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Circle just announced that it is acquiring U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex. According to Fortune, Circle is paying $400 million for the acquisition. Poloniex has been around for years and used to be one of the biggest exchanges out there — there are now many exchanges competing with Poloniex. Circle is an interesting startup because it’s […]

PhishMe, a seven year old startup that helps companies train employees to avoid phishing scams, announced today that it has been purchased by a consortium of private equity firms at a valuation of $400 million. That wording doesn’t give the exact price and a company spokesperson was careful in her response when we requested clarification. […]

When investor and entrepreneur Jalak Jobanputra first visited a blockchain conference five years ago she got goosebumps. The experienced investor had heard of cryptocurrencies but now that they had truly come into maturity she was excited. Now, five years later, she’s building her entire VC practice around blockchain and sees bright days ahead for the […]

The notch is here to stay. Two upcoming phones are reported to sport the awful, disgusting notch at the top of the screen. Huawei and Asus are following Apple and Essential down the notch hole. Neither of these phones are confirmed or officially announced yet. Both the Huawei and Asus models appeared online ahead of […]

Changes are afoot at BGF Ventures, the London-based early-stage venture fund of BGF, as three partners are departing, TechCrunch has learned. Rumours that the VC firm’s future was in flux as parent BGF reviewed its current investment strategy began surfacing in late January, but multiple sources now tell me that BGF Ventures partners Harry Briggs, […]

Automaker Daimler has a new largest shareholder – Geely Automotive chairman Li Shufu. The Geely stake, worth an estimated $9 billion, should give the Chinese automotive giant more leverage when trying to work out cross-company tech arrangements with Daimler and its sub brands including Mercedes-Benz. Daimler is already partnered up with a major automotive concern in […]

Starting a small business can involve a remarkable amount of red tape. Certificate of incorporations, sales tax licenses, publication requirements, annual franchise taxes, the list goes on. Even worse, every state in America has its own unique peculiarities. Failure to follow instructions perfectly can result in fines and possibly expropriation. And all you wanted to […]

According to KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Apple Insider, Apple could be working on a brand new pair of wireless headphones for later this year. While the company already owns Beats, those over-the-ear headphones could be sold under the Apple brand. It seems like the AirPods are a success, and the company wants to capitalize […]

Wickr, the secure communications service, is bringing new features to its free users. Already available to paying Wickr customers, users of Wickr’s “Me” service will also now be able to enjoy encrypted calling to protect against listening ears. The company is adding end-to-end encrypted calling along with encrypted and ephemeral voice messages and memo. These […]

Anyone who fondly remembers the Altair revolution probably wasn’t there. But that doesn’t stop us nerds from romanticizing one of the coolest proto-computers ever made. Originally sold as a way to interact with the magical 8800 chip back in January 2017, the Altair is one of the first usable home computers although it had no […]

Ford vehicles equipped with the automaker’s SYNC 3 infotainment system will soon have access to a new voice-powered driving assistant behind the wheel – Sygic’s new aptly named “Driving Assistant.” The feature, which works with Sygic’s GPS navigation app, is described as a “voice-controlled co-driver that helps the driver identify nearby rest-stops, restaurants, hotels” and […]

Chinese clothing manufacturer Dayang Group is making a strategic investment in InStitchu, a startup selling custom tailored suits and other menswear. At $2.5 million, the round is relatively small, but InStitchu co-CEO James Wakefield said the real reason for taking the money is to deepen the relationship with Dayang. Apparently the manufacturer was already making […]

Michigan-based startup May Mobility, which is trying to swap out current transportation options for corporate and other clients with self-driving small shuttles, has raised $11.5 million in sed funding from investors including BMW i Ventures and Toyota AI Ventures, along with existing investors. The round comes just about a year into the company’s launch, and […]

Acorns, the financial management service focused on getting low- and middle-income households to invest and save responsibly, has reached 3 million users in the United States. The company has roughly $800 million in assets under management, with accounts coming from primarily low and middle income customers across all fifty states, according to Acorns co-founder and […]

