world wide level, local news sources have atrophied. Those two things are, obviously, intertwined. As the news moved online the revenue sources that powered local papers and news stations has taken a hit, resulting in smaller news rooms and outlet closures. What this adds up to… Read More

 A growing number of law firms working with startups are beginning to accept their payment in cryptocurrencies, according to a new report by the trade-focused outlet Law.com. The lawyers suggest that they increasingly have no choice. In order to land the growing number of businesses launched by cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, they have to show that they’re invested in what their clients… Read More

 Mixer, Microsoft’s answer to Twitch, will soon allow its streamers to start selling games and other downloadable content via its service, and will introduce tipping, the company announced this week in its year-end wrap-up. The game sales will be made possible through the new Mixer Direct Purchase program, which is now in testing ahead of a broad, public launch, Microsoft says. Initially,… Read More

 Intel CEO Brian Krzanich was delighted to report that Intel had a record year in the company’s quarterly earnings call with analysts yesterday. Of course, he also had to acknowledge the Spectre and Meltdown chip vulnerabilities revealed earlier this month in perhaps the ultimate good news-bad news moment. Like any good salesman, Krzanich led with the good news. “2017 was a record… Read More

 If the fourth season of Black Mirror didn’t throughly freak you out, buckle up! Ford has filed for a patent on an autonomous police car. While patent filings don’t always come to fruition, the mere fact that this idea is in development is mildly unnerving. The patent, first spotted by Motor1, describes an autonomous police vehicle that would be able to detect infractions performed… Read More

 Google is testing a tool called Bulletin that would allow anyone to publish local news stories and events, according to a report from Slate, which Google later confirmed. The company described Bulletin as a way for others to communicate information of local interest, like bookstore readings, high school sporting events, or information about street closures, for example. Slate found a website… Read More

 Are you afraid of human contact? Do you like movies? Do you like buckets? Sister, have I got a product for you. Poptheatr is a bucket that you put over your head. You put your telecommunications device on top of the bucket and then look up at movies, television, and pornography while you lie comfortably on your back. This keeps your hands free to manage your video playback using an included… Read More

 Detroit-based Floyd has announced a $5.6 million Series A funding round that will let the company expand its operations and release new products. The company has been in Detroit for the last five years and they’re dedicated to creating better furniture and a better experience around furniture. This injection of cash should go a long way in helping that mission. Floyd launched its… Read More

 Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we once again had the full crew on set: Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself. And even better, we were joined by Sarah Tavel from Benchmark, who helped us unspool a topic or three. And topics we had. This being earnings season, we had little choice… Read More

 French startup Heetch has an ambitious goal. The company wants to become the second ride-sharing service in France and in the other European countries where it operates. The startup just raised $20 million from Félix Capital, Via ID, Alven Capital and Idinvest Partners. In order to stay competitive with Uber, Heetch is a bit cheaper than a normal UberX ride. But drivers still get paid more… Read More

Robinhood is going to let you buy and sell crypto soon, CNN shuts down Casey Neistat’s Beme and Sotheby’s acquires Thread Genius. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 China’s smartphone market is no longer growing after it witnessed its first annual decline in shipments during 2017, according to new figures released today. The writing was on the wall with a market decline first noted in Q2 but this is the first time a drop has been sustained over a twelve-month period. That’s according to data from analyst firm Canalys which reported that… Read More

 Walmart today announced a major expansion in terms of its global e-commerce presence: the retailer is entering a strategic partnership with Tokyo-based Rakuten, which will see the companies collaborating on the launch of a new online grocery service in Japan, and the sale of e-readers, audiobooks and e-books in the U.S., via Rakuten-owned Kobo. The strategic alliance is one that has two of… Read More

 It’s no secret that Facebook is big on both AR and VR, both for entertainment and communication purposes. And new research suggests it is working on AR applications that could not just modify or replace your face, but your entire body. Read More

 Damien Chazelle, who won last year’s Best Director Oscar for his work on La La Land, will be making a TV show for Apple. The New York Times reports that Chazelle will be writing and directing every episode of the first season, and that the series will be produced by MRC, the studio that’s making House of Cards for Netflix. Nothing else — not the title, the subject, or the… Read More

 French startup Blade, the company behind Shadow, is launching its cloud gaming service in the U.K. Just like in the U.S., the company is starting with a pre-sale before accepting all customers. For a flat monthly fee, you can rent a gaming PC in a data center near you. You can then access this beefy computer using desktop and mobile apps as well as the company’s own little box. Read More

