FinancialForce, a cloud ERP solution built on the Salesforce platform, announced today that Tod Nielsen, an experienced executive from a Who’s Who of tech companies, will become the company’s new CEO. Nielsen replaces Jeremy Roche, who founded the company and has run it since its inception in 2009. Roche will remain on the board of directors, and have a yet-to-be-defined role… Read More
Training surgeons on specific surgical procedures is expensive and hard. London-based Touch Surgery has created more than 200 training programs for surgical procedures to be completed on a mobile phone or tablet. At CES, it announces support for a new type of deeply immersive surgery training — and potentially assistance in an operating room — on DAQRI and HoloLens. Read More
Newly minted classifieds startup Carousell is officially on the prowl to eat up struggling startups in Southeast Asia. The Singapore-based company closed a $35 million Series B in August, and this week it acquired Malaysia-based rival Duriana in an undisclosed transaction that represents its third piecemeal M&A deal since that fundraising. Read More
Samsung had a pretty dire last quarter of business as profits sunk by 30 percent thanks primarily to the recall of the Galaxy Note 7. There’s some New Year cheer, however, with news that the Korean firm is forecasting profit for its current Q4 2016 quarter to jump by 50 percent year-on-year. Read More
CES 2017 kicks off, Vine edges closer to its death, Medium is shifting strategies and streamlining and Netflix’s upcoming Korean TV show. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Amid the confusion of smart showerheads and selfie drones at CES this year, a handful of companies are working to serve the needs of populations that are frequently overlooked by the proprietors of high tech. You won’t find these devices in every home, but homes with someone disabled by age or misfortune will welcome them more than a new voice-powered fridge. Read More
Amazon is bringing its next physical bookstore to New York City. The company confirmed that it would be setting up its fourth Amazon Books shop in the Time Warner Center in midtown Manhattan. “We are excited to be bringing Amazon Books to The Shops at Columbus Circle, Time Warner Center in New York City in 2017,” a spokeswoman wrote in an email. Already operating three bookstores… Read More
Nvidia’s Shield set-top streaming device got an update at this year’s CES, and it was a big one: The new hardware is 40 percent smaller than the original, with a new Android 7.0 Nougat-based operating system and a redesigned UI that groups games together and just generally organizes things a bit more logically. It also handles 4K HDR content streaming, and boasts the most… Read More
Microsoft isn’t building its own connected car — but it is launching a new Azure-based cloud platform for car manufacturers that want to use the cloud to power their own connected-car services. The new Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform will go live as a public preview later this year.
“This is not an in-car operating system or a ‘finished product’,”… Read More
The Boston-based company that was first to provide robotic legs to paralyzed veterans in the U.S., Rewalk Robotics Ltd., has a new product in development that you won’t see this week at CES. The device is a “soft exoskeleton,” designed to help people who have lower limb disability but who have not severed their spinal cord or otherwise become paraplegic. According to Rewalk… Read More
The early cancer screening startup Grail plans to raise more than $1 billion in Series B financing, possibly up to $1.8 billion. While the company doesn’t want to name investor names, only mentioning in a release the funding will come “primarily from undisclosed private and strategic investors,” Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google Ventures,… Read More
Against the backdrop of an imminent public offering, one former Snap Inc. employee is claiming in a lawsuit that the company inflated its performance metrics to lure investors.
Anthony Pompliano, the one-time head of Snap’s growth and user engagement team, is seeking an injunction and monetary relief after being fired just three weeks into his tenure. Mr. Pompliano, now a venture… Read More
In a blog post, Google announced the acquisition of Limes Audio, a Swedish company that focuses on improving the quality of voice calls. The 10-year-old company, headquartered in Umeå, Sweden, also has offices in Stockholm and Palo Alto. The acquisition isn’t Google’s first time shopping around in the Swedish startup community. In 2007, Google acquired Swedish communications… Read More
CES seems to be making some bloggers a little trigger happy with posting. Just a little while ago VentureBeat published a story claiming that Intel had acquired Bitcasa, a cloud storage company that had shut down operations last year. We’ve confirmed directly with Intel that this is not the case, however.
“Intel did not acquire Bitcasa,” an Intel spokesperson tells… Read More
This week I had the chance to visit Columbia University to meet with Max Levchin, currently the CEO of financial company Affirm and one of the co-founders of PayPal. He was in the Lerner Hall auditorium surrounded by a large flock of programmers belonging to a special branch of the field: cryptology. They were all there vying for the second annual Levchin Prize. Levchin started the award… Read More
While the ZMorph 2.0 SX looks like an alien seed pod but it’s actually a powerful, multi-tool printer for the prosumer market. The company has been around for a bit but this is their latest entrant in the 3D printing world and features multiple tool heads including a standard plastic extruder, a laser, a CNC router, and dual-head extruder for multiple colors. The founder, Przemek… Read More
Today’s wearables are only scratching the surface of what we can learn about our health. BloomLife, makers of a clinically validated wearable for pregnant mothers, wants to dig deeper when it comes to the health of the baby and the mother during pregnancy. The company demonstrated its wearable onstage today at Hardware Battlefield at CES. Women experience all kinds of crazy sensations… Read More
Things are looking up for biotech and health device startups wanting to cash in on VC dollars or go public this year. According to Silicon Valley Bank’s latest report on healthcare investments and exits, a conservative 2016 has set up 2017 for a hearty boom.
Though biopharma M&A activity declined slightly last year and IPOs declined more than 30 percent, according to the report… Read More
On the heels of EVgo‘s announcement that it was breaking ground on its first 350-kW public charger, ChargePoint announced at CES that it has developed what it calls an ultra-fast DC charging station that can deliver up to 400 kW. The ChargePoint Express Plus is aimed at cutting-edge cars that charge quickly and have long ranges, like the Tesla Model 3 and Chevy Bolt — cars that… Read More
When it comes to isolating weight loss or weight gain on different parts of your body, it’s a lot more complex than just tracking a single number. ShapeScale, competing today on the TechCrunch CES Hardware Battlefield stage, is aiming to build a more visual way of tracking your fitness. The company’s product, a connected smart scale, creates 3D scans of a user’s body and… Read More
