Retail giant Walmart announced this morning it’s acquiring the Tel Aviv-based startup Zeekit, which allows consumers to virtually “try on” clothing when shopping online. The company leverages a combination of real-time image processing, computer vision, deep learning and other AI technology to show shoppers how they would look in an item by way of a […]
BluBracket, an early-stage startup that focuses on keeping source code repositories secure, even in distributed environments, announced a $12 million Series A today. Evolution Equity Partners led the round, with help from existing investors Unusual Ventures, Point72 Ventures, SignalFire and Firebolt Ventures. When combined with the $6.5 million seed round we reported on last year, […]
Don't wait for laws preventing the use of NDAs. Companies should shape these policies on their own, rather than waiting for legislation to drag an ethical NDA policy out of them.
More money for the now very buzzy business of reshaping how people work: Worksome is announcing it recently closed a $13 million Series A funding round for its “freelance talent platform” — after racking up 10x growth in revenue since January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a remote working boom. The 2017 founded […]
SpaceX’s bourgeoning Starlink satellite-based broadband internet service just got a big boost from a significant new partner: Google Cloud. Thanks to a new partnership between the two, SpaceX will now be locating Starlink ground stations right within Google’s existing data centers, providing the Starlink network with direct access to ground-based network infrastructure to help facilitate […]
Liquid Death, a four-year-old, L.A.-based canned mountain water startup that has steadily garnered market share and press coverage by promising, amusingly, to “murder your thirst,” just raised $15 million in Series C funding. The round brings the company’s total backing to date to $50 million. The new financing — it follows a $23 million Series […]
While a unicorn named Hopin tends to dominate the virtual conferencing space, a new startup just raised millions of dollars by focusing on what it believes is an untapped niche in the same universe: academic conferences. Morressier, a virtual conference and publishing platform specifically for the scientific community, announced today that it has raised $18 […]
Roku today announced the launch of its own original programming, which will initially become available to viewers in the U.S., U.K., and Canada through the media platform’s free streaming hub, The Roku Channel, starting on May 20th. The debut lineup will include 30 titles, including both the scripted and reality programming Roku had acquired from […]
Blockset, the blockchain infrastructure platform for enterprises by BRD, announced early access to its Wallet-as-a-Service today. The white-label solution gives clients, like financial institutions, the ability to launch wallets that have the same features as BRD’s own mobile cryptocurrency wallet, which now has about 7 million users with over $20 billion assets under protection. Blockset’s […]
It’s hard to recall a consumer electronics category that matured quite as quickly as the fully wireless earbuds. Things went from a handful of plucky startups to virtually every hardware manufacturer over the course of a year or two. When Amazon entered the category, it did so in an already arguably overcrowded field. The first […]
Upsie, a consumer warranty startup, has raised $18.2 million in a Series A round led by True Ventures. The financing brings the total raised for the St. Paul, Minnesota-based startup to $25 million since its 2015 inception. A large group of investors participated in the round, including Concrete Rose VC, Avanta Ventures, Kapor Capital, Samsung […]
The Internet of Things just got bigger. Four years after Ford Motor Company introduced an integration with Amazon’s suite of smart home devices, the automaker is beefing up its in-vehicle software offerings with built-in Alexa voice assistant and a wireless software update ecosystem. Ford’s over-the-air software updates, which it has branded Power-Up, will have the […]
TiMi Studios, one of the world’s most lucrative game makers and is part of Tencent’s gargantuan digital entertainment empire, said Thursday that it has struck a strategic partnership with Xbox. The succinct announcement did not mention whether the tie-up is for content development or Xbox’s console distribution in China but said more details will be […]
SpaceX private spaceflight ambitions got a big boost in 2018 when Japanese entrepreneur and billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced he’d be taking a trip aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon on a round-trip flight passing the Moon. Maezawa is still on track to make that trip by 2023 according to current schedules, but he’s so eager to […]
Google has been fined just over €100 million (~$123M) by Italy’s antitrust watchdog for abuse of a dominant market position. The case relates to Android Auto, a modified version of Google’s mobile OS intended for in-car use, and specifically to how Google restricted access to the platform to an electric car charging app, called JuicePass, […]
Nano Technologies, a startup that lets workers in Vietnam access their earned wages immediately through an app called VUI, has raised $3 million in seed funding. The oversubscribed round was led by returning investors Golden Gate Ventures and Venturra Discovery, and included participation from FEBE Ventures, Openspace Ventures and Goodwater Capital. Nano recently took part […]
Only four months after securing Series B fundraising of $310 million, Chinese autonomous driving company WeRide says it has achieved its Series C funding round that brings its post-money valuation to $3 billion. This is first time the company has disclosed its value. The company did not share how much it has raised this round, […]
Tesla CEO and self-dubbed Technoking is back-peddling on the company’s stance about bitcoin and has suspended purchases of its electric vehicles with the cryptocurrency. The change of stance, which was delivered via tweet, comes just weeks after Tesla CFO and dubbed “Master of Coin” Zach Kirkhorn said the company believes in the longevity of bitcoin, […]
Vitalik Buterin donated cryptocurrencies worth $1.5 billion to several non-profit organizations, including $1 billion to a COVID-19 relief fund in India, on Wednesday in one of the largest-ever individual philanthropy efforts. Or at least that was the worth of the cryptocurrencies — many of which are dog-themed — when he made the donation. Buterin, the […]