SigOpt, a company aiming to “optimize everything,” announced today that it has raised $6.6 million in Series A funding. When startups talk about optimization, they often mean trying out a few different variations and then choosing the ones that get the best results. With SigOpt, it’s more of a continual process, where the technology can look at your results and recommend what… Read More
Uber drivers are being given the opportunity to save for retirement. The ride-hailing company announced today that drivers in several cities will be offered retirement plans through Betterment, an automated investment service. The deal, which has been in the works since this spring, will be offered first to drivers in Seattle, Boston, Chicago and New Jersey. Uber plans to eventually expand… Read More
Serendipity has long been a staple of scientific study, and a new discovery by MIT is no exception. Researchers at the school were trying to build better batteries, but instead found a better way to smelt metal. The study resulted in a brand new, far less polluting way to make antimony, which itself isn’t very applicable in a broader manufacturing context, but the method could be applied… Read More
Hot on the heels of a deal with a self-driving sensor technology startup this month, the automotive giant has backed Zoomcar, a Zipcar-like company that operates in India. Subsidiary Ford Smart Mobility led a $24 million Series B round for Zoomcar, with participation from returning investors Sequoia Capital, Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) and Empire Angels. Read More
Rats and other whiskered animals use senses that we don’t yet possess. In addition to being able to run mazes and lick our faces to confirm we aren’t covered in BBQ sauce, scientists have confirmed that some animals use their flowing front whiskers to sense wind position, a technique that could be used in future direction-sensing robots.
A team of students working at… Read More
Gunshot detectors and anti-drone defense topped our list of favorites from the 48 startups that presented at Y Combinator Summer 2016 Demo Day 2. We asked investors what wowed them and huddled with the TechCrunch team to come up with our pick of the 8 most promising companies. Check them out here, as well as our top 7 startups from the 44 that presented on Demo Day 1. Additional reporting by… Read More
After the close of the bell, technology stalwart Hewlett-Packard announced better than expected numbers in their Q3 earnings report. This comes after a relatively flat week on the public markets for the company. Analysts expected an adjusted EPS of 44 cents on $11.44 billion in revenue. Instead, HP reported an EPS of $0.48 cents and revenue of $11.9 billion. The EPS numbers reported… Read More
David Lortscher was one of a few dozen people practicing dermatology in New Mexico when he realized a huge problem in the field: There weren’t enough dermatologists, and people were skipping out on visits because they thought it was for more affluent people or took too long. So Lortscher decided to start Curology, which provides acne and anti-aging treatment and prescriptions through… Read More
While innovations like mobile payments and biometrics may one day change the way we safeguard consumer financial information in the digital age, we cannot neglect the here-and-now of both online and off-line users. The overwhelming majority of Americans use credit cards at the point of sale. Unfortunately, we’re falling short in protecting them, even though the remedy is simple. Read More
Best Buy has provided in-person demonstrations for Oculus Rift basically since there were real Oculus Rift headsets to demonstrate – the retailer announced back in May it would provide demos at 48 locations in the U.S. Now, it’s doubling down on that bet, with a plan to give customers a taste of VR in 500 locations in time for the holiday shopping season, according to Bloomberg.… Read More
For the first time, astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting our sun’s nearest neighbor. The newly identified exoplanet (a planet outside our solar system) is officially the closest known exoplanet to Earth, located at a distance of 4.25 light-years away.
They’re calling it Proxima b, and it orbits around our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, every… Read More
Twitter today continues to push forward with its increased emphasis on its messaging feature, with the rollout of a new button for websites that allows visitors to privately message an individual or company directly. The feature, now one of several website buttons available, follows the company’s recent test of a change to brands’ customer support profiles’ that encouraged… Read More
Halo 5: Forge, the level creation tool that lets players build their own worlds and create new game experiences for Halo 5: Guardians, has come to Windows 10 PCs. The free download puts gamers in the developer’s seat, and adds support for mouse and keyboard, and up to 4K resolution, likely beating out the Xbox One add-on in terms of giving you finer control over world building. Xbox… Read More
The U.S. presidential election is fast approaching, and a growing number of VCs who’ve historically shied from making taking sides publicly, are tweeting, talking with reporters, and blogging about who they are backing and why. The early-stage venture firm CRV, formerly known as Charles River Ventures, is taking things a step further, having just published a tranquil little piece… Read More
Dyson’s been on something of a product launching roll, of late – hair dryers, robotic vacuums, it’s a diverse portfolio to put it mildly. The latest launch from the company, however, isn’t so much new territory as it is fusing together of a few of its existing lines into a single device. As its name implies, there’s a lot going on with the Pure Hot+Cool Link. The… Read More
While Pokémon Go is definitely the primary benefactor of its own success, that doesn’t mean it’s hurting its competition in the mobile gaming space. New data from mobile commerce provider DOCOMO Digital has found that in fact, the Google Play Store’s top four grossing apps have seen a 10 percent increase in overall revenue from their games in Europe since the debut of… Read More
If customized keyboards for mobile devices are to be the next-gen interface for accessing the wider web – including information you’d normally turn to a search engine to find – then Microsoft today has stepped up its fight with Google with the rollout of a new version of its predictive keyboard app Word Flow. While the app previously offered intelligent word suggestions… Read More
A startup called SelfScore has raised $7.1 million in new venture funding to help bring much-needed financial services to international students at U.S. colleges and universities. SelfScore co-founder and CEO Kalpesh Kapadia grew up in India, but moved to the U.S. for graduate school in 1995. That’s when he first noticed the challenges of assimilating into what he says is the… Read More
Genius, the service that lets users add annotations and context to other docs, has today announced the launch of Questions and Answers, or Q+A. Genius originally launched as a rap lyrics data trove, where users could add interesting context and insights about various rap lyrics. Eventually, the company expanded (and not without some growing pains) to all types of documents, like public… Read More
China’s got some lofty space plans lined up for the next couple of decades, culminating with a manned moon landing by 2036. Meantime, the country is looking even further out, geographically speaking, toward the red planet, detailing a mission to send a rover to Mars at around July or August 2020. This week, China revealed some key computer generated images from the ambitious mission… Read More
