Thanks to his work at Politico, Mike Allen has been described as “The Man the White House Wakes Up To.” But he left the site last year and teamed up with Politico’s Jim VandeHei to launch Axios, a media startup that combines brevity with real reporting. Axios (the name comes from the Greek word for “worthy”) isn’t the only site focusing on short,… Read More
Last year was a challenging one for the Tor Project, the non-profit organization beyond the anonymous global network. Prominent developer Jacob Applebaum stood down following allegations of sexual mistreatment, an ugly saga that resulted in the appointment of a new board of directors and the introduction of policies aimed at preventing similar incidents in the future. Despite those goings-on,… Read More
Over a year ago, Spotify inked a deal with music annotation startup Genius to provide the backstory to the songs you’re streaming through a feature called Behind the Lyrics, which pops up additional commentary as you’re listening to tracks on the service. Today, the company says the feature is finally making its way over to Android, where it will initially be available across a… Read More
The Duke Of York’s Pitch@Palace event is now a regular annual fixture in the London startup scene, and TechCrunch is delighted to live stream the pitches of the teams Pitch@Palace has selected from its events throughout the year. Today you can watch the event being broadcast live right here from 17.40 London time or 09.40 SF time. Today is the final event of Pitch@Palace 7.0, following… Read More
Facebook wants you to think about whether a headline is true and see other perspectives on the topic before you even read the article. In its next step against fake news, Facebook today begins testing a different version of its Related Articles widget that normally appears when you return to the News Feed after opening a link. Now Facebook will also show Related Articles including third-party… Read More
At his startup Splice, Steve Martocci said he’s aiming to build “the creative hub for the modern musician.” And with the latest addition to the service, he’s looking to work with sound designers and sound editors, too. Splice offers both collaboration tools and a library of royalty-free music samples, which it calls Splice Sounds. More recently, it’s expanded… Read More
Google has made some adjustments to how Search works, which are aimed at improving the general quality of returned results, and more specifically at fighting the problem of “fake news,” which Google takes to mean “content on the web [that[ has contributed to the spread of blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information,” according to a blog… Read More
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
