Hanson Robotics is making its first foray into the consumer electronics market with an educational toy called Professor Einstein. The device is a pint-sized, shuffling Albert Einstein that uses natural language processing, and other artificial intelligence capabilities, to comprehend and answer kids’ questions about science. The Einstein toy robot works as a standalone or in conjunction… Read More
A rough start to the week for Qualcomm stock following a week that brought some major bad news in the form of an FTC antitrust complaint and a one $1 billion or so suit from one-time ally Apple.
The chipmaker was already stumbling from an FTC complaint a week back that accused the company of instituting a “no license, no chips” policy that instituted higher fees and held down… Read More
More red carpet live streams are coming to Twitter, thanks to a new deal between the social network and Dick Clark Productions, announced this morning. The partners will again work together to bring live streamed programming from award shows exclusively to Twitter, including red carpet pre-shows for the 52nd Academy of Country Music Awards, 2017 Billboard Music Awards and 2017 American… Read More
IBM Security announced this morning that it has purchased Agile 3 Solutions, a San Francisco-based company that has developed a security analytics dashboard aimed at helping executives understand cyber-security risks inside an organization. The acquisition gives IBM another tool in its security arsenal to provide more insight to key decision makers, which ultimately could help them sell… Read More
All Chromebooks new in 2017 will support Android apps out of the box. An update will not be required. Owners will be able to take the Chromebook home, open it up and immediately access the Google Play Store. The news comes from a single line of text on Google’s list of Chromebooks compatible with Android apps. “All Chromebooks launching in 2017 and after as well as the… Read More
While global investment in cybersecurity startups may have shown signs of slowing in 2016, Israel – second only to the U.S. market – remained strong and showed impressive numbers yet again, as we witnessed a surge in funding and continued innovation.
Investments in Israeli Companies Continues to Rise
CB Insights estimated that the 2016 global deal activity and dollar funding in… Read More
Tricentis, a startup that helps enterprise development teams automate software testing, got a bushel of money today from Insight Venture Partners — $165 million to be exact. As part of the deal, Insight Managing Director Mike Triplett will join the Tricentis board.
In a traditional software development cycle, developers took months to create and deliver a product. Testing involved… Read More
Here’s an interesting turn of events in the ongoing story of the streaming music industry. Today, Sprint, itself owned by Softbank, announced it would take a 33 percent stake in Tidal, the streaming music startup originally founded in Norway that was majority acquired by Jay Z and relaunched in 2015 as a platform to compete against the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, offering… Read More
On the heels of hiring a new CTO from Yahoo and trying to position itself either as a stronger acquisition target or standalone entity, SoundCloud is getting a lot deeper into the business of advertising. Today the audio startup — which streams both licensed music tracks and is also a go-to platform for user-generated content (similar to YouTube) — announced that it would be… Read More
Just weeks after landing a $215 million Series D funding round, Chinese bike-sharing service Mobike has scooped up a strategic investor from prolific manufacturing firm Foxconn. Read More
Pitchero, a U.K. startup that makes it easy for amateur and grassroots sports clubs to build a web presence and move communities online, has scored £3.1 million in Series A funding. ICM, a global fund manager with numerous other sporting interests including Harlequins Rugby Club, led the round. Read More
The growth of smartphone sales may be declining, but the reach of mobile internet in China has now reached the notable threshold of 50 percent for the first time. Read More
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is losing its head of international and primary English-language spokesperson Hugo Barra after he announced his exit from the company. Read More
Hot on the heels of providing closure around the Galaxy Note 7 saga, Samsung won’t be launching or previewing its come-back smartphone at Mobile World Congress, the industry’s largest trade show, in February. Read More
As if two massive data breaches affecting more than one billion users isn’t enough, Yahoo is now under investigation from the SEC for not disclosing the hacks sooner, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Read More
After explosions, recalls, and months of bad press, Samsung is attempting to put the drawn out Galaxy Note 7 saga behind it once and for all, with the long-promised official release of the findings of its internal investigation. Samsung mobile chief DJ Koh kick off a packed press conference in Seoul by “deeply” apologizing to customers and business partners, before adding on a… Read More
If you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in energy, you should. We’ve seen this movie before. Spoiler alert: There’s massive economic opportunity ahead. How massive? Imagine standing in 1992, knowing that Google, Akamai, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, BuzzFeed and Uber lay ahead. This time it’s the “Enernet,” not the internet, that will… Read More
Seed terms have gotten much better, but I still find Series A (and beyond) term sheets frustrating. I think we can change the “norm” by offering entrepreneurs a better alternative. So if you have terms you don’t like, it’s time to try object-oriented capital (OOC). Read More
With one foot in its science fiction past and the other in the new frontier of science and tech innovations, AI occupies a unique place in our cultural imagination. Will we live into a future where machines are as intelligent — or frighteningly, more so — than humans? AI’s next frontier requires ethics built through policy. Will Donald Trump deliver? Read More
