Harry Destecroix co-founded Ziylo while studying for his PhD at the University of Bristol. Ziylo, a university spin-out company, developed a synthetic molecule allowing glucose to bind with the bloodstream more effectively. Four years later, and by then a Phd, Destecroix sold the company to Danish firm Novo Nordisk, one of the biggest manufacturers of […]
Sometimes it’s just not worth it to try to top Mother Nature. Such seems to have been the judgment by engineers at the University of Washington, who, deploring the absence of chemical sensors as fine as a moth’s antennas, opted to repurpose moth biology rather than invent new human technology. Behold the “Smellicopter.” Mounted on […]
You can listen to Apple Music on your Google Nest device, Apple is working to top Intel with its next set of chips and Cisco acquires Slido. This is your Daily Crunch for December 7, 2020. The big story: Google smart speakers add Apple Music support Google announced this morning that devices including the Nest […]
Like a lot of startups, Aarmy faced some big challenges when the pandemic forced widespread shutdowns in March. Up until then, Aarmy was offering in-person fitness classes from its locations in New York and Los Angeles. Trey Laird, who founded the startup with trainers Akin Akman (chief fitness officer) and Angela Manuel-Davis (chief motivation officer), […]
Practically speaking, it’s nearly impossible to offer a real review of “Cyberpunk 2077,” the long-awaited follow-up to “The Witcher 3” from developer CD Projekt Red. In the first place, it’s so big that the few days I’ve had with it aren’t enough to realistically evaluate the game; second, it’s so buggy and janky now that […]
Aurora Innovation, the autonomous vehicle startup backed by Sequoia Capital and Amazon, has reached an agreement with Uber to buy the ride-hailing firm’s self-driving unit in a complex deal that will value the combined company at $10 billion. Aurora is not paying cash for Uber ATG, a company that was valued at $7.25 billion following […]
Odysee is a new video site that CEO Jeremy Kauffman said was created to recapture some of the freedom and independence of the internet he grew up with — an internet where “anyone could speak and anyone could have a voice.” Kauffman argued that since then, the internet has become “very corporate,” with a small number […]
Do people want their at-home fitness to come in video-game form? The incredible popularity of games like Ring Fit Adventure suggests yes. London-based startup Quell thinks it’s just the beginning for this genre, and they’ve raised a $3 million seed round to help prove it. At the core of Quell’s gameplay is the “Gauntlet” — […]
Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, the company which spun out of Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs to fund, develop and own the next generation of infrastructure, has unveiled its latest project — Resilia, which focuses on upgrading the efficiency and reliability of power grids. Through a $20 million equity investment in the startup OhmConnect, and an $80 million commitment […]
Finn.auto — which allows people to subscribe to their car instead of owning it, and offsetting their CO₂ emissions — has raised a $24.2 million / €20 million Series A funding round. White Star Capital (which has also invested in Tier Mobility), and the Zalando co-CEOs Rubin Ritter, David Schneider and Robert Gentz, are new […]
Twitter’s timeline is currently overrun with ads for some users, in what at first appeared to be a glitch involving the distribution of Promoted Tweets. Typically, a Promoted Tweet — which is just a regular tweet an advertiser has paid to promote more broadly — will appear just once at the top of a user’s […]
Portable audio recording solutions abound, and many recently released devices have done a lot to improve the convenience and quality of sound-recording devices you can carry in your pocket — spurred in part by smartphones and their constant improvement in video recording capabilities. A new device from Austria’s mikme, the mikme pocket (€369 or just […]
The FCC has just published the results of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction, which sounds rather stiff but involves distributing billions to broadband providers that bring solid internet connections to under-served rural areas “on the wrong side of the digital divide.” Included is $885 million earmarked for SpaceX, whose Starlink satellite service […]
I’m a true believer that you can solve any problem with the right product and process, even one as gnarly as the multiheaded hydra that is microservice overhead.
Cloudflare is working on a new product called Cloudflare Pages. The new product could compete directly with Netlify and Vercel, two cloud hosting companies that let you build and deploy sites using Jamstack frameworks. Popular Jamstack frameworks include Gatsby, Jekyll, Hugo, Vue.js, Next.js, etc. The new product was discovered on Saturday by reverse engineer Jane […]
Microsoft continues to expand its global Azure data center presence at a rapid clip. After announcing new regions in Austria and Taiwan in October, the company today revealed its plans to launch a new region in Denmark. As with many of Microsoft’s recent announcements, the company is also attaching a commitment to provide digital skills […]
Cloudflare has launched a new set of features today called the Data Localization Suite. Companies on the Enterprise plan can choose to enable the features through an add-on. With the Data Localization Suite, Cloudflare is making it easier to control where your data is stored and if you’re authorized to view data depending on from […]
So much for a December slowdown — this morning, Airbnb and C3.ai raised their IPO price ranges and we got early pricing information from Upstart and Wish.
The state of California has now expanded access of its CA Notify app to all in the state, after originally deploying the app in a pilot program at UC Berkeley in November, which later expanded to other UC campuses. The statewide launch of the app, announced by California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday, means that […]
