Coinbase, the prominent cryptocurrency exchange, has announced its most significant piece of M&A to date after it agreed to buy Earn.com, the U.S. startup that uses the blockchain for its paid-email service, in a deal worth over $120 million. In additional, Coinbase has appointed … | Continue reading
Lyft drivers have earned more than $500 million in tips to date, Lyft announced today. Since fleshing out tip functionality last June to encourage higher tip amounts, tip averages increased by nearly 8 percent in 2017 compared to 2016. While it took four years for Lyft to reach $ … | Continue reading
Porsche is planning a Supercharger-like network of fast charging stations at dealerships and highway locations across the US. There will be at least 500 by the end of 2019 according to Klaus Zellmer, CEO of Porsche Cars North America, speaking to Automotive News. The timing coinc … | Continue reading
There’s a new world of lab-grown replacements coming for everything from the meat department in your grocery store to a department store near you. Lab-made leather replacements will soon join vegetable-based meat replacements on store shelves thanks to startups like Bolt Threads, … | Continue reading
Israel-based BrainQ is a new nuerotech startup hoping to take on brain-computer interface (BCI) companies like Braintree founder Bryan Johnson’s Kernel and Silicon Valley billionaire Elon Musk’s Neuralink. It’s not clear yet what Musk’s startup intends to do with the computer ch … | Continue reading
Fintech startup Revolut can’t stop and won’t stop growing. The company has had an amazing month of December with a huge increase in the total volume of transactions and signups. Because of that, Revolut broke even in December for the first time ever. The company told me that it … | Continue reading
David McIntosh’s startup Tenor builds a GIF keyboard — but he actually hopes you’ll spend as little time searching on it as possible. Instead, Tenor’s aim has been to collapse the amount of time it takes for you to find a GIF you like and send it to a friend. Instead of trying t … | Continue reading
Russian search and internet services giant Yandex has been working on its autonomous driving program, and its most recent achievement is a public self-driving pilot of its self-driving test car in Moscow, the first such test on public roads in the Russian capital. Yandex had an … | Continue reading
Bynder, one of the leading companies in the digital asset management space, today announced that it has acquired Shutterstock‘s Webdam. The Amsterdam-based company tells us that it paid $49.1 million for Webdam, which Shutterstock itself acquired back in 2014. Like Bynder, Webda … | Continue reading
India’s Zoomcar — which operates an on-demand car rental service — has raised a $40 million Series C round led by Mahindra & Mahindra, the 70-year-old Indian corporation that specializes in automotive. Ford and other existing investors also took part in the round, Zoomcar confir … | Continue reading
The Rise of the Rest seed fund’s first round of startup investments cover eight states that are usually overlooked by tech investors, including Kentucky, South Carolina and Ohio. The $150 million fund was launched in December by Steve Case and J.D. Vance, with backing from many … | Continue reading
While Coinbase has had its fair share of technical issues the last few months, it seems the latest one may not be their fault. Earlier today reports started coming in across social media and reddit that Coinbase users were seeing strange charges on their credit and debit cards. … | Continue reading
If you need to make a 3D model of an object, there are plenty of ways to do so, but most are only automated to the extent that they know how to spin in circles around that object and put together a mesh. This new system from Fraunhofer does it more intelligently, getting a basic … | Continue reading
Google announced today that it intends to buy Xively from LogMeIn, giving Google Cloud an established IoT platform to add to their product portfolio. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Google indicated it wants to use this purchase a … | Continue reading
Instagram has taken down content posted by Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny under pressure from a government agency, while YouTube has yet to do so. Navalny and others have criticized Instagram for complying to what they call a politically-motivated move to silence him. … | Continue reading
Black Panther doesn’t look like any movie I’ve seen. I mean, I don’t want to downplay America’s long history of black cinema (a history that already includes a handful of black superheroes). Nor am I ignoring the fact that Black Panther is the latest installment of the Marvel Ci … | Continue reading
