MasterCard announced today that it is acquiring RiskRecon, a Salt Lake City startup that uses publicly available data to build security assessments of organizations. The companies did not share the purchase price. It’s become increasingly important for financial services companies like MasterCard to help customers navigate cyber security and RiskRecon will give customers an objective
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DJI is easily the leading brand when it comes to camera drones, but few companies have even attempted a ground-based mobile camera platform. The company may be moving in that direction, though, if this patent for a small off-road vehicle with a stabilized camera is any indication. The Chinese patent, first noted by DroneDJ, shows
Social media influencers have been known to promote events around the world for the right price — decisions that sometimes prove to be mistakes. Bella Hadid, who’d promoted the failed Fyre Festival with a gaggle of other models who’d vacationed in the Bahamas for a video designed to help sell tickets, later apologized for her
American automotive technology startup Rivian has raised $1.3 billion in new funding, the company announced today. The new investment is the fourth round of capital announced by the company in 2019 alone, following prior announcements of $700 million led by Amazon, $500 million from Ford (which includes a collaboration on electric vehicle technology) and $350
One odd thing in 2019 has been Slack’s falling share price contrasted against the rising value of the Nasdaq composite, a tech-heavy index that many use as shorthand for the US tech market. Why one of tech’s hottest, and fastest-growing companies was losing altitude while tech stocks themselves broadly rose has been interesting to unpack.
Eddy Travels, an AI-powered travel assistant bot which can understand text and voice messages, has closed a pre-seed round of around $500,000 led by Techstars Toronto, Practica Capital and Open Circle Capital VC funds from Lithuania, with angel investors from the US, Canada, UK. Launched a year ago in November 2018, Eddy Travels claims to
A year from now, this is likely to have all blown over. A year from now, the Samsung Galaxy Fold’s turbulent takeoff may well be a footnote in the largest story of foldables. For now, however, it’s an important caveat that will come up in every conversation about the nascent product category. How history remembers
Every once in a while on VC Twitter, a comment or statement seems so outlandish, so completely outrageous, that it must be — certainly has to be — false. Such as it was for Primary Ventures investor Jason Shuman, who commented on the recent prices for pitch deck advice in the Valley today: Founder friend
Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, but it’s not a magic wand. Applying the technology requires thought and dedication, especially with legacy industries like law and insurance, which are being taken on in this way by Luminance and Omnius respectively. The companies’ founders, Emily Foges and Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss, spoke with great insight on this on
TikTok may be the fastest-growing social network in the history of the internet, but it is also quickly becoming the fastest-growing security threat and thorn in the side of U.S. China hawks. The latest, according to a notice published by the U.S. Navy this past week and reported on by Reuters and the South China
Burst, the subscription dental care service, with the pretty, pretty toothbrushes, has now added a sleek dental floss product to its monthly kits. The Los Angeles-based dental hygiene company, which has raised at least $20 million in financing from the growth capital investment firm Volition Capital, takes a different approach to reaching consumers than competitors
Ripple has raised a $200 million Series C funding round. Tetragon is leading the round, with SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures also participating. According to Fortune, the company is now valued at $10 billion. “We are in a strong financial position to execute against our vision. As others in the blockchain space have slowed
Even when Apple telegraphs its hardware strategy, it’s proving to be nearly impossible for startups to beat them. The company’s executives have been motioning interest in following their runaway success on mobile with hefty investments in augmented reality, something that has led to the rise of dozens of venture-backed startups hoping to beat Apple to
Every year, the tech industry experiences moments that serve as guideposts for future entrepreneurs and investors looking to profit from the wisdom of the past. In 2017, Susan Fowler published her heroic blog post criticizing Uber for its culture of sexual harassment, helping spark the #MeToo movement within the tech industry; 2018 was the year
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. Today, we’re weighing a standard bit of startup wisdom that recently reemerged against some surprising, contrasting evidence. Does too much money hurt a startup more than it helps, or is that standard view actually mistaken?