 Trueface.ai, the stealthy facial recognition startup that’s backed by 500 Startups and a slew of angel investors, is integrating with IFTT to allow developers to start playing around with its technology. Chief executive, Shaun Moore tells me that the integration with IFTT represents the first time that facial recognition technology will be made available to the masses without the need… Read More

 AR (mobile AR, smartglasses) could approach three and a half billion installed base and $85 billion to $90 billion revenue within five years. At the same time, VR (mobile, standalone, console, PC) might deliver 50 million to 60 million installed base and $10 billion to $15 billion. That’s a pretty big difference, and it all has to do with AR’s ubiquity and VR’s focus. Read More

 Sensors are growing more and more sophisticated as we build machines that can interpret the world with more precision than we can. Occipital is aiming to do this as effectively and cheaply as possible as it morphs its 3D scanning technology into a product that can do much, much more. The company has closed $12 million of what it plans to be a $15 million Series C. Read More

 Juni Learning wants to give every kid access to a quality education in computer programming. The company, part of YCombinator’s latest batch of startups, is taking the same approach that turned VIPKID into the largest Chinese employer in the U.S. and a runaway hit in the edtech market, by matching students with vetted and pre-qualified online tutors. While VIPKID focused on teaching… Read More

 Similar to Uber’s “God View” scandal, Lyft staffers have been abusing customer insight software to view the personal contact info and ride history of the startup’s passengers. One source that formerly worked with Lyft tells TechCrunch that widespread access to the company’s backend let staffers “see pretty much everything including feedback, and yes, pick up… Read More

 Tesla’s Model 3 EV delays are well-known, including in the company’s own earnings report and quarterly delivery numbers. A fresh report from CNBC on Thursday claimed that Model 3 production was even more delayed than it appeared, with specific continued issues around battery manufacturing. CNBC also suggested that the company is “not close” to mass-production of the… Read More

 Signing on to all of your favorite networks’ apps on Amazon TV just got a little easier. The company, which had teased single sign on for Fire TV in September, is now bringing the service to network apps in the U.S. Users just need to sign in with their pay TV provider credentials and they can access all the networks they need without entering additional passwords. The service works with… Read More

 It’s over. Benchmark’s lawsuit against former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has now been dropped, ending one of the biggest VC-founder disputes in history. It was dismissed as a condition of the SoftBank investment in Uber getting done. The deal was completed earlier this month, giving both Benchmark and Kalanick an opportunity to sell a significant Uber stake. The venture firm and… Read More

 Airbnb has appointed Kenneth I. Chenault, the outgoing CEO of American Express, to its board of directors. The announcement comes one week after Facebook appointed Chenault to its board of directors. “As the CEO of American Express, Ken has built one of the most successful trust-based companies in the world,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote in an open letter today. Read More

 If you are a Microsoft Azure customer and want to get 24/7 access to technical and billing support for your company, as well as a response time of less than an hour for your critical issues, but you don’t want to pay $300 per month for this, today is your lucky day. Microsoft today announced that it’s dropping the price of Azure Standard Support from $300 per month to $100 per… Read More

 People like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the game where you basically re-enact a version of Battle Royale with you as one of the contestants in the human survival game. It had huge success in alpha prior to its full launch on PC, and now we know that console gamers also love the heck out of it – despite reports of buggy experiences with the Xbox One version. Bugs aside, Xbox… Read More

 Everyone knows that both Main Street and Wall Street investors are going gangbusters for cryptocurrency and blockchain-related technology. But here’s the thing. It’s currently nearly impossible to invest directly in cryptocurrency or in legitimate cryptocurrency companies if you want to limit your investments to SEC-sanctioned ETFs or stocks that are listed on NASDAQ or NYSE. So… Read More

 At first, it may seem an odd move. Google makes money on its ads business, and giving advertisers free rein to stalk you on every site seems really good for companies hoping to remind you of that thing you checked out one time. But the search giant wrote in a blog post out today that it wants to give you, the consumer, more transparency and control. Read More

 The world’s largest taxi firm, Uber, is buying cars. The world’s most popular media company, Facebook, now commissions content. The world’s most valuable retailer is now Amazon, and has more than 350 stores. And the world’s largest hospitality provider, Airbnb, increasingly owns real estate. Things change. Read More