This morning’s Sony press conference was a real whirlwind. The company announced two new phones and the availability of its Xperia Ear Duo, still managed to wrap it all up in about an hour. All said, it was actually kind of refreshing to be in and out so quickly. There was a quick “one more […]

In a fascinating post, Brian Krebs and a group of security researchers have found a method for laundering money through expensive ebooks. It started when author Patrick Reames received an Amazon tax form saying he’d made $24,000 selling his books through Amazon’s CreateSpace, the company’s book-printing arm. His books didn’t sell nearly that many copies, […]

Just like CES has seen an influx of car manufacturers in recent years, MWC, too, is now a showcase for new in-car technology. Like in previous years, BMW once again set up shop in Barcelona this week to show off some of its most recent innovations, all of which bring together some of the current […]

Mozilla called it a day with Firefox OS for mobile handsets back in 2015 and said it would test the waters for an IoT effort using some of the same technology (and it has). But that hasn’t spelled the complete end for the tech on mobile devices. Quietly, a company called KaiOS, built on a fork […]

Sony’s embrace of smart assistants has been rocky, at best. The original Xperia Ear was an interesting exercise in the concept of carrying your AI with you, but the company has since been passed by the likes of Apple’s Siri sporting AirPods and the Google Pixel Buds. The company’s giving it another go, because it […]

Triple, the Stockholm-headquartered marketplace for local travel experiences, has acquired competitor Local Guddy for an undisclosed sum. The deal sees Local Guddy founder Emre Semercioğlu become part of the Triple team as Head of Market Growth, while I understand it was part cash, part stock. The Turkish startup had previously raised a seed round in […]

Long-time collaborators Tencent Holdings and JD.com have each bought minority stakes in Better Life, a Chinese retail conglomerate. According to a filing made on Friday by Better Life, which is traded on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Tencent paid 886.9 million RMB (about $140 million) for a 6% stake, while JD.com took a 5% stake for […]

Fintech startup Revolut can’t stop and won’t stop growing. The company has had an amazing month of December with a huge increase in the total volume of transactions and signups. Because of that, Revolut broke even in December for the first time ever. The company told me that it wasn’t just a lucky month and […]

While Nokia’s former handset business forges ahead with its new device strategy under licensee HMD, Nokia itself has taken one more step to build out its business with carriers in a new wave of services. To coincide with MWC in Barcelona and a bigger step into the WiFi business, the company today announced that it […]

Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor: A peek inside Alphabet’s investing universe Raise softly and deliver a big exit With more money flowing into a shrinking number of deals, the average startup funding round is getting bigger. And it’s not by a small […]

If you were having any doubts about Samsung’s commitment to its DeX, consider them assuaged. The company introduced its smartphone docking hardware with the Galaxy S8 and has talked up a new version for every big phone release since then — and today’s big Galaxy S9 reveal is no different. We were pretty lukewarm on […]

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a beautiful phone with a critical flaw. The fingerprint sensor is in the wrong damn spot. A phone is only as good as its usability and, to me, the S8 is crippled with its fingerprint sensor located off center. It drives me mad but Samsung finally righted the wrong with […]

Samsung’s AR Emoji taps creepy avatars and Disney characters to compete with Animoji 10 minutes ago by Brian Heater A ‘Black Panther’ moment 33 minutes ago by Henry Pickavet Samsung’s DeX docking station gets revamped, turning a smartphone into a trackpad 53 minutes ago by Brian Heater With the Galaxy S9, Samsung put the fingerprint sensor where it belongs […]

Nokia — in its newest iteration as a licensed brand of HMD — is a long way off from its glory days, the years when it not only set the pace for innovation in the mobile phone market, but also led it as the world’s biggest handset maker. Today, the company took its latest step […]

Alongside HMD’s big bet on reviving the legendary Nokia brand and business through a licensing deal and a new wave of handsets that it is unveiling today at MWC in Barcelona, the company also announced another interesting piece of news: it has entered a new partnership with Google, where HMD/Nokia is now a leading participant […]

