Fire TV owners could already control their set with voice commands, but doing so used to mean having to pick up the remote. Now that Amazon’s set top box can be paired with an Echo, the company has brought users another step closer to never having to lift a finger.
Starting today, users can choose specific shows, change channels, adjust volume and open apps directly from the smart home hub. Read More
Insurance is one of those markets where startups see an opportunity to apply new technologies and data to lower costs and improve the consumer experience. And Kin Insurance is one of those startups that thinks it can do a better job of helping homeowners in particular get insured. Read More
Shopify reported results for its fiscal Q2 2017 on Tuesday, and the numbers are strong: Revenue grew 75 percent year over year, and the company’s gross profit also grew 83 percent compared to the same quarter in 2016. Total revenue beat expectations from Wall Street at $151.7 million, and its subscription-based business grew to $71.6 million, driven by a record number of new merchants… Read More
Project Kino was inspired by ‘living jewelry,’ large bedazzled beetles and other insects worn as decoration in different parts of the world. The MIT Media lab version is much more humane, however, using palm-sized robots that cling onto clothing with magnets. The team has been demoing the work for about a year now and has come up with a wide range of functions for the little… Read More
Tesla’s energy business is focused in part on solar power generation, but a big component of the business hopes to use its Powerpack commercial storage batteries in tandem with renewable power generation to store energy until it’s needed. A new proposal, reports Bloomberg, by energy supplier Deepwater Wind would use Tesla’s batteries in a new offshore wind plant near… Read More
Subscription services sprout up every day, but a new project from actress Sofia Vergara and her partner Renata Black is looking to do something a little different. Eby, cofounded by Vergara and Black, is a subscription service for women’s underwear. The product itself is a seamless panty that is designed specifically to prevent sliding and riding up, with styles including thong,… Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt alum UnifyID has the clear goal of changing the way we think about authentication. Instead of entering a username and password as the only line of defense to our computer systems, it wants us to rely on other data that comes from the phone in our pockets. That smartphone has a number of sensors in it like an accelerometer and a GPS, and using the kinds of data it gather… Read More
Boxed allows online shoppers to to find the same kinds of deals you’d get at a wholesale retailer like Costco. Now it wants to help you avoid that awkward moment when you realize you’re all out of toilet paper. Co-founder and CTO William Fong said that last week, the company released a new feature called SmartStockup to about a quarter of its users, and it’s in the process… Read More
We’re just weeks away from Samsung’s next major launch event on August 23, and already we have a full visual of the device it is expected to unveil — the Galaxy Note 8. That’s courtesy of prolific smartphone leaker Evan Blass — who correctly detailed Samsung’s Galaxy S8 before it was announced earlier this year — and a couple of photos of the… Read More
Didi Chuxing, the ride-sharing company that forced Uber out of China, has expanded its increasingly global empire after it made an investment in Taxify, an Uber-like service that operates in Europe and Africa as it prepares to launch in London later this year.
The amount invested has not been disclosed but TechCrunch understands from a source close to the deal that it is an eight-figure U.S. Read More
Carspring, the London and Berlin used car buying platform founded by Rocket Internet, has picked up £5 million in Series B funding. Backing the round are Rocket Internet itself, along with Channel 4’s Commercial Growth Fund, which offers media in the form of TV advertising in return for equity. Read More
Fintech startup Klarna grew thanks to its e-commerce payment service, but now the startup is diversifying a bit. The Swedish company is launching Wavy, a free peer-to-peer payment app and service.
After Cookies imploded, Klarna approached the team behind the German app so that they could join another fintech company. It turns out that this team has been working on another peer-to-peer payment app. Read More
Less than a week after the SEC said that it may regulate certain crypto token sales, better known as ICOs, Singapore has followed suit to say it too will regulate offerings that are deemed to be securities. Already a global financial hub, Singapore has developed into a destination of sorts for ICOs, with the likes of TenX ($80 million), Golem ($8.6 million) and Qtum ($15.6 million) among those… Read More
Following sexual harassment allegations that led to the resignation of 500 Startups co-founder Dave McClure, it’s now emerged that the troubled VC firm has abandoned its Canada fund. According to reports in The Globe and Mail and BetaKit, the saga made it difficult to move forward with the next phase of 500 Canada, where it had a profit-sharing relationship. The firm was in the process… Read More
Snap, the Snapchat parent, closed the day down just 1% Monday after the first phase of the dreaded lockup expiration, which meant that some insiders are now eligible to sell shares. The anticipation of a big selloff had been putting downward pressure on the stock for weeks, but it appears that enough of that fear was already built into the stock price to withstand day one. But while… Read More
Niantic postpones its European Pokémon GO Event, Discovery Communications acquires Scripps Networks for $14.6 billion, Game of Thrones materials getting released in HBO hack and Reddit is now valued at $1.8 billion. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
After being ousted from the VR empire he built, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is wasting no time on his next project: building the wall. As CNN reports, Luckey’s newfound interest in defense is evident in the Secure Miles with All Resources and Technology (SMART) Act, proposed by Texas Representative Will Hurd. Hurd partnered with other Republican representatives from border states… Read More
We’re taking a look at the IPOs of tech’s biggest players. Next up is Google, which went public in 2004. At the time, the firm frankly told investors that it was “not a conventional company,” and it did “not intend to become one.” For Google, the unconventional attitude worked. But before its IPO more than 10 years ago, the company’s future was… Read More
Facebook has gone ahead and purchased Charles Jolley’s conversational AI startup Ozlo. Jolley, formerly Head of Platform for Android at Facebook, will not be returning to the company. The Ozlo team is expected to join Facebook to work on natural language processing challenges. Read More
NASA has announced the latest beneficiaries of its Small Business Technology Transfer program, which solicits and funds small-scale research projects outside the agency but relevant to its interests. Nineteen projects in a variety of fields are being awarded a total of $14.3 million. Read More
