The German cabinet has backed proposals to hit social media firms with fines of up to €50 million if they fail to promptly remove illegal hate speech from their platforms — within 24 hours after a complaint has been made for “obviously criminal content”, and within seven days for other illegal content. Read More
Zunum Aero, a company backed by funding from Boeing HorizonX and JetBlue’s tech venture arm, has revealed its plans to create a hybrid electric aircraft designed for regional flights with plans to fly by 2020. The aircraft would have a range of around 700 miles at launch, and the plan is to get that up to over 1,000 miles by 2030, which means it could service many popular commuter routes… Read More
At 26 years of age, Ramtin Naimi, has already made a small fortune as a hedge fund investor. Now, the founder of Abstract Ventures, an early-stage venture investment firm, is looking to rethink how early stage deals are done. Specifically, he’s hoping to combine an emphasis on community and philanthropy with investing to both draw in deal flow while also helping his network of young… Read More
Fred Destin, one of European VC’s biggest personalities, is leaving Accel, the London-headquartered VC firm he joined from Boston’s Atlas Ventures in mid 2014, to focus more on Seed and earlier-stage investing.
Specifically, I understand that the plan is for the Belgium-born VC to create his own franchise, either with a team or as a solo GP, “focused on very early-stage… Read More
European VC firm 83North (formerly Greylock IL), which since 2008 has focused on backing startups in Europe and Israel, has closed its fourth fund — taking $250M in a raise that it says was both oversubscribed and its largest to date, and bringing its total capital under management to $800M. Read More
Forward Partners, the London-based VC firm originally founded by Forward Internet Group and Nic Brisbourne, has closed a new £60 million fund to continue investing in tech startups from idea to late Seed stage. Read More
With the appointment of Ajit Pai as the new FCC chairman and his public opposition to current regulations, the death of net neutrality is likely upon us. As a result, an internet toll road – and higher costs for more data – is probably in your future. Read More
AdAsia, a one-year-old online advertising startup based in Singapore, has closed a $12 million Series A round from Japanese investor JAFCO.
The company was founded in April 2016 by CEO Kosuke Sogo, the former managing director of Japan’s MicroAd in APAC, and COO Otohiko Kozutsumi, who had been with MicroAd Vietnam. It offers a single digital platform that integrates elements such as… Read More
Yahoo and AOL combine under Verizon to become Oath, Yelp acquires Wi-Fi marketing company Turnstyle Analytics, Apple improves the specs of the Mac Pro and a new sentiment index aims to help founders time their fundraising. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
After signaling in late February that such legislation was on the way, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced a bill that aims to protect the digital privacy of American citizens at U.S. borders. While the policy appears unevenly enforced, U.S. citizens have reported an uptick in border agents demanding passwords and searching their devices at American borders. The Trump… Read More
Amazon has reportedly reached a deal with the NFL to stream 10 Thursday Night Football games this year, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The one-year deal is reportedly valued at around $50 million. Read More
A team of researchers at the University of Missouri are using a pair of robotics platforms and a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a system for identifying crop strains resistant to heat, drought and flood. Read More
TechCrunch has learned that Mike Swartz, an operations veteran from Amazon who joined Instacart in February last year, has left the company. Instacart confirmed the departure. Read More
You weren’t supposed to know about Oath. Not this week, at least. And certainly not under these circumstances. The newly minted and already much maligned poster child of the forthcoming face of Verizon’s Yahoo acquisition was developed in-house as a B2B brand, designed for customer and partner relationships. Read More
Bradley Tusk is a former political operative who currently runs a consultancy that helps Fortune 500 companies launch political-style campaigns, as well as a separate outfit, Tusk Ventures, that that focuses on helping startups do the same. Read More
Google’s Project Zero has been on a roll lately, unveiling sophisticated bugs in Cloudflare, LastPass and now Broadcom, a Wi-Fi chip supplier whose product is found in iPhones, Nexuses and Samsung devices. Read More
FINE, a San Francisco- and Portland-based brand agency, is open sourcing the content management system (CMS) it has developed in-house to build sites for brands like Anchor Brewing, Kimpton Residences at Seafire, Prūf Cultivar (“Elevated Cannabis”) and others. Read More
Buffy Li was very patient when she took time off from her Spring Break to talk to me. Li, an 11th grader at Santa Cruz’s Kirby prep school, spent most of the week off coordinating the launch of her new app, TagDat. While she’s stressed about getting her ducks in a row, the app is actually the second startup she’s worked on, so she knows how it goes. As one of the founders… Read More
Kanye West’s last album has just made streaming history.
The Life of Pablo, released a little over a year ago, just went Platinum with over 1.5 billion song streams in the U.S.
While popular albums frequently go platinum, this is a big deal because Kanye’s album reached this milestone relying on streams alone – no paid downloads.
Let me explain:
An album typically goes… Read More