Nokia’s 8110 — the distinctive ‘candy bar’ feature phone with a slider opening — was once the phone that everyone wanted but no one could afford, made popular through the Matrix film franchise. Now HMD, the company that has the license to make Nokia phones, is hoping for a hit by bringing it back. Today, […]

ZTE’s one of those workhorse smartphone companies you don’t hear much about, aside from the occasional misguided flirtation with a bizarre form factor, a la the dual-screen Axon M. But the Chinese handset manufacturer still powers away and manages to produce some solid handsets at bargain bin prices. The company hasn’t officially announced pricing on […]

I’ve been CTO of HappyFunCorp since last year, and it has been a deeply edifying experience. Everything people told me was mostly true: I write less code; I go to more meetings, and turn up in more conference calls; I think more strategically, and less tactically; my time is spent in a more fragmented and […]

Apple told Reuters that the company had to comply with Chinese authorities and move iCloud data to Chinese data centers. Not everyone’s data is moving to China. This is only going to apply to residents of mainland China who chose China as their main country when they created their Apple account (not Hong Kong, Macau […]

Bike-sharing startup GoBee Bike is giving up and shutting down in all French cities where it operates. GoBee Bike operates just like Chinese giants Ofo and Mobike. You open the app, you find a bike on the map and you unlock it by scanning a QR code. Once you’re done, you lock it again and […]

If coffee be the food of innovation, pour on. Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. And if you wish to pour me coffee, do so from the Rite Press, a clever hack on the traditional French press that adds a few features that even high-end models don’t […]

Can programming be a craft? I was thinking about this as I was reading Matthew Crawford’s excellent book The World Beyond Your Head. Much like Crawford’s earlier work Shop Class as Soulcraft, he argues that craftsmanship is an activity that doesn’t just provide us with satisfaction, but also makes us fundamentally human by enchanting us […]

[embedded content] Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. At long last, after many predictions and even a private filing, Dropbox dropped its S-1 today. The filing marks the public beginning of the end of Dropbox’s life as a private company. Dropbox is going public! […]

According to a number of reports today, the next version of Android would include a “dark mode” – something that’s been a long-time feature request from those who prefer the dark-themed and power saving option that’s already available in apps like YouTube and Twitter. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. News that Android was getting its […]

A big part of the FCC’s mandate is to ensure broadband is rolled out all over the country, and it issues regular reports along those lines — but there’s nothing presenting information visually to get the point across. A new official map of broadband access based on FCC data lets you browse block by block […]

If you’re worried about someone finding out what you’re pointing your browser at, there are plenty of options for keeping it secret, with varying levels of difficulty and effectiveness. Veil takes things further than perhaps any other anonymous browsing method by masking the page you’re viewing not just from would-be attackers, but from your own […]

Monique Maddy Contributor Monique Maddy has spent her career as a technology entrepreneur working in emerging markets, including Africa, Asia and Latin America. She is currently founder and CEO of Ezuza, a mobile payments company located in Mexico. Long gone are the days when Africa was disparagingly regarded as the White Man’s Burden. Today, Africa is […]

It’s official, the Dropbox IPO filing is here. Going public is a huge milestone for Dropbox and has been one of the most anticipated tech IPOs for several years now. We knew that it had already filed confidentially, but the company has now unveiled its filing, meaning the actual IPO is likely very soon, probably […]

[embedded content] You’ll soon be able to trap Ghostbusters ghosts in augmented reality à la Pokémon Go. A short demo of the game Ghostbusters World was showcased at Google’s MWC booth, highlighting functionality made possible by the public release of Google’s ARCore augmented reality platform. Details are pretty slim for a wide release date other […]

In the race for in-ear AI, Apple has the clear advantage despite the fact that their intelligent assistant is one of the dumbest of the bunch. Yesterday, reports emerged that Apple was working on a pair of follow-ups to its Airpods headphones that could bring them always-on Siri functionality as well as a splash-proof design. As […]

