The third session of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, a multi-nation body comprised of global legislators with concerns about the societal impacts of social media giants, has been taking place in Dublin this week — once again without any senior Facebook management in attendance. The committee was formed last year after Facebook’s CEO Mark
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Microsoft Research is a globally distributed playground for people interested in solving fundamental science problems. These projects often focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, and since Microsoft is on a mission to infuse all of its products with more AI smarts, it’s no surprise that it’s also seeking ways to integrate Microsoft Research’s innovations
The property industry — covering people and businesses that invest in, build, purchase or rent and maintain property — is hugely fragmented when it comes both to data sources and the companies that work within it. Today, a New York-based startup that is building a database that helps bring all of that together is raising
Aircam is a new startup that allows anyone to get instant access to pictures taken by professional photographers at weddings, parties and other events. The company was founded by brothers Evan and Ryan Rifkin, who previously co-founded Burstly, the company behind mobile app-testing service TestFlight (which was acquired by Apple). In addition to officially launching
Hot on the heels of adding support for Samsung Pay, Curve, the London-based “over-the-top” banking platform that lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single card, has added support for Google Pay. The new integration — which we reported earlier this week was imminent, means that Android users can pay with Curve
Veritas Genetics, a DNA testing startup, has said a data breach resulted in the theft of some customer information. The Danvers, MA-based company said its customer facing portal had “recently” been breached but did not say when. Although the portal did not contain test results or medical information, the company declined to say what information
The planned $26 billion merger between T-Mobile and Sprint has been approved by the Justice Department and the FCC, but it’s not a sure thing yet. To sweeten the deal, T-Mobile is dangling three big free and cheap data initiatives that will only go through if the merger does. A little sugar helps the medicine
YouTube’s homepage is getting a makeover. The company announced today an updated, cleaner design that does away with information density to instead give more room to the videos and their titles, plus other new features like an “Add to Queue” option on the desktop, a desktop version of YouTube’s stop suggesting feature, and more. The
Reserved instances (RIs) have provided a mechanism for companies, who expect to use a certain level of AWS infrastructure resources, to get some cost certainty, but as AWS’s Jeff Barr points out they are on the complex side. To fix that, the company announced a new method called Savings Plans. “Today we are launching Savings
Small satellite startup Kepler has done something never before accomplished with satellite-based broadband connectivity: providing a high-bandwidth the Arctic. Kepler’s nanosatellites have successfully demonstrated achieving over 100Mbps of network speed to a German icebreaker sea vessel that acts as a mobile lab for the MOSAiC research expedition. This is the first time ever that there’s
Immo Investment Technologies, a London-based fintech startup that purchase homes on behalf of buy-to-let investors, has closed €11M in Series A funding. Backing the round is Talis Capital and HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, with participation from Tom Stafford and Rahul Mehta of DST Global, Mato Peric of MPGI, among others. In addition, the company is disclosing
South African internet company Naspers isn’t a particularly well-known name in the startup community. And yet, the company made an early investment in a small Chinese company called… Tencent. Naspers still retains a 31% stake in Tencent that is valued at around $100 billion (with a B). That’s why I’m excited to announce that Naspers
Earlier this year, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft announced the second generation of its HoloLens augmented reality visor. Today, the $3,500 HoloLens 2 is going on sale in the United States, Japan, China, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand, the same countries where it was previously available for pre-order.
WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Facebook, has faced a lot of controversy over the role that Groups plays on the platform — both for Groups’ role in spreading spam, misinformation or worse, and for the fact that it can be very hard (actually impossible) to control when you are added, except by blocking
European startup studio eFounders recently reached a portfolio valuation of $1 billion across 23 companies. And the company doesn’t want to stop there as it is currently launching three new companies and products. While software-as-a-service companies are trendy, eFounders has been exploring this space for a few years now. The company regularly comes up with
Stealth fintech startup Digits, from the same team that built Crashlytics to scale then sold to Twitter for over $100 million, has raised a $10.5 million round of Series A funding, the company is announcing today. The round was led by Benchmark and has the backing of 72 angels, including founders and CEOs from companies
Barcelona-based on-demand delivery startup Glovo is beefing up its engineering capacity by opening a second tech hub, its first in Poland — with an initial plan to hire 40 additional engineers and have a total of 50 tech and product experts working predominantly out of its Warsaw office. Glovo says it expects the Polish engineering
Saudi Arabian officials allegedly paid at least two employees of Twitter to access personal information on users the government there was interested in, according to recently unsealed court documents. Those users were warned of the attempt in 2015, but the full picture is only now emerging. According to an AP report citing the federal complaint,
Neo4j, a popular graph database, is available as an open source product for anyone to download and use. Its enterprise product aimed at larger organizations is growing fast, but the company recognized there was a big market in between those two extremes, and today it introduced a new managed cloud service called Aura. They wanted
Following the death of five people at a Halloween party hosted at a California Airbnb rental, and a scathing Vice report outlining Airbnb’s failure to prevent nation-wide scams, the company says it will begin verifying all seven million of its listings. Airbnb properties will soon be verified for accuracy of photos, addresses, listing details, cleanliness,
eToro, the multi-asset investment platform that spans “social” stock trading to cryptocurrency, has acquired Delta, the crypto portfolio tracker app. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although one source tells me the deal was worth $5 million. It is not clear if it is stock only or cash (or a mixture of both) and if
As history tells us, the break-up of ‘Big Oil’ and ‘Big Telco’ in the past, led to more competition and innovation. What to do in the era of ‘Big Tech’? Living in 2019, we know more than ever before about how Big Tech, particularly in the shape of Facebook, Twitter and Google – as the
The $399 Mavic Mini lives in a sweet spot of core features and a low price. It packs everything critical to be a quality drone. It has a good camera, good range, and a good controller. It holds up well in the wind and is quick enough to be fun. And it’s so small that
With roughly one million customers across Brazil and a new round of financing, the mobile phone insurance provider Pitzi now finds itself with a $100 million valuation. The size of its latest round, which was led by QED Investors and included commitments from existing investors like Thrive Capital and Valiant Partners, was undisclosed. PItzi acts
Tinder’s big experiment with interactive content — the recently launched in-app series called Swipe Night — was a success. According to Tinder parent company Match during its Q3 earnings this week, “millions” of Tinder users tuned into to watch the show’s episodes during its run in October, and this drove double-digit increases in both matches and messages. As a
Immersive Labs, a cybersecurity skills platform, has raised $40 million in its Series B, the company’s second round of funding this year following an $8 million Series A in January. Summit Partners led the fundraise with Goldman Sachs participating, the Bristol, U.K.-based company confirmed. Immersive, led by former GCHQ cybersecurity instructor James Hadley, helps corporate
GoCardless, the London fintech that makes it easy for businesses to offer recurring bank payments, has partnered with TransferWise for its currency exchange. The move sees GoCardless utilise the TransferWise API and the money transfer company’s “TransferWise for Business” product and in turn provide TransferWise’s FX rates to its own customers. More broadly, the partnership
FirstVet, the Swedish startup which provides pet owners with on-demand video consultations with local, qualified veterinarians, has closed €18.5 million in Series B funding. The round is led by London-based Omers Ventures, the venture capital arm of Canadian pension fund Omers that recently launched a dedicated €300 million fund to invest in European tech startups.
Voters in San Francisco have resoundingly rejected an attempt to overturn a citywide ban on e-cigarettes by a margin of around 80:20. Reporting on the count in the Bay Area, CBS SF says at least 78 per cent of voters rejected the ballot measure, known as Proposition C. The measure had been heavily back by e-cigarette
Chinese tech giant Huawei has asked some of the world’s best phone hackers to a secret meeting in Munich later this month as the company tries to curry favor with global governments, TechCrunch has learned. Sources with knowledge of the November 16 meeting said Huawei will privately present its new bug bounty program, which would