It’s one thing to dispatch a drone when an accident happens to get an aerial overview of what’s happening on the ground, but you get far better situational awareness if you can use augmented reality (AR) to add the names of roads, the location of key personnel, cars and other assets to that view. That’s what Edgybees, a Santa Clara-based startup that current specializes in AR… Read More
Fresh on the heels of settling a contentious and expensive lawsuit with Uber, Alphabet’s self-driving unit Waymo is looking to get out there and educate the public on how its autonomous vehicles work. In a blog post announcing that Waymo self-driving cars have racked up 5 million miles of driving experience on public roads, the company released a video called the Waymo 360-degree… Read More
Kindred Capital, a London-based VC firm that has actually been up and running since 2015, is announcing that it has closed its first seed fund of £80 million, money it has already been deploying in around 20 tech startups throughout Europe over the last two years. Read More
Israel-based BrainQ is a new nuerotech startup hoping to take on brain-computer interface (BCI) companies like Braintree founder Bryan Johnson’s Kernel and Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk’s Neuralink. It’s not clear yet what Musk’s startup intends to do with the computer chips it plans to put in our heads but Johnson’s startup says it is focused on… Read More
Pinterest today is adding another executive to its upper c-suite with the hire of Francoise Brougher, who was most recently business lead at Square and prior to that VP of SMB global sales and operations at Google, as its first chief operating officer. Both of those previous positions are probably going to be of particular interest to Pinterest, as someone with Brougher’s experience… Read More
If an engineer ends up leaving a company, on their own, or for any other reason, the company work is going to have to quickly work to change all of their keys for their credentials and keys application components. That’s a huge hassle, because often times it’s hard to know where they are stored, who can access what, and how to change everything at a massive scale — especially… Read More
Industrious, the WeWork competitor that launched in 2013, is today announcing the close of an $80 million Series C funding round. The financing was co-led by Riverwood Capital and Fifth Wall Ventures. Industrious thinks of itself as a more premium version of WeWork, offering coworking space and workplace services to some 35 locations across 25 cities nationwide. “Industrious is high… Read More
Carnegie Mellon grad Luke Skurman built the first version of Niche in 2002. Originally called College Prowler, it was an online store selling physical college guidebooks. Times changed and the site changed with it, first taking on over a $1 million in investment to ramp up with a new name and then hitting a $6.6 million series B from Allen & Company and Grit Capital. Skurman, a San… Read More
Peanut, the app referred to as “Tinder for moms” because it connects mothers by letting them swipe each other’s profiles, is launching a new community discussion feature. Called Peanut Pages, it’s meant to give mothers a better alternative to Facebook Groups, Quora and other social platforms. Read More
A reminder that I’m going to have Paul Vigna and Michael Casey, authors of The Truth Machine, onstage with me next week at Knotel, a co-working and event space in Manhattan. I’d love for you to come. You can RSVP here and space is limited. It’s happening Tomorrow, February 28, at 7pm and will feature a 35-minute talk with two of the top writers in crypto. These guys… Read More
JD.com, one of China’s largest e-commerce companies, is launching a new Beijing-based accelerator program for artificial intelligence and blockchain startups. Called AI Catapult, its first batch includes six companies: Bankorus, CanYa, Bluezelle, Nuggets, Republic Protocol and Devery. Read More
In a country that’s increasingly polarized, where partisan politics shape perception, the question of how to create a compelling argument — rooted in facts — that can change minds isn’t simply academic. It’s a question that’s chipping away at the foundations of American democracy. Read More
Autonomous driving technology startup Pony.ai has become the first company to operate an autonomous ride-hailing service on public roads for public users in China. The company, just over a year-old, recently raised $112 million in a Series A round to help it accelerate its efforts, and its fleet is running a nearly two-mile route in Nansha, Guangzhou, where its China HQ is located. As you… Read More
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 hard to keep track of what it does. Read More
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 technology. Join us Jobanputra,… Read More
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 do was create a simple… Read More
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 half of the… Read More
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. Read More
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 margin, either. Supergiant funding rounds are coming to dominate the funding landscape at all stages. Here we take a look at this growing phenomenon, what it means and what might be happening “under the hood” in supergiant seed rounds. Read More
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 leave it there — there’s no dock. And yet, the startup is blaming vandalism and says… Read More
Some founders toil for years to secure a meager seed round. Others seem to go from launch to a massive fundraise in no time. Why is that, and how does one get into that second group? There’s no single formula, of course. But data indicates it helps to be famous, involved in a hot technology sector or working to cure cancer. Read More
Long gone are the days when Africa was disparagingly regarded as the White Man’s Burden. Today, Africa is the continent with the youngest demographic in the world, on the brink of a technical renaissance — yet the world’s tech titans are floundering to understand and gain a foothold in this market. Read More
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 they had originally heard about Eden from… Read More
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, except for the actual electricity used… Read More
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 way to select groups of users. Co-founder and CEO… Read More