If you’re wondering why Zynga issued $875 million in convertible notes at the end of 2020, CEO Frank Gibeau said the company was fundraising to build up a “war chest” for more acquisitions. “As you know, we’ve been a consolidator inside of this business for a while, and we’re going to continue to be on […]
One of the most difficult tasks in the increasingly high-fidelity world of gaming is making realistic-looking people — especially faces. Epic today showed off a new character creation tool in Unreal Engine that lets you make a near-infinite variety of near-photorealistic digital people with far less effort than it might have taken before. MetaHuman Creator […]
Mobile analytics and market data company App Annie launched a new app today that CEO Ted Krantz said is built not for the analyst who’s “immersed in the data,” but rather the executive who needs “a much more elevated, top-down view.” The biggest new piece of the company’s Pulse app is something called the App […]
NASA will provide 1,000 of its employees, including 150 astronauts, with Fitbit devices in a pilot program designed to see if they can help supplement efforts to keep these mission-critical personnel healthy ahead of key space missions. The program will see NASA employees outfitted with a wearable and provided access to a daily check-in app […]
As the second impeachment trial of his presidency unfolds, there’s another bit of bad news for the former president. In a new interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Twitter Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal gave the decisive word on how the company would handle Trump’s Twitter account long term. Responding to a question about what would […]
The European Union’s lead data protection supervisor has recommended that a ban on targeted advertising based on tracking internet users’ digital activity be included in a major reform of digital services rules which aims to increase operators’ accountability, among other key goals. The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Wojciech Wiewiorówski, made the call for a […]
Alexa von Tobel has a unique vantage point on the world of startups. She debuted in the tech space with the launch of LearnVest in 2009. The company raised nearly $70 million and sold to Northwestern Mutual in 2015 for an estimated $375 million, according to reports. Since, von Tobel has founded her own venture […]
Consumer genomics company Ancestry has confirmed it fought two U.S. law enforcement requests to access its DNA database in the past six months, but that neither request resulted in turning over customer or DNA data. The Utah-based company disclosed the two requests in its latest transparency report covering the latter half of 2020. The report […]
Apple Maps is inching into more Waze-like territory with an update that will give drivers the ability to report road hazards, accidents or even speed traps. The new features are live in the iOS 14.5 beta, which is now open to public beta testers as well as developers, but won’t roll out to the general […]
The founders of Accord, an early-stage startup focused on bringing order to B2B sales, are not your typical engineer founders. Instead, the two brothers, Ross and Ryan Rich, worked as sales reps seeing the problems unique to this kind of sale firsthand. In November 2019, they decided to leave the comfort of their high-paying jobs […]
Lang.ai, which has developed a no-code platform for businesses, closed on a $2 million seed funding round. The company’s SaaS platform aims to allow business users to structure any free-text data with custom categories built through a drag & drop interface, based on AI-extracted concepts. Village Global led the financing, which included participation from new […]
Earlier this week, Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei spoke rather diplomatically about the company’s hopes of holding talks with the new U.S. administration. The hardware giant is also taking a less conciliatory route, challenging its FCC designation as a national security threat. The company this week filed a suit with the U.S. Court of Appeals for […]
The era of social audio 1.0 is in full swing, and while podcasts and Clubhouse have led the way, there are many other audio startups joining the fold. Quilt, an audio social network that focuses on wellness and community, has raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Mayfield Fund, with partner Rishi Garg joining […]
The insane saga of a potential forced sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations is reportedly ending — another victim of the transition to methodical and rational policymaking that appears to be the boring new normal under the presidency of Joe Biden. Last fall, the U.S. government under President Donald Trump took a stab at “gangster capitalism” […]
If you want to make your website accessible right now but lack the resources for the kind of serious revamp it would take, an “accessibility overlay” may take the pressure off while the work gets done. Though critics argue that these tools aren’t a permanent solution, AccessiBe has raised $28 million to show that its […]
This morning Level, a Seattle-based startup that offers credit to gig-economy workers, announced that it has raised a $1.5 million pre-seed round. Level intends to provide various services to gig-economy workers, starting with a financing product. The goal of Level today is to furnish access to credit to workers who might not be able to […]
SoLo Funds wants to replace payday lenders with a community-based, market-driven model for individual lending and now has $10 million to expand its business in the U.S. Payday lenders offer high interest, short-term loans to borrowers who are at their most vulnerable and the terms of their loans often trap borrowers in a cycle of […]
SLAs, SLOs, SLIs. If there’s one thing everybody in the business of managing software development loves, it’s acronyms. And while everyone probably knows what a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is, Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Indicators (SLIs) may not be quite as well known. The idea, though, is straightforward, with SLOs being the […]
