Earlier this month, the first Pokémon Go malware was spotted in the wild, but the app was not much of a threat to users as it never made it into the official Google Play store for download. The same cannot be said of a new group of dangerous applications targeting Pokémon Go users by promising cheats, tips, and other functionality. Despite their innocuous-sounding titles, the apps… Read More
Thrive Capital, a New York-based, stage-agnostic venture fund that focuses primarily on media and internet investments, has closed its fifth fund with $700 million. The seven-year-old outfit is now managing a little less than $1.5 billion altogether. Thrive closed its fourth fund with $400 million in October 2014, so the new fund is a sizable step up. Then again, Thrive holds stakes in… Read More
BMW might have found a low-risk way to test its autonomous driving systems — in the pool. Wait…what?
For the past six years, BMW has been the official mobility partner of the U.S. Olympic Committee. As part of the role, the automaker has created a customized motion tracking system for USA Swimming, treating American swimmers like they’re autonomous cars in chlorine.
How? Read More
Adweek is changing owners again. The ad- and media-focused industry magazine is being sold by MediaBistro Holdings to private equity firm Beringer Capital, with Beringer co-founder Brian F. Martin becoming Adweek’s chairman. This follows last year’s spin out of Adweek and other media properties from Guggenheim Partners/Prometheus Global. An Adweek spokesperson told me that… Read More
Sure, you like the Olympics. But do you, you know, like-like the Olympics? As in, would you pay a $100 premium for a special limited edition version of the Galaxy S7 Edge in order to proudly display your devotion to the 2016 summer games to the world for the next two or so years? As previously noted, Samsung created a special, limited edition version of its high end smartphone with the… Read More
Cars that drive themselves should be able to account for themselves, or so goes the thinking behind new legislation proposed by Germany’s transport ministry. The country is planning new laws that require cars equipped with self-driving features to also include a black box, Reuters reports, similar to the flight recorder required on aircraft. Germany’s future legislation, which… Read More
Hey, Tom Brady — deflate this football at your own risk. According to the Toronto Sun, the NFL is planning on inserting customized data chips into game balls for the 2016 preseason, beginning next month, and for Thursday Night Football regular-season games. The Sun reports that narrowing the goalposts could be one of the results from this experiment. Our emails and calls to the… Read More
At nearly every major technology event for the past five years we’ve been given at least one “wow” moment — when one of the big players would unveil some sort of product or service that no one had ever seen before. The bar was set high for innovation, because there were wide-open spaces to be filled. Technology was revolutionary, not evolutionary. But so far in 2016… Read More
Google today is rolling out a new search feature that will help U.S. users learn how they can register to vote, according to their state’s requirements. When people search for “register to vote” on Google, the search engine will now display detailed guidelines, voting requirements, as well as information on how to register online, by mail and in person, as applicable. The… Read More
When you’re worth like, $60 billion, you pretty much get to do what you want. You can launch your own space company, explore the bottom of the ocean and even make a brief, but resource-intensive cameo in Star Trek sequel. Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin and producer JJ Abrams have confirmed that Amazon head Jeff Bezos will make an appearance in the upcoming film as an unknown alien.… Read More
In this brave new world of significant mid-cycle game console upgrades, the Xbox One S will lead the way. The Microsoft Xbox One semi-successor will be available in its 2TB ‘launch edition’ to shoppers on August 2. The Xbox One S got a big reveal last month, but we didn’t know exactly when it would actually get in the hot little hands of gamers until today.… Read More
Pokemon Go has been continuing its global rollout fairly slowly, with a launch in Canada just this past Sunday, and even without an official debut in some key markets like Japan, it already dominates. In the course of winning so winningly, Pokemon Go has also achieved – almost as a side-effect – the kind of success some celebrated (but ultimately shuttered) startups have pursued in… Read More
A UK parliamentary committee looking at issues pertaining to the digital economy has warned of multiple risks in the wake of last month’s referendum vote to leave the European Union. Read More
Just after Softbank confirmed plans to acquire UK semiconductor company ARM Holdings for $24.3 billion in cash earlier today, people began to wonder if it was the result of the pound falling in the wake of the Brexit referendum vote. Not so, said Softbank’s CEO and founder Masayoshi Son.
In a press conference soon after the news broke, Masayoshi said that he only began acquisition… Read More
MarketInvoice, which plays in the peer-to-peer lending space by enabling U.K. businesses to raise money from institutional investors and high net worth individuals by ‘selling’ outstanding invoices, has raised a further £7.2 million. Read More
What do you get if you combine the broad trends of smartphones, wearables, Internet of Things, an individual desire for control and healthcare costs for society? You get VCs investing in health-tech startups, that’s what.
And the latest evidence of this is Stockholm-based Lifesum raising a $10m funding round led by Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), with Draper Esprit, Bauer Media Group and… Read More
Some more developments over at Opera, the browser company based out of Norway. The company announced that an offer to acquire the company for $1.2 billion has now been terminated, and in the meantime, the deal has been renegotiated: the same group will now pay $600 million to acquire only certain parts of Opera’s business. Opera will sell the Qihoo 360-led consortium its mobile… Read More
In the wake of the historic Brexit vote and the fall of the Pound, the UK is now witnessing its biggest-ever technology exit. Today, Arm Holdings confirmed that Japan’s Softbank Group has offered to pay £24.3 billion ($32 billion) in cash to acquire the company — known for its chip designs for mobile handsets (Apple is a customer) as well as for processors to power… Read More
Baidu has made its second investment in a U.S. fintech company inside a month after it put an undisclosed sum of money into ZestFinance, a big data firm specializing in credit scoring. Baidu, which operates China’s dominant search platform, took part in a $60 million round for payments firm Circle in June. Read More
Tonight SpaceX successfully recovered yet another rocket, making it their fifth one in total.
Elon Musk’s rocket company launched their two-stage Falcon 9 vehicle from Cape Canaveral at 9:45 pm PT tonight and subsequently recovered the first stage of that rocket back on land. The landing marks the second time SpaceX recovered a rocket on land and their fifth recovered first stage in… Read More
