CompareAsiaGroup, which runs online financial marketplaces in seven Asian countries, has closed a $50 million Series B. The round was led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, and includes capital from new investors Alibaba, SBI Group, and H&Q Utrust. Returning investors also participated. Read More
Apple’s latest operating system may still be chugging along through the phase of developer betas, but we’ve already been seeing a lot of the projects developers have been building for the company’s ARKit augmented reality platform for iOS. Read More
A $27 million fund aimed at applying artificial intelligence to the public interest has announced the first targets of its beneficence: $7.9 million will be split unequally between MIT’s Media Lab, Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and seven smaller research efforts around the world. Read More
This past weekend I ditched my electric skateboards and decided to risk my life testing a whole new and evolving category of personal electric vehicles: e-bikes. Lithium Cycles is one such maker of e-bikes, is based out of Tustin, California and scored $300K of equity crowdfunding earlier this year. The market for e-bikes in the United States is expanding and the reasons are straightforward.… Read More
Perhaps for the first time ever, our noggins have stolen the spotlight from our hips. The media, popular culture, science and business are paying more attention to the brain than ever. Billionaires want to plug into it. Scientists view neurodegenerative disease as the next frontier after cancer and diabetes, hence increased efforts in understanding the physiology of the brain. Read More
When long-time Microsoft COO Kevin Turner left the company last year, it marked a key turning point in the Satya Nadella era. Turner’s exit enabled Nadella to start putting his own stamp on the company, and the layoffs, strategy shifts and personnel changes we’ve seen recently are a reflection of that. Read More
Toca Boca, a hugely popular kids’ app maker, has grown to over 170 million downloads across its line of 38 apps, which 13 million children use every month. Now, the company is transitioning its brand beyond the digital space to become a maker of real-world products, as well. In an exclusive deal with Target, announced today, Toca Boca will launch its own collection of… Read More
Amazon has been quietly rolling out its own repair and installation service, a competitor of sorts to something like Best Buy’s Geek Squad, according to a report from Recode out this morning. The service is live now in seven markets across the U.S. – including Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, among other West Coast metros. It involves the use of trained Amazon employees who can… Read More
You’ve done it. After weeks and weeks of bringing your Overwatch A-game to the table for randos who disappear at the end of every match, you’ve finally found a competent group that wants to stick together.
Now what?
Guilded wants to be the spot your gaming guild calls home; the home base you head back to when the matches and discord chats are over. Read More
Waymo’s self-driving Pacifica minivans recently got a dedicated testing day with the Chandler, Ariz. Fire & Police Department, wherein the autonomous vehicles spent time in focused demo runs where firetrucks, police cars, motorcycles, ambulances and more navigated streets in and around the Waymo vehicles. This test was the “first emergency vehicle testing day” Waymo has… Read More
With its Rappido subsidiary looking to become a marketplace for all sorts of online and delivery services, Movile is moving further along in its mission to become the Tencent of Latin America. Given its backing by Naspers (a large shareholder in Tencent — one of China’s e-commerce giants), the move to replicate a business model that’s worked so well for the investor… Read More
Effective today, any company can file for a “confidential” IPO, even if annual revenue is greater than $1 billion. This means that larger companies can now submit and revise financial filings, waiting until a few weeks before the offering to announce it to the public. Read More
Google today announced an update to Forms, its service for building online surveys to collect information. Now, no matter whether you are trying to figure out who will actually want to come to your team-building event at the local ropes course or what your customers think about your latest product, Forms will be a bit more useful. Among the new features is an intelligent response validation… Read More
When trolls barge into people’s notifications with offensive replies or user names, those legitimate users might not keep coming back to Twitter. So today the company rolled out new tools to help you silence the riff-raff. Read More
Venture capital’s national association has come out swinging against the Trump administration’s decision to delay the International Entrepreneur Rule. A product of the final days of President Obama’s administration, the rule was designed to let talented immigrant entrepreneurs stay in the U.S. to build their companies. The two-and-a-half year period that immigrants would have… Read More
In the shadow of its Inspire partner conference, Microsoft today launched in preview three new tools for small businesses: Microsoft Connections, Microsoft Listings and Microsoft Invoicing. These join the company’s existing stable of small business tools like Microsoft Bookings and the Outlook Customer Manager. Microsoft Connections allows its users to create Mailchimp-like email… Read More
China’s latest move to crackdown on VPN software that enables people to circumvent its internet censorship system appears to be a very worrying one. Bloomberg reports that the government has requested that state-run telecom operators prevent their customers from running VPN apps on their network. Citing sources, the publication said that the government intends for the VPN block to come… Read More
As premium cable networks transition to become over-the-top services aimed at cord cutters, they’re finding that they need to offer more diverse content libraries, in order to compete with streaming giants like Netflix. HBO tackled this problem a couple of years ago, by partnering with Sesame Workshop to secure the multi-season rights to “Sesame Street,” and other… Read More
Take this at face value: Detroit has 50% more venture-backed startups than it did three years ago. This comes from a study from the Michigan Venture Capital Association (MVCA) which found there are 35 active venture-backed startups in Detroit. Sure, that’s not a huge number compared to other regions, but the growth is notable. I live in the great state of Michigan and can attest to… Read More
