“VR will be big, AR will be bigger and take longer.” What sounded revolutionary when we first said it two years ago has become accepted wisdom. But now the market has actually launched, and we’ve got 12 months of real-world performance and major tech players’ strategies emerging. And that’s changed our views on VR/AR growth. A lot. Read More
Make way for another large fintech investment out of Europe. Funding Circle, the London-based peer-to-peer lending platform that lets small businesses connect with investors willing to lend them money, has raised another $100 million in funding of its own, led by Accel with participation from other previous investors Baillie Gifford, DST Global, Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Rocket… Read More
The FCC may be on the verge of being rebuilt under a very different administration, but reports put together under the current one are still being issued — and just such a one released today offers a critical view of some current “zero-rating” plans from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. Read More
Las Vegas, transportation beat reporters can’t quit you; CES was like a car extravaganza, and now you’re launching a self-driving, fully electric shuttle on public streets. The shuttles are the result of a partnership between shuttle-maker Navya, fleet logistics provider Keolis and the city of Las Vegas, and began picking up members of the public today, riding a regular route… Read More
Despite delays, Apple’s AirPods had a great holiday season according to a new report on wireless headphone online spending over the past several weeks. The report from Slice Intelligence–which collects its data from hundreds of millions of anonymized e-receipts–found that the $159 AirPods have accounted for more than a quarter of all online wireless headphones… Read More
With the smartwatch field facing an uphill battle for the attention of the gadget-buying audience, Google’s Android Wear delay couldn’t have come at a less opportune moment. The wearable operating system was originally scheduled for release by year’s end, only to get pushed back to a broad “early next year,” a move that may well have contributed to the surprising… Read More
Cloudflare issued its biannual transparency report yesterday, detailing the government requests for user data it received during the latter half of 2016. Many tech companies make regular disclosures about these types of requests in an effort to be more transparent with their users, and, following the passage of the USA Freedom Act, more and more of these disclosures include national… Read More
Looks like Friday’s hands-on event isn’t the only big bit of Nintendo Switch business going down in New York City this Friday. The gaming giant’s New York store Twitter account just dropped the news that the eagerly anticipated (though barely seen) convertible console will open for pre-orders at the company’s storefront at 9AM that same day.
A limited quantity of… Read More
It’s no secret that more celebrities are flocking to tech and venture capital these days. The latest to make the leap into entrepreneurship is Sarah Michelle Gellar, best known for her TV role as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and most recently as the voice of The Seventh Sister inquisitor in the animated series Star Wars Rebels.
The company she founded with CEO Galit Laibow and COO Greg… Read More
Instagram competitor and visual arts technology company VSCO has closed up shop in New York and laid off all staff, TechCrunch has learned and the company confirmed. The decision was made in order to centralize staff at the company’s Oakland location, its main headquarters. VSCO also has an office in Denver, Co., which was added when it acquired the Denver-based printing shop,… Read More
Alexa is going to at least own the living room, and there’s a good bet that it’s going to own the whole home. But that’s not stopping RnD64, a small company building a small little black voice-powered black egg, from trying to get in the kitchen first. Hello Egg works as a cooking assistant, with a few extra flourishes — like a friendly little eye to keep you company on… Read More
The U.S. regulatory agency overseeing transportation at the federal level has announced a new official committee on automation, be it autonomous driving, drones or other self-guided modes of getting around. The committee is designed to help the Department of Transportation (DOT) learn from industry experts regarding how it should be shaping policy and research in these emerging fields. Members… Read More
At his first proper press conference as President-elect, Trump and team provided answers for a number of long-burning questions, sort of. Trump held his last full press conference on July 27 and months later canceled plans for a December 15 press event at which he was expected to assuage concerns about his myriad conflicts of interest. In an unconventional opening at Wednesday’s… Read More
The DeepDrive project has made it possible to use Grand Theft Auto to train self-driving cars for some time now. But today, the work is being integrated and open-sourced with OpenAI’s Universe. The collaboration will cut the once day-long setup time down to just 20 minutes. Training AI frameworks on synthetic data is all the rage these days. Large tech companies and startups alike… Read More
When Google picked up Titan Aerospace in April 2014, the sky was, as they say, the limit. The high-flying drone producer seemingly had a lot to offer the tech giant, including the potential to expand Project Loon, its balloon-based plan to develop low-cost internet access to remote rural areas. The UAV maker, which was reportedly also being courted by Facebook around the same time, also had… Read More
Charles Hudson has lived in the Bay Area for the last 20 years, working as product manager, as an entrepreneur, and an investor. As such, he’s had a front row seat to a number of changes in the way startups are funded, including the evolution of numerous angel investors into so-called micro VCs into fund managers who are now responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars. Take… Read More
Over the past year, the presidential campaign captured the world’s attention. Now all eyes are on Washington and the emerging administration. Indeed, the federal government dominates the news. To put it mildly, there’s no sign that will change anytime soon. Entrepreneurs in enterprise technology often experience a similar federal fixation. Here’s why they shouldn’t. Read More
YouTube announced today it’s making a change to a prominent video discovery feature on its site in order to showcase more videos made by newer creators and music artists. The company says that it will begin to highlight those video makers who are “On the Rise” on its Trending Tab in the U.S., and will rotate the selection of promoted videos on a weekly basis. Each week,… Read More
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday our daily guided tour of the biggest tech stories from the past 24 hours will appear here on TechCrunch.com. To get The Daily Crunch in your inbox every day of the week, sign up here. Cloudy with a chance of cybersecurity showers, Obama bids a tearful farewell, and Tesla taps more Apple talent. That and more in The Daily Crunch for January 11, 2017. And if… Read More
If you’ve ever flown an RC plane or even a quadcopter you’ll know the exciting experience of trying to land the thing and ending up in a pond or a tree. That’s fine when you pay a few hundred for your drone but what if your drone costs $1 million and needs to fly around spying on bad guys? How do you keep it from crashing into a larch? Researchers at the University of Bristol… Read More
