As consumer behavior and expectations around privacy have shifted — and operating systems and browsers have adapted to this — the age of cookies as a means of tracking user behavior is coming to an end. Few people will bemoan this, but advertisers and marketers rely on having insights into how their efforts translate into […]
Enterprise-focused Alchemist Accelerator is back with another one. Today marks its 27th Demo Day, with more than two dozen companies expected to take the (virtual) stage. Coming in at 25 companies, this is Alchemist’s largest cohort so far. Meanwhile, Alchemist Director Ravi Belani tells me that applications to the accelerator have grown by more than […]
They say for every door that opens another closes, and the executive shuffle at VMware is certainly proving that old chestnut true. Four months after Pat Gelsinger stepped down as CEO to return to run Intel, the virtual machine pioneer announced yesterday that long-time exec Raghu Raghuram was taking over that role. That set in […]
Cloud Run, Google Cloud’s serverless platform for containerized applications, is getting committed use discounts. Users who commit to spending a given amount on using Cloud Run for a year will get a 17% discount on the money they commit. The company offers a similar pre-commitment discount scheme for VM-based Compute Engine instances, as well as […]
A year and a half’s worth of global pandemic has had a profound impact on virtually every sector of the workforce. When it comes to future automation, food prep isn’t quite at the top of the list (that distinction likely goes to warehouse fulfillment, for the time being), but it’s certainly up there. And it’s […]
Legionfarm, the gaming platform that lets gamers play with pro players in their favorite games, has today announced the close of a $6 million Series A round. Investors in the round include SVB, Y Combinator, Scrum VC, Kevin Lin, Altair Capital, Ankur Nagpal and more. Legionfarm launched out of Y Combinator at the beginning of […]
An activist short seller has written a letter to the chief executive of insurance giant Lemonade with details of an “accidentally discovered” security flaw that exposes customers’ account data. Carson Block, founder of investment research firm Muddy Waters Research, sent the letter to Lemonade co-founder and chief executive Daniel Schreiber on Thursday, describing the bug […]
UK-based startup Sylvera is using satellite, radar and lidar data-fuelled machine learning to bolster transparency around carbon offsetting projects in a bid to boost accountability and credibility — applying independent ratings to carbon offsetting projects. The ratings are based on proprietary data sets it’s developed in conjunction with scientists from research organisations including UCLA, the […]
With the pandemic finish line in sight — at least for some — now is a good time to start assessing which segments have been most impacted by the events of the past year and a half. In terms of robotics, investments have been all over the place — and for good reasons. COVID-19 seems […]
Repairability has been a big sticking point for consumer electronics over the past several years. As devices have gotten thinner — and companies have pushed to maintain control over proprietary systems — many devices have become near impossible for an every-day person to repair. It’s an issue for a number of reasons — not the […]
Risk defense startup SpecTrust is emerging from stealth today with a $4.3 million seed raise and a public launch. Cyber Mentor Fund led the round, which also included participation from Rally Ventures, SignalFire, Dreamit Ventures and Legion Capital. SpecTrust aims to “fix the economics of fighting fraud” with a no-code platform that it says cuts […]
If you’re new to Discord, you might be thrown off by the lack of an endless feed peppered with ads. On Discord, all of the action happens in interest-specific servers, and the company wants to make it easier for anyone to stumble across and plunge into those communities. The company launched Stage Channels, its own […]
Retail giant Walmart announced this morning it’s acquiring the Tel Aviv-based startup Zeekit, which allows consumers to virtually “try on” clothing when shopping online. The company leverages a combination of real-time image processing, computer vision, deep learning and other AI technology to show shoppers how they would look in an item by way of a […]
BluBracket, an early-stage startup that focuses on keeping source code repositories secure, even in distributed environments, announced a $12 million Series A today. Evolution Equity Partners led the round, with help from existing investors Unusual Ventures, Point72 Ventures, SignalFire and Firebolt Ventures. When combined with the $6.5 million seed round we reported on last year, […]
Don't wait for laws preventing the use of NDAs. Companies should shape these policies on their own, rather than waiting for legislation to drag an ethical NDA policy out of them.
More money for the now very buzzy business of reshaping how people work: Worksome is announcing it recently closed a $13 million Series A funding round for its “freelance talent platform” — after racking up 10x growth in revenue since January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a remote working boom. The 2017 founded […]
SpaceX’s bourgeoning Starlink satellite-based broadband internet service just got a big boost from a significant new partner: Google Cloud. Thanks to a new partnership between the two, SpaceX will now be locating Starlink ground stations right within Google’s existing data centers, providing the Starlink network with direct access to ground-based network infrastructure to help facilitate […]
Liquid Death, a four-year-old, L.A.-based canned mountain water startup that has steadily garnered market share and press coverage by promising, amusingly, to “murder your thirst,” just raised $15 million in Series C funding. The round brings the company’s total backing to date to $50 million. The new financing — it follows a $23 million Series […]
While a unicorn named Hopin tends to dominate the virtual conferencing space, a new startup just raised millions of dollars by focusing on what it believes is an untapped niche in the same universe: academic conferences. Morressier, a virtual conference and publishing platform specifically for the scientific community, announced today that it has raised $18 […]