 First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund just released VCWiz, a tool to help founders find investors and raise money from them. The platform is one part VC directory and one part CRM tool, essentially letting you find the best investors for your startup then begin the process of reaching out to them. New users input some basic information about their startup including a description, industry… Read More

 Smartphone adoption in emerging markets just delivered the highest number of app downloads Google Play has ever seen in a quarter. According to today’s report from App Annie, Google Play app downloads topped 19 billion in Q4 2017, a new record. That also makes Google Play’s download lead over iOS its largest ever, at 145 percent. Specifically, the downloads were driven by… Read More

 As AppleInsider first spotted, the first beta of iOS 11.3 includes a subtle change. iBooks is now called Books. And Mark Gurman thinks it could be the sign that there will be bigger changes with Apple’s ebook reading app. According to Bloomberg, Apple is working on a new design for the iBooks app on the iPhone and iPad. It will feature a simpler interface with a new section called… Read More

 Mirantis co-founder Adrian Ionel left his CEO role in October 2015, at a time when the company was still solely focused on OpenStack. Now, he is coming back to reprise his role as the company’s CEO at a time when Mirantis is looking beyond OpenStack and toward the still nascent cloud native ecosystem around Kubernetes for its next big business opportunity. Mirantis’ current CEO… Read More

 Ford is acquiring Autonomic and TransLoc, two of its partners, in deals that will help its new mobility business take shape. The acquisitions follow Ford’s announcement at CES earlier this month that it would be working with Silicon Valley-based Autonomic, a transportation architecture and technology provider, on its forthcoming Transportation Mobility Cloud open platform for cities… Read More

 Every company today is a tech company, a maxim that was proven out today when one of the world’s oldest and biggest art auction houses acquired an AI startup. Sotheby’s has bought Thread Genius, which has built a set of algorithms that can both instantly identify objects and then recommend images of similar objects to the viewer. You can see some examples of how it works… Read More

 A backhanded compliment for Uber snuck into UK prime minister Theresa May’s speech to the World Economy Forum in Davos this afternoon — when she said the company’s behavior had made the case for laws being strengthened to stop gig economy workers from being exploited by overly powerful tech platforms.  Read More

 Apple has expanded its autonomous vehicle test fleet, according to Bloomberg, jumping from just three cars registered with the California DMV last year, to 27 vehicles in total now. The fleet consists entirely of Lexus RX450h SUVs, a popular choice for anyone working on autonomous car tech because they can be fairly easily retrofitted with aftermarket sensors to complement those on board and… Read More

 CNN’s attempt at expanding its digital news business by bringing in a top YouTube creator has failed. According to a confirmed report from BuzzFeed, CNN is closing down YouTube star Casey Neistat’s video business, Beme, which it bought for a reported $25 million back in 2016. In addition, the YouTuber and his co-founder, Matt Hackett, are also leaving the company. Neistat spoke… Read More

 No-commission stock trading app Robinhood will let you buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum without any added transaction fees starting in February, compared to Coinbase’s 1.5 to 4 percent fees in the US. And as of today Robinhood will let all users track the price, news, and set up alerts on those and 14 other top crypto coins, including Litecoin and Ripple. “We’re planning… Read More

 Gfycat, a player on the smaller side of the consumer-facing explosion of GIFs, has generally spent a lot of time trying to build out a suite of creator tools — and now it looks like it’ll get another piece to add to that with a small acquisition today. The startup said it’s acquiring MovieLala in a deal where the terms were not disclosed. MovieLala was originally birthed as… Read More

 YouTube Gaming, Google’s rival to game-streaming site Twitch, is starting to pick up traction. According to a new report from Streamlabs, Twitch continues to dominate the live streaming space, but YouTube grew its monthly active streamer base by 343 percent over the course of 2017. Twitch, by comparison, grew 197 percent. Streamlabs has visibility into the live streaming market by way of… Read More

 Social media giants have once again been singled out for a high profile public spanking over social responsibility and illegal online content in Europe. Read More

 CamSoda, a adult web-streaming service, has announced VIRP – Virtual Intercourse with Real People – a service that lets you simulate sex with on-screen participants using RealDoll robots. Yep. The CamSoda [NSFW LINK] service is partnering with the folks at RealDoll to add teledildonics to already fairly realistic sex dolls. The dolls range in price from $1,500 and up and… Read More

