What do N26, Revolut and Monzo have in common? The three founders of those three startups are all coming to TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin to discuss all things fintech. If you want to see Valentin Stalf, Nikolay Storonsky and Tom Blomfield share the same stage, come to Disrupt in December. N26 also happens to be a Startup Battlefield success story. The company participated in our startup… Read More
From travel visas to sponsoring green cards, today’s companies deal with a lot of documents to keep up with the demands of a global workforce. A Chicago-based startup called Envoy Global has built enterprise software for processing the relevant paperwork. It also works with a law firm to offer companies legal advice pertaining to immigration and visas. Envoy Global has raised a $21… Read More
In its ongoing war against online extremism the UK government has said it intends to change the law to bring in tougher sentences for people who repeat view terrorist content online — increasing the maximum penalty to up to 15 years behind bars. Read More
Curiscope, a U.K. augmented and virtual reality content startup, has raised a $1 million seed round led by LocalGlobe, the seed VC firm founded by Saul and Robin Klein. Ascension Ventures, Force over Mass, ustwo Adventure, and Richard Fearn also participated. Read More
Last year, a new VC emerged in Silicon Valley, designed to deal with the world’s biggest problems. 50 Years said it wanted to solve real-world problems, while at the same time as making money. What if you took that ethos and created a sort of Y Combinator-for-good? Today London, seems to be poised to catch up with that idea, with the launch of Zinc, a new ‘company builder’… Read More
A potentially pivotal document in the legal fight between Uber and Waymo, the self-driving car company that was originally part of Google, has been released. It is a report (embedded at the bottom of this post) commissioned by Uber from cybersecurity firm Stroz Friedberg last year as part of its due diligence before acquiring Otto, a self-driving truck startup founded by former Google employees. Read More
GM is hoping to have 20 new electric vehicles by 2023, Uber is partnering with Westfield Malls to offer pick-up spots and lounges and Facebook is hiring 1,000 more people to help combat election ad interference. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Ajit Pai has been confirmed by the Senate as the Chairman of the FCC. He has been acting Chairman this whole time, as the process of confirmation generally lags well behind the succession process at the agency; the former Chairman, Tom Wheeler, stepped down shortly before the new Presidential term began, marking Pai’s de facto promotion. The vote today is his de jure assumption of the role. Read More
Truphone, a mobile company based out of London that made a name for itself through low-cost international mobile voice and data plans, is taking a very big step forward in a strategy to catapult itself into the future of communications: the company has picked up a massive £255 million ($339 million), funding that it will use to retire its debt and double down on providing data connectivity… Read More
Tech hubs tend to generate material wealth for their workers and the countries that house them. Historically, Silicon Valley has served as the de facto hub for tech. But that is under assault from markets both domestic and abroad. So, how is the United States faring in terms of its share of global early-stage funding? Read More
ForeScout Technologies has unveiled its IPO filing. This puts the network security company on track for a public debut that could happen as soon as late October. ForeScout helps companies and government agencies monitor the devices connected to their networks and alerts them of potential intrusions. Read More
Topology Eyewear is an augmented reality app providing custom-fit glasses from a 3D scan of your face. Most glasses are mass manufactured to fit a supposedly symmetric head. The problem is, most of us are not that symmetrical. The Topology app, available on iOS, uses face-scanning technology to take into account facial factors that can make most glasses not fit as well as they should. Read More
Ex-500 Startups partners Elizabeth Yin and Eric Bahn want to focus on potential impact, not on whether or not founders have a degree from Stanford or some Ivy League school. Their goal with Hustle Fund, according to sources, is to level the playing the field for entrepreneurs in an industry where pedigree is not a good proxy for success. Read More
When Oracle chairman Larry Ellison announced his company’s new autonomous database product at the Oracle OpenWorld conference keynote, he took several minutes to disparage AWS, one of his chief rivals in the cloud market. As market leader, Amazon stands firmly in Ellison’s crosshairs, but AWS took exception to his comments, and decided to issue a public rebuke. Read More
Snapchat plans to launch a new augmented reality art platform featuring pop artist Jeff Koons and others. It will allow art to be pinned to specific locations in augmented reality so users can see it when they hold up their phones in the right spot. Snapchat will solicit sign-ups from artists who want their art added to the platform. Snapchat plans to roll out the feature with Koons’s… Read More
Tesla has released its quarterly vehicle production numbers for the third quarter of 2017, which it says was its “all-time best quarter for Model S and Model X deliveries” — but it was not a great quarter for production of the Model 3, of which only 260 were made. Read More
In the early hours of the morning as reports were coming in about the mass shooting in Las Vegas, some of the largest websites in the world were distributing unverified claims about the attack.
Google, which was running reports from 4chan in some of its search queries as a top story, explained to us what went wrong… and how it enabled some false information from one of the web’s… Read More
As a true clotheshorse I love to lay out my outfits a week in advance and ensure that all of my sartorial choices are on, as it were, fleek. But not everyone has that skill or the time and those people should try Cladwell. Created by Blake Smith the app first tells you exactly what to buy – a selection of regular items that you can use forever – and then gives you permutations… Read More
ServiceNow is best known for helping large organizations organize field service and help desk activity. Today it bought design firm Telepathy because it knows that offering enterprise-class functionality isn’t enough anymore. Your applications have to look good too.
The company did not reveal the acquisition price
Telepathy is a design firm that was founded in 2001 in San Diego and… Read More
A friend of mine wakes up every morning and reports every single instance of crass, homophobic, and racist behavior she sees on Twitter. She sees it as her duty, an ordering of things in an unordered stream. Her efforts are quixotic at best because when she wakes up and rubs the sleep out of her eyes the firehose still rages. Why does she have to do this? Because of Twitter’s success and… Read More
