Xiaomi has forgone its tradition of revealing how many smartphones it sold the previous year. The strategy yielded many headlines for the highly-regarded Chinese outfit, but today its CEO admitted that Xiaomi has been in transition after growing “too fast”. Read More
Lily, the autonomous camera drone that sold a whopping $34 million in preorders, has announced it is shutting down. In an email sent to customers about an hour ago, the startup said that it was unable to raise an additional round of funding which would have allowed it to start production of the drone. So it announced instead that it will be winding down the company, and offering an… Read More
FarmLogs raises $22 million, Instagram Stories hits 150 million daily users, Google closes its UAV project and JetBlue gives us free Wi-Fi. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
For millions of people, Facebook is the internet — but many of those who rely on the social network for news and views may not be aware that Facebook isn’t immune to internet censorship itself. Read More
Swiss researchers have given a literal twist to the proverbial ticker, designing a clock-like device that could help power pacemakers by harvesting energy from the heart itself — just like an automatic watch harvests movement from the motion of the wrist. Read More
It’s hard to build a drone that’s high performance and affordable enough to compete with DJI’s popular and pervasive models. That’s something drone companies who built their own “platforms,” a.k.a. original hardware and proprietary software, are grappling with these days. The industry has seen belt-tightening measures at Parrot SA, a changing of the guard… Read More
“VR will be big, AR will be bigger and take longer.” What sounded revolutionary when we first said it two years ago has become accepted wisdom. But now the market has actually launched, and we’ve got 12 months of real-world performance and major tech players’ strategies emerging. And that’s changed our views on VR/AR growth. A lot. Read More
Make way for another large fintech investment out of Europe. Funding Circle, the London-based peer-to-peer lending platform that lets small businesses connect with investors willing to lend them money, has raised another $100 million in funding of its own, led by Accel with participation from other previous investors Baillie Gifford, DST Global, Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Rocket… Read More
The FCC may be on the verge of being rebuilt under a very different administration, but reports put together under the current one are still being issued — and just such a one released today offers a critical view of some current “zero-rating” plans from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. Read More
Las Vegas, transportation beat reporters can’t quit you; CES was like a car extravaganza, and now you’re launching a self-driving, fully electric shuttle on public streets. The shuttles are the result of a partnership between shuttle-maker Navya, fleet logistics provider Keolis and the city of Las Vegas, and began picking up members of the public today, riding a regular route… Read More
Despite delays, Apple’s AirPods had a great holiday season according to a new report on wireless headphone online spending over the past several weeks. The report from Slice Intelligence–which collects its data from hundreds of millions of anonymized e-receipts–found that the $159 AirPods have accounted for more than a quarter of all online wireless headphones… Read More
With the smartwatch field facing an uphill battle for the attention of the gadget-buying audience, Google’s Android Wear delay couldn’t have come at a less opportune moment. The wearable operating system was originally scheduled for release by year’s end, only to get pushed back to a broad “early next year,” a move that may well have contributed to the surprising… Read More
Cloudflare issued its biannual transparency report yesterday, detailing the government requests for user data it received during the latter half of 2016. Many tech companies make regular disclosures about these types of requests in an effort to be more transparent with their users, and, following the passage of the USA Freedom Act, more and more of these disclosures include national… Read More
Looks like Friday’s hands-on event isn’t the only big bit of Nintendo Switch business going down in New York City this Friday. The gaming giant’s New York store Twitter account just dropped the news that the eagerly anticipated (though barely seen) convertible console will open for pre-orders at the company’s storefront at 9AM that same day.
A limited quantity of… Read More
It’s no secret that more celebrities are flocking to tech and venture capital these days. The latest to make the leap into entrepreneurship is Sarah Michelle Gellar, best known for her TV role as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and most recently as the voice of The Seventh Sister inquisitor in the animated series Star Wars Rebels.
The company she founded with CEO Galit Laibow and COO Greg… Read More
Instagram competitor and visual arts technology company VSCO has closed up shop in New York and laid off all staff, TechCrunch has learned and the company confirmed. The decision was made in order to centralize staff at the company’s Oakland location, its main headquarters. VSCO also has an office in Denver, Co., which was added when it acquired the Denver-based printing shop,… Read More
Alexa is going to at least own the living room, and there’s a good bet that it’s going to own the whole home. But that’s not stopping RnD64, a small company building a small little black voice-powered black egg, from trying to get in the kitchen first. Hello Egg works as a cooking assistant, with a few extra flourishes — like a friendly little eye to keep you company on… Read More
The U.S. regulatory agency overseeing transportation at the federal level has announced a new official committee on automation, be it autonomous driving, drones or other self-guided modes of getting around. The committee is designed to help the Department of Transportation (DOT) learn from industry experts regarding how it should be shaping policy and research in these emerging fields. Members… Read More
At his first proper press conference as President-elect, Trump and team provided answers for a number of long-burning questions, sort of. Trump held his last full press conference on July 27 and months later canceled plans for a December 15 press event at which he was expected to assuage concerns about his myriad conflicts of interest. In an unconventional opening at Wednesday’s… Read More
The DeepDrive project has made it possible to use Grand Theft Auto to train self-driving cars for some time now. But today, the work is being integrated and open-sourced with OpenAI’s Universe. The collaboration will cut the once day-long setup time down to just 20 minutes. Training AI frameworks on synthetic data is all the rage these days. Large tech companies and startups alike… Read More
