Amazon is continuing its international expansion push with the launch of its services in Singapore coming imminently. The arrival could happen as soon as this week, according to a source with knowledge of the plans, and it will mark Amazon’s entry into Southeast Asia. The launch will see Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime Now fast delivery and Amazon’s regular e-commerce services… Read More
For Convoy, a meet-and-greet hosted earlier this year by two prominent investment firms has resulted in one of the bigger Series B fundings of 2017. As Convoy cofounder and CEO Dan Lewis recalls it, his company, a two-year-old, tech-enabled trucking network, was invited to the full-day event organized by Greylock Partners and Y Combinator, the famous startup accelerator. Convoy already… Read More
HubSpot is announcing that it has acquired Kemvi, a startup applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to help sales teams. A few months ago, Kemvi launched DeepGraph, a product that analyzes public data so that salespeople can identify the best time (say, after a job change or the publication of an article) to reach out to potential customers. It also proactively reaches out to… Read More
BMW Group today revealed more information about its forthcoming battery electric Mini car, which will join the existing internal combustion and hybrid options as a pillar of the lineup. The all-electric model will be a “variant of the brand’s core 3 door model,” BMW revealed for the first time today, and will enter production in 2019 alongside the rest of the Mini lineup.… Read More
Tel Aviv-based startup Prospera has raised a $15 million Series B to expand the scope of its technology, which uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to help farmers analyze data gathered from their fields. The round was led by Qualcomm Ventures, with participation from Cisco Investments, ICV and returning investor Bessemer Venture Partners, and brings Prospera’s total funding… Read More
Based out of Israel, Even is an audio startup that designs headphones tailored to the listener’s hearing. It starts with a short audio test of the frequencies you can hear in each ear, with an algorithm Even says stitches the resulting data into a sound profile called, your “EarPrint”. It’s an interesting concept that works well in the instances I’ve used it. At… Read More
Third party keyboards might seem like an app fad blast from the recent past. But the smartphone keyboard space could be set for a shake up as long time player Fleksy gets a new team working full time on the app… Read More
Lyft’s new partnership with Taco Bell seems like a weird cross-marketing campaign at first glance, but it could become a model for future tie-ups to come, and a new revenue opportunity for ride-hailing in general. Lyft and the fast food restaurant chain debuted “Taco Mode” today, which allows riders to add on a Taco Bell side trip during their ride with a simple tap within… Read More
Nielsen is taking a big step in measuring streaming TV today with the addition of Hulu and YouTube TV to its ratings. Nielsen’s President of Product Leadership Megan Clarken said that the company’s ratings (the best-known measurement of TV viewership) have included some streaming data before, but it was usually when “traditional networks … distributed their content… Read More
While Airbnb may have started off the wave of renting out a room in your house periodically to travelers for some extra income, that industry has blown up to include a lot of other competitors like VRBO. That’s led to many vacation rental owners putting their homes on multiple sites, which has led to the emergence of startups like Beyond Pricing — which helps vacation home… Read More
Varo Money, which provides a mobile-first banking product to consumers, wants to take on the big banks. In an effort to offer similar — but better — checking, savings and lending products to consumers, the company has applied for a national bank charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Read More
Companies are increasingly dependent on digital platforms for their business growth, and that is giving a boost to analytics firms that are helping them make better sense of that digital landscape. SimilarWeb — which offers analytics and insights about the performance of websites and apps, as well as competitive intelligence about how other apps and sites are doing (covering 80… Read More
U.S. social media giants have been warned by Europe’s consumer rights commissioner that she’s running out of patience with their failure to comply with the region’s consumer protection standards. Read More
The Budapest Transport Authority (BKK, in Hungarian) recently launched an online payment system with the help of a T-Systems, Deutsche Telekom’s consulting arm. The system, which took three months to build, was supposed to be installed in time for the FINA world championships in Budapest. The software, not unexpectedly for such a project, was full of bugs including the discovery of an… Read More
Duolingo, the popular language learning service that was co-founded by reCAPTCHA founder Luis von Ahn, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series E round led by Drive Capital. This brings Duolingo’s total funding to $108.3 million and the company says that its valuation in this last round was $700 million. Read More
Big data analytics — where vast troves of information are structured and used to help businesses gain more insights into their operations and customers, to develop new products, and to run more efficiently — are a cornerstone of how many tech-centric enterprises run their businesses today. Now the focus is on building solutions that the rest of the enterprise world can use, even if… Read More
Last month, the international Sino-US hardware technology accelerator and investment firm HAX released its state of the union address on trends in the hardware industry to a select group in San Francisco. The massive 243 slide-long deck and accompanying over-an-hour presentation included a few nuggets that we were able to comb through today. Primarily for the folks at HAX, these are the… Read More
DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, the best human Go player in the world. It was a defining technological moment not unlike IBM’s Deep Blue beating chess champion Garry Kasparov, or IBM Watson beating the world’s best Jeopardy players. As mind-blowing as they seemed, these victories were more about training algorithms and using brute-force computational strength than any… Read More
Google is launching a new feature for both Search and Maps today that is meant to give its users better information when a natural disaster or other crisis hits their area. These new so-called “SOS Alerts” will now prominently feature at the top of the company’s search results and in Maps when a user looks for information about an incident or an affected area. The company… Read More
This week on Technotopia I interview Rahul Sood, former founder of Voodoo PC and the current CEO of Unikrn, an e-sports betting service. Sood, who spent a number of years at Microsoft Ventures, started Unikrn because he saw the e-sports space was exploding in popularity. His company allows people to bet on gaming events and even bet on themselves as they get better at games. Sood’s… Read More