I’ve been holding a series of micro meetups in New York over the past few years and I thought we should have one on February 28 to talk about token sales/ICOs. I’ll bring in an outside speaker and I’d love to have one or two companies pitch who are working on their own token. If … | Continue reading
LiveLike, a startup that powers VR streaming experiences for broadcasters like FOX Sports and Sky, has raised a $9.6M Series B round led by Greycroft Partners and Lepe Partners. This brings total funding raised to just over $23M. As a refresher, LiveLike’s VR experience let you … | Continue reading
Unsplash is rethinking the way photography gets distributed and monetized, and today it’s announcing a $7.25 million Series A to fund those efforts. The site actually started as a side project for freelance marketplace Crew, but eventually the founders decided to focus on Unspla … | Continue reading
20 minutes into my interview with CEO Rob Nail, and I still couldn’t cut through the buzzwords about his online and in-person education startup. So I asked him straight up, “with as little BS as possible, what does Singularity University do?” He told me “You learn to read the ne … | Continue reading
The UK government has directly accused Russia of being behind the so called NotPetya ransomware attack last year — which quickly spread around the globe, including affecting businesses in Spain, France and India, demanding payment in Bitcoin to unlock infected machines. Read Mor … | Continue reading
MVPindex and Umbel, two companies delivering social media data to the sports and entertainment industries, are teaming up. The combined company will be led by MVPindex’s co-founders, with Stan Woodward serving as CEO, Shawn Spieth as president and chairman and Kyle Nelson as chi … | Continue reading
You’d be forgiven if you’ve had some trouble combing through Samsung’s laptop product page. I’ve been looking most of the afternoon, and I couldn’t really tell you the distinctions between the various lines. But while the company’s not doing a great job mitigating brand confusio … | Continue reading
One of the two major dedicated companies pursuing the creation of functional Hyperloops (high-speed tunnel transportation that can zoom pods around in low pressure) has signed its first agreements that could lead to an interstate Hyperloop system. The deal with Hyperloop Transpo … | Continue reading
Bike-sharing turned multi-modal transportation company LimeBike has raised an additional $70 million from its previously announced $50 million Series B round. This brings LimeBike’s total funding to $132 million. The funding comes shortly after LimeBike announced its entrance in … | Continue reading
betaworks, the 10-year-old startup studio out of NYC, is today introducing a brand new business in the form of betaworks Studios. Think of betaworks Studios as a membership club for builders, offering entrepreneurs, artists, enginneers/developers, and creatives the space to work … | Continue reading
In the endless hunt to gain credibility for token products, founders are resorting to some shady – and ridiculous – tactics. After researching the weird world of pay-for-play recently and taking part in this expose on the space, I stumbled on another corner of the Internet that … | Continue reading
Popular payment enabler Stripe announced plans to end support for bitcoin last month, but crypto exchange Coinbase is stepping into the gap after it released a new option for online merchants. Coinbase — which is best known for its service that converts fiat into bitcoin, Ethere … | Continue reading
After London sent ripple’s of shock through Silicon Valley last year, by denying Uber a renewal of its private hire vehicle license, the city’s transport regulator is doubling down on its scrutiny of the impact of app-based ride operators like Uber. Read More | Continue reading
Pasadena-based hardware startup Miso Robotics just got a big vote of confidence from investors, in the form of a $10 million Series B. This latest windfall led by Acacia Research Corporation brings the company’s total disclosed funding to $14 million and arrives as it ramps up p … | Continue reading
If you have purchased a drone in the last year or two, there’s a high likelihood that it only emerges from your gadget closet a few times per year. DroneBase is a startup that connects drone users with commercial missions so that they can keep the dust from settling on their fly … | Continue reading
CommonSense Robotics, an Israel-based startup developing AI and robotics tech to help online grocery retailers speed up fulfilment and delivery, has raised $20 million in Series A funding. Read More | Continue reading