 Sneaky Pete, the series created by Bryan Cranston and David Shore, is heading into its second season. Amazon today announced that Season 2 of the drama/thriller will debut March 9 on Amazon Prime Video. Sneaky Pete follows the story of Marius, a conman released from prison who decides to steal the identity of his cellmate Pete to avoid paying back a gangster he robbed in the past. Amazon… Read More

 Sonos is offering a special limited deal for its new Sonos One smart speaker, which works with Amazon’s Alexa right now, and is gaining support for Google Assistant in a future update: You can buy two for $349, which is the same price as one of Apple’s HomePod Siri-enabled speakers. This is likely not a coincidence. Individually, the Sonos One retails for $199, so you get a $50… Read More

 Some consolidation is underway in the world of crowdfunding and online fundraising: YouCaring — which competes with GoFundMe and others in the area of sourcing fundraising for compassionate and charitable causes — is buying Generosity.com from crowdfunding giant Indiegogo (which originally launched as Indiegogo Life). The latter is using the divestment to further hone its focus… Read More

 Ex-hacker Eric Taylor, also known as CosmoTheGod, and another infosec name, Bryant Townsend have colorful pasts. Most recently Taylor stole the social security and personal records of a number of high-ranking Obama administration officials, posting it on a site called exposed.su. Townsend, for his part, was caught up in a denial of service hack that led back to his former DDoS mitigation company. Read More

 IBM today announced a partnership with low-code development platform Mendix that will bring Mendix and native integration with many of IBM’s Watson IoT and AI services to the IBM Cloud. This deal is an evolution of a previous partnership that involved what was then called IBM Bluemix (now IBM Cloud). Read More

 Square has acquired Entrees On-Trays, a 32-year-old restaurant delivery platform. The plan is to expand the footprint of its on-demand food delivery service, Caviar, in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area. There were a few factors Square took into consideration in its acquisition of Entrees On-Trays, Caviar product lead Gokul Rajaram told TechCrunch via email. For one, the acquisition is designed… Read More

 Meet Cozy, a French startup that wants to completely rethink how cloud services work. The startup first launched a Dropbox-like competitor to store, synchronize and share all your files. Now, the company wants to go one step further and create an ecosystem of open-source services that respect your privacy. When I met with Cozy co-founder and CEO Benjamin André earlier this week, he was fed… Read More

 Brainly, the edtech startup founded out of Poland but now with a HQ in New York, has acquired Bask to add video to its peer-to-peer learning platform. Read More

 It’s high times for the marijuana industry, which has been flourishing in recent years as more regions move to decriminalise the use of it for medical and other purposes. Now, Privateer Holdings, one of the big investors in the space, has raised $100 million to back more cannabis startups and capitalise on that trend. This Series C brings the total raised by Privateer to $200 million… Read More

 Snowflake, the cloud-based data warehouse service, announced an enormous investment round today, pulling in a whopping $263 million on a unicorn valuation of $1.5 billion. The round was led by a trio of big-name Silicon Valley VC firms including existing investors Iconiq Capital and Altimeter Capital and new investor Sequoia Capital. Today’s announcement comes on top of the $100… Read More

 StoreHub, a startup that helps retailers digitize their business, has closed a $5.1 million Series A round led by Vertex Venture to expand in Southeast Asia. The startup was founded in 2014 and it offers point-of-sale technology and digital services to retailers. The idea is to help bring the long tail of less sophisticated physical merchants online to help them digitize their finances and… Read More

 A big blow for Facebook today after Europe’s top court delivered a verdict in a long-running legal challenge that opens the door for plaintiff and privacy campaigner, Max Schrems, to sue Facebook in his home city of Vienna. Read More

 Xiaomi couldn’t have wished for better timing of two reports that claim it has toppled Samsung to become India’s top-selling smartphone company. The Chinese firm, which is reportedly on a roadshow ahead of an IPO that could value it as high as $100 billion, is said to have beaten Samsung’s sales efforts in India, the world’s second-largest smartphone market behind… Read More

 LG’s smartphone business still continues to lose money at an alarming rate. The Korean firm cut its losses in its Q4 2017 financial period to minus RKW 213.2 billion ($192.33 million), up from KRW 375.3 billion ($331.37 million) in the previous quarter, but there’s is no sign that things will drastically change any time soon. LG Mobile has posted just one quarter of profitability… Read More