Eden, the office management and tech support platform, has today announced the acquisition of OrgOrg, a social network for office managers to recommend, discuss, and review vendors and products. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Eden founder and CEO Joe DuBey explained to TechCrunch that a growing number of on-boarding clients said that […]

Local news sites Gothamist, LAist and DCist are coming back from the dead. Their assets (including story archives) have been acquired by three public radio companies — WNYC in New York, KPCC in Southern California and WAMU in Washington, D.C. According to the acquisition announcement, the deal comes after a competitive sale process, and it […]

French startup Ledger is making some of the most secure cryptocurrency hardware wallets out there. But the company’s apps aren’t that great. That’s why the company announced that Ledger has been working on brand new native apps for all desktop and mobile platforms. Right now, Ledger relies on Google Chrome for its desktop apps. At […]

After Microsoft signed a deal to test Windows 10 on Xiaomi devices in 2015 and then Xiaomi bought a trove of patents to help run other Microsoft services on its devices in 2016, today the two companies announced another chapter in its collaboration. Xiaomi and Microsoft have signed a Strategic Framework Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to […]

Tesla expects to sell 100,000 electric vehicles in 2018. But electric vehicles don’t make much sense unless chargers are easily accessible and convenient. That’s why Tesla is introducing the Workplace Charging program. It will allow offices and business to apply for a Wall Connector to be installed in the company garage or parking lot. And, […]

If you have a new Pixel phone, you may have been able to play with Google’s AR Stickers that brought Star Wars and Stranger Things into the real world. With ARCore’s launch today, developers are now able to put their own creations into the Play Store and users with phones left out of the preview […]

Google has adopted a novel way to circumvent China’s internet censorship system, which continues to block its services, after it partnered directly with three OEMs to bring its augmented reality service to the country. ARCore, the company’s augmented reality SDK for Android, launched in full today following its announcement in November. Google says there are 100 […]

Alongside news of Google Assistant’s forthcoming multilingual support and the addition of more languages this year, Google also announced this morning its smart assistant would soon be gaining two new features: Routines and location-based reminders. Google has been promising Routines were in the works for some time. The feature, which lets Google Assistant users string […]

Next Story Google Assistant will support over 30 languages by year-end, become multilingual Writer-director Alex Garland has said that his adaptation of Annihilation isn’t a straightforward retelling of the book — instead, he said, it’s “true to my subjective response to the novel.” That’s a fair warning: The movie’s details don’t really match the book, which was […]

Discord, the voice and text chat app for gamers, is today announcing a new partnership with a number of eSports teams for the launch of Discord Verified Servers. Verified servers ensure that users know they’re communicating with an official source, similar to verified accounts on other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Alongside […]

[embedded content] Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week the full gang was in town, with Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm all back in the podcast studio. The trio was joined by Hilary Gosher, a managing director at Insight Venture Partners who helped […]

Password management service 1Password has a neat new feature that lets users check whether a password they’re thinking of using has already been breached. At which point it will suggest they pick another. This is in addition to the more usual password strength indicator bar that tries to encourage web users to improve their security […]

WeChat is far and away the biggest messaging platform in China at the moment, and that is helping to drive a push among the smaller players to get together for better scale. Today, Momo, the Chinese location-based social networking app that has more recently made a big push into dating services and is traded on […]

Opera Max lives on after Samsung acquired the mobile browser to save it from oblivion. The browser was one of the first data-friendly mobile browsers and it later added privacy-focused settings, including safeguards against insecure WiFi connections and a VPN. The popular app clocked up more than 500,000 installs, but that didn’t stop parent company Opera […]

 Nissan Motor and DeNA announced today that field tests of Easy Ride, the self-driving taxi service they developed together, will begin next month in Japan. This means that Nissan and DeNA now rank among Uber, Lyft, GM, Didi Chuxing and other companies pioneering self-driving taxi pilots, with the goal of launching commercially within the next […]

Angry Birds maker Rovio’s stock price tanked cratered after their latest quarterly earnings report painted a dismal future for the game maker. The stock is down 50 percent after the company sent investors a warning in their latest earnings report that revenues were likely to suffer in 2018. Despite a strong over reliance on the Angry […]

