BlackBerry’s most interesting phone in years – if not an entire decade – is the KEYone, an Android device with a classic BlackBerry hardware keyboard that finally answers the needs of truly dedicated thumb typists with a modern mobile OS. Now, the KEYone ‘Black Edition’ has arrived, and it’s more than just a fresh coat of paint on an older gadget. In fact,… Read More
According to a new report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is still facing supply chain constraints for the upcoming iPhone X. The company will have around 2 to 3 million units before the launch on November 3rd, which shouldn’t be enough to meet demand. While Apple didn’t disclose exact numbers for first-weekend sales last year, the company sold 13 million iPhone… Read More
Spotify already has a reputation of being a hitmaker for new artists and other up-and-comers, but now the company is turning its prowess into a product. Today, Spotify announced the launch of RISE, a new program designed to “identify and break the next wave of music superstars,” the company says. The idea here is that Spotify will leverage its platform and its sizable reach… Read More
Grab is in the process of raising $2.5 billion for it ride hailing service in Southeast Asia, but that hasn’t stopped the Uber rival from tapping banks for $700 million in debt facilities to develop its business. The Singapore-based company said it had pulled in the financing from “leading global and regional banks” to expand its car rental fleet in Singapore and Indonesia,… Read More
Legend tells of a programmer named Martin Kirkholt Melhus who worked at a client site where there was no Internet. Realizing most of his work involved cutting and pasting from StackOverflow, he needed a way to get online. And so he turned his speaker and microphone into a working (in theory) modem. “This was only ever intended as a gimmick and a proof of concept – not something that… Read More
We’re breaking the rules a little for this one. While TechCrunch’s Original Content podcast is focused on new shows and movies from streaming services like Hulu and Netflix, we’ve also gone out of our way to remind listeners that Inhumans, the new Marvel series airing on ABC, looks very bad. This week, your hosts Darrell Etherington and Anthony Ha decided to take the plunge… Read More
Welcome to Equity, TechCrunch’s podcast about venture capital and the tech business. On the latest episode, we were joined by Barry Eggers, co-founder and a general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. There was a lot of IPO news this week. MongoDB debuted and we saw filings on Thursday for both Stitch Fix and SendGrid. And, of course, there was the inevitable ridesharing news.… Read More
Ridge Ventures, which is the new incarnation of the old IDG Ventures USA, has made a significant new hire in its path towards its future as a newly independent VC firm. It’s brought on Ben Metcalfe, formerly of WP Engine and Uber, as its first-ever Principal. He brings a very broad experience as an entrepreneur, angel investor, software engineer, product developer and operator, said… Read More
People often stop after Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant when rattling off the list of smart assistants. Cortana really gets no love at all. The oversight can be chalked up, in part, to the fact that AI has been mostly desktop-bound. No one’s really bothered to take Cortana to the next level — Microsoft certainly isn’t taking the initiative. Read More
PayPal users in the U.S. will now be able to send and receive person-to-person payments over Facebook Messenger, the company announced this morning. The deeper integration with Messenger’s platform, which will also include PayPal’s first customer service bot for handling customer questions and requests for help, follows a series of tie-ups between the two companies. Last year,… Read More
Sea, the Singapore-based digital entertainment firm formerly known as Garena, is set to raise upwards of $884 million when it lists on the New York Stock Exchange Friday under ‘SE’.
The company, which specializes in publishing games but also offers payment and e-commerce services, has priced its shares at $15 — above the $12-$14 range it previously set out. Sea originally… Read More
Softbank looks to be preparing follow on raises to its first ~$100BN Vision Fund. Speaking to Nikkei today CEO Masayoshi Son said: “The Vision Fund was just the first step, 10 trillion yen is simply not enough… Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt events are famous for attracting the best and brightest minds the tech world has to offer. This December, Disrupt Berlin will be rife with opportunity both for startup founders and venture capitalists. The tricky bit is finding the right fit amidst hundreds of companies and thousands of attendees. That’s why we created CrunchMatch. Read More
Lyft raises $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation, Swedish lock maker Assa Abloy acquires August Home, MongoDB up 34% on stock market debut and Facebook is testing paywalls for Instant Articles. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
You get to a certain age, and if you’re remotely vain (and let’s face it, you are), you need to have your hair colored fairly frequently. You’re hardly alone. Roughly 75 percent of women in the United States color their hair, which today adds up to an $18 billion opportunity for brands like L’Oréal and Clairol. It used to look that way, anyway. Eating into a… Read More
Today Google announced a new labeled data set of human actions taking place in videos. That may sound obscure, but it’s a big deal for anyone working to solve problems in computer vision. Read More
A topic like fake news (more broadly the question of trust and verification on the internet) is a complex one. Sometimes you just have to poll the room and get a feel for what people are thinking before drawing any conclusions. That’s what Pew Internet did, contacting thousands of experts in tech, internet, and social policy and asking how they thought things would go. They were not… Read More
Every year at its MAX conference, Adobe shows off a couple of interesting prototypes that may or may net end up in one of its products. This year is no exception as the company highlighted 11 projects from its labs today. These included Project Lincoln, a tool that everybody who has ever tried to visualize data would surely welcome with open arms. Read More
Palmer Luckey’s new defense startup Anduril has aspirations well beyond a high-tech border wall. According to new information on the company’s website and its hires, Anduril intends to apply its virtual reality pedigree to “real-time battlefield awareness for soldiers,” among other defense-centric specialties. Read More
