In the early days of Android, skins were the norm. Manufacturers looked to set themselves apart from countless competitors with custom design languages at proprietary apps, to the point where many actually slowed down and hurt the experience in the process.
The tide has, thankfully, turned on that front. While a full-vanilla Android experience isn’t always the norm, many learned the… Read More
Tile, the company that makes connected devices in order to track items when they go missing, today announced it has raised a Series B-1 round of new funding, led by Bessemer Venture Partners. In addition, Tile noted it has now hit two major milestones for its business: $100 million in revenue in 2016, and 10 million total units sold. Read More
We first developed the idea for TC Sessions: Robotics because we wanted to bridge the gap between startups and investment in the robotics world — namely research, academia, government and industry. On July 17 at MIT’s Kresge auditorium in Cambridge, MA, those worlds will come together like never before for an event that we’re pleased to host alongside MIT’s… Read More
Instagram’s head of product Kevin Weil came to Disrupt in New York to introduce selfie filters for Instagram Stories — read more about the new feature here. You can now choose between eight filters to add koala nose and ears to your face and more. This was clearly inspired by Snapchat, and Weil is aware of that. Read More
Bill Maris, the former chief executive of Alphabet’s venture arm, GV, has closed on $150 million in commitments for his own, San Diego-based venture firm. The outfit, Section 32, was expected to raise closer to $100 million, according to an earlier Bloomberg report; because there was “strong interest,” it will instead close on $150 million, Maris tells us. Read More
In an effort to be more competitive in the streaming TV market, the ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV announced this morning it will expand its offering of live streaming channels to include a large library of on-demand movies and television shows. Read More
Crate.io, the winner of our Disrupt Europe 2014 Battlefield, is launching version 2.0 of its CrateDB database today. The tool, which is available in both an open source and enterprise version, started out as a general-purpose but highly scalable SQL database. Over time, though, the team found that many of its customers were using the service for managing their machine data. Read More
Last year, we told you about the employees at Uber who were seemingly handcuffed to the company, noting that those whose shares were vested can’t afford to quit. Startup employees typically have to exercise their options within 90 days of leaving a company or else lose them, and given Uber’s stratospheric valuation, that cost had simply grown too daunting. By February of this… Read More
Symphony, a secure messaging app that counts 15 of the world’s biggest banks among its investors and 200,000 paying customers, has raised a new tranche of funding to fuel its expansion into new markets. Symphony has closed in on $63 million; and according to sources close to the company, the startup is now valued at over $1 billion — confirming our reporting from December. This… Read More
SoFi wants to be at the center of its members’ financial lives, and believes the best way to do so is to provide new products that complement its existing portfolio of student loan, mortgage and other loans. Today the company is announcing the launch of SoFi Wealth, a product it believes will compete with Wealthfront, Betterment and other low-cost wealth management platforms. Read More
Today Instagram Stories adds a more subtle and mature but error-prone copycat of Snapchat’s beloved augmented reality selfie filters. The eight initial “face filters,” as Instagram calls them, work exactly like Snapchat, and let you add virtual koala ears, nerd glasses, a butterfly crown or wrinkle-smooth makeup to yourself and friends in photos or videos. Read More
Lyndon Rive, the CEO and co-founder of SolarCity prior to its acquisition by Tesla, will leave the automaker/energy company in June. Rive announced his departure on Monday, saying he’s departing in order to spend more time with family and to spin up a new company sometime next year. Read More
One day down, two more to go. Welcome to our live coverage of Disrupt NY 2017 Day two. Today’s agenda includes Instagram’s VP of Product Kevin Weil, Synthego’s Paul Dabrowski, Pinterest’s Tim Kendall, and Caribou Science’s Rachel Haurwitz. Plus, we’ll be continuing our Founder Spotlight showcase with PS Dept, Capsule and Button. And then, of course, we have… Read More
According to AngelList, the startup funding and recruiting platform, the number of companies being minted continues to far exceed the numbers of funds that can support them at the Series A and even the seed stage. Meanwhile, angel investors don’t necessarily have enough capital, particularly those who may be respected operators but haven’t yet enjoyed a major liquidity event… Read More
BMW, Intel and Mobileye have a new partner in their previously announced initiative to co-develop an autonomous driving platform. Delphi is now a member of the group effort, which was announced first in July 2016, prior to Intel’s acquisition of Mobileye earlier this year. Read More
By 2020, an estimated 75 percent of cars will be internet-connected worldwide, according to estimates from the FBI, Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That connectivity will allow drivers to tap into life-saving safety features and make self-driving cars a reality. But it also makes vehicles vulnerable to malicious hackers. Read More
Pinterest and Google’s recent moves to leverage visual search technologies to connect consumers with products have not gone unnoticed by those in the e-commerce business. One company, Wayfair, is taking inspiration from these efforts with a new feature for finding home furnishings that allows consumers to take a photo of something they like, then see related styles on Wayfair’s… Read More
Enrico Fermi tore a large sheet of paper into small pieces and dropped them. A few seconds later, the pieces were blown a short distance in midair and landed some eight feet away. Fermi paced the distance, then consulted a chart he prepared earlier. Based on the corresponding data, he told the people around him that the shockwave that hit the air to blast the papers out was from a force of… Read More
OpenInvest, a new company based in San Francisco, has raised $3.25 million in new financing from one of venture capital’s biggest names with claims that it can help both your stock portfolio and your moral compass point in the right direction. Read More
