- January 23rd, 2019
- 11:17 PM
- Source: SoftBank is investing $100M in Globality, a marketplace for large companies to find and manage service providers, at a ~$1B valuation (Tomio Geron/Wall Street Journal)
- 10:51 PM
- Federal prosecutors and US court in Seattle agree to publish info on warrantless surveillance requests, will disclose case numbers and crime being investigated (Aaron Mackey/Electronic Frontier ...)
- 10:25 PM
- Facebook to launch Page Quality tab for admins, showing when content is removed for policy violations and when post distribution is reduced due to fact-checking (Facebook)
- 09:59 PM
- Facebook tightens its policies, says it may now remove networks of fraudulent pages and groups created by people who previously breached its rules (Louise Matsakis/Wired)
- 09:33 PM
- Researcher: 24M+ financial and banking documents, representing tens of thousands of loans and mortgages, were left exposed online by Texas-based firm Ascension (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)
- 09:07 PM
- Next Trucking, a California-based logistics platform matching carriers with shippers, raises $97M Series C led by Brookfield, with Sequoia, others participating (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)
- 08:15 PM
- Source: Verizon Media Group, which owns Yahoo and AOL, plans to cut 7% of its staff (CNBC)
- 08:15 PM
- Symbiont raises $20M Series B for its enterprise blockchain-based platform for financial instruments such as securities and loans, led by Nasdaq Ventures (Yessi Bello Perez/The Next Web)
- 08:15 PM
- Patreon says it has 3M+ patrons, up by 1M+ in 2018, who support 100K+ creators; the company will pay creators $500M in 2019, reach $1B paid since launch in 2013 (Janko Roettgers/Variety)
- 07:23 PM
- Uplift, which works with airlines and sites like Kayak to offer travelers vacation financing, raises $123M Series C, expects to drive nearly $1B in loans in '19 (Anthony Ha/TechCrunch)
- 07:23 PM
- Amazon says it is field testing Amazon Scout, a small autonomous six-wheeled delivery robot, in Snohomish County, Washington (Day One)
- 06:31 PM
- Electric.ai, the NY startup that helps companies automate their IT support services via a chat-based service, has raised $25M Series B round led by GGV (Jordan Crook/TechCrunch)
- 06:05 PM
- Andela, which trains and places African programmers to work remotely for US companies, raises $100M Series D from Al Gore's Generation Investment Management (Joshua Brustein/Bloomberg)
- 05:13 PM
- After Netflix price hikes, Hulu will lower the price of its base, ad-supported subscription plan to $5.99/mo, down from the current $7.99/mo, starting Feb. 26 (Chris Welch/The Verge)
- 05:13 PM
- Waymo to invest $13.6M in a factory for level 4 autonomous cars in Michigan, partnering with Magna to install Waymo's self-driving system in cars made by others (Reuters)
- 05:13 PM
- Anchorage, which holds and safeguards crypto assets for institutions, comes out of stealth after raising $17M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz (Josh Constine/TechCrunch)
- 04:47 PM
- Meizu announces Zero, a smartphone with no ports, physical buttons, or SIM card slot; instead it has eSIM support and 18-watt fast wireless charging (GSMArena.com)
- 04:21 PM
- Consumer finance journalist Martin Lewis drops his lawsuit against Facebook over scam ads, after the company agrees to donate £3M to set up an anti-scam project (Alex Hern/The Guardian)
- 04:21 PM
- Confluent, the company behind open source streaming data project Apache Kafka, raises $125M Series D led by Sequoia Capital, source says at a $2.5B valuation (Alex Konrad/Forbes)
- 04:21 PM
- Candy Ventures acquires AR startup Blippar, which went into administration last month after raising $130M+, and will reform it as a new business with same CEO (Shona Ghosh/Business Insider)
- 03:55 PM
- Google launches YouTube TV in 95 new US markets, says it now covers 98% of US households (Chris Welch/The Verge)
- 03:29 PM
- Microsoft is automatically installing NewