For driverless car startups, raising capital seems to happen on autopilot. Investors and acquirers have put billions into the space over the past couple of years in the race for early-mover advantage. They’ve shown no desire to hit the brakes lately either, as indicated by a spate of recent deals. Read More
Face ID has already generated a lot of excitement but the switch to a facial biometric does raise privacy concerns — given that the human face is naturally an expression-rich medium which, inevitably, communicates a lot of information about its owner without them necessarily realizing it. Read More
Three prominent tech thinkers recently declared the end of the startup era, questioned the future of tech innovation generally and heralded the rise of the “Frightful Five” — Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft — who will dominate the future of tech. All of the posts make credible arguments, but ignore how consolidation could be good, even great, for startups. Read More
Like many of the most compelling startups, littleBits began life as a side-hustle — no expectations, no early push for venture capital. Just a bit of tinkering to pass the time. Ayah Bdeir was a recent MIT grad with a fellowship at New York City architecture design firm I-Beam when the seeds of the company first sprouted. Read More
The International Conference on Computer Vision just wrapped up, and at it the finest minds in CV and machine learning compared notes, gave presentations, and probably just marveled at how far we’ve come in the last few years. The world of assistive AI and self-driving cars requires computer vision to advance by leaps and bounds, and the researchers of the world are happy to oblige. Here… Read More
While Amazon has yet to reveal where in North America its second headquarters will be, the Seattle headquartered ecommerce behemoth has got Canadians excited by announcing it’s opening a second corporate office in Vancouver. Read More
Happy iPhone X day! A few of us over here at TechCrunch received our new toys today and wanted to share some initial thoughts with y’all. Leggo. Read More
It seems there’s nothing but bad news out there lately, but here’s some good news — the nonprofit Evolve Foundation has raised $100 million for a new fund called the Conscious Accelerator to combat loneliness, purposelessness, fear and anger spreading throughout the world though technology. Read More
Bradley Tusk, a former political operative who helps companies launch political-style campaigns, runs several businesses. One of them, Tusk Ventures, has been working with startups for a couple of years and, until recently, accepted its payment in equity only. That changed in early 2016 when the outfit began raising money from outside investors looking to get into some of those deals. Read More
“Make No Small Plans” is the Summit Series motto, and it doesn’t. The “Burning Man meets Davos” event company has bought a mountain, rented cruise ships and, this week, is taking over Los Angeles. If you can get an invite, Summit Series could see you learn to free dive or meditate, watch Quentin Tarantino or Kendrick Lamar debate art, take a class on polyamory… Read More
Tech IPOs have been picking up lately and one lesser-known semiconductor company, Aquantia, made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange today.
The company raised $61 million in its offering, after pricing shares at $9.00. It closed the day of trading at $9.51.
The San Jose, California-based company describes itself as “a leader in the design, development and marketing of advanced… Read More
It was only in April that Blizzard made the original StarCraft free to play, and now the company has done the same for its sequel. StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, which is certainly the most-played real-time strategy game ever made, will be free for anyone to play starting on November 14. Of course there’s a catch, but nothing nefarious. Read More
Meural’s second-generation Canvas digital art display is now available, and I’ve been testing one out for the past couple of weeks to see how it stacks up. This is my first experience with any kind of digital canvas product, and I have to admit I had very low expectations going into it – but the Meural is actually an outstanding gadget, provided you have the means to commit… Read More
Stranger Things 2 (as Netflix and the Duffer Brothers are calling the second season of their hit show) has been out for a full week, so some serious fans have already watched all nine episodes.
That includes TechCrunch’s Darrell Etherington and Anthony Ha, who have been bingeing the show all week. On the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, we discuss our feelings about the… Read More
The day we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. Apple’s highly anticipated iPhone X has made it into the hands of everyday customers. I’m a big weirdo, so I’ve been mostly looking forward to being able to use Face ID for the purposes of animoji. Animoji takes emoji to the extreme and it works using the iPhone X’s new facial recognition system. Read More
Netflix definitely has a hit show on its hands with the recent release of Stranger Things 2. According to new data this week from Nielsen, which only recently began measuring subscription video on demand services, 361,000 viewers binged their way through the entire second season of Stranger Things 2 – that’s 9 straight episodes – within the first day it was… Read More
Today, the iPhone X became available in Apple retail stores across the globe. And given the fanfare around iPhone launches for the past decade, we couldn’t help but show up and chat with one of the world’s most loyal consumer fan bases. At Apple’s 5th Avenue Manhattan store, lines stretched down the block and across Madison Avenue, with some pre-order folks arriving only a… Read More
Friends, if you include yourself among the ranks of world-class procrastinators, we’re here to say that you just got lucky. We’re extending the deadline on deep discount savings for Disrupt Berlin tickets — by one full week. You read that right. You now have until November 10 to save 30 percent over standard ticket pricing. Read More
The iPhone 8 may have been filled with the expected kit, but we’ve all been looking forward to finding out what fun Apple’s engineers had putting together the all-new iPhone X — and it doesn’t disappoint. iFixit’s excellent-as-always teardown finds a wealth of strange new components inside the biggest redesign of the device in years. Read More
