Snapchat now has not one, but two Spectacle-selling Snapbots deployed at the same time. The second dropped Wednesday morning at 10 AM ET (7 AM PT) at a spot near Santa Monica at the Brentwood Country Mart in Los Angeles. The Brentwood Country Mart is a shopping and for spot in L.A.’s Brentwood district, which actually hosts a petting zoo, too. This is the third time a Snapbot has dropped… Read More
The UK government has confirmed it will be borrowing to try to encourage investment in high speed fiber broadband networks and 5G technology — with a plan to spend over £1BN by 2020-2021 to bolster the country’s digital infrastructure. Read More
MIT has a new nylon-based artificial muscle-like filament created by researchers that could eventually provide the basis for robots with bulging biceps. The filaments themselves look eerily similar to the ones extruded by the 3D printers used in the opening sequence of HBO’s Westworld, which is why Gizmodo and others are seeing parallels between potential applications of the tech and… Read More
OnePlus has always been a people pleaser. It’s an impulse grown, in part, from the hardware startups close connection to a tight-knit fanbase. As other new entrants like Le Eco on the smartphone scene push to be the biggest and flashiest, the company has been producing excellent handsets from the very beginning, devices capable of taking on the top flagships at a fraction of the price.… Read More
Andy Rubin is looking for another big round of funding for his hardware incubator, Playground Ventures. According to an SEC filing that popped up yesterday (via Dan Primack), the Android founder is looking to raise up to $500 million — Rubin’s name is listed alongside fellow Playground founders Peter Barrett, Matt Hershenson and Bruce Leak. This follows a $300 million funding… Read More
Co-working spaces are becoming a serious business in Asia. WeWork entered the region via China earlier this year, but there are numerous others across the continent. Singapore-based Spacemob is one such contender, and today it announced a $5.5 million seed round to expand its reach across Asia Pacific. Read More
McLaren makes supercars, and to make those cars requires a lot of technical expertise and rigorous engineering. The new McLaren P1 fully electric car is no different. This open-top vehicle hit the test track recently with a seasoned driver at the helm – and the resulting video (via Jalopnik) is pretty intense. McLaren’s outdone itself with the promo copy on this exciting new… Read More
More money for more startup seed-stage investments: SV Angel, one of the more prominent early-stage investment firms in the Bay Area, has closed its latest fund at $53 million, according to an SEC filing (via Dan Primack). The firm had originally targeted $46 million for the fund, according to a previous filing in March of this year. Prior to that, the firm had said it would raise even… Read More
Digg, the one-time internet sensation, is losing the CEO that has nursed it back to good health. Gary Liu is leaving the company to become CEO of South China Morning Post (SCMP), the Hong Kong-based newspaper and media firm that Alibaba acquired for $262 million earlier this year. Read More
The SaaS Co., a startup that helps Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies with B2B sales, has raised €800,000 in seed funding, money it plans to use to further develop its AI-driven sales assistant. Backing the round are various unnamed angel investors, along with the European Union via a €300,000 grant. Read More
Cashboard, an online wealth management startup based in Berlin, has closed €3 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Digital Space Ventures, with participation from existing investors Redalpine Capital, Earlybird, and 500 Startups. Other previous backers include Makers, and ProSiebenSat.1. Read More
French startup Agricool has raised $4.3 million (€4 million) from newly launched VC firm Daphni as well as Parrot founder Henri Seydoux and Captain Train (acquired by Trainline) co-founder Jean-Daniel Guyot. Agricool’s product is quite unusual as the company wants to grow strawberries and later other fruits and vegetables inside shipping containers. With many people moving to… Read More
November 2016: the month that Facebook ‘killed’ its CEO Mark Zuckerberg (and a bunch of other users) and Twitter suspended its CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey. Read More
Tesla and SolarCity power an island in American Samoa, after skipping last year Apple holds its Black Friday sale, robots will be helping with shopping at Westfield malls in San Francisco, Michigan doubles down on autonomous cars and Munchery gets a new CEO. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Shopify’s Garage group is a product skunkworks of sorts, and it’s launching a new app called Frenzy today, focused on flash sales, just in time for that most consumerist of holidays — Thanksgiving. Limited-release sales are big again, with Yeezy raffles all over the place and Snapchat just dotting the map with expiring Snapbot vending machines for Spectacles. So Frenzy enters… Read More
All right, don’t panic, but computers have created their own secret language and are probably talking about us right now. Well, that’s kind of an oversimplification, and the last part is just plain untrue. But there is a fascinating and existentially challenging development that Google’s AI researchers recently happened across. Read More
This post is going to be brief because I’m about two seconds from running outside to catch me some Ditto, but: Reports are pouring in left and right that Ditto has, at long last, been added to Pokémon GO. The lil’ purple blob has been curiously absent from the game since launch, but the reason wasn’t too hard to figure out: he has a unique ability (the ability to change into… Read More
Right now there’s a multi-million-dollar con being played on employees, investors and founders of startup companies — and they don’t even realize it.
In a dying media world where quality coverage has become invaluable to a rising startup, public relations agencies charge startups anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000+ per month for their services. Unfortunately… Read More
Last year, Ember Technologies, Inc. ran a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to build a mug that keeps hot drinks at the perfect sipping temperature. By now, it’s sold 4,000 of these devices. And in something of a coup for the startup, Starbucks Corp. has begun selling Ember Temperature Control Mugs in its stores across most of the U.S. and online for $149.95. Whether it’s… Read More
