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It’s not McLaren Racing, but McLaren Applied Technologies, that Apple is likely lusting after
When racing cars have only hundredths of seconds between them, in a race where the time to change a tire means the difference between winning and losing (and the impact on millions of dollars in sponsorship), a company gets good at technology. Fast. The data from drivers, cars and engines has to be parsed and acted upon literally in real-time. That’s why the racing industry’s… Read More
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This new electric car is designed for a $37 weekly subscription service
Europe continues to test the waters of shared vehicle ownership models, and the Amber One is a car designed to help eliminate the huge amount of time our own vehicles currently spend idle. The all-electric concept has a 250-mile range on a single charge, a top speed of over 93 mph, and a 0 to 60 time of a respectable 7 seconds. But you can’t buy one – to gain access, you… Read More
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Fotr forces you to print every iPhone photo you take
When was the last time you printed a photo? Well, Fotr is a new iPhone app that wants to turn that trend on its head, by automatically printing every photo you take. The idea is to bring back an aspect of analog photography: shoot fewer, but higher-quality photos. Read More
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Handmade, Amazon’s Etsy rival, expands into Europe
Amazon continues to try to turn the screws on its competition through its scale, and now it’s the turn of Handmade, the e-commerce giant’s marketplace for arts and crafts that competes most closely with Etsy. Today, Amazon announced that Handmade would expand to Europe, starting first in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK, where some 30,000 “genuinely handmade… Read More
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Mike Lynch, Autonomy Founder and now VC, will appear at Disrupt London
TechCrunch Disrupt London is coming! From December 5 to 6 in the Olympic Village’s Copper Box Arena, you see see incredible speakers and visit the enormous Startup Alley, as well as the famous Startup Battlefield where one startup will take home £30,000. Grab early-bird tickets for Disrupt London here. Read More
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Y Combinator signs up to Founders Pledge charity scheme for social causes
There’s always been an ongoing conversation amongst successful tech entrepreneurs about how to “give back.” Not everyone can afford to found an entire hospital, and yet many feel a desire to do something more than move on to the next startup. What probably needs to change is not so much the conversation around the “big exit” but the “conversation”… Read More
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After a long journey, WAYN gets picked up by its dotcom-era brother, Lastminute.com
Fourteen years is a long time to be a startup, but long-time travel social network WAYN has finally cashed in its chips and sold to (almost equally old) online travel pioneer Lastminute.com Group. Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, so take that to mean what you will. WAYN’s founders and a team 20, based across the UK, Poland and South Africa, will transfer to the new… Read More
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WorldRemit CEO Ismail Ahmed to speak at Disrupt London
TechCrunch Disrupt London is coming this December. The two-day conference runs December 5 to 6 in the Olympic Village’s Copper Box Arena and features Startup Alley and Startup Battlefield where one startup will take home £30,000. You can buy early-bird tickets for Disrupt London here. We’re delighted to announce that we will be joined by the founder and CEO of WorldRemit… Read More
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OurCrowd raises another $72M to build out its equity crowdfunding platform
OurCrowd, the crowdfunding platform that gives backers equity in the companies they support, today announced that it has raised $72 million in a Series C round of funding, and expects the final figure to be closer to $100 million. Half of the capital will be used to build out its offices globally and develop its platform; and half will be used to match investments made on OurCrowd, according… Read More
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European insurance tech startup FinanceFox closes $28M Series A
“We’re not a bunch of startup dudes saying we’re disrupting insurance… we’re not a bunch of arrogant pricks,” FinanceFox co-founder and CEO Julian Teicke told me during a call late last week. The company, which is announcing $28 million in Series A funding today, is one of a number of European ‘insurtech’ startups who are attempting to bring… Read More
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DeepMind wants its healthcare AI to charge by results — but first it needs your data
Mark your Google calendars because from today ‘Don’t be evil’ rides again, via the DeepMind AI division of the Alphabet ad giant, as a hippocratic assurance to ‘Do no harm’… Read More
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Angel.ai, a company that builds chat bots, acqui-hired by Amazon
It looks like Google, which yesterday acquired API.ai, a company that helps developers build conversational interfaces, isn’t the only major tech company hoovering up chat bot talent. TechCrunch understands that Angel.ai (formerly known as GoButler) has, at least partially, been acqui-hired by Amazon. Read More
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Sainsbury’s exits digital entertainment, hands over e-book business to Kobo
Once again, a big retailer in the UK is pulling away from its ambitions to move into digital media. Supermarket giant Sainsbury’s is exiting the digital entertainment business. As part of that process, it will be outsourcing its e-book operations to Kobo, the online bookseller and maker of e-readers, owned by Japan’s Rakuten. The digital entertainment business, which is marketed… Read More
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French online restaurant FoodChéri raises €6M Series A
French food delivery startup FoodChéri, which operates an online only restaurant along the lines of EatFirst in the UK or Munchery’s original model in the US, has raised €6 million in Series A funding led by 360 Capital Partners, and Breega Capital. Read More
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StarOfService raises $10 million for its service marketplace
French startup StarOfService just raised another $10 million for its European Thumbtack alternative. Andrea Piccioni and Silvio Pagliani, ENERN Investments and Point Nine Capital participated in today’s round, as well as various business angels. When I first covered StarOfService, the company didn’t even try to hide from me that it was a Thumbtack copycat. The main difference is… Read More
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Airbnb faces fresh crackdown in Barcelona as city council asks residents to report illegal rentals
Airbnb is facing a further squeeze on its activities in Barcelona, the Catalonian capital that’s hugely popular with tourists — ramping up tension with local communities dealing with inflating rents and rowdy behavior by visitors facilitated by the rapid rise of sharing-economy platforms. Read More
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Aircall raised $8 million for its cloud phone system for teams
In case you missed it, Aircall announced last week that it had raised another $8 million dollars in funding for its call center software-as-a-service. Balderton Capital is leading this Series A round, with New York-based VC firm FJLabs and existing investors also investing. I’m a bit late to the news because last week was TechCrunch Disrupt SF. It’s worth mentioning that… Read More
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Riot wants to be like Slack, but with the flexibility of an underlying open source platform
In the ‘old days’ there were plenty of messaging apps and aggregators, but they survived in an open source world. Today, business models dictate that platforms like Slack must keep their messages to themselves. It would be nice if open-source alternatives could bring back the days of flexibility, combined with today’s world of excellent user experience. What if Slack were… Read More
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