SoundCloud co-founder Alex Ljung gave his first major public interview to me today at Tech Open Air Berlin. He batted back claims that SoundCloud is facing tough times, insisting that by cutting headcount by 173 people and closing two major offices, it is on its way to “taking back control” of its destiny and remaining a major independent force in the music and tech industry. Read More
Grand Central Tech is kicking off the fourth year of its startup accelerator.
As its name suggests, the organization is located near New York City’s Grand Central station. It’s not just an accelerator anymore — it also runs a coworking space, a “hub” for urban tech companies and is taking over the New York Venture Fellows program.
But Managing Director Matthew… Read More
We said yesterday that all signs pointed to Amazon’s Prime Day sales event smashing through its own numbers, and that is exactly what happened: the company today announced that the 30-hour sale, which saw deep discounts on Amazon’s own Echo products as well as a host of other bargains (hundreds of thousands of items, in Amazon’s words), was the biggest sales day in the… Read More
Venture investment in U.S. startups rose sequentially in the second quarter of 2017, boosted by large, late-stage financings and a few outsized early-stage rounds in tech and healthcare. Overall, Crunchbase projects that U.S. startups raised $22.7 billion across all stages, from seed through technology growth rounds. That’s up from $20.6 billion in Q1. Read More
Dietary supplements aren’t regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which means the industry is rife with dubious claims. Revere, a new startup that sells monthly subscriptions of its workout and energy drink powders, wants to cut through the buzz with straightforward mixes of plant-based ingredients, such as pea protein and sweet potato powder. The company announced today that it… Read More
PayPal this morning announced an expanded partnership with Apple, which will now see the payment method becoming available as an option on iOS devices, in addition to being available in more markets. Before today, U.S. users could add PayPal as their payment method on iTunes desktop on Mac and Windows when configuring their Apple account, but this expansion means that same feature will be… Read More
Meet the OrCam MyEye, a tiny wearable device that can give you secret powers if you have vision problems. It’s a tiny device that you clip to your glasses. It has a camera, a speaker and a cable that hooks up to a bigger device that is roughly the size of a smartphone. After that, you can use the OrCam MyEye to read stuff for you. We visited OrCam’s office in Jerusalem to try out… Read More
Hyperloop One conducted the first full-scale system test (via The Verge), achieving full vacuum conditions in its closed tube environment with a test pod that’s the actual size of what it envisions for its production systems. The ultra high-speed transit system didn’t pull off any speed records, however, with the test pod vehicle topping out at 70 miles per hour on H1’s… Read More
Sega’s making good on its promise to continue adding titles to its Sega Forever library of mobile games – the latest is the Dreamcast classic Virtua Tennis Challenge. The Sega Forever model sees the game maker releasing games from its previous console generations as free-to-play ad supported mobile games, with an optional in-app purchase to get rid of the adds permanently. The… Read More
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has developed a new method for displaying 3D movies at home without requiring the use of 3D glasses, and without some of the downsides of traditional methods for glasses-free 3D video playback. The method also doesn’t require any new special source material – it converts existing 3D movies from their stereo format… Read More
Unless you’ve had a chance to try some Apple HomeKit products in someone’s home or apartment, it can be hard to understand how it all works. In order to help with that, Apple has unveiled interactive HomeKit experiences in 46 of its retail stores worldwide.
Now, when you go into Apple’s new retail stores, you’ll be able to use the Home app from either an Apple Watch… Read More
Hutch, the interior design app that takes a photo of your room and virtually redecorates it, has raised $10M in funding from real estate platform Zillow. Zillow’s CEO Spencer Rascoff will also join Hutch’s board of directors as part of the investment. Right now the investment is strictly a financing deal – meaning for now there will be no strategic or operational… Read More
Part of the sexism problem in tech/VC comes down to the fact that women are far outnumbered by men, especially at the top of the food chain. Women represent seven percent of the partner positions within the tech VC community. This, in turn, leads to female founders receiving less funding simply because unconscious bias leads folks to invest in people who look like themselves and even… Read More
A few weeks ago I stopped at a garage sale in Brooklyn and found a stack of Nintendo Power magazines. Nintendo Power, for the non-80s kids, was a magazine produced by Nintendo from 1988 to 2012. It was full of tips and tricks and even had walkthroughs of popular games. If you had an NES it was required reading and, boy, did I read it. Opening the pages of Nintendo Power, almost three… Read More
Some more M&A news in the world of artificial intelligence. Today it was made public that Google has acquired Halli Labs, a very young (its first public appearance was on May 22 of this year) startup based out of Bengaluru, India, that was focused on building deep learning and machine learning systems to address what it describes as “old problems.” The company says it will… Read More
ZeroFox, a startup that helps companies manage social media risk including scams, malicious links and account hijacking, announced a $40 million Series C investment today.
The round was led by Redline Capital Management and Silver Lake Waterman (which is Silver Lake’s late stage growth capital fund). Existing investors NEA, Highland Capital Partners and Core Capital also participated. Read More
Esports is growing up. Activision Blizzard just announced the Overwatch League, a new esports league built around Overwatch, which will be the first major esports league with a traditional city-based team structure, just like professional sports leagues. Seven teams are being announced today, based in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Miami-Orlando, San Francisco, Shanghai and Seoul. The… Read More
The venture capital firm Fifth Wall, an investor in construction and real-estate focused startups that is backed by some of the country’s largest real estate companies, is expanding into early stage investing with the launch of a new accelerator program. For the firm’s co-founder and co-managing partner Brendan Wallace, the accelerator is an opportunity to reach out to companies… Read More
Two years ago, Stephen Kane was looking for his next big idea. A lawyer who previously worked for the mega-firm O’Melveny & Myers and then spent time at Lex Machina, a software company that analyzed case law for lawyers, Kane was looking for the next new thing. That was when he hit on his latest idea, FairCaims — an online service to resolve small claims cases. Kane calls it… Read More
After helping to launch the Partnership on AI with Google, Facebook and others; and doubling down on AI research, today Microsoft unveiled a new initiative that points to how it plans to target specific verticals in what can potentially be a very nebulous field — while also raising the public image of AI as some grow concerned about the implications of its encroaching influence. Today,… Read More