Facebook tried to block the referral but today an influential advisor to Europe’s top court has issued a legal opinion that could have major implications for the future of the EU-US Privacy Shield personal data transfer mechanism. It’s a complex opinion, dealing with a fundamental clash of legal priorities around personal data in the EU
The CDC has issued a set of reports showing that the lung disease associated with vaping seems to be declining from peak rates, and that Vitamin E acetate seems — as speculated early on — to be the prime suspect for the epidemic. The affliction has cost at least 54 lives and affected 2,506 people
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Kate was in SF, Alex was in Providence, and there was a mountain of news to shovel through. If you’re here because we mentioned linking to a certain story in the show notes, that’s here. For
Timothy R. Bowers Contributor Andrew P. Dixon Contributor For many founders, building and selling a successful venture-backed company for cash is the ultimate goal. However, the reality is that some companies will instead receive an equity-funded acquisition proposal in which equity of another private venture-backed company, rather than cash, represents all or a significant portion
Now that the final technology IPOs of 2019 have touched down, it’s a good time to start looking back at what happened during the year. We’re hunting for trends as the clock winds down. Here’s one that’s obvious: Hardware startups are still struggling. It’s cliché to note in startupland that hardware is hard. Everyone knows
Airbnb will be breathing a sigh of relief today: Europe’s top court has judged it to be an online platform which merely connects people looking for short term accommodation, rather than a full-blown estate agent. The ruling may make it harder for the ‘home sharing’ platform to be forced to comply with local property regulations
Coral is a company that wants to “simplify the personal care space through smart automation,” and they’ve raised $4.3 million to get it done. Their first goal? An at-home, fully automated machine for painting your nails. Stick a finger in, press down, wait a few seconds and you’ve got a fully painted and dried nail.
F5 got an expensive holiday present today, snagging startup Shape Security for approximately $1 billion. What the networking company gets with a shiny red ribbon is a security product that helps stop automated attacks like credential stuffing. In an article earlier this year, Shape CTO Shuman Ghosemajumder explained what the company does: “We’re an enterprise-focused
Curve, the so-called “over-the-top” banking platform that lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single Curve card and app, is launching new feature to make it possible to send money to friends and contacts. Dubbed “Curve Send,” the feature lets you send money from any of your bank accounts (via the debit
Spain’s Glovo, an on-demand delivery app platform which operates in Europe, LatAm and Africa delivering food but also other urban conveniences from groceries to pharmaceuticals, has bagged another €150 million (~$166M) in a fast-following Series E round led by Abu Dhabi state investment company, Mubadala. The raise follows a €150M in Series D that was
France’s competition watchdog has slapped Google with a €150 million (~$166M) fine after finding the tech giant abused its dominant position in the online search advertising market. In a decision announced today — following a lengthy investigation into the online ad sector — the competition authority sanctions Google for adopting what it describes as “opaque
Apple is said to be working on satellite technology, having hired a number of aerospace engineers to form team along with satellite and antenna designers, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The report notes that this is an early-stage secret project that could still be scrapped, but that the purpose of the team and
When we met up with Huawei at their Shenzhen headquarters earlier this year, details on the Mate X were hazy, at best. We did have the opportunity to play around with the forthcoming handset a bit over lunch, but the unit looked largely unchanged from what we’d seen at MWC earlier in the year. Release
“We were in the back washing blenders so they could keep taking Snackpass orders” recalls co-founder and CEO Kevin Tan. The team from order-ahead food startup Snackpass was willing to get their hands dirty to keep up with demand at one of their first restaurant partners, Tropical Smoothie Cafe on the Yale college campus. Why were
Josh Gross Contributor Josh Gross is the managing partner at digital product studio Planetary and its child company, Regular, the low-cost, high quality studio for small businesses. Do you remember as a kid going to the grocery store with your parents and being just totally overwhelmed by the bright, loud packaging of products on shelf