AHHHHHHH. Disney just announced something that’s potentially so damned cool that I hardly need complete sentences here: Immersive. Star Wars. Hotel. Details are still super light, but Disney just dropped this bombshell in the middle of its D23 expo down in Los Angeles. Here’s what we know so far: All of the employees (or ‘cast members’, in Disney Park lingo) will be… Read More
These are good times for AI entrepreneurs. Venture, corporate and seed investors have put an estimated $3.6 billion into AI and machine learning companies this year, according to Crunchbase data. That’s more than they invested in all of 2016, marking the largest recorded sum ever put into the space in a comparable period. Read More
Breakthroughs in technology, changes to regulation and socio-economic tailwinds are allowing talent and capital to be more widely distributed and at the same time closely connected. We’re witnessing the democratisation of a number of components of the startup ecosystem. Read More
French startup Alan launched a brand new full-stack health insurance last year. This week, the company is launching corporate-owned life insurance so that it can become a one-stop shop for all your corporate insurance needs. When Alan launched its health insurance product, it was the first new one in France in decades. The life insurance market has remained stagnant for years as well. This… Read More
SoundCloud says it’s not going away. I’m glad to hear that because I can’t lose SoundCloud. Ever. Last week, SoundCloud announced layoffs of 173 employees (about half of its staff), as well as the closing of its offices in San Francisco and London. TechCrunch’s Josh Constine later found out that those layoffs and other cost-cutting measures only gave SoundCloud… Read More
Borrowed location databases are paying off big time for Snapchat. They allow users to turn any nearby landmark or business into a stylized geofilter that they can overlay on their photos and videos. Before Snapchat partnered with location data providers Foursquare and Factual, only a few popular neighborhoods, cities, and places had their own geofilters. It also recently added a user… Read More
Sketchfab wants to become a sort of YouTube for 3D models and scenes. While the service started as a way to show off static 3D objects, the company has added a ton of interactive tools over time, making it a solid platform to preview virtual reality content.
This week, Sketchfab added sound support. So if you have a VR headset at home, you can look at a scene in 3D using your headset with… Read More
The world record for the fastest drone is set, an artificial heart is 3D printed and luxury phone maker Vertu shuts down. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Messaging apps today are one of the most popular ways consumers communicate today, not just with each other but, increasingly, with businesses and services. Now there are signs that we could see another big player enter the messaging fray, alongside more established services from Facebook, Snapchat, Wechat and more. Amazon appears to be sounding out the market on a new service called Anytime,… Read More
When the internet security company Cloudflare decided to engage in all-out war with what it views as a “dangerous new breed of patent troll,” it found a receptive audience with Eric Lesser, who became the youngest state senator in Massachusetts when elected to office in 2014. Senator Lesser, now a 32-year-old in his second two-year-term, was in the same Harvard fraternity as… Read More
Indoor mapping is one of those problems that seems to only have solutions that involve a great deal of money and infrastructure: beacons, lasers, emitters, scanners… who wants to install those in malls across the world? Microsoft Research has produced an indoor navigation app that keeps things simple, using existing sensors and the fact that people already go most of the places you want… Read More
Anyone who’s tried to do anything artistic in New York City knows that one of the toughest things to do is find a space to make the things they want to make or do the things they want to do. (Hello 2001-era-would-be-found-sculptor-me). Well, a new service called Scout It Out has launched in the city that never sleeps to provide would-be artists, directors, actors, interpretive dancers… Read More
Light’s L16 was a radical design concept when it was originally introduced in October, 2015 — but the concept has become a reality, as the company is now shipping the first production units to its pre-order customers. Read More
Verily, the life science’s arm of Google’s parent company Alphabet, has hatched a plan to release about 20 million lab-made, bacteria-infected mosquitoes upon Fresno, California — and that’s a good thing! Read More
AdQuick is looking to make billboard advertising easier and more transparent. AdQuick founder Matthew O’Connor said he ran into the billboard ad world repeatedly while working at startups, including Instacart. Each time, he found himself “perplexed at why it’s so hard to find and buy outdoor advertising.” Read More
Beatrice Kim is suing her former employer, BetterWorks, and its CEO Kris Duggan for allegedly assaulting her in a sexual manner during a company retreat. The lawsuit also implicates the startup’s regional VP Matt Hart and VP of People Operations Tamara Cooksey for allowing sexual harassment in the workplace and not taking action after the alleged assault was reported. Read More
Warner Music Group announced today it’s acquiring the selected assets of the music platform Songkick, including its app for finding concerts and the company’s trademark. The deal will not include Songkick’s ticketing business, however, nor the pending litigation Songkick has against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Songkick has been involved in a lawsuit against the major… Read More
TheMednet launched out of Y Combinator earlier this year to bring physicians a sophisticated platform for finding the best in treatment research, starting with cancer. It has now raised $1.5 million in seed funding to help it reach even more of those physicians. Read More
Facebook confirmed it has begun testing a new GIF maker in the camera feature of the main Facebook mobile application. The feature, which is available with the tap of a button at the top of the screen, lets you shoot footage that you can then save in GIF format to your device’s photo gallery, post to your Facebook profile, or add to your Facebook Story. The addition was first spotted… Read More
Why would Uber buy a team that builds Snapchat competitors? To make its driver app feel more human. Uber has acqui-hired Swipe Labs, the social product studio run by Marwan Roushdy. He and a selection of engineers from the dozen-person startup will join Uber to work on the driver experience within the driver earnings team. A source from the venture capital industry described the deal to… Read More
