Third time is a charm. Viva Technology (or “VivaTech” for short) hosted its kick-off press conference to present this year’s event. And this year is going to be quite special for TechCrunch as well because we’re hosting a Startup Battlefield Europe at VivaTech and a Hackathon. H … | Continue reading
TechCrunch Startup Battlefield is headed to VivaTech in Paris on May 24th to find and feature the best early-stage startup across Europe! In partnership with VivaTech, Startup Battlefield Europe will feature startups from across continental Europe working on the cutting-edge tec … | Continue reading
JD.com, the Chinese e-commerce giant that is Alibaba’s closest rival, is raising giving its logistics spin-out business a huge boost after it announced that the unit is raising $2.5 billion. JD Logistics, which became a standalone business last April, is raising the investment c … | Continue reading
Outbrain, the network known for distributing garbage clickbait articles and ads on sites across the internet, is now going to offer a premium product that ensures that the articles recommended to folks at the bottom of their screens will be less garbage. Onstage at the Code Medi … | Continue reading
Rockville, Maryland-based Homesnap has come a long way from its days as a consumer-facing app for displaying information about local homes by taking a photo. While its current app still works this way for prospective buyers, these days its core focus is for U.S. real estate agen … | Continue reading
Google just announced a plan to “modernize” email, allowing “engaging, interactive, and actionable email experiences.” Does that sound like a terrible idea to anyone else? It sure sounds like a terrible idea to me, and not only that, but an idea borne out of competitive pressure … | Continue reading
Magic Leap and the National Basketball Association are partnering with Turner Sports to show live games on its platform in an app that will be available to Magic Leap One ‘Creator Edition’ customers. The partnership announced onstage at the Code Media conference in Huntington Be … | Continue reading
There’s no doubt that linear advertising revenues are going to decline in the coming years for big networks. Squeezed by Facebook and Google on one side, and impossible consumer expectations created by Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services on the other, the idea of an ad- … | Continue reading
In the age of altcoins, at least one news site is taking a novel approach to making ends meet. Salon announced today that it would give readers a choice between turning off ad-blocking software or “allowing Salon to use your unused computing power” in order to access their conte … | Continue reading
One of the great thing about podcasts is the opportunity to discuss things in-depth, without having to squeeze it all down into a 30- or 60-second sound bite. But that creates a subsequent challenge: What’s the best way to promote those longer conversations on social media? That … | Continue reading
If you’re a Twitter shareholder wondering if the company is about to get acquired, co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey doesn’t want you to get that impression. “There’s a lot of strength to our independence,” he said, at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Fra … | Continue reading
Time Warner will be fine even if the government blocks the bid from AT&T to buy the company. That’s the word from John Martin, the free-wheeling chief executive of Time Warner subsidiary, Turner Inc., who was speaking at the Code Media conference in Huntington Beach. For the rec … | Continue reading
Unlike most startup founders who saw the birth of the internet in the mid-1990s, I am still CEO of my company. My longevity in this position gives me a unique perspective on the changes that have happened over the past two decades, and I see one happening right now that will rad … | Continue reading
Particle – which used to be called Spark – has released the third generation of their tiny, networked computing boards. Their new product, called Mesh, allows you to connect wither to a Wi-Fi or cellular network but also allows you to create a mesh network between multiple Mesh … | Continue reading
Smart Reply, the clever A.I.-powered technology that automatically creates responses to your inbound messages, first debuted in Google’s email client Inbox over two years ago, before later rolling out to Gmail, Android Messages on Project Fi, and Allo. Now, a team inside Google’ … | Continue reading
Snapchat has a new ally or enemy depending on how you look at Google’s new mobile magazine format, but the social app is welcoming the search giant. Google’s clone of Snapchat Discover called AMP Stories officially launched today, allowing news outlets to create photo/video slid … | Continue reading
It’s been over 45 years (!) since Pong debuted. At this point, you wouldn’t have a hard time finding someone who grew up playing it. But they probably haven’t played it like this. Read More | Continue reading
The majority of Twitch’s product announcements lately have been focused around new tools or expanded money-making opportunities for its video creators. Today, the company is instead launching new features for viewers – one related to Twitch’s 60-second video snippets called Clip … | Continue reading
The Warriors are currently atop the Western Conference standings, but from the looks of it, Kevin Durant is shaping up to be every bit as in demand off the court. Roughly a month ago, YouTube announced that it was partnering with the star small forward’s video business to offer … | Continue reading
Lots of companies need to understand what CIOs are thinking, but it’s hard to get a group of busy people to give meaningful answers about the products they use or their budget priorities in public forums for obvious reasons. Pulse Q&A is a new company in the Y Combinator Winter … | Continue reading
All over the world, language barriers are limiting the ability of refugees and immigrants to seek help, and aid workers to provide it. Tarjimly is a new service that connects people who speak one language but need to speak in another, with a person who speaks both — in just a co … | Continue reading
The order to roll back net neutrality may have been made (though it’s not quite in effect yet), but the fight to restore it is ongoing. 24 members of Congress have asked the FCC for answers on a variety of topics relating to the huge and controversial comment docket for the “Res … | Continue reading
HackerRank, the skills-based recruiting platform and online coding challenge community, today announced that it has raised a $30 million Series C funding round led by JMI Equity, a fund that specializes in helping software companies scale. Exiting investors Khosla Ventures, Batt … | Continue reading
If you’ve ever tried to order and source products from overseas you likely know the process is broken. Factories rarely talk directly to customers and middlemen are difficult to track down and there’s usually a significant delay while you wait for them to communicate back and fo … | Continue reading
