April 2017
Amazon’s new Echo Look has a built-in camera for style selfies
With the addition of a camera, Amazon’s new Echo Look device can now see and hear all. The device is a sort of standalone selfie machine so users can take…
Investor Chris Sacca is retiring from venture capital
Chris Sacca, a former Google lawyer who rose to fame by betting heavily on Twitter and Uber, says he’s “hanging up his spurs,” and getting out of the investing game.…
Is Twitter the new TV? The social network hopes to become something resembling that, with plans revealed by CFO and COO Anthony Noto to eventually be airing live video content…
Synthego co-founder Paul Dabrowski is coming to Disrupt New York 2017
Genetic engineering startup Synthego makes synthetic ribonucleic acid (RNA), an important genetic component found in all living cells and also used in CRISPR Cas9, a technology enabling scientists to rip…
Mobile now accounts for the majority of digital ad spending, according to IAB
Digital ad revenue grew to $72.5 billion in 2016, up 22 percent from the year before. That’s according to the latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Interactive…
Anki brings ‘Fast & Furious’ branding to its Overdrive line of smart toy cars
Before its adorable little robot Cozmo arrived on the scene, Anki was in the business of making smart toy cars. The hardware startup’s robotic race car line Overdrive is getting…
As industries go, agriculture represents one of the worst environmental offenders. Besides all the fertilizers, pesticides and water they use, farms also burn a lot of fossil fuels and money…
Token, with $2.5 million in funding, wants to help you find the perfect gift
There is nothing better than giving someone the perfect gift. So it’s only natural that giving the wrong gift, for which you searched tirelessly and still came up short, is…
Air Tailor, an ERA-backed startup, offers on-demand clothing alterations
Almost nobody looks forward to going to the tailor. For one, you have to trek your clothes to and from this place — in metropolitan centers where walking/biking is a…
Startup Hippo Insurance launches in California with a tech-enabled home insurance
Offering a more complete home insurance package for less money than traditional insurance sellers, startup insurance broker Hippo Insurance launched its first service this week in California. According to chief…
Robinhood stock-trading app confirms $110M raise at $1.3B valuation
Zero-fee stock-trading app Robinhood has joined the unicorn club. That’s thanks to it reaching 2 million total monthly users, and 17 percent month-over-month growth of its revenue-driving Robinhood Gold subscription…
Huddly raises $10M to “reinvent the camera” with a computer-vision platform for video meetings
Huddly, a Norway-based startup that sells a camera targeting remote company meetings (or huddles) and is building out what it describes as a “computer-vision” platform to help managers glean better…
OverOps, a startup that wants to help companies find software bugs more efficiently than by pouring over log files, announced a $30 million Series C round led by Lightspeed Ventures,…
Paktor, a major rival to Tinder in Asia, moves into live-streaming via merger deal
Dating app Paktor, often dubbed ‘The Tinder of Southeast Asia,’ just sealed up its move into live-streaming and media content after it announced a merger deal with Taiwanese startup 17…
Aspiration can now tell you the ‘social impact’ of your monthly spending
Looking for some insight into the societal cost of buying a cup of coffee, a double cheeseburger, or a pack of cigarettes? Well, financial services startup Aspiration now has an app for that.…
Instagram’s growth speeds up as it hits 700 million users
Instagram has doubled its user base, to 700 million monthly actives in two years, fueled by Stories, web signups and better onboarding on low-end Android phones. Instagram’s growth rate is…
Oracle delivers artificial intelligence across its customer experience cloud
Oracle announced a slew of AI-driven capabilities across its Customer Experience Cloud Suite today that are designed to help users to deliver better, faster and more personal experiences. If you think you’ve…
IBM launches 4 new data centers in the U.S.
IBM, which has been putting a lot of emphasis on its cloud services and infrastructure lately, today announced that it is opening four new data centers in the United States. These…
Chinese and European space agencies in talks to build a moon base
A ‘lunar base’ is a phrase previously used mostly by Bond villains, but the Chinese and European space agencies are discussing creating exactly that in a new collaborative effort. The…
Twitter shares spike 10% after it delivers a much-needed earnings beat
Twitter delivered a surprising and much-needed positive quarterly earnings report this morning — and it’s finally seeing some positive moves in its stock price. That’s going to be important going…
Here’s hoping this Google Pixel low-light photography experiment gets real
Google’s Pixel already boasts a formidable camera, among the best in smartphone photography. A Google Daydream engineer Florian Kainz revealed how much more incredible it could be specifically in the area…
Twitter desperately needed a hit first-quarter and somehow managed to deliver
In an very un-Twitter move, the company completely beat out the increasing decline of its business that tech observers were expecting. This is a hugely positive sign for the company, which…
Quovo, an API manager for fintech applications, raises $10 million
Quovo, which has developed an API management toolkit for individual financial managers and large financial services players, has raised $10 million in a new round of funding. Integrated tools are all the…
Uber is making a couple of changes to its rating system, which should balance out the means to evaluate rides with a bit more fairness towards drivers. The new rating…
Bullish: No tech company is immune from discrimination and sexual harassment
Tech’s diversity problem isn’t going to go away anytime soon, if ever. On a scale of one to 10 — 10 being tech is doing the most amazing job ever…
Dropbox is shuttering Hackpad, the collaborative document service it bought in 2014
Cloud sharing giant Dropbox announced this week it will shutter document collaboration service Hackpad, which it acquired way back in 2014, next month. Unlike the usual (and inevitable) demise of…
Europe passes last hurdle to end mobile roaming fees on June 15
The European Council yesterday adopted the legal act that limits how much mobile operators can charge each other — the final step in the multi-stage, multi-year process for the region’s…
Gojimo, an app that helps U.K. high school students prepare for exams, has been acquired by Telegraph Media Group, the publisher of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph newspapers.…
Korea’s Ticket Monster nabs $115M at a $1.4B valuation to ramp up in grocery
After an M&A rollercoaster that involved getting acquired by LivingSocial and then Groupon (before getting spun out again), Korea’s Ticket Monster, a mobile e-commerce marketplace, today is announcing a major cash…
AIDoc Medical raises $7M to bring AI to medical imaging analysis
We are probably still quite some way off from seeing Artificial Intelligence (AI) replace doctors, but there are already lots of proven use-cases where AI is being used to augment…
