TechCrunch is holding its first ever event focused solely on robotics on July 17 at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium in Cambridge, Mass., and today we’re really pleased to roll out the agenda for TC Sessions: Robotics. Read More
Plenty dismissed modularity (the concept of making a phone’s innards swappable and upgradeable) the first time around. And for good reason. Like just about every other gimmick in smartphoneland, the idea has been tried and abandoned more times than anyone cares to mention. With the announcement of the second generation Moto Z, however, the Motorola is not only committed to the idea… Read More
The rigorous new Chinese cybersecurity laws which we wrote about last November took effect today. They’re designed to give China’s central government more direct control over the operations of internet-based companies operating in the country. As we wrote last November: The regulation would require instant messaging services and other internet companies to require users to… Read More
Media streaming app Plex has been around (and great) since before set-top streaming boxes were even properly a thing, but on Thursday it added Live TV integration and DVR capabilities, which make it even more useful. Nvidia is doing everything it can to make its Shield streaming Android TV box the best Plex partner around, too, and a new version of the Shield software adds support not only… Read More
Plex is doubling down on its support for capturing over-the-air signals from digital antennas this morning, with the announcement that it will now not only let users record TV programs, it will also allow them to watch live TV. The result is a low-cost, do-it-yourself version of a live TV streaming service – a popular new category in the streaming market, which offers a pay-TV live… Read More
Apple may finally get overtaken by Android in developer revenues this year (or so the analysts say), but today the iPhone maker passed a milestone of its own: the company said it has passed $70 billion in payouts to app developers, up from $50 billion about a year ago, after taking its commission. And despite the fact that new smartphone purchases appear to have fallen off a cliff as many… Read More
Baidu has two new German auto industry heavyweights on its side in the race to develop autonomous driving technology. Both Bosch and Continental are now partnered up with the Chinese internet giant to work together on not only automated driving, but also on connected cars in general and mobility services. Both Continental and Bosch are key auto industry suppliers, and this partnership is… Read More
Security firm BullGuard has launched a consumer-focused Internet of Things product in the U.S., following its acquisition of Israeli startup Dojo-Labs last year. Read More
The old song tells us that leg bone is connected to the hip bone how are we to know if the articulated cam can connect to the brushless motor? There are, sadly, no songs designed to tell us how to build robots. Luckily CMU’s Ruta Desai has us covered. His project, “Computational Abstractions for Interactive Design of Robotic Devices,” is essentially a robotics toolkit. You see… Read More
This one’s for you, startups in sub-Saharan Africa. TechCrunch is excited to be partnering with Facebook to bring our illustrious startup competition, the Startup Battlefield, to Nairobi, Kenya later this year, and we’re looking for some promising startups to take part in the inaugural Startup Battlefield Africa. Read More
TechCrunch is coming back to Israel with a Meetup + Pitch-off in Tel Aviv because everybody had a great time last year. The event will be on June 28 at Trask, between 6-10 p.m. If you want to introduce your startup to the world, compete in the Pitch-Off. It’s a great challenge and applications are open now! All applications must be in by June 6. That’s in five days, so hurry… Read More
There’s been a whole lot of talk about initial coin offerings (ICO), company fundraising events based around the sale of cryptocurrencies, but not much in the way of action until yesterday. That’s when web browser maker Brave, founded by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, raised $35 million from its ICO — and it did it in less than 30 seconds, too.
ICOs operate by selling… Read More
Hubble, a London-headquartered a startup founded in 2014 to ride the coattails of the trend towards flexible office space, has picked up £1.2 million in new funding. Read More
Julie Desk, a French startup that’s developed an AI-driven “virtual assistant” to automate the scheduling of meetings, appointments, and more, has picked up €2.5 million in new funding — money it plans to use to further develop the technology. Backing the company this time around are previous investor SIDE Capital, Entrepreneur Venture, and SAAS Lab. Read More
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, will soon be using virtual reality to help train its employees on topics like management and customer service. VR instruction will be used at each of the retailer’s 200 “Walmart Academy” training centers in the U.S. by the end of the year, helping educate the estimated 150,000 employees that will go through the program each year.… Read More
Mary Meeker’s 2017 Internet Trends Report is released, Elon Musk draws his line with Trump, Nest’s newest smart camera, Nest Cam IQ, is released and Samsung’s Bixby personal assistant is reportedly running a little late on its release. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Silicon Valley has very few executives that have a LatinX background, and today’s Breaking Into Startups Episode features a young Dominican from the Bronx named Ysiad Ferreiras that survived gang violence, became an engineer, and is now the VP of Sales for a company called Hustle. Read More
NTT Data, the large Tokyo-based global IT services provider, today announced that it has made a strategic investment in database provider MarkLogic. The two companies declined to reveal the size of the investment, but Dave Ponzini, MarkLogic’s EVP of Marketing and Corporate Development, tells me it was “not a huge amount but not an insignificant amount either.” Read More
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes talked about the pending sale to AT&T onstage at Code Conference on Wednesday. Bewkes told the largely tech and media crowd that he doesn’t think the Trump administration will have a big impact on the proposed deal, despite previous claims by the president that he’s against it. Read More
Uber’s head of finance, Gautam Gupta, is leaving the company in July, The Wall Street Journal reports. TechCrunch has since confirmed this news with Uber. Gupta’s plan is to join another San Francisco-based startup as COO, but it’s not clear what that startup is. News of his impending departure comes as Uber has reported losses of $708 million. Read More