Since October, emergency responders in Elk Grove and Sacramento County, California have received over 1,600 false alarm 911 calls coming from an Apple repair and refurbishing site in the area. It’s not clear if the calls are coming from Apple’s iPhones or Watches but each time a call originates out of the Elk Grove facility, […]

Split announced this morning that it’s raised $17 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Accel Partners and new investor Harmony Partners. Split has now raised a total of $26.8 million. The startup allows companies to test out new features and deliver them in a targeted […]

Snap’s stock investors haven’t made much money since the company went public last year, but CEO Evan Spiegel still got a hefty payday. According to an SEC filing, he was granted an RSU of 37,447,817, which vested at the time of the IPO. In other words, that was worth nearly $636.6 million. His salary for […]

Similar to the way people insure their cars, houses and lives, slave-owners would sometimes insure their slaves. Fearful of not getting their money’s worth from their slaves, owners would sometimes take out insurance policies on them. In the 1800s, for example, some slave-owners who rented out their slaves would insure them so that, in the […]

Robotics is an incredibly demanding field because robots demand the best of everything technology has to offer, from machine learning, to sensors and GPUs, to materials technology and of course the “robot” itself. For that reason, there is no better subject for one of TechCrunch’s single-day, single-topic events, and we’re excited to announce that TechCrunch […]

As the streetwear and sneaker industry continues to explode in popularity we’re seeing more and more startups popping up to service the industry, all from slightly different angles. Meet Bump, a peer-to-peer take on a streetwear marketplace. Founded six months ago in the U.K and now part of Y Combinator’s Winter ’18 batch, the startup […]

Facebook is looking to clean up and clarify the way advertisers measure their campaign performance. Over the past couple of years, the company has had to acknowledge multiple mistakes in its ad metrics. Last fall, researchers even pointed out that Facebook’s purported reach was greater than the US Census population in every state. So making […]

At this point, if you haven’t accepted the celebrity influence of the Kardashian/Jenner machine, you probably haven’t been paying attention to pop culture at large. Nevertheless, when a reality star can seemingly affect the value of your publicly-traded tech company, you’re in a bit of trouble. Yesterday, Kylie Jenner tweeted a pretty brutal takedown of Snapchat […]

Eight years after Amazon snatched up the daily deals site Woot!, the retailer is now leveraging the site to serve as another perk for Prime members. Woot! this morning announced that it will begin offering free shipping on purchases from its site to all Amazon Prime members. Woot!, which was founded in 2004, is no […]

French startup Snips is announcing two things for its voice assistant SDK. First, the company is showing off an interesting use case in Nuremberg with a Snips-powered voice assistant in a car. Second, you can now build voice assistants in German. Snips isn’t technically competing with Alexa Voice Service or Google Assistant SDK as they’re not designed […]

MyBagCheck is a clever system that ensures that you’ll be able to spend that extra few hours in a foreign city without having to lug around fifty pounds of Samsonite. The founder, Micah B. Lewis, created the app to allow people who have bags to get those bags picked up and stored during the day, […]

 Rich Communication Services (RCS) is basically the standard for the next generation of text messaging, with apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, LINE and others now offering features that go far beyond the standard SMS-based messaging apps that tend to ship with your phone — unless, of course, you are an Apple and iMessage user. Read […]

Airbnb today is rolling out a few new additions to their home-booking system, including new tiers that are aimed at higher-end customers called Airbnb Plus and Beyond by Airbnb. The new Airbnb Plus tier has homes that are verified for “quality and comfort,” rolling out with around 2,000 homes to start that have been inspected […]

What if instead of blasting cargo into space on a rocket, we could fling it into space using a catapult? That’s the big, possibly crazy, possibly genius idea behind SpinLaunch. It was secretly founded in 2014 by Jonathan Yaney, who built solar-powered drone startup Titan Aerospace and sold it to Google. Now TechCrunch has learned […]

The car leasing and rental market is forecast to be worth $124 billion in 2022, and today a startup that is hoping to get a piece of that action by making the process of leasing a car easier is announcing a Series A in its effort to get there. Honcker — a New York-based startup […]

It turns out that while e-sports may be growing in popularity, the fans of different video games don’t spend the same way as fans for traditional sports. To try and figure out ways to part fans from their hard earned money, teams are beginning to turn to the types of data monitoring tools that are […]

If you’ve tried to deal with a bot before you can speak to a human customer service rep, you know how frustrating that process can sometimes be. Sure, there are basic tasks that can free up a human rep to handle the more difficult matters, but it can be exasperating when there is no easy […]

UPS will work with partner Workhorse, a battery-electric transportation technology company, to develop and deploy a fleet of 50 custom-built plug-in electric delivery trucks with zero emissions. The goal is to make trucks that cost as much to buy as do traditional fuel-based delivery vehicles – even without taking into account subsidies. The Workhorse designed-vehicles, will […]

Max Rhodes was walking around that weird little parklet in Hayes Valley in San Francisco after taking a break from a five-year stint at Square to figure out what he wanted to do next — and he kept seeing Square registers everywhere. It was spotting them over and over again in smaller retail shops dotted […]

Coinbase has some serious competition. Today Robinhood starts rolling out its no-commission cryptocurrency trading feature in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana and New Hampshire. Users can buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum with no extra fees, and track those and 14 other coins in its sleek app. That’s compared to paying 1.5 to 4 percent fees […]

SpaceX nearly succeeded in catching the fairing used in its PAZ Falcon 9 mission on Thursday, using a barge called ‘Mr. Steven’ that uses four giant arms with a net strung between them to secure the used nosecone once it floats back from space. The fairing missed the boat by just a few hundred meters, […]

Ford today announced key changes in the company’s leadership ranks after yesterday’s abrupt departure of Raj Nair, former Ford President of North America. Kumar Galhorta will take over Nair’s position effective on March 1. In this post he will be responsible for all of Ford’s North American business and report to Jim Farley, Ford EVP […]

SpaceX has successfully launched a Falcon 9 from SLC-4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base today, its first launch since its successful Falcon Heavy test earlier this month. The launch took off early Wednesday morning, after being rescheduled a couple of times from an initial target of this past weekend. The launch was primarily designed to […]

What started with an esports team is now quickly becoming an esports empire, backed by some of the biggest names in sports and money managers for entertainment family dynasties and Hollywood power brokers. Vision Esports LP, the esports conglomerate launched by Stratton Sclavos, Rick Fox and Amit Raizada has just closed on a $38 million […]

Broadcasting app Anchor, which helps anyone record and share audio, is relaunching its app today with a new focus on serving the larger podcaster community. While in the past, Anchor was carving out a niche for itself in the short-form, social audio space, the new version – Anchor 3.0 – aims to be everything you […]

Feature Labs, a startup with roots in research begun at MIT, officially launched today with a set of tools to help data scientists build machine learning algorithms more quickly. Co-founder and CEO Max Kantor says the company has developed a way to automate “feature engineering,” which is often a time consuming and manual process for […]

Few problems are as much of a headache for the modern corporate worker as buying things on the company’s dime. Companies are loathe to hand out credit cards to everyone in the building, but they also want their employees to do your job without having to fill out six forms in triplicate to requisition a […]

What happens if you take a home security camera, throw it out, and head back to the drawing board with engineers from the world of self-driving cars behind the wheel? That’s the basic premise behind Lighthouse. They’re trying to build a camera that, thanks to its 3D-sensing lasers and a mountain of machine learning chops, […]

[embedded content] SpaceX is making a second attempt to launch its PAZ mission today, which includes the PAZ satellite from client Hisdesat, and is set for launch during an instantaneous window at 6:17 AM PST, or 9:17 AM EST. The mission was scrubbed on Wednesday due to high upper level winds, and reset for this […]

KKDay, a startup from Taiwan that operates a platform that helps travelers to Asia find local activities, has raised $10.5 million. The funding round was led by Japanese travel operator H.I.S. with participation from existing backer MindWorks Ventures, the Hong Kong-based VC. KKDay is one of a number of services that cater to Asia’s burgeoning […]

