October 2017
Owl Ventures, which funds edtech exclusively, just raised $185 million for its second fund
Plenty of investors have broken their picks, trying to find gold in education technology. That doesn’t seem to concern the limited partners of Owl Ventures, a three-year-old venture firm that’s…
Pokémon Go’s Halloween event will bring new Pokémon, double candy, and more
Just a few days ago we wrote that new Pokémon were seemingly just about to land in Pokémon Go timed alongside a Halloween event — and hey, what do you…
Gett inks cross-network partnership with Carey to share tech, expand to 1000 cities
A lot of the conversation today about on-demand transportation is focused on how new players like Uber and Lyft are rapidly expanding and disrupting the established transportation market (alongside whether…
Verizon delays its live TV service until spring 2018, report says
Verizon’s* plans to launch a streaming service of its own to compete with the likes of Dish’s Sling TV, AT&T’s DirecTV Now, Sony’s PlayStation Vue, and others, have been pushed…
Led by Stellar cofounder Joyce Kim, SparkChain Capital is a new $100M fund for blockchain and cryptocurrency startups
Over the past 18 months, investments in blockchain startups tackling a variety of problems have climbed. SparkChain Capital, a new $100 million early-stage fund launched by SparkLabs Group, wants to…
Relativity Space wants to launch rockets for 90% less with 3D printing
A new startup called Relativity Space founded by two aerospace engineers wants to use massive 3D printers to produce rockets without humans required on the factory floor, with the ultimate…
Cisco to buy Perspica and fold engineering team into AppDynamics
Cisco announced today that it intends to acquire Perspica, a machine learning-driven operations analytics firm that has raised $8.5 million. Cisco intends to fold Perspica’s team into AppDynamics, the company…
I’ve seen startups come and go over the years and I was particularly interested to see what happened to August Home today. The company originally tapped Yves Behar to make a…
Elon Musk’s Boring company readies its second, poetic tunnel digger
The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s third or fourth company (who can keep track) is nearly ready to double its tunnel digging capacity: The venture’s second boring machine is “almost ready”…
The furniture rental industry is stuck in the last. Current options involve old-school companies like CORT where most of the inventory will make your apartment look like a dorm room,…
Swedish lock giant Assa Abloy acquires smart lock maker August Home
The smart home market continues to heat up, and the legacy giants do not want to get locked out: quite literally. This morning, Assa Abloy, the $23 billion Swedish lock…
[related_articles]Jinn, the London-based startup that offers a same-hour ‘shop on your behalf’ delivery app that operates quite similarly to Postmates in the U.S., has shut down, with the company in…
Hiya, a Whitepages spinout, nabs $18M for its smart caller ID technology
Hiya came to life a year ago when it was spun out by Whitepages to take on TrueCaller and others in the world of smart caller ID services. Using machine…
European house removals platform Movinga raises up to another €22M
Movinga, the European platform for house removals that was seemingly written off last year, continues to perform what appears to be an impressive turn around. The Berlin-headquartered startup has closed…
Safaricom launches innovation center to move beyond M-Pesa
Safaricom, Kenya’s largest telecom company and provider of the nation’s mobile money service, M-Pesa, has launched a new innovation center in Nairobi. Named Safaricom Alpha, a priority of the incubator…
Tony Fadell’s newest product? An investing and advisory firm called Future Shape
Tony Fadell is starting yet a new chapter. Fifteen months after leaving Nest Labs, a maker of digital thermostats and smoke detectors that Fadell cofounded and sold to Google for…
Crunch Report | Snapchat Halloween Costume
Duo Security raises $70 million, a close look at Apple’s self-driving car, Snapchat’s Halloween costume and Abu Dhabi’s state fund is doing business in San Francisco. All this on Crunch…
This ultra-cute tiny PS4 controller is a great option for children and the small-handed
If you like playing console games with the younger generation, you may have come across the issue of their tiny hands being unable to perform certain combos, reach certain buttons…
MongoDB has finished up what is essentially the final step in going public, pricing its IPO at $24 and raising $192 million in the process. The company will debut on…
Atlas Informatics, whose Atlas Recall promised an intuitive and powerful way to index all your information across many services, is shutting down less than a year after launch. There will…
While you’ve already got Yelp and other apps to help you figure out where to eat, Truffle is designed specifically for sharing recommendations with friends and other people you know.…
Tom Willerer, who has spent the last four years with the online education company Coursera — the last two as its chief product officer — is moving on from the…
As Blue Apron approaches its next earnings report in a couple of weeks, the company said Wednesday that it is laying off 6 percent of its staff as part of “a company-wide…
eBay is not having a great afternoon after posting a pretty ho-hum third quarter that fit roughly in line with analyst estimates, but perhaps not seeing the kinds of leaps…
Adobe says it wants AI to amplify human creativity and intelligence
About a year ago, Adobe announced its Sensei AI platform. Unlike other companies, Adobe says that it has no interest in building a general artificial intelligence platform — instead, it…
Snap is selling a dancing hot dog costume on Amazon
This might perhaps be the most random thing I ever write, but here goes nothing. Snap, the maker of Snapchat and Spectacles, is selling the dancing hot dog costume on…
Bixby 2.0 takes center stage at Samsung’s Developer Conference
No surprise, Samsung is making the connected home a big focus of its annual Developer Conference this week in San Francisco. DJ Koh, the company’s head of Mobile Communications took…
Facebook and Google competed for anti-immigration ad dollars during the 2016 election
In a textbook illustration of the conflict of interest between Facebook and Google’s ostensible dedication to free speech and their ostensible espousal of progressive values, the internet giants reportedly took…
Facebook’s response to Russian election interference: ‘Bad things happen’
Facebook has come under fire for its role in influencing the U.S. presidential election, particularly when it comes to “fake news” and Russian-sponsored ads. When asked about this at WSJ…
Dropit runs live auctions on stadium scoreboards that fans bid on from the stands
There’s no doubt that our collective mobile device addictions are hurting real-world engagement for advertisers. This is especially true in professional sports stadiums, where looking down at your phone means…
