As Uber continues to get more negative attention for its business culture and practices, the company today is taking one step ahead in the UK to try to improve its relationship with drivers here. The company is today announcing a new partnership with the Association of Independent Professionals & the Self-Employed (IPSE) to offer personal injury and illness cover for its 40,000 drivers… Read More
Nintendo has sold 2.74 million Switches to date, the first official number released by the company by way of its FY 2016 earnings report, released on Thursday. The total hardware units sold have also led to decent game sales – 5.46 million total across the library, but Zelda: Breath of the Wild looks to be the only real breakout hit for the console with 2.76 million Switch units sold,… Read More
Zeta Global, the marketing tech company that has recently acquired the likes of eBay’s enterprise arm and Acxiom Impact, is preparing for another round of acquisitions and investments in its technology. To do so, the company today announced that it has raised a $140 million Series F round. Read More
TransferWise, the billion-dollar valued startup that reduces the cost of cross-border payments, has taken a big step to globalizing its service after it opened an Asia Pacific office in Singapore. The UK-based service was started in 2010 by Estonian entrepreneurs Kristo Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus, its CEO, as a method for sending money from country to country more efficiently. It… Read More
The world is awash with bots these days — applications the run either partly or entirely using natural language processing, machine learning, computer vision and other artificial intelligence technologies to help consumers ask and answer questions, buy things and get other stuff done. In the enterprise equivalent, a company that is building something akin to this for large… Read More
Despite the Galaxy Note 7 saga and the arrest of its defacto head on bribery charges, Samsung’s business has bounced back. The company just announced its first quarter financial results, and they are as impressive as it had forecast earlier this month. Operating profit for the quarter rose by 48 percent year-on-year to reach 9.9 trillion KRW, or approximately $8.7 billion. That makes… Read More
Didi Chuxing, the on-demand giant that drove Uber out of China, is set to become the world’s second-highest valued tech startup. Beijing-based Didi is in the process of raising a round that could reach as high as $6 billion at a valuation that would exceed $50 billion, a source with knowledge of discussions told TechCrunch. That’s not far from Uber itself, which is said to… Read More
The New Zealand government has created a new rating for the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” that says a parent or guardian must be present when it is viewed by teens under 18. Read More
Drone maker DJI has updated their software to turn huge expanses of Syria and Iraq into no-fly zones. DJI usually prevents users from navigating their drones over sensitive areas like military bases and airports, but its new no-fly zones cover a much wider breadth and includes most of the northern half of both countries (including the city of Mosul), according to DJI’s map. Read More
EVERFI Inc. has raised $190 million in Series D funding to teach students online the life skills and touchy subject matter that they never learned in school. A sampling of courses offered by Everfi range from “Harassment Prevention Training” for the workforce, to “Alcohol EDU” for college students and “Vault Understanding Money” for fourth-, fifth- and… Read More
Poshmark, the fashion resale social network, is on track for $100 million in revenue this year, TechCrunch has learned. We hear the company reached $50 million in revenue last year, which means they are on pace to double in 2017. The company also recently became cash flow positive, with profitability on an Ebitda basis. This is a commonly used, but adjusted… Read More
Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai released the broad strokes of his plan to abandon consumer protections to the benefit of large corporate players in the telecommunications industry. While major telecom companies are looking forward to Pai’s FCC makeover, the same can’t be said for everyone else in tech. After Pai’s announcement, a group of more than 800 names in tech sent Pai… Read More
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai stirred up the hive today with his official declaration of war on the net neutrality rules established in 2015. Reactions have been mixed — depending on whether the person represents the telecommunications industry or not. In the melee, I had a chance to talk with Senator Schatz (D-Hawaii) about the pronouncement. Read More
Luxe started as a company that promised to make parking in busy cities less awful with an app that summoned blue-jacketed, scooter-carrying valets to your location to whisk your car away until you needed it back. It seems they’re pivoting away from that initial vision. Users began receiving emails like the one below this afternoon, promising “a new service” by summer of… Read More
Today’s Stories
Instagram’s growth speeds up as it hits 700 million users
Twitter desperately needed a hit first-quarter and somehow managed to deliver
Amazon’s new Echo Look has a built-in camera for style selfies
Uber is making it easier to see your rider rating
Investor Chris Sacca is retiring from venture capital
Credits
Written and Hosted by: Anthony Ha
Filmed… Read More
Given all of the security concerns raised by the rise of the Echo and other smart home hubs, Amazon surely knew that adding a camera to one of its devices was going to reinvigorate the privacy debate. After all, an always-listening microphone is one thing — the Echo Look, with a camera designed to sit in its owner’s bedroom, is another question entirely. Read More
Healthy financial milestones sugarcoat the conversation temporarily, but eventually Drew Houston is going to have to step into the public markets. At that point nobody will care how fast Dropbox grew its revenue back in the day. The question will be whether Dropbox is a company that can eventually sustain $10 billion in yearly revenue. Read More
For the past few years, Hollywood has been enamored with dystopias pulled from young-adult fiction — stories like The Hunger Games and Divergent, where the evil government provides a structure for our heroes to rebel against, a set of villains for them to defeat. The Handmaid’s Tale is something else entirely. Read More
Yesterday I wrote about a poll conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan that found people were interested in flying cars if they were autonomous, shared and electric. As soon as I posted that, I found an email in my inbox saying that ChargePoint and Uber Elevate, among others at the recent conference on flying vehicles, had partnered to prepare for just that exact scenario. Read More
PayPal, the payments company, posted first-quarter earnings results after the bell on Wednesday. After surpassing analyst estimates with an adjusted 44 cents per share, compared to the 41 cents that many were predicting, shares rose 7 percent in initial after-hours trading. Net income was $384 million, up 5 percent from last year. Read More