Korea’s dominant messaging firm Kakao is back raising funds after its games business, a standalone unit that is headed for an IPO, pulled in $130 million (140 billion KRW) from Tencent and a range of other strategic investors. The company, which owns Korea’s top mobile messaging … | Continue reading
Fujifilm’s mirrorless lineup of X Series cameras has an excellent reputation, especially thanks to their ability to produce great-looking images comparable to full-frame competitors from crop sensors due to their unique image processing. Among still photographers, the X-Pro 2 an … | Continue reading
Uber lost $4.5 billion last year, but CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he’s not worried. Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, the newly appointed chief defended the company’s financials, saying that “we can turn the knobs to g … | Continue reading
Demand is off the charts for blockchain talent, and the capital is waiting to back it up. Over $3.7 billion has been raised through ICOs in the United States alone. Blockchain-related jobs are the second-fastest growing in today’s labor market; there are now 14 jobs openings for … | Continue reading
I’m a big fan of the Netgear Orbi line of mesh access points and now there’s more to love. Netgear is now shipping the RBS50Y, a new satellite that is weatherproof and allows you to add coverage to your back yard or garage without worrying that your access point will short out i … | Continue reading
Workast, the popular Slack-based task management toolkit, is looking to expand its messaging horizons. The company, which answered the prayers of everyone who was sick of working with Asana and other task management applications, has raised $1.85 million in a seed round of fundi … | Continue reading
Fresh off a public spat between Uber investor Benchmark Capital and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Benchmark general partner Bill Gurley took the stage in front of a large room of bankerfolk at the Goldman Sachs technology conference to talk about how startup boardrooms are no … | Continue reading
Tony La Russa is a member of the MLB Hall of Fame as a manager. The man helped introduce video study and analytics to the game of baseball when he was manager of the great Oakland A’s teams in the late 1980s and 1990s. He understands the value of data, but he also gets that data … | Continue reading
Translating is difficult work, the more so the further two languages are from one another. French-Spanish? Not a problem. Ancient Greek-Esperanto? Hard. But sign language is uniquely difficult because it is fundamentally different from spoken and written languages. All the same, … | Continue reading
Yesterday, at Startup Grind, an event series that’s aimed at new founders and people contemplating becoming entrepreneurs, we sat down with Joe Kraus, a partner for the last eight years with Google’s early-stage investing arm, GV. Kraus, who’d earlier cofounded two companies — E … | Continue reading
Alongside co-founder and longtime partner Stephan Ango, Jesse Genet has built a business with Lumi that’s already been profitable, and has just raised $9 million in venture funding to boost its growth. Read More | Continue reading
MIT researchers are working on a new steering system for drones that uses uncertainty to ensure that they don’t hit obstacles as they fly autonomously. The system is a bit complex but it’s called NanoMap and it quite simply finds ways to get from point A to point B without crash … | Continue reading
We’re just about a week away from hosting our 1st Annual Winter Party at Galvanize and if you haven’t been able to grab a ticket yet, today is your lucky day. We’ve released our final round of tickets to TechCrunch’s Winter Party so do yourself a solid and pick yours up so you c … | Continue reading
The latest game from Monument Valley designer Ken Wong doesn’t have much in common with the brilliant pastel puzzler, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth experiencing. Florence, available now in the App Store, isn’t really a game so much as a graphic novel strewn with a few int … | Continue reading
Back in the early 2000s before Dropbox was gleam in Drew Houston’s eye, sharing large files was a huge challenge. Email services limited attachment size because bandwidth and storage were both expensive and FTP required a certain level of technical acumen. YouSendIt tried to res … | Continue reading
SpaceX is planning to send up a pair of its own satellites in this weekend’s launch, in order to test a proposed space-based broadband internet service. But if you want get into the broadband business, first you have to get past its U.S. gatekeepers: the FCC. Fortunately for Spa … | Continue reading