PayPal this morning announced an expanded partnership with MasterCard aimed at helping the payments service become a more universally accepted checkout method at stores. The partnership, which follows a similar deal with Visa earlier this year, will make MasterCard a clear payment option within PayPal, increase PayPal’s presence at point-of-sale, and will enable Masterpass… Read More
What hath science wrought: First it created the brooding Mewtwo, whose tale of experimentation and weaponization is the dramatic underpinning for the original Pokémon movie; now, it’s responsible for Type: Null, a new synthetic Pokémon from the upcoming Sun and Moon Pokémon games for 3DS that combines the strengths of various other pocket monsters. In addition to the fairly badass… Read More
In a quest to dismantle itself and become more relevant in the 21st Century, IAC-owned About.com is launching another standalone vertical in the form of The Balance, a personal finance website tailored to today’s millennial. The Balance is focused on making personal finance easy to understand, no matter where you are in life. The site will launch with more than 34,000 pieces of… Read More
Yet another partnership has been forged to help usher in the era of self-driving software: This time, it’s Volvo, which announced (via Reuters) a joint venture with Swedish-American car safety system supplier Autoliv to create autonomous driving. Volvo is already a partner of Uber’s in self-driving cars, and this new venture looks like yet another effort to help propel the… Read More
Adobe has a host of new features for its Creative Cloud video tools it’s debuting at IBC 2016 this week. The improvements include new team collaboration features, as well as new improvements to its VR video workflow, as well as updates to its beta Character Animator software. There are also performance improvements throughout, hopefully helping speed up your video editing workflow. The… Read More
Hong Kong is making a move to challenge Singapore and others as the dominant location for fintech in Asia after the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) unveiled a digital hub and new allowances that it believes can spur innovation. Read More
How do you make a dent in the energy market? SolarCity is likely one of the few companies that has a good idea of how to answer that question, and one part of its plan includes replacing the roofs of 5 million U.S. homes with solar cells, according to The Guardian. It’s a plan that SolarCity board chairman Elon Musk first tipped on a conference call last month, but now we have a bit… Read More
In the world of tech and investing FOMO is a dominant theme that drives much of investment decision-making at the early stage. Ben Lerer, Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau Ventures, goes as far as stating, “FOMO is an inevitable part of life as an investor,” in our latest interview. However, there are methods and processes that can be used to mitigate the effects of FOMO.
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Google is speeding up its internet services in Asia once again. Fresh from expanding its data centers in the region last year — which are located in Singapore and Taiwan — the company said today that it has switched on a new undersea cable that will make services like YouTube or its cloud computing platforms run quicker still. Read More
French startup Lydia is launching a card so that you can spend your Lydia balance in every retailer that accepts MasterCard. You can trigger a lot of features in the app. In other words, you remain in control of your card, and not your bank.
Lydia started off as a peer-to-peer payment app so that you can pay back your friends using your phone — gone are the tedious IBAN and wire transfers. Read More
The UK’s Divido is one of a number of startups and tech companies operating in the point of sale consumer finance sector. Its alternative payment option lets customers spread the cost of any purchase over a period of time while the retailer gets paid in full right away. Today the London-based company is disclosing £2.5 million in seed funding led by Mangrove Capital, and DN Capital.… Read More
Podcasts blew up in 2016. Ever since Serial’s success two years ago, the medium has gained devotees among celebrities and… apparently everyone else. The new, new thing in the podcast world is to take the show on the road with tools to give mobile phones nearly the same level of quality that users would get from a home studio. That’s why apps have proliferated from… Read More
VizEat, a European startup that operates a “social dining platform” to enable travellers to dine in a local’s home, has raised €3.8 million in new funding. The round was led by various, mostly unnamed, investors and also includes current backer Eurovestech. Read More
Zilingo may not be a name known to many prior to today, but the under-the-radar e-commerce company has closed a impressive $8 million Series A round to scale its fashion-focused marketplace in Southeast Asia. Read More
Intel’s RealSense platform was the star of its Intel Developer’s Forum conference in San Francisco last month and it seems the company is only looking to grow the scale and capabilities of its computer vision tech. Today, the company announced that it is acquiring the computer vision startup behind Google’s Project Tango 3D-sensor tech, Movidius. In a blog post,… Read More
Like most VCs, we see dozens of deals each week. We’ve developed a funnel that enables us to quickly eliminate those that don’t fit our general investment criteria. The deals that survive this initial process are subjected to greater scrutiny. In the end, we invest in a small percentage of the deals we review. When we decide not to invest, we always explain the reasons to the founders. Read More
On this week’s episode of TCBC, the podcast where TechCrunch’s writers go in-depth about the beats they love and obsess over, we talk to Emily Calandrelli, our resident space reporter and the host of Xploration Outer Space – season 3 of which premieres this coming Saturday on FOX.
Luckily, there’s been no shortage of space news lately: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket… Read More
As a necessary function of a product launch, startups are myopic — they’re frenzied, they’re broke and they’re not remotely cognizant of the serious public policy hurdles to which they’re racing. That’s the problem. Read More
Disrupt SF starts a week from today. There’s still time to get on board, and here are a few reasons why you might be sad if you don’t. You can still get a ticket here. #1 Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Diane Greene, Reid Hoffman, Sebastian Thrun. If those names got your attention, so will these: the Warriors’ Steph Curry, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash… Read More
The $6.7 billion telepresence and video communication category hasn’t evolved much since we were introduced to Cisco and Polycom. At the same time Smart TVs are making video conferencing easier. But it’s still not that easy. Hello is a new startup addressing this space — created by two former refugees from the war in Kosovo — which has now passed it’s… Read More
