Brillen.de, a bootstrapped, family-run company in Germany that has built an online business selling its own eyewear by tapping into a network of independent and local opticians, has raised €45 million ($49 million) in its first-ever VC funding. The money comes from a single, notable, investor, Technology Crossover Ventures (which has backed the likes of Facebook, Spotify, LinkedIn,… Read More
Tesla has reiterated that drivers using Autopilot mode remain safer than those who don’t use it. The disclose came as the automaker continued to deny reports from Fortune that it misled investors and the public by taking too long to disclose details of a fatal accident involving one of its customers who was in Autopilot. Read More
Forerunner Ventures, an early-stage, San Francisco-based venture firm that focuses almost exclusively on e-commerce businesses, has raised a $122 million fund, shows an SEC filing that was filed earlier this morning.
The firm was founded by Kirsten Green, who is listed on the filing along with Eurie Kim, a partner who joined the firm in 2012.
The all-female firm also features an operating… Read More
Snapchat has a big update and introduces memories, another Tesla car accident, Alibaba’s first smart car is unveiled, Etsy has payment processor problems, light camera raises 30 million dollars and has delays. All this on Crunch Report! Read More
Here’s the dirty little secret about the Internet of Things: The things might not work, and you might not use them. As a consumer, many of your gadgets will collect dust tucked away in a drawer. As a business, many of your devices will not perform as well as expected, turning into maintenance-heavy money pits. Read More
In the U.S., it’s as if laws and regulations only apply to people of color — and when people of color bend them, they lose their lives. When white tech CEOs bend the laws at massive scale, they’re rewarded with billions of dollars and prestige. “You know how Silicon Valley advocates an Uber-esque model where everybody is an entrepreneur, disrupting markets while the… Read More
It was only a matter of time before Tinder for balance-sheet lenders and debt investors became a thing.
Financial matchmaking platform Blackmoon launched this week in the United States. The platform is designed to help institutional investors access non-bank balance-sheet loans. The Russian marketplace Lending-as-a-Service platform is also adding a New York office to its international… Read More
It’s been less than a year since the consumer Gear VR was first shown off and it already seems as though Samsung and Oculus are regrouping to push out a new version of the pre-eminent mobile VR headset. A Dutch Samsung rumors site inexplicably found a listing from an Indian imports database that highlights a new model number (SM-R323) for the Gear VR device being shipped.… Read More
NASA scientists are bringing one of the most powerful computers in the world — just recently given a tune-up — to bear on the question “Where do stars come from?” So next time your toddler asks you that, you’ll be able to say something smart, like “hyper-dense elongated stellar filaments, child.” Read More
With more than 4.5 billion views and 8.5 million subscribers on YouTube, plus their own video platform, there is no arguing that Rooster Teeth has paved their way as one of the premier online entertainment content brands. Starting the company in the spare bedroom of Burnie Burns’ house 14 years ago — before YouTube, free video hosting or web encoding — Burns had a lot of ideas… Read More
Nike, the home of all things athletic, is joining the ranks of the programmers with its launch of open-source software. Last week, Nike published three open-source projects on GitHub: a JSON parsing framework, a distributed tracing solution for Java and a lightweight logging library written in Swift. The company also open-sourced the code that powers its own site on GitHub. While… Read More
Two separate reports claim Autopilot 2.0, an enhanced version of Tesla’s Autopilot semi-autonomous driving tech, is coming to vehicles soon, potentially as part of the upcoming 8.0 update of Tesla’s software. TechnoBuffalo reported that Autopilot 2.0 is confirmed as “coming soon,” while Electrek’s Fred Lambert discussed the feature in an earlier piece focused on… Read More
Venture capital used to be such an insular, under-the-radar industry that entrepreneur-investor Marc Andreessen has said that he’d never heard the term before arriving in the Bay Area in 1994. He’s hardly alone. It wasn’t until the mid- to late-1990s, during the dot.com boom, that the world became acquainted with what venture capitalists do. And it wasn’t until after… Read More
Pivotal, developers of the Cloud Foundry open source cloud development platform and Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, announced a partnership today where Ubuntu becomes the preferred operating system for Cloud Foundry.
In fact, the two companies have been BFFs since the earliest days of Cloud Foundry when it was an open source project developed at VMware. Read More
Enterprise is where the money’s at. Today, Glassbreakers is shutting down its consumer-focused platform for peer-to-peer mentorship for women. This comes a few months after Glassbreakers launched its enterprise product to support diversity and inclusion initiatives at Fortune 500 companies. “Our opportunity to accelerate inclusion in the workforce through our technology is… Read More
Hoverboards! The must-have trash gadget of the holidays, now gathering dust in a million closets and garages nationwide, is being recalled in even larger numbers than before due to “a risk of the products smoking, catching fire and/or exploding.” Someone warn Justin Bieber! Read More
NextVR confirmed today that the company has received $20 million in funding from a Chinese investment firm as a part of an upcoming Series B raise.
The news surfaced earlier this week on Variety after regulatory documents from CITIC Group Corp. were discovered. The $20M is just a slice of the Series B raise; Variety reports that NextVR is looking to raise $80 million at a $800 million… Read More
I’ve been playing Pokémon Go for most of today because no force in heaven or on earth could stop me, and here are a few things that I’ve learned about the game, myself and life as a result. The new Pokémon professor is like real, real handsome but his shoes are terrible I don’t like to move very much or at all if possible I’m still cheaper than I am lazy because… Read More
If you were eagerly awaiting your “late summer” delivery of your pre-ordered Light L16 camera, today will bring an impatient tear to your eye. In parallel with announcing having raised $30 million from GV (nee Google Ventures), the company sent out an email to early supporters telling them they’d have to wait for a while longer — until “Early 2017,” that is. Read More
