A startup based in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, Phononic, wants to make refrigeration and temperature control far more efficient, and steadier, than is possible with traditional systems. Instead of relying on vapor compressors, fans, chillers or passive heat sinks, Phononic makes semiconductors that are smaller than a dime, and actively remove heat from the places or… Read More
Twilio, the developer-centric communications platform that successfully IPOed earlier this year, published a new study today about how consumers want to use tech to talk to businesses and brands. The study, which the market research firm Vanson Bourne performed for Twilio by surveying 6,000 consumers in Europe, Asia and North America, shows that nine out of ten consumers would like to be able… Read More
While Verizon continues to work towards closing its acquisition of Yahoo to boost its media and consumer Internet business (which also includes ownership of AOL, which owns TechCrunch), the company has made another acquisition to keep building out its enterprise services, too. The carrier has bought Sensity Systems, a startup based out of Sunnyvale (also home to Yahoo!) that has built… Read More
Teads, the video ad company that last month raised $47 million in debt financing in order to go on a buying spree of other adtech startups, is staying true to its word. Today it’s announcing the acquisition of UK and Romania-based Brainient. Read More
Great tech talent, an excellent regulatory environment and a world-class city has turned London into the fintech capital of the world. And there’s a boom on. UK fintech firms secured $5.4 billion of the $49.7 billion of global investment in financial tech between 2010 and 2015, compared with the total $4.4 billion raised across the rest of Europe, according to research from Fintech… Read More
Samsung has made a significant move among its leadership ranks after Jay Y. Lee, son of company chairman Kun-Hee Lee and its expected future leader, was nominated to the company’s board. Read More
Are you looking to attend the hottest startup show in the UK for the cheapest possible price? You’re in luck. Extra early-bird tickets to Disrupt London 2016 are on sale now through Friday, September 23, giving you until the end of the week to get your tickets and save £400 in the process. You can get your tickets here. Your extra early-bird ticket gets you into all the events that… Read More
Southeast Asia-based shopping site iPrice has introduced a major update that bring direct price comparison to its e-commerce aggregation service. Read More
GenieBelt, a European startup co-founded by Klaus Nyengaard, the former CEO of Just Eat, has built a project management and communications platform for the somewhat antiquated construction industry.
And, now that the so-called ‘ConTech’ company feels that it has found market fit for its wares, it’s secured €2 million in new investment to ramp up marketing for the platform. Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt in London is beginning to appear over the horizon. We’ve already announced that Accel’s Sonali De Rycker and Atomico’s Niklas Zennström will be on our stage. Today we’re delighted to say that we’ll also be joined by world-famous supermodel Natalia Vodianova. The Russian model, philanthropist and occasional film actress is well-known for her… Read More
The AI field lacks diversity — even more spectacularly than most of our software industry. When an AI practitioner builds a data set on which to train his or her algorithm, it is likely that the data set will only represent one worldview: the practitioner’s. The resulting AI model demonstrates a non-diverse “intelligence” at best, and a biased or even offensive one… Read More
The team hailed from Lagos, New York, and suburban New Jersey and had been up for nearly 24-hours working on imprompt.io, a new collaboration tool for meetings on-the-fly for the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Hackathon. It’s a problem the hacking team knew quite well. Hailing from the coding staffing company Andela, which pairs top-tier developers from Africa with startups and large tech… Read More
Toyota’s Prius Prime is an updated take on the company’s popular hybrid, with more emphasis on the EV aspects of the vehicle, including a battery with double the driving capacity, and a few other tweaks that push the car closer toward the EV end of its dual identity, including an acceleration feature that lets the electric motor handle much of the pick-up when you first put your… Read More
How do you convince a potential car buyer your vehicle is a future-focused choice? One way is to get one of the most iconic creators of cinematic futurescapes to help you build a virtual world that people can drive the car through themselves. Toyota enlisted Syd Mead, the creative visionary behind Blade Runner and Tron‘s vehicles, architecture and more. Mead provided concept art and… Read More
Worldwide, there are 62 million girls without access to traditional education due to a lack of resources, safety and general attitudes about girls and women.
In order to address this issue, First Lady Michelle Obama teamed up with AOL (TechCrunch’s owner) to launch the Let Girls Build track as part of the Built By Girls challenge, which recently culminated with a pitch day at… Read More
U.S. companies have a massively greater appetite for startups than their European counterparts. Over the past five years, U.S. companies have purchased about four times as many startups as European acquirers, according to a new report from CrunchBase and entrepreneurship foundation Mind the Bridge. The study looked at about 6,000 acquisitions by European and U.S. companies since 2012 and… Read More
Application development has long been fraught with peril: Projects become bloated, expensive and never ship. The “micro” trend in application development is focused on delivering bottoms-up, simple solutions to complex problems. Micro services, apps and flows offer a new way to weave existing systems in novel, organic ways in order to deliver solutions immediately. Read More
Q: You’ve been incredibly successful as a VC—you’ve had numerous major exits and been named to the Forbes Midas list several times. To what do you attribute your success? I think the most important thing about being successful in the venture business is being able to work with these great entrepreneurs. We try to find them at an early stage then roll up our sleeves and help… Read More
No one person can take sole credit for Star Trek’s success, not even creator Gene Roddenberry.
But Leonard Nimoy could make a pretty strong claim to being the franchise’s heart, or at least its face to the outside world, having portrayed Trek’s most iconic character on the original show, plus the animated series and six feature films. And that’s before his… Read More