Falcon.io, a startup out of Denmark that helps businesses manage their presence across social media and messaging platforms, has acquired a competitor in a wider trend of consolidation in the market for such services. It is buying Komfo from customer experience software developer Sitecore, which itself was acquired by EQT for $1.1 billion in 2016. […]

Apple is preparing a couple of updating models of AirPods, according to Bloomberg. The popular fully wireless earbud-style headphones that Apple introduced last year are currently on track for a refresh in 2018 with the addition of a new version of the “W” line of chips that Apple created specifically to manage and improve Bluetooth-based […]

A new startup called Vence from sunny San Diego is aiming to make cattle farming more sustainable with a wearable device to create virtual fences for livestock. The company has raised $2.7 million in new funding to bring its product to market and develop new services for farmers in a round led by Eniac Ventures […]

[embedded content] Airbus recently had the first ever successful flight of its Vahana autonomous air vehicle, and now it’s released video of that pivotal moment in the aircraft’s development. The flight took place at the end of January in Pendleton, Oregon, when the flying, passenger-capable drone took off and hovered off the ground about 16 […]

Jake Bright Contributor Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa. More posts by this contributor: Africa Roundup: Partech Ventures launches $70M fund, TPG Growth acquires TRACE, Rensource raises $3.5M Want to learn about African immigrants? Mr. President, meet Africa’s tech sector Harley Davidson will launch its […]

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has distanced the company from reports that it might exit Southeast Asia and India. Currently in India on his maiden visit to Asia as Uber boss, Khosrowshahi told an audience that the company plans to continue to invest in Southeast Asia, where Uber has slipped behind Grab and Indonesia-based Go-Jek. “We expect to […]

For the singer-songwriter Starshell, a one-time protege of Mary J. Blige, success comes in many guises — and the latest is startup entrepreneur. Her song “Birthday Girl“, resonated so strongly with fans, says the singer born LaNeah Menzies, that it became something of an anthem. And Menzies has turned that anthem into a business. Her […]

The third time is a charm, Tel Aviv. After holding a Meetup + Pitch-off the last two years in Israel, TechCrunch is returning on 7 June 2017 for a day-long conference. As much fun as networking on a roof facing the Mediterranean Sea is, we’re ready to dig deeper into the tech that is coming […]

Tinyclues, the French startup that offers an intelligent campaign marketing solution that uses AI to help push the right products to the right customers, has closed $18 million in Series B investment. Leading the round is EQT Ventures, with participation from existing backers Alven, Elaia Partners, and ISAI. Using what it describes as “Deep AI […]

Pandora tumbled almost 9% on the stock market Wednesday. And then it bounced back over 6% after the day ended. The music streaming business, which has had a terrible past year on the stock market, surprised investors when it revealed a 63% rise in subscription revenue, totaling $97.7 million. Subscribers also jumped 25%, to 5.48 million. […]

ParkBee, a Netherlands-founded startup that lets private car parks monetize underutilized spaces by making them bookable to the public, has picked up €5 million in new funding The round is led by German-based Statkraft Ventures, with participation from existing investors. Statkraft Ventures is backed by the Statkraft Group, which claims to be Europe’s largest generator […]

Capillary Technologies, an India-based startup that helps e-commerce businesses manage their marketing and customer engagement, has pulled in $20 million in fresh funding from existing investors Warburg Pincus and Sequoia. The company said it plans to use the capital to develop its products and R&D, including a new focus on the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) space […]

Following a slowdown in e-commerce sales over the holidays, Walmart today is readying a new strategy to attract online shoppers with an increased focus on home goods. The retailer is now launching a redesigned Home shopping experience on the web which will better highlight home products, like furniture, accessories, and other decorative items. The new […]

Intel has announced that the fix is out for its latest chips affected by Spectre, the memory-leakage flaw affecting practically all computing hardware. The patch is for the Skylake generation (late 2015) and newer, though most users will still have to wait for the code to be implemented by whoever manufactured their computer (specifically, their […]

