Orion Labs alternately refers to the Onyx as a “smart walkie-talkie” and a “real-life Star Trek communicator.” Really, the device is a wearable push-to-talk device with a microphone and speaker built in that saves users the trouble of moving their phone up to their head or jamming a pair of headphones in their ears. The walkie-talkie bit is a reference to the fact… Read More
Sebastian Thrun’s online education startup Udacity recently created a self-driving car engineering nanodegree, and on stage at Disrupt today Thrun revealed that the company intends to build its own self-driving car as part of the program, and that it also intends to open source the technology that results, so that “anyone” can try to build their own self-driving vehicle… Read More
One of the startups that caught my eye at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley was MobileIrisID, a company that combines the convenience of the mobile phone with the power of the cloud. Aiming to be a drop-in service for high-value transaction authentication, the service puts hyper-secure identification at the fingertips of developers. The company uses the front-facing camera to capture… Read More
Sebastian Thrun is taking a drive down memory lane with the latest initiative from his online learning juggernaut, Udacity. The company is partnering with Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, Didi, Otto, and Nvidia on a nanodegree program for self-driving cars, Thrun announced onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. Working with Udacity, the partners will set up a curriculum… Read More
Evernote — the popular note taking and productivity startup with 200 million users — has built its reputation around an app that lets you record and track all your life’s details hold them there, for life. Today, the company is shifting gears on the question of how it will keep hold of and track that information: Evernote is migrating all of its data to Google’s… Read More
Microsoft’s CTO for Azure (and occasional novelist) Mark Russinovich is extremely bullish about microservices. In his view, the vast majority of apps — including enterprise apps — will soon be built using microservices. Microsoft, with its variety of cloud services and developer tools, obviously wants a piece of that market. With Service Fabric, the company offers a service… Read More
Yesterday went off without a hitch, but today’s lineup will blow your mind: Reid Hoffman. Marc Benioff. Ash Carter. Steph Curry. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Plus, we have more Battlefield companies coming at you. Just like yesterday, the live stream is going to be available pretty much anywhere you are. Here are the deets: TechCrunch.com – The entire show will… Read More
Watches like the Omega Ploprof and, now, the bulbous-looking Robusto, are designed for rough and ready wear. The watch, created by a Dutch company called Time22 features a titanium case and automatic movement and should be able to withstand pressure, smacks, and damage. The watch is made of Grade 5 titanium and is water-resistant to 200 meters. It runs an ETA or quartz movement and starts at… Read More
As publishers of dead-tree newspapers continue to look for ways to pivot and profit from the massive consumer shift to digital platforms, one of the more storied of them is putting some money into an online icon to boost its position. Digg, an early mover in online content aggregation that was acquired by the New York incubator Betaworks back in 2012 for a mere $500,000, is raising another… Read More
Following its accidental reveal of a newer, cheaper version of its Alexa-powered Echo Dot speaker on Monday, Amazon this morning announced new numbers detailing the rapid growth of its Alexa “app store,” which it calls the “Skills” section in its Alexa app. The company says the selection of these voice-activated apps has grown by 3x since June, and now includes over… Read More
Industrious, a WeWork competitor that offers workspace to entrepreneurs, has today announced the close of a $37 million Series B round. Riverwood Capital led the round, with participation from Outlook Ventures and Maplewood.
Industrious currently has 12 locations across the country, including cities like Atlanta, St. Louis, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Raleigh, Chicago, Austin, and… Read More
No, Auto-Trash does not mean wrappers and french fries lingering on the floor of your car. Auto-Trash is a Raspberry Pi-powered trashcan that can automatically sort items placed in it based on what they are. It works by using a Raspberry Pi module equipped with a camera to “see” each item placed on top of the can’s rotating top. Using image recognition—powered by… Read More
It’s pretty difficult to make digital marketing sexy, but crystal is going at it with both barrels. Launched in public beta today at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley, the product features beautiful dashboards, smart AI and Siri-like voice control. Its self-learning algorithms can learn when a company’s audiences are most likely to respond to marketing messaging and much more. Read More
GGV Capital, the nearly 20-year-old cross-border venture firm, with offices on both Sand Hill Road and in Beijing and Shanghai, has brought some new, interesting people into its orbit: Jason Costa, who spent the last three years as a product manager at Pinterest and the two previous years working on Twitter’s platform, has joined the outfit as an entrepreneur-in-residence;… Read More
Amazon this morning rolled out another perk for subscribers to its Amazon Prime membership program: free access to Audible’s short-form digital programming called Audible Channels, as well as a selection of free audiobooks. Amazon says members will have access to a rotating selection of over 50 audiobooks from Audible’s catalog. That’s similar to how the Kindle Lending… Read More
Native mobile advertising startup Avocarrot — which, interestingly, was in the first cohort of company builder Entrepreneur First — has been acquired by adtech company Glispa Global Group. Read More
Sourcery Technologies Inc. has raised $5 million in venture funding for software that helps restaurateurs and corporate kitchens order from vendors, keep track of their inventory and costs, and figure out the appropriate prices for different ingredients. Marker LLC led Sourcery’s new round joined by Steadfast Venture Capital and the company’s earlier backers including Palantir… Read More
GitLab, the code collaboration platform for developers based on the open source Git tool, announced a $20 million Series B round today led by August Capital. Existing investors Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator also participated. Today’s investment brings the company’s total raised to date to over $25 million. It was just about a year ago that GitLab announced its $4 million… Read More
Ontame.io, a relatively new startup from the former CTO and CEO of Graduateland (which recently acquired Tyba), is building a product to bring better analytics to recruitment. Read More
Instead of taking on debt to buy a house, Point provides equity funding. The startup can find the capital needed to finance your home and in return they get partial ownership. And now Point is getting its own funding, $8.4 million led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Bloomberg Beta and Ribbit Capital. Inspired by the venture capital model for startups, Point aims to make it… Read More
