Today Affirm has announced that it has more than 1,000 merchants signed up to offer its financing options at checkout, helping to reduce the friction around making large purchases and, by extension, increasing sales for its partners. Read More
Slidebean, the app that wants to take on Prezi and PowerPoint, is launching version 3.0 of the service on the heels of an $850K seed round from 500 Partners. The idea behind Slidebean is relatively simple. Presentations/decks are a fact of life for many professionals, but creating those presentations isn’t as simple as inputting the information you want. More often than not,… Read More
Elon Musk said on Twitter that he received “verbal government approval” to build an underground Hyperloop transit network connecting New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC, with stops connecting each city center, and a dozen more entry or exit elevators located within each city. The project would be run through The Boring Company, Musk’s tunneling venture, which… Read More
Unless you literally wear a mask all the time, it is almost impossible to completely avoid cameras and face recognition technology. Not only is this a privacy concern, but it also presents a potential liability for companies that need to protect personal data. D-ID, a startup currently taking part in Y Combinator, wants to solve the problem with tools that process images to make them… Read More
Movidius and Intel have put deep-learning on a stick with a tiny $79 USB device that makes bringing AI to hardware a snap.
In April of last year, Movidius showed off the first iteration of this device, which they then called the Fathom Neural Compute Stick. The company wasn’t able to get the product out as quickly as they had hoped because they were a little busy getting acquired by… Read More
Google last year introduced an app called Motion Stills that aimed to help iOS users do more with their Live Photos – including being able to crop out blurry frames, stabilize images, and even turn Apple’s Live Photos format into more sharable GIFs. Today, Google says it’s bringing Motion Stills to Android, along with a few changes. Obviously, Android users aren’t in… Read More
For a long time, traditional IT resisted the cloud, but that has changed in recent years as companies have come to realize that they can’t survive without the agility, scalability and economics that only a public cloud approach can provide. Yet in spite of the clear advantages the public cloud brings, there are still many companies out there that resist it for a variety of… Read More
After raising $55 million last year to build its business beyond its existing help desk services, today Freshworks (the parent company of Freshdesk) has made an acquisition to help it fill out that strategy. The company has acquired Joe Hukum, a startup out of India that offers a platform for businesses to build their own chatbots. I’ve asked, but the companies are not revealing any terms… Read More
It’s hard to see this move as anything but a temporary reprieve for the once-mighty Sears brand. The mall mainstay has fallen on hard times in recent decades as online retail has taken over — and now, the company is signing on with Amazon to sell its Kenmore brand through one of the key contributors to that on-going downside. While the move feels a bit defeatist, it’s a… Read More
IAC-owned streaming video site Vimeo has a new CEO: Anjali Sud, who previously led the company’s creator business. The appointment comes as the company has scrapped plans to launch a subscription video-on-demand service and decided instead to double down on bringing more professional and semi-professional creators to the platform. Read More
PebblePost, a startup that uses online data to target consumers with printed mail, has raised $47 million in a combination of equity and debt. That includes the $15 million, RRE Ventures-led Series B that the company announced in February. The equity portion of the funding has been expanded to $20 million, with another $27 million coming from a loan facility from Horizon Technology Finance, plus… Read More
Dynamic Yield, which uses machine learning to help online marketers personalize customer experiences on their site, has added $9 million to its Series C, bringing it to a new total of $31 million. Its new investors are DTCP (Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners) and La Maison. Read More
Twitter today offered an update on how its improvements to user safety and its newer anti-abuse measures are having an impact. The company declined to share any hard numbers related to abuse on its network, including how many abuse reports have been filed, or the number of actions it’s taken, for example, noting instead across the board percentage increases on things like account… Read More
Messaging app Viber earlier this year made its first foray into shopping services with Instant Shopping, a feature that lets you search for items for sale via a keyboard when you have the messaging app open. Today, the company is announcing some more e-commerce related news: it’s buying the startup that helped build that feature. Viber has acquired Chatter Commerce, maker of a… Read More
Mastering the ability to distinguish hot dogs from not hot dogs is truly one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Attempting to one-up that sort of masterstroke would surely be flying too close to the sun — but researchers at MIT are trying nonetheless. The team’s pic2recipe system uses neural networks to determine the recipe of a given food, in an attempt to gain… Read More
Google Street View now lets you explore the International Space Station (ISS). This marks Street View’s first foray into space and gives those of us who will likely never get to visit the ISS a chance to explore all of its 15 modules. The new imagery lets you walk (drift?) through the different modules and given the complexity of the ISS, Google thankfully provides explanations for some… Read More
Well the TechCrunch London Meetup + Pitch-Off in London is over for another year, and this one was arguably the best vintage ever in terms of quality of startups and the sheer enthusiasm from the attendees! Hundreds of startups entered the competition, creating a very competitive field. We packed out the Old Truman Brewery in East London with over 500 people, to hear the pitches of the… Read More
Citymapper has long been a top option for navigating in major urban centers thanks to its app, but now it’s getting even closer to the heart of the problem – by operating its own buses, starting with its first commercial bus route in London. The inaugural route is a nighttime one, running between 9 PM and 5 AM on weekend nights in East London, which Citymapper identified as… Read More
As web hosting and domain registration business GoDaddy prepares to report its quarterly results in a couple of weeks, the company is making some moves to reorganise its business.
Earlier this week it confirmed that it would sell its European PlusServer business to London-based private equity firm BC Partners for $456 million (€397 million).
And separately, we have learned that GoDaddy is… Read More
Petcube’s existing pet camera is basically an advanced video camera and voice intercom, but the new Petcube Bites is also a treat flinging machine that gives you more ways to interact with your pet while you’re not at home. The Petcube Bites has a reservoir that can hold up to two pounds of treats for either dogs or cats – and it can fling those treats at different ranges… Read More