Investors don’t want their portfolio companies to pay you too much, or too little. So they pay Advanced-HR for its compensation data pulled from 2,500 startups. With a generic name, the service has flown somewhat under the radar since launching 20 years ago. As startups grow more professional while staying private longer, they’re getting serious […]

KitSplit, which operates a peer-to-peer marketplace for creative equipment, is announcing that it’s raised $2.1 million in seed funding. The equipment available for rental can include cameras, lights and lenses, but also VR gear and drones. Renters get access to this equipment for a lower price (CEO Lisbeth Kaufman estimated said KitSplit usually costs 30 […]

Ford today announced the departure of the Raj Nair, Ford’s President of North America and former executive vice president, Product Development, and chief technical officer. According to a press release, he is leaving the company following a recent internal investigation that found certain behavior by Nair was “inconsistent with the company’s code of conduct.” Nair […]

Despite surpassing analyst expectations for the quarter, Roku disappointed Wall Street when it shared its fourth-quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday. The digital streaming business fell about 18% in after-hours trading, in the minutes following the news release. Roku posted$188.3 million revenue, when Yahoo! Finance estimates showed $182.5 million. Earnings per share was 6 […]

The pixel-peepers over at DxOMark have shared some of the interesting metrics and techniques they use to judge the quality of a smartphone’s artificial bokeh, or background blur in photos. Not only is it difficult to do in the first place, but they have to systematize it! Their guide should provide even seasoned shooters with […]

Perhaps the most surprising thing I learned about Signal when I spoke with Moxie Marlinspike, the encrypted chat service’s creator, last year at Disrupt, was that it was essentially running on a shoestring budget. An indispensable tool used by millions and feared by governments worldwide, barely getting by! But $50 million from WhatsApp co-founder Brian […]

I’ve had a number of conversations with blockchain-focused people over the past few weeks. In some of those conversations — particularly with engineers — there is a palpable excitement and a belief that this technology is going to end up being their life’s work. As one blockchain hacker told me this past week, “It’s going […]

It’s a gloomy time in media, with frequent announcements of layoffs and shutdowns (it even happened today). That’s why it seems remarkable for an established publication to announce ambitious plans for newsroom expansion. The publication in question is The Atlantic, the magazine that Lauren Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective bought a majority stake in last year. The magazine […]

The micro venture firm UpWest Labs was founded nearly six years ago in Palo Alto with one mission in mind: to bring Israeli founders to the U.S. when their companies are still nascent and provide them with enough financial and other resources to get going. Why do this? UpWest’s founders, Shuly Galili and Gil Ben-Artzy, say […]

How much can customer service be automated? Onward has some straightforward targets — 40 percent of tickets and 40 percent of messages should be automated, and average response times should be 40 seconds on average. Founders Rémi Cossart and Pramod Thammaiah describe this as Automate40 — basically, a set of goals for businesses looking to […]

If you own a car or home, one of the biggest challenges you’ll face is finding the right insurance plan that’ll cover everything you need and save you some money — but those plans are always changing, and consumers are getting stuck footing a bill they don’t necessarily need, according to Hanno Fichter. That’s why […]

With so many Android devices out there to choose from, it’s not always easy to find one that’s enterprise-friendly. To help alleviate that problem, Google announced the Android Enterprise Recommended program today. As the name implies, it’s designed to point enterprise IT departments at devices that Google has deemed to be enterprise-ready. This involves a number […]

Raisin, the Paypal-backed savings deposit marketplace that lets you shop for a better interest rate across Europe, has launched a dedicated U.K. site, meaning that savers can now access deposit accounts in Sterling. The first partner bank on the British version of the platform is BACB, which is offering a range of fixed term savings […]

Facebook has just opened up registration for its annual F8 developer conference. Last year, Zuck and company talked about augmented reality, brain-computer interfaces and a complete rewrite of its React framework. Facebook has had turbulent year in the news, and the company has made some significant moves to restructure how its users are interacting with […]