eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman are among the backers of a new $27 million fund, announced today, that’s aiming to promote research into artificial intelligence in the public interest. Read More
Kaminario, the all-flash storage vendor based near Boston, announced an oversubscribed $75 million round today. The investment was led by private equity firm, Waterwood Group. Sequoia Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Lazarus, Silicon Valley Bank and Globespan Capital Partners also participated. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $218 million, according to the company. CEO… Read More
French company Parrot has had a rough year and missed its sales expectations. That’s why the company will lay off 290 employees who were working on drones. In total, Parrot currently has 840 employees on the drone team and more than a thousand employees in total. While the company isn’t just selling drones, it represents a good chunk of the business. But it looks like other… Read More
Berlin startup Campanda, which offers an online booking site for Recreational Vehicles (that’s motorhomes, caravans and campervans, to you and me), has raised €10 million in Series B funding. Leading the round is Michelin Travel Partner, the subsidiary of tyre manufacturer Michelin. Previous backers also participated, including Accel, idinvest, Le Peigné, Ringier Digital Ventures,… Read More
Apple has submitted a proposal to expand its manufacturing capabilities at a site in Mesa, Arizona where it already produces certain components for its consumer products. Read More
Well this is a relatively fast exit. In March last year a brand new smart watch brand appeared, hoping to offer something different. Combining the incredible engineering talent in Central Europe’s Romania, with the business smarts of London and former executives from Citizen watches, the Vector startup carved out a very credible slot in the ‘affordable luxury’ smart watch… Read More
Atomico, the European VC fund founded by Skype’s Niklas Zennström, is announcing two promotions today as both Carolina Brochado and Teddie Wardi make the step up from Principal to Partner. Zennström, who spoke at our own TechCrunch Disrupt London in December, remains as bullish as ever regards the startup ecosystem in Europe. Both Brochado and Wardi’s promotions, which have… Read More
In a different kind of British invasion, Snap (the company that launched 1,000 ephemeral selfies) has planted its disappearing flag in the UK for its international home-away-from-home as it preps for an initial public offering in the U.S. Read More
Early last month, we told you about a bizarre new lawsuit involving longtime venture capitalist Michael Goguen, whose career at Sequoia Capital ended early last year after he was sued in a salacious breach of contract suit that accused him of sexually mistreating a woman named Amber Baptiste, then refusing to honor an elaborate financial arrangement they’d made. Baptiste and Goguen… Read More
Atlassian buys Trello for $425 million, Uber debuts Movements to monitor traffic data, Netflix and Amazon get a couple of Golden Globes, Amazon buys harvest.ai and the CES Hardware Battlefield winner is Siren Care. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Civil liberties group Liberty has launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund a U.K. High Court challenge to the bulk powers contained within a new domestic surveillance law. Read More
Despite hiccups, Yahoo’s planned sale to Verizon appears to be moving forward — but some portions of the company will be left behind and renamed Altaba Inc.
Yahoo is hanging on to its 15 percent stake in Alibaba and its 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, and those assets will survive as an investment company under the new name Altaba Inc., as the rest of Yahoo integrates with Verizon. Read More
Bumble will soon release BumbleVID, which will allow users from across the dating platform to create a story with unlimited 10-second videos, which will each delete after 24 hours. Here’s how it will work. Users record 10-second videos from directly within Bumble. These videos then post to their profile, and can be viewed by anyone who comes across their profile while swiping. You can… Read More
CyberPowerPC has introduced a new entry-level virtual reality-ready pre-built PC with AMD’s Radeon RX 470 on board for $499 at Best Buy and Amazon. That’s a new low for an off-the-shelf VR-capable configuration, and it’s also available as a bundle with Oculus Rift for $1,099.98 — or exactly what you’d pay if you purchased the two separately. Even if there’s… Read More
The iPhone turns 10 today, at least if you start counting from the day it was announced. So why not take a few minutes to relive that day, with all its excitement and the palpable pride taken by Steve Jobs in both the product and presentation? Come on, you know you want to. Read More
Paul Hemmersbaugh, chief counsel for the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), has left the agency. NHTSA confirmed Hemmersbaugh’s departure after TechCrunch learned of the top lawyer taking leave of the federal organization. Hemmersbaugh is another high-ranking departure at the agency ahead of Trump’s inauguration, after… Read More
Lola, a startup that connects travelers with live travel agents, has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The Boston-based startup was founded by Paul English, who previously co-founded and served as CTO at Kayak. In contrast to many other assistant services that hype their automation and technology, Lola proudly highlights the fact that its iPhone app uses human travel agents —… Read More
The United States has finally announced a comprehensive package of responses to Russia’s 2016 influence operation against the U.S. elections. This is a significant response, but a closer reading of the package reveals four important lessons about what this means for deterrence, statecraft and cybersecurity. Read More
Do you like making lists of things to do, but then end up failing to accomplish the items you’ve laid out? A new application aimed at those with a tendency towards procrastination can help. Instead of a simple checklist or time tracker, Time, as the app is called, lets you more obsessively micro-manage the tasks at hand with a color-coded timer that changes from green to yellow to red as… Read More
