Sensors are all around us, not just in our cars but in our homes, our phones, our airplanes, our elevators, our workplaces and on our wrists; they are ubiquitous. They protect us, warn us and, in some cases, even inspire us to live better, healthier lives. The cognitive era is here, and machines will be increasingly trusted to not only collect and analyze data, but to help us make our decisions. Read More
Volition Capital, a Boston-based growth equity firm, just closed its third fund with $250 million in capital commitments. It’s a sizable step up from the firm’s previous fund, which closed with $170 million in 2013.
You can understand why its investors might be enthusiastic about the six-year-old firm, which says it just added a dozen new backers to its roster. It focuses on… Read More
Zagat, the restaurant review service Google acquired in 2011, has finally been given a mobile makeover today following years of what have been only minor updates and bug fix releases. Launching first on iOS, the updated Zagat app features a refreshed logo and new look-and-feel, as well as features that tailor the app to the individual user. Before today’s refresh, the app had a… Read More
Four continents, 24,800 miles, and more than 500 days later, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg are back where they started. The pair of Swiss pilots completed their round-the-world tour in the Solar Impulse 2 today, landing in Abu Dhabi early this morning. The multiple record-breaking trip was completed without any fuel, trading off flying duties for the journey, which lasted a total of… Read More
T-Mobile again expanded its free streaming program Binge On this morning, with the addition of Apple Music and fifteen other providers, including video services like ABC, Fox Now, FXNOW, Disney Channel, Disney Jr., Disney XD, NAT GEO TV, DISH Anywhere, and others. This brings the total number of video providers now participating in Binge On to over 100 since the service’s launch just… Read More
Israeli startup Engie wants to crack open the auto-repair industry with a combination of hardware and software to enable you to better understand the health of your car, tied to a more transparent marketplace for local mechanics. Read More
Taboola, the startup behind the publishing widget that recommends more content at the end of articles online, has made an acquisition to expand its horizons beyond the written word: it has bought ConvertMedia, a recommendation engine designed specifically to sniff out and recommend online videos at scale. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed but we understand from sources that it is in… Read More
Sure the plain ole Xbox got a price drop to $249 ahead of the release of the console’s svelte new configuration, but Microsoft’s still looking to lure in bargain hunters who’ve been eying the 40-percent slimmer new console.
This morning the company showed off two Xbox One S bundles, due out a few weeks after the system’s August 2 debut, each featuring one of the… Read More
Nintendo’s upcoming NX console is slowly taking shape, but a new report provides a lot more specificity than we’ve seen in the past, claiming the still-secret gaming hardware is actually primarily a portable console – albeit with some modular features that could make it more versatile than most handhelds.
According to new info from Eurogamer, the NX core system will be a… Read More
Janica Alvarez, CEO and co-founder of Naya Health, is slated to speak at Disrupt SF this September. Janica’s mission for Naya Health is to create better experiences for moms through a range of early-infant nutritional products and services. Based in Redwood City, CA, Naya Health has raised $3.9 million in seed funding to reinvent the breast pump and bottle. Prior to co-founding… Read More
A new startup called Rockets of Awesome launching today wants to make shopping for kids’ clothing easier by offering to do it for you. Similar in concept something like StitchFix, which sends boxes of clothing free of charge for home try-on, Rockets of Awesome helps parents build their children’s wardrobe by sending seasonal selections, and only charging for those items… Read More
Microsoft announced a number of updates to Word, PowerPoint and Outlook today that will bring more of its machine learning smarts (among other things) to some of its core Office suite products. For Word, the focus is on helping you become a better, more confident writer. With Researcher for Word, the team is now building a new tool into Word that helps you find information regarding the… Read More
Reflect, a Portland, Oregon-based data visualization service, today announced that it has raised $2.5 million on an oversubscribed seed round led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Other participants in this round include Founders’ Co-Op, Liquid 2 Ventures (Joe Montana’s investment vehicle), Techstars, Stanford University and a number of angel investors, including Parse co-founder Ilya… Read More
On their quarterly earnings call this morning, self-driving automotive technology company MobileEye announced that Mobileye’s work with Tesla will not extend beyond EyeQ3, the processor currently used in Tesla vehicles to provide the image analysis intelligence that enables Tesla’s driver-assisted autonomous tech Mobileye CTO Amnon Shashua explained on the call that the company… Read More
Scopely is announcing that it has raised a $55 million Series B round of funding. The Los Angeles-based company has built tools for promoting and monetizing mobile games — some of those games are developed in-house, others are created by outside studios. “The vision is creating the most premium experiences on people’s phones across a network of developers,” co-founder… Read More
Verizon yesterday announced a landmark deal to purchase Yahoo’s core business for $4.83 billion, but judging from its just-released second quarter earnings report, the telecom giant continues to feel the pressure of declines in its legacy business. The Q2 report shows total operating revenue of $30.5 billion and earnings per share of 94 cents. That’s a miss on revenue, but a… Read More
Acalvio Technologies, a new start-up made up of cybersecurity veterans, is emerging from some two years of stealth with $17 million in combined series A and B funding and a security product which the team claims leapfrogs existing solutions. The founders believe, and indeed the company is built around the idea, that cybersecurity needs a bit of a reboot. Read More
The restaurant food delivery wars in Europe were always going to get messy and the latest casualty is Take Eat Easy. Despite celebrating its 1 millionth order last week, the Brussels-headquartered startup has ceased trading and will file for “juridical restructuring” after it failed to raise a much-needed Series C round and has run out of money. Read More
Some more movement and consolidation is afoot in the on-demand transportation industry, specifically in Europe. Today, Hailo is announcing that it has sold 60% of its company to Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler, and Hailo will merge its and rebrand its operations under MyTaxi, another on-demand ride-sharing company that was acquired by Daimler subsidiary Moovel in 2014. The merged… Read More
Today seems to be a day of e-commerce inevitabilities in India. Alongside news of Rocket Internet-backed Jabong’s sale comes the launch of Amazon Prime in the country. Read More
