Amazon this morning gave an update on its Dash buttons in light of its recent expansion to support over 300 brands, and, in typical Amazon fashion, it didn’t release any hard numbers in terms of Dash buttons in the wild, or sales figures generated by these push-button ordering devices. However, there was a hint that Dash buttons’ traction is growing – the company said that a… Read More
Pockit, a mobile banking app that provides current account functionality and is targeting the U.K.’s “underbanked,” has picked up £2.9 million in further funding and will soon begin rolling out a remittance service to make it easier for its users to send money abroad. Read More
CommonBond, one of the biggest of the second generation of startups tackling online lending, has launched a direct student loan product as it expands its footprint in the debt business. The company is known for its strict qualification requirements for refinancing packages and with an initial focus on the high end of student lending (servicing only 20 — mostly ivy league —… Read More
Rubrik, the startup that provides data management services like backup and recovery to large enterprises, is in the process of raising between $150 million and $200 million on a valuation of $1 billion, as we reported yesterday. And as a measure of how it’s growing, today it’s announcing an expansion of its product set, specifically in cloud services.
Now Rubrik — which… Read More
WeWork, the co-working giant closing on 100,000 members, is today launching the WeWork Services store. In short, the NY-based behemoth wants to take over the world by way of the office, and is now focusing in on office tools instead of just the space. Much like your old-fashioned app store, WeWork Services Store gives members easy access to a broad suite of enterprise services, oftentimes… Read More
Dialpad, a cloud-based business communications platform announced a new Amazon Echo integration this week that enables you to perform a number of business phone tasks by asking Alexa.
So for example you could ask, “Alexa, do I have any messages on Dialpad?” or “Alexa call Liz Green with Dialpad.”
Dialpad sees this integration as part of a general push to make phone… Read More
Virtual clinical trials have come into their own thanks to widespread technology enabling patients of every background to input their experiences at the tap of a button. Science37 capitalizes on that trend by providing qualified patients free tools to participate from the comfort of their own home and the company has just raised $29 million in Series C funding to help it reach new… Read More
Mobileye’s Road Experience Management (REM) platform scored another big win today: Signing up Nissan, the third major automaker to enter an agreement with the company to help build and use its high-precision road maps, which are updated in real time using anonymized, crowdsourced data from cars on the road. Nissan joins BMW and Volkswagen as REM platform members, and will both use the… Read More
Waymo isn’t the only self-driving company with on-demand autonomous car service news today: Dutch startup Amber Mobility, which designed a new vehicle specifically for shared commuter use, is putting a firm timeline on its plans to add self-driving capabilities to its fleet. Amber will provide self-driving vehicles for user with its business-to-business car sharing platform in Eindhoven… Read More
Meet Dave: an AI dressed up in a bearsuit that’s just launched to save you from the evils of expensive overdraft fees. Hand Dave access to your checking account and the app’s machine learning algorithms will get busy crunching your spending data so the bear can warn you about pending transactions which might push you into the red and incur an expensive bank penalty. Read More
The end of April (and also my birthday in case you care) is coming really soon, which means that Apple only has a few more days to release its first original video series for Apple Music. In a statement sent to TechCrunch, Apple said that Carpool Karaoke has been delayed until later this year. “Carpool Karaoke for Apple Music will premiere later this year,” an Apple spokesperson… Read More
Waymo has already been offering members of the public access to its self-driving fleet – for two months, during a limited trial in Phoenix, Arizona. The Alphabet-owned company quietly kicked off public availability of its Fiat-Chrysler Pacifica minivans and other autonomous vehicles, equipped with self-driving hardware and software, with a small group of testers who live in the Phoenix… Read More
SeedPlus, the early-stage investment firm backed by Singapore’s Jungle Ventures, has closed its debut fund at a total of SG$25 million, or approximately $18 million. The firm also announced that Cisco and Eight Roads Ventures, the investment arm of Fidelty, have joined IFC and Indian business magnate Ratan Tata among the fund’s LPs. It added that the fund was over-subscribed.… Read More
Fresh off $8 million in Series A financing, Immuta is releasing the second version of its data science governance platform. With the democratization of machine learning comes new risks for businesses that have too many workers manipulating data sets and models without oversight. The Immuta platform helps companies maintain an understanding of how digital assets are applied and shared across… Read More
One of the questions I often get from engineers I mentor is how do you decide on what early stage startup is worth working for? Often, this is long before you have paying customer logos or big name venture funds with substantial commitments as ‘signals’ of potential success. I was a programmer once. And I had to wrestle with this question too. How do I decide? More than a decade… Read More
China has long eluded Netflix. The company officially gave up on its original plan to enter the country last October in favor of licensing deals, and now it has inked its first major deal to give its programming a presence on Chinese soil. Baidu’s iQiyi, a top video portal in China with nearly 500 million monthly viewers, has agreed to a deal that will see it show some Netflix… Read More
Hibob, a HR and employee benefits platform for small to medium-sized businesses, has raised $17.5 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is U.S. VC firm Battery Ventures, with participation from Arbor Ventures, and Fidelity’s Eight Roads Ventures. Existing backer Bessemer Venture Partners also joined the round, which brings total funding for the U.K. and Israel-based startup to… Read More
Babylon Health, the U.K. startup that offers a digital healthcare app using a mixture of artificial intelligence (AI) and video and text consultations with doctors and specialists, has raised $60 million in new funding. Read More
JD.com, China’s second-largest e-commerce company after Alibaba, will create a new business group called JD Logistics. Not to be confused with a Wisconsin-based company that has a similar name, JD Logistics will take advantage of the company’s existing delivery and warehouse infrastructure. Read More
Once derided as a silly novelty, emojis are coming into their own as a communication tool. New app Wemogee uses the ideograms to help people with aphasia, a language-processing disorder that makes it difficult to read, write or talk. Read More
