In a huge blow to Uber in the UK London’s transport regulator has rejected its application to renew its license to operate in the city. In a statement today TfL said it has concluded that Uber is “not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator licence”. “TfL’s regulation of London’s taxi and private hire trades is designed to ensure passenger… Read More
Ach du lieber, menschen! The application deadline for your chance to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin is this Monday, September 25 at 5 p.m. PT. It’s time to cancel your weekend plans, stop procrastinating, hunker down and get it done. Read More
Walmart announced today it will begin testing a new service that will allow customers with August smart home devices, like the August doorbell and security cameras, to have their packages delivered inside their home instead of left on the doorstep. This test will also include online grocery orders, which won’t just be placed inside the house like the packages, but will be put away in… Read More
East Ventures is back at it again with another new fund to invest in early-stage companies in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy and the world’s fourth most populous country.
This new $30 million fund is the firm’s sixth to date in Southeast Asia, and remarkably its second in 2017 alone. Read More
MongoDB, a database software company based in New York, has filed to go public with the Securities and Exchange Commission as it continues to burn a ton of cash despite its revenue almost doubling year-over-year. The company, which provides open-source database software that became very attractive among early-stage startups, is one of a myriad of companies that have sought to go public by… Read More
Baidu is putting some serious cash behind its self-driving car push after it announced a $1.5 billion fund that’s focused on backing autonomous driving tech companies. The Chinese giant, best known for its internet search service and AI technology, has prioritized autonomous vehicles in a major way in recent years, so this comes as little surprise. Baidu made its Apollo self-driving… Read More
Shopping may be turning into an increasingly virtual experience, with people buying goods online and through apps, but there is no denying the power of a physical in-store experience — a lesson Microsoft is taking to heart. Today the company announced it will be opening a new flagship store in London — just a stone’s throw from the Apple flagship store. Read More
Election meddling is Facebook’s next adversary, and it’s got a plan to attack it just like it did with fake news. Solutions to both these scourges come too late to prevent tampering that may have aided Donald Trump winning the presidency — but at least Facebook is owning up to the problem, working with the government and starting to self-regulate. Read More
As Congressional investigations into Russia’s role in manipulating the election for U.S. president deepens, tech companies are assuming a more central role in the inquiries. Both Twitter and Facebook are stepping up their efforts to cooperate with Congressional investigations into Russian interference with last year’s presidential election. Read More
ipsy, a subscription service that delivers a collection of products to its users every month, has spent the last six years building up a community with millions of people obsessed with beauty products. And now that the company has more than 3 million subscribers — with a $10 per month subscription cost — it’s ready to get a little bit more aggressive by getting directly… Read More
Flexport handles the boring logistics of a trillion-dollar business: the transport of shipping containers around the world. Because the work of freight forwarding seemed so bland, it was long ignored by the tech world. But digitizing the paperwork let Flexport speed up shipping so clients keep less inventory on hand while never running out. Read More
Google Cloud Platform announced support for some powerful Nvidia GPUs on Google Compute Engine today. For starters, the company is making Nvidia K80 GPUs generally available. At the same time, it’s launching support for Nvidia P100 GPUs in Beta along with a new sustained pricing model. For companies working with machine learning workloads, having access to GPUs in the cloud provides… Read More
Bose’s rumored QC 35 II noise-cancelling headphones are rumored no more: Bose made them official today, revealing the update to the company’s popular QC 35 premium noise-cancelling cans.
Google worked with Bose to create the new headphones, the company explained in a new blog post, helping to “optimize” the audio accessory for Assistant, Google’s virtual helper… Read More
Instagram is making its face filters available for live video streaming through the app, the company announced today. Instagram had introduced face filters, which add visual effects to detected faces, back in May, but until now it was only available on video and images captured first and then posted to your Instagram Story after the fact. All existing face filters are now available for live… Read More
Google is launching a new way for businesses to give new phones to their employees: zero-touch enrollment. Traditionally, when you want to give a new phone to an enterprise user, chances are some poor admin has to deal with ensuring that the device is configured correctly and that all the right policies are in place. As the name implies, the new zero-touch enrollment feature, however, takes… Read More
Europe’s executive body has revealed more of its thinking on reforming digital taxation rules, issuing details of proposals it’s considering ahead of another meeting of EU ministers next week. Read More
Nine months after raising $22 million for its unique take on the cash-advance business, Activehours has gone back to the venture capital well and pulled out another $39 million in financing.
Led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from the company’s early-stage investors Matrix Partners, Ribbit Capital, and March Capital Partners, Activehours has managed to now raise nearly $65… Read More
There’s a new CEO at TodayTix, though he’s definitely not new to the company — Chairman Brian Fenty is becoming chief executive, while his co-founder (and the previous CEO) Merritt Baer is becoming the Head of Europe. TodayTix sells theater tickets in cities across the United States (including New York, Chicago and San Francisco), but its European presence is currently limited… Read More
London and Antwerp-based Hummingbird Ventures, which counts Deliveroo and Showpad in its portfolio, has closed a new $95 million fund to invest in tech startups at the “late Seed and Series A” stage. Read More
Nvidia’s Shield TV, an Android TV-based device that’s currently the best option available for 4K streaming fans, is getting a price drop with a new package that leaves out the included video game controller. Bundled with just the remote, the 16GB Shield TV is now $179 – $20 cheaper than the Shield TV bundle that also includes the joypad, and in line with the pricing of the… Read More