One of the continuing challenges that artificial intelligence programs face is how they receive and process the information they need to take actions. While the algorithmic tools that developers have harnessed to automate a dizzying number of different processes are incredibly g … | Continue reading
Microsoft is beefing up its Slack-like collaboration software, Microsoft Teams, with the technology (and the founder) from collaboration software startup Chalkup. Following the acquisition, Microsoft says it will bring some of the features Chalkup had built to the Microsoft Team … | Continue reading
A court in Germany has ruled that Facebook’s default privacy settings and some of its terms and conditions breached local laws. The Berlin court passed judgement late last month but the verdict was only made public this week. Read More | Continue reading
Fitbit’s been on a bit of a acquisition spree over the last couple of years, as the company’s looked to grow its business inside the stagnating wearables category. This morning, the hardware maker announced plans to pick up Twine Health, a HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based health man … | Continue reading
Facebook’s status update box is getting a new feature called Lists, which begins rolling out today. This is the first major update to the entry field since the launch of colored backgrounds just over a year ago, and also serves as a way to encourage Facebook users to share more … | Continue reading
Amazon Prime Video’s longest running hour-long original series is back for yet another season. The company has greenlit Season 5 of Bosch, the Emmy-nominated series based on Michael Connelly’s detective/crime fiction novels. Bosch follows LAPD Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch … | Continue reading
Uber has launched a new, lower-cost service in Nairobi called Uber Chap Chap. Made possible by using a fleet of fuel-efficient budget sedans, Uber Chap Chap (Swahili slang for “hurry, hurry”) is currently available in several areas of the Kenyan capital, including its central bu … | Continue reading
A four-year-old autonomous drone startup founded by MIT researchers and backed by Silicon Valley’s top investors is finally ready to show off what it’s been building over the last several years. Today, Skydio is showcasing the R1, a drone that boasts what the startup calls “self … | Continue reading
Google’s AMP format has always been about making mobile pages render faster. But Google is now taking it beyond posts, recipes and how-to articles. First, the company launched the new AMP story format earlier today and now it’s also announcing a preview of AMP for Email. At firs … | Continue reading
PicoBrew today announced a new product in its growing line of brewing appliances. Called the Z Series, this product targets serious brewers with a scalable design that allows for greater precision in repeatable larger batch sizes. And with the largest model, the Z4, the owner en … | Continue reading
Sourcing the right technology for a company has always been challenging, but today it is an entirely different beast. There are tens of thousands of startups out there hawking their technology services, and the pace of innovation has increased dramatically. Hundreds of startups … | Continue reading
ARM doesn’t build any chips itself, but its designs are at the core of virtually every CPU in modern smartphones, cameras and IoT devices. So far, the company’s partners have shipped more than 125 billion ARM-based chips. After moving into GPUs in recent years, the company today … | Continue reading
Obligatory disclaimer: Don’t be dumb. What follows is a video showing high level instructions on how to build a nearly exact copy of The Boring Company’s flamethrower. Basically, gut this $125 Airsoft gun and insert a propane torch. The total bill of goods should be under $200, … | Continue reading
In Q4 2017 – essentially during the last holiday season – market research firm Canalys found that more people bought Apple watches than Swiss watches. Two million more, to be exact. Brian Heater has more data but this news is quite problematic for the folks eating Coquilles St-J … | Continue reading
Volkswagen has been showing off its I.D. line of concept electric vehicles for a couple of years now, but we won’t have to wait long for them to actually enter production according to a new report. VW will enter production with the I.D., starting with the I.D. Crozz in the U.S. … | Continue reading
In a world where sensors are capturing ever-increasing amounts of data, being able to collect that high volume and measure it over time becomes increasingly important. InfluxData, the startup built on top of the open source time series database platform, announced it has receive … | Continue reading
Location tracking can seem pretty creepy if you’re the consumer being watched. But there’s big and growing business in tracking human movements and behavior, thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones. To wit: Unacast, a location data startup from Norway, has today announced a $17.5 … | Continue reading
UJET, a startup that makes software to improve customer support, said today that it’s raised a $25 million Series B led by GV (formerly known as Google Ventures). Other participants in the round include returning investors Kleiner Perkins and DCM Ventures and new backer Citi Ven … | Continue reading
Frank and Oak, the direct-to-consumer clothing brand based out of Canada, is today announcing the close of a $16 million USD Series C funding round led by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, with participation from Goodwater Capital and Investissement Québec. Frank and Oak l … | Continue reading
The UK government’s pressure on tech giants to do more about online extremism just got weaponized. The Home Secretary has today announced a machine learning tool, developed with public money by a local AI firm, which the government says can automatically detect propaganda produc … | Continue reading
Travis VanderZanden. If you’ve been following the fast-changing transportation industry, it’s a name that may sound familiar. Until September 2016, VanderZanden was VP of growth at Uber and before that, COO of its fierce rival Lyft, which had acquired his on-demand car wash compa … | Continue reading
Southeast Asia has a new venture capital fund on the scene after Victor Chua, formerly a vice president at Gobi Ventures, launched Vynn Capital. The Kuala Lumpur-headquartered venture is founded by Chua and Singaporean Darren Chau, previously with IE Singapore, and it is targeti … | Continue reading
For the most part, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project was about what its name implies: accelerating mobile pages. Unsurprisingly, that mostly meant quickly loading and rendering existing articles on news sites, recipes and other relatively text-heavy content. With that pa … | Continue reading
GM has launched its first major international city for its Maven car sharing product. The service is going live in Toronto, Canada’s largest city by population, with rates beginning at $9 per hour which include gas and insurance coverage. The launch follows a prior pilot in the … | Continue reading