Ingrid Lunden
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The Latest from Ingrid Lunden
Verizon to take a charge of up to $6.7B due to Oath and redundancies
Verizon, the telecoms giant that is the parent of Oath (and therefore owns TechCrunch), has been through the re-organizational ringer in recent quarters and today it announced the full financial effec
TechSee nabs $16M for its customer support solution built on computer vision and AR
Chatbots and other AI-based tools have firmly found footing in the world of customer service, used either to augment or completely replace the role of a human responding to questions and complaints, o
Apple acquired Platoon, a platform for musicians to create and distribute work
Spotify has made some significant moves to bypass record labels and work directly with artists, and there are signs that Apple could be eyeing up a similar approach to get a bigger share of original c
Mobile payment co. Boku acquires Danal for up to $68M to add user authentication
After going public in the U.K. last year, Boku has made an acquisition to expand its carrier billing services, which let users bill to their mobile bills mobile content purchases from companies like
Pindrop raises $90M to bring its voice-fraud prevention to IoT devices and Europe
When it comes to how humans communicate with each other or with machines, voice is a major interface, with growth in the latter fuelled by the rise of artificial intelligence, faster computing techno
Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery business, to begin a pilot in Finland in Spring 2019
Wing, the drone delivery X project that “graduated” into full company status under the Alphabet umbrella this past July, is taking flight in Europe. Today, it announced that it will start
TrackR rebrands to Adero, pivots to finding whereabouts of groups of items
Earlier this year, we reported that TrackR, a startup that makes a small Bluetooth device that you attach to items like keys to locate them when lost, would be rebranding as Adero and pivoting the bus
Asana, a work management platform, nabs $50M growth round at a $1.5B valuation
Asana, a service that teams and individuals use to plan and track the progress of work projects, is doubling down on its own project: to shape “the future of work,” in the words of co-founder and
Canada’s Corel is acquiring virtualization specialist Parallels in an all-cash deal
Some consolidation is afoot in the world of business software. TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources that Parallels, the virtualization software specialist with millions of users, is getting ac
Cyber Monday hits $7.9B in online sales, $2.2B spent via smartphones
Cyber Monday 2018 is likely to be the highest-online selling day of the holiday season this year, and in US e-commerce history, with $7.9 billion in online sales. Adobe — which tracks trillions
LinkedIn violated data protection by using 18M email addresses of non-members to buy targeted ads on Facebook
LinkedIn, the social network for the working world with close to 600 million users, has been called out a number of times for how it is able to suggest uncanny connections to you, when it’s not
Black Friday hits $6.2B in US online sales, smartphones accounted for $2.1B
After a record-breaking Thanksgiving with $3.7 billion in digital sales across desktop and mobile devices, Black Friday pulled in a bumper year for e-commerce. Adobe — which tracks trillions of
Thanksgiving online spend hits a record $3.7B, mobile accounted for one-third of sales
Thanksgiving, a day when brick-and-mortar stores tend to be closed, has become a big one for online spending, and this year did not disappoint, with a surge of consumers rushing to digital platforms t
China’s Geek+ raises $150M to build robots for warehouses and logistics
One of the most immediate — and already live — applications for robotics and artificial intelligence in general has been in using unmanned robots in warehouses and other environments, wher
Apple puts its next generation of AI into sharper focus as it picks up Silk Labs
Apple’s HomePod is a distant third behind Amazon and Google when it comes to market share for smart speakers that double up as home hubs, with less than 5 percent share of the market for these d
Wonolo, a staffing platform for blue-collar and labor contractors ‘left behind by Silicon Valley,’ raises $32M
A recent survey found that around 20 percent of all jobs in the U.S. are held by contractors — people who take on work based on a particular project or fixed-term period, not as full-time, perma
Citrix pays $200M to acquire Sapho, which connects legacy software with ‘micro apps’
As large organizations grapple with adopting modern work practices without throwing out all of their legacy software, a company that works with them is making an acquisition that it hopes will help wi
RPA startup Automation Anywhere nabs $300M from SoftBank at a $2.6B valuation
The market for RPA — Robotic Process Automation — is getting a hat trick of news this week: Automation Anywhere has today announced that it has raised $300 million from the SoftBank Vision
Airtable, maker of a coding platform for non-techies, raises $100M at a $1.1B valuation
If data is the new oil, you might think of apps are the cars that need it to move. Now, a startup that has built a platform to let everyone — not just those with technical expertise — make
ServiceTitan raises $165M for its home services software, now valued at $1.65B
ServiceTitan, a startup out of Glendale, Calif. that has built a software platform for home services businesses — in areas like air conditioning, plumbing and electrical repairs — to manag