April 2017
Watch Lilium’s successful test flight of the world’s first electric VTOL jet
Lilium has successfully tested its all-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) jet for the first time, and you can watch the inaugural test flight above. The basic concept of a…
Former White House economic advisor Jason Furman discusses how automation will impact jobs
When it arrived in December, the White House’s report, “Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy” felt like both a parting shot and warning to the incoming administration. That it was…
Alexa now works with your G Suite calendar
Amazon’s connected speakers and other Alexa-powered devices will now work with your G Suite calendar, the company announced this morning. Once enabled, users will be able to ask Alexa to give…
Google Home can now recognize up to six voices and give personalized responses
Google Home is finally getting a feature that its users have been clamoring for since it launched last year: it can now distinguish between different voices and respond with personalized…
Gladly, incubated at Greylock, nabs $36 million in Series C funding
There’s no shortage of customer service startups trying to meet the changing expectations of consumers, who want to Tweet, phone, text and use Facebook Messenger, among other newer ways to…
YouTube jumped to the top of the App Store following news of mobile live-streaming expansions
Demand for mobile live streaming on YouTube appears to be strong, given the fact that YouTube shot up to the top of the App Store – a position it hasn’t…
DFJ Growth, the 11-year-old growth-stage arm of the 31-year-old Sand Hill Road firm, has closed its third vehicle with $535 million, slightly more than it was targeting when it began…
Swingvy raises $1.1M to give HR staff in Southeast Asia a break from paperwork
Human resources paperwork is never fun to take care of—especially if it’s literally on paper. Swingvy co-founder Jin Choeh says that in Southeast Asia, many small businesses are still stuck…
Getaround raises $45M from Toyota and others to build more partnerships
Car sharing service Getaround has raised $45 million in Series C funding, led by a new investor Braemar Energy Ventures, and with participation from Toyota Motor Corp and China’s SAIC…
Spotify strikes new deal with indy giant Merlin ‘competitive’ with big labels
Spotify — the streaming music company with 50 million paying users — has been working on renegotiating licensing deals with labels over the last several months — a critical move to…
Harman and Baidu team up on in-car AI for Chinese automakers
At the Shanghai Auto Show on this week, global automotive supplier Harman announced a new partnership with Baidu, the leading Chinese internet services provider. The team-up brings together Samsung-owned Harman’s…
Amazon Lex, the technology behind Alexa, opens up to developers
Amazon Lex, the technology powering Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, has exited preview, according to a report from Reuters this morning. The system, which involves natural language understanding technology combined with automatic speech…
Investors: Here are the Startup Alley companies at Disrupt NY
Listen up, investors at Disrupt NY 2017. This one’s for you. We’re thrilled to announce that you can now peruse all of the companies that will be on display in the…
Coyuchi launches a subscription and recycling service for its organic home textiles
An organic bed linen subscription and recycling service sounds like the ultimate hipster indulgence, but considering the massive amount of textiles that end up in landfills every year, it might…
Completed wants to take on LinkedIn with a Yelp-style rating model
If Black Mirror is anything to go by, rating everyone around you isn’t always a great idea, but Completed wants to make it easier to rate and rank the business…
Bedly raises $2.7 million to make renting an apartment a little less horrible
Craigslist is great for serial killers and spear-phishers, but less than ideal for anyone looking for housing. As a platform for renters, Bedly aims to take some of the pain…
GoPro today announced the Fusion, a camera capable of capturing spherical video for use in VR and standard video formats through a software solution. The camera will be released this…
If you live in New York, you’ve seen the subway ads. MakeSpace wants to free your apartment of clutter. And now the self-storage startup is getting $30 million to execute on their vision. This…
Second round of Disrupt NY Hackathon tickets now available
If you’re looking to participate in the hackathon at Disrupt NY 2017, but missed out on the first round of tickets, you’re in luck! Today, we’re releasing a new batch of…
Shopify’s Marketing Events API shows merchants what marketing actually does
Shopify is announcing new APIs for developers at its annual Unite developer conference in San Francisco today, but the new Marketing Events API might be the most interesting. Basically, it…
With its Unity Buy SDK, Shopify now lets mobile games sell real goods
Mobile game developers tend to enjoy offering swag related to their games, especially if those amass any kind of decent-sized audience. The Unity Buy SDK from Shopify, announced at its…
Shopify has designed its own hardware for the first time, building out a design team and coming up with a unique approach to the simple card reader, that most basic…
Just 2 days left to save $1,000 on Disrupt NY tickets
Heads up, startup guys and gals. You are seriously running out of time to get deeply discounted tickets to the hottest startup show in the Big Apple – Disrupt NY…
With revenue of $29.8 billion, Verizon’s first quarter earnings fall short of analyst expectations
Verizon just released its first quarter earnings results, with adjusted earnings per share of 95 cents on revenue of $29.8 billion. Revenue (minus divestitures and acquisitions) is down 4.5 percent…
MasterCard trials biometric bankcard with embedded fingerprint reader
MasterCard is trialling a Chip and PIN bankcard that includes an embedded fingerprint reader, introducing a biometric authentication layer for card payments — and taking a leaf out of the…
ZappRX gets $25 million from Qiming US to expand into the U.S. drug prescription market
ZappRX, the app that aims to make it easier to manage specialty drug prescriptions, has pulled in $25 million in Series B funding led by Qiming US, the Chinese venture…
Report: Microsoft may buy cloud monitoring startup Cloudyn for $50M-70M
The consolidation of smaller cloud services through acquisitions by larger could platforms has been a running theme in the enterprise world for a while, and this morning we got a glimpse of…
China summons Apple for talks following concern around live-streaming apps
Apple is coming under pressure from authorities in China after internet regulators asked the company to tighten standards for iOS apps in the country. A report from state news agency Xinhua said…
French telecom company Orange is launching a bank this Summer in France. Orange CEO Stéphane Richard listed some of the features behind Orange Bank this morning at a press conference.…
AeroMobil starts taking pre-orders for its ‘first edition’ flying car
Flying-car company AeroMobil revealed its new model today, and is set to start taking pre-orders for the limited first edition run of the hybrid vehicle. The company had promised to…
