Roll up, roll up… there’s another e-commerce mega deal in Southeast Asia courtesy of a Chinese investor. Following on from Alibaba’s $1 billion deal with Lazada and a $1.1 billion round in Tokopedia led by Alibaba, rival Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com has announced a $500 million investment that will create e-commerce and fintech businesses in Thailand. Southeast Asia, a… Read More
The Global Learning XPRIZE, an international competition to create educational software, has reached its penultimate stage: 5 teams out of an initial pool of nearly 200 have been selected to receive $1 million and compete for the $10 million grand prize. Read More
Equifax learned about a major breach in its systems in March, well before it disclosed a massive breach earlier this month that included sensitive information for 143 million consumers, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Read More
Apple and Google are ready for an augmented reality tidal wave, but what of developers? Over the past several months, the availability of ARKit and ARCore have proven there’s plenty of interest in the technology on the developer side, and some big brands from Ikea to Disney have been publicly exploring the ways in which the technology can enhance existing applications. But developers… Read More
Since the advent of the modern ticket era, speed has been the name of the game. Whether it was the first person to get in line, or the first ping to hit the server, the winners in the world of ticketing have always been a step ahead. Over the last 15 years on the internet, that competition has risen to super-human levels, with bots becoming virtually unbeatable. For average fans, that… Read More
Noted Silicon Valley investor and SpaceX investor Steve Jurvetson is probably better positioned than most to know what Elon Musk is thinking with The Boring Company, his project to build a better tunnel boring concern, which he created essentially because he was fed up with sitting in traffic in L.A. Though The Boring Co.’s most recent headlines have hailed Musk’s plans to… Read More
Essential is bringing the latest version of Android to its first smartphone, the aptly named “Phone.” The Android 8.0 release is already available for Google’s own flagship Pixel hardware, but Essential has previously talked about how it will endeavor to follow Google quickly when it comes to major software updates. Read More
It’s impossible to ignore the rush of ICOs in venture capital land. The new fundraising dynamic has helped companies raise more than $1.7 billion this year to date. Huge sums of money tend to catch the attention, but experts in the industry argue that there’s far more to ICOs, also known as token sales, than simply the cash. Eyal Hertzog, a co-founder of Bancor Network —… Read More
Two days ago, a friend who invested in Bitcoin asked me how secure her Coinbase investment was. She had plans to put her coins in cold storage, but as a security stopgap was relying on two-factor authentication (2FA) through Coinbase, as many people do. My main question: What kind of two-factor? Read More
Pinterest is rolling out a new feature inspired by its power users, said Pinterest CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann, speaking today at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco. The new addition, called Sections, allows Pinterest users to divide their board into various sub-groups related to the board’s main topic. For example, if you’re redesigning your home, you might create sections… Read More
In the future, said Andy Warhol, everyone will be bionic for fifteen minutes. I’m paraphrasing, but it looks like a Portuguese company called Nuada is about to give us that opportunity. Created by Filipe Quinaz and Vitor Crespo, the seed-funded company pitched on our Disrupt stage and showed us one of the coolest pieces of hardware I’ve seen in a long time.
The Nuada is a smart glove. Read More
Facebook is serious about using Groups to propel its new mission to “bring the world closer together.” That’s why it’s made a big-name hire for the product leader for the Facebook Groups team. Former Change.org COO and president Jennifer Dulski will take the role. Read More
Bridgefy, which is launching in our Disrupt SF Battlefield today, allows developers to build a mesh network into their mobile apps so that their users and apps can still communicate, even when those devices aren’t connected to the internet. Read More
Back in June of this year, we wrote about a company called Future Family that aimed to simplify the world of female fertility testing, all while bringing down the cost of treatment options. But female fertility is but a part of the baby equation; it takes two to tango, as they say. With that in mind, Future Family is now offering fertility testing for men, as well. Read More
Wireless charging isn’t new. But wireless charging is still limited, particularly in terms of where your device can be while pulling a charge. For the most part, “wireless charger” means “a pad you sit your device directly on.” Lift your phone a few centimeters off the pad, and charging stops. Pi, a company that debuted in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield… Read More
Robots are stealing jobs, the narrative says, and, according to this video, robots are stealing the arts too. The video shows several industrial robotic arms playing the piano, guitar, drums and a keyboard. Through some stellar music production, it sounds amazing too. Read More
The Galaxy S8’s devoted Bixby button was one of the least popular features on an otherwise well received phone, owing in part to the fact that Samsung’s smart assistant was still half-baked at launch. Unsurprisingly, the feature also made its way onto the Galaxy Note 8, though, by that time, the company had finally rolled out Bixby’s voice functionality for both devices.… Read More
Intel’s putting its investment fund where its mouth is when it comes to artificial intelligence: The chipmaker announced today that it has funneled over $1 billion into AI startups via its Intel Capital center arm. That includes participating in rounds in companies including Mighty AI, Data Robot, Lumiata, AEye and many more. Intel’s investment focus has spanned a range of… Read More
The mind behind Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, is matter-of-fact about the crypto. In short, he believes what interviewer Naval Ravikant called “brain virus” is the true future of security and economics and, with the right incentives, Ethereum can replace things like credit card networks and even gaming servers. Buterin separates the world into two kinds of people. “There’s… Read More
Today at Disrupt SF 2017 Vitalik Buterin sat down with AngelList founder Naval Ravikant to talk Ethereum. Because, well, Vitalik created Ethereum. Up front, Ravikant asked him to explain Ethereum and this is what he said.
“You basically need to have some system that keeps track of how much money you have at any given time, how much money you have the right to spend,” Buterin said. Read More
