Lightricks, the startup behind a suite of photo and video editing apps — including most notably, selfie editor Facetune 2 — is taking its retouching capabilities to video. Today, the company is launching Facetune Video, a selfie video editing app, that allows users to retouch and edit their selfie and portrait videos using a set […]
As part of its continued preparations to begin its commercial passenger spaceflight operations, Virgin Galactic has revealed the final design of the interior cabin of its VSS Unity spacecraft. The company unveiled the interiors during a virtual event today, and offered members of the press (myself included) a special tour of the interior in VR. […]
GitHub today announced that it will start publishing a public roadmap to help its users understand when it will ship new features across its various versions of the GitHub code repository and products like GitHub Actions, its mobile app and its security tools. “What we’re trying to do is provide a way for people to […]
Spotify announced today it’s updating its recently launched shared-queue feature, Group Session, to support remote usage. Essentially a “party mode,” the feature first debuted in May, offering a way for participants contribute to a collaborative playlist in real-time and control what’s playing across everyone’s devices. Spotify explained at the time that, despite social distancing measures, […]
For the past 10 years, Disrupt has been a place for the tech community to come together to connect and learn. And while thousands of techies won’t be able to descend on the Moscone Center this year, the Disrupt show will most certainly go on. On the conference’s 10th anniversary, we’re coming to you virtually. […]
Indonesia-based online travel portal, Traveloka, has picked up $250M in fresh funding to beef up its coronavirus-battered balance sheet. The travel aggregator dubs the capital injection a “strong vote of confidence” in its strategy to adjust to what it couches as a ‘new normal’ for travel by retooling its focus on domestic and short hop […]
A lot has been written about increased interest around automation and robotics during the pandemic — I know because I’ve done a lot of the writing. Most of these discussions tend to revolve around things like logistics, delivery and food preparation. But there’s also a compelling case to be made for companionship. And for that […]
Twitter has temporarily frozen Donald Trump Jr.’s account after the president’s son shared a video making false and potentially life-threatening claims about the coronavirus pandemic. The younger Trump’s account was restricted Tuesday morning after he shared a link to the viral video, tweeting “This is a much [sic] watch!!! So different from the narrative that […]
Gaming platform Roblox, which has seen a surge of use due to the coronavirus pandemic, now has over 150 million monthly active users, up from the 115 million it announced in February before the U.S.’s shelter-in-place orders went into effect. The company also said its developer community is on pace to earn over $250 million […]
Low-code is a hot category these days. It helps companies build workflows or simple applications without coding skills, freeing up valuable engineering resources for more important projects. Paragon, a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 cohort, announced a $2.5 million seed round today for its low-code application integration platform. Investors include Y Combinator, Village […]
CES 2020 got in just under the wire, ahead of COVID-19 reaching true international pandemic levels. And until today, the show’s governing body, the CTA, was planning to keep its record unbroken. Today, however, CEO Gary Shapiro announced via video that the Las Vegas event has been canceled. Instead, CES 2021 will follow the lead […]
NASA and SpaceX are looking to finish up the final demonstration mission of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon astronaut spacecraft at the end of this week, but it’s already looking ahead to Crew-2 – the second operational flight of Crew Dragon, currently set for sometime next spring. The agency revealed the four people that will fly aboard […]
Startup stories are often too reductive — an entrepreneur dreams up an idea, snags some co-founders, raises a bit of money and presto: success and riches. It’s nearly never true. Even breakout successes like Slack that may feel straightforward have complicated stories. Amongst the most valuable startups there are hidden crises and disappointing quarters. Some […]
Playground Global has an eye on the future. A quick glance at the investment firm’s portfolio showcases a wide-ranging list of investments, covering robotics, autonomous driving, neural network, quantum computing, metallic 3D printing and gene therapy. Playground GlobalCEO Barrett will join us on Extra Crunch Live to chat about these categories and more at 2 […]
Lucid Motors is loading up its first electric vehicle with hardware — dozens of sensors, a driver monitoring system and an Ethernet-based architecture — for an advanced driver assistance system that aims to match and even surpass its rivals. There will be 32 sensors in all, according to Lucid, which has branded its advanced driver […]
XPRIZE is turning its tried and tested model of offering cash prizes to spur innovation in critical areas to the challenge of COVID-19 testing. the nonprofit has created a $5 million prize pool for a Rapid COVID Testing competition, in partnership with an organization called OpenCovidScreen formed by scientists, researchers and industry leaders to drive […]
A lot of tech is built on the premise of services that can target the widest or most lucrative pools of users (and they’re a blockbuster when they can do both). But that leaves out a number of consumers, who fall into the margins for all kinds of reasons, be they physical, age, financial or […]
In a world with growing amounts of data, finding the right set for a particular machine learning model can be a challenge. Explorium has created a platform to make that an easier task, and today the startup announced a $31 million Series B. The round was led by Zeev Venture with help from Dynamic Loop, […]
Just like we enjoy a range of different possible modes of transportation on Earth, the potential of the space economy allows for many different types of of vehicles and launch systems. Dawn Aerospace took the wrapper off one today, a suborbital spaceplane called the Dawn Mk-II Aurora that’s smaller than a compact car and that […]
Swiss computer vision startup, Advertima, has raised a €15 million Series A (~$17.5M) to build out a machine learning platform for physical retail stores to ‘upgrade’ the shopping experience via real-time shopper behavior analytics. The round is led by existing shareholder, Fortimo Group, a Swiss real estate company. Fed by visual sensors, Advertima’s platform provides […]
