Amino Apps, a startup aiming to reinvent online forums for the mobile world, has raised $19.2 million in Series B funding. The New York City-based company started out by building individual apps focused on topics like anime and Doctor Who, but earlier this year it launched a new, all-purpose Amino app that allows anyone to launch a community. Now more than 250,000 communities have been… Read More
The Federal Communications Commission has been led by Chairman Tom Wheeler for the past three years, but Wheeler intends to end his run at the FCC on January 20, 2017. Wheeler announced the news via press release on Thursday, and offered the following official statement about his decision: Serving as F.C.C. Chairman during this period of historic technological change has been the greatest honor… Read More
Hong Kong’s largest tech IPO for nearly a decade went off with a fizzle rather than a bang today. Meitu, the company behind more than a dozen beautification apps, raised $629 million but its hotly-anticipated listing fell flat. Read More
Looking to be the next leap forward in data organization, computation, and delivery for big data Databricks, the business built on top of the popular Apache Spark open source project, has raised $60 million in new financing. Taking the route mapped by so many big data companies before it, Databricks is the business that the open source Apache Spark project built. Spark is the next step in… Read More
Instagram has gone through a whirlwind of changes the past few months. Between bookmarks, likable comments, live video, tags, zoom, drafts, Stories and of course the controversial algorithmic feed – no one can argue that the Facebook-owned photo sharing app hasn’t been innovating at a rapid pace. But the real question is what effect are these product enhancements having on… Read More
As BMW continues to weld a position for itself in the next generation of connected and autonomous car technology, it’s signed up for one more partnership that focuses on the data side of the equation. Today, IBM announced that it would be working with BMW on R&D where Watson sensors and computing will be integrated into BMW cars to pick up car data and help with new systems aimed… Read More
Say you’re, like, um, gaming on your computer with headphones on. And you’re like… um. Really into the game? And someone sneaks up on you from behind and you don’t have time to… pause… the game? The Sentry can help prevent the embarrassment of being seen while… playing games. This fun little device is basically an IR motion sensor that can see… Read More
BMW is doing something pretty sci-fi with the interior of its vehicles at CES – it’s showing off a new HoloActive Touch system, which is a touch sensitive display for showing the driver information about music, navigation and more, which appears to float in air, and which also provides actual felt, tactile feedback in response to interactions.
The new interactive holograph-style… Read More
eHarmony, the OG dating site that focuses on lasting relationships through compatibility, has today announced that it’s ready to hear about what the kids are calling it these days.
Under new CEO Grant Langston, who has been at eHarmony since before it launched, the company is taking a fresh look at its product to ensure that it’s keeping up with the times.
“At eHarmony… Read More
Uber announced Thursday it will be deploying new hardware called Uber Beacon in select cities, starting in Miami, Denver, Nashville and Newcastle in the UK. The new piece of hardware is a small, wireless Bluetooth device that is really just a multicolour LED light in the shape of the Uber logo. The idea is that drivers can stick it in the bottom corner of their windshield, and signal riders… Read More
Kreditech — the online lender that builds credit histories based on big data analytics and is backed by the likes of Peter Thiel, Blumberg and the World Bank’s IFC — is today announcing a new strategic investor, and with it, a little more funding. The Berlin startup has raised $10 million from Rakuten, the e-commerce giant out of Japan. The investment comes out of… Read More
A House of Lords committee in the UK has published a report on Brexit and financial services urging the government to secure a transitional period early in negotiations to avoid the risk of fintech firms shifting operations out of the UK as uncertainty after the vote to leave the European Union stacks up. Read More
Here — the mapping business that was sold by Nokia to a consortium of automakers including Audi, BMW and Daimler for $2.8 billion in 2015 — today announced that it has extended a mapping deal with Microsoft. Microsoft was already using Here data in Bing Maps (used in Bing.com, Cortana and other services) and the Bing Maps API. Now, it plans to expand that to use Here mapping… Read More
Yet more regional consolidation is underway among the giants of take-out and delivery startups in Europe as they gear up to compete more aggressively against newer entrants like Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Today, Berlin-based Delivery Hero announced that it is selling its UK business, which operates as hungryhouse, to rival Just Eat for £200 million ($251 million) in cash, plus another… Read More
Following its acquisition by Fitbit last week, Pebble has reassured owners of its smartwatches that they aren’t about to suddenly stop working. Read More
Uber self-driving cars get into permitting issues in San Francisco, Amazon drone delivery begins in the U.K., The Wynn wants to add an Alexa to every room and Donald Trump adds Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick to advisory roles in his administration. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
A lot of us have cars, but not a lot of us use cars – estimates suggest our cars are sitting unused as much as 95 percent of the time, which is kind of insane if you think about it. That’s why things like Turo exists, which lets people rent out their vehicles on-demand via an app, Airbnb style. Turo is expanding to the UK today, but its debut there will actually focus on rental… Read More
Codementor (incorporated as Peer Idea Inc.) has raised $1.6 million in seed funding to grow its online education business into a marketplace for elite freelance developers who are among the top-rated mentors on its site. Based in Mountain View with a development office in Taiwan, Codementor is a graduate of Techstars in Seattle. WI Harper led the seed round in Codementor, which had… Read More
With the amount of published research, patents, white papers and other written knowledge out there, it’s hard to be even reasonably sure you’re aware of the goings-on around a certain topic or field. Omnity is a search engine made to make it easier by extracting the gist of documents you give it and finding related ones from a library of millions — and now supports over a… Read More
Uber has been ordered by state regulators to stop using self-driving cars in California, according to the Associated Press, at least until it secures the necessary permit issued by the state to allow companies to test autonomous vehicles on public roads. The California Department of Motor Vehicles issued a statement saying Uber was expected to secure such a permit, but Uber maintained that it… Read More
