Amazon is developing a free and ad-supported streaming video service, according to a new report out now from AdAge, citing people familiar with the plans. The company is said to be in discussion with various studio and TV networks to provide content for the service, which aims to give content creators their own channels where ad revenue would be shared with Amazon. This is not the first… Read More
Looking for a roommate on Craigslist can be cumbersome. And it can be difficult to determine what the person will be like in real life. A startup called Roomi thinks it has a better solution for finding people to live with. Its app and website help you search for apartment listings with background-checked profiles from the tenants. It also pulls data from social media, like photos and… Read More
Lyft is growing beyond its home market of the U.S., with a launch planned next month in Toronto, the largest city in Canada. Residents in the greater Toronto area (and nearby Hamilton will be able to hail vehicles from five of its service options starting in December. Riders in the cities will be able to hail Lyft Plus, Lyft Premiere, Lyft Lux and Lyft Lux SUV rides, as well as normal… Read More
Spotify, the $16 billion digital music “startup” that is hotly tipped for an IPO, continues to lay the groundwork to diversify its platform beyond basic streaming. In the latest development, the company is going to start selling beauty products. Yes, you read that right, you can now buy makeup on Spotify. The new service is the latest expansion of Spotify’s partnership… Read More
A group of female venture capitalists are launching a series of office hours for female founders. The idea is to host free, quarterly events that explore topics across the range of company stages — from early to hyper-growth. The first event, on November 30 in San Francisco, will be geared toward helping seed-stage female founders finesse their pitches. It will kick off with a talk, by… Read More
Flux, the London fintech startup founded by former early employees at Revolut, has announced a partnership with Barclays in the U.K. that will see it trial its itemised receipt technology with 10,000 of the bank’s customers. Read More
European Union financial regulator, the ESMA, has become the latest regulatory body to issue a warning about the risks of buying into — and running — ICOs. Read More
Razer has continued a winning streak of IPOs from Asian companies after its share price surged as much as 41 percent up on its first day of trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company, which makes accessories for PC gamers, laptops and is preparing to sell its first smartphone, raised $529 million from the sale of 1,063,600,000 shares. After deductions, Razer estimated its take-home… Read More
Boku, the startup that partners with Apple in its rollout of carrier billing for the App Store, expects to raise £45 million ($60 million) on a post-money valuation of £125 million ($164 million) when it goes public on November 20, a week from today. The company — which also works with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Spotify and some 173 carriers to allow users to pay for digital goods… Read More
Stan Laurent is Highland Europe‘s newly appointed Partner. Until recently he served as chief executive of PhotoBox, the photo-printing consumer company that also owns Moonpig. Read More
Whether you’re a founder on a fundraising mission or an investor searching for the perfect addition to your portfolio, you want to make the most of your time at Disrupt Berlin. But with thousands of attendees, how do you cut through the noise to make the right connections with the right people? It’s CrunchMatch to the rescue. What is CrunchMatch? Imagine a personalized dating… Read More
While some of the largest chip manufacturers are looking to shift their focus onto the GPU for their biggest machine learnings, there’s a blooming ecosystem of new chip startups looking to rethink the way processing for AI works That includes a European-based startup called Graphcore, which said today that it has raised $50 million in new financing led by Sequoia Capital — following… Read More
It hasn’t been a great few weeks for social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. But in spite of all the undeniable problems associated with fake news, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the equally undeniable civic value of social media. Take, for example, the role of social media in the response in Houston to Hurricane Harvey. According to Art Acevedo,… Read More
The paperwork’s done! The long-anticipated SoftBank Group investment into Uber has been agreed upon, a spokesperson confirms to TechCrunch. We’ve been provided the following statement. “We’ve entered into an agreement with a consortium led by SoftBank and Dragoneer on a potential investment. We believe this agreement is a strong vote of confidence in Uber’s… Read More
After months of talks, SoftBank Group is close to finalizing its investment in Uber. Multiple sources tell TechCrunch that the deal is expected to be signed later in the day on Sunday. SoftBank plans to lead a $1 billion investment directly in the company alongside Dragoneer Investment Group. The joint venture will also buy up to $9 billion of shares from eligible existing shareholders in a… Read More
Remember the Arab Spring? “Revolution 2.0”? Remember how we imagined, full of triumphal optimism, that social media would become the web that knit the oppressed masses together, would empower them to join forces and overthrow their oppressors and stride shoulder-to-shoulder together into a better world? Yeah, those were the days. But now — “disillusioned”… Read More
What do you get if you endlessly recombine Spiderman and the Joker with Elsa from Frozen and lashings of product placement for junk food brands like McDonalds? Read More
New CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been vocal in pledging to reform Uber’s toxic culture to take the business to the next level — and ultimately an IPO — but, over in Asia, another recent arrival is presiding over a revamped approach which includes turning those who were once enemies into friends. Brooks Entwistle, a former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Southeast Asia, joined… Read More
I’ve tried both Blue Apron and HelloFresh before, but I don’t like being locked into some subscription, so I decided to go with Chef’d this time around. Chef’d, which raised $35.2 million in August from strategic investors like pork producer Smithfield Foods and online grocer Fresh Direct, is different in that you don’t need to subscribe to anything, ever. There… Read More
Makespace, one of the many startups that launched to give consumers a new option for storing their stuff, has a new chief executive, TechCrunch has confirmed. The company’s thirty year-old co-founder and chief executive Sam Rosen is stepping down to make room at the top for Rahul Gandhi, Rosen’s fellow founder and Makespace’s chief operating officer. News of the change at the… Read More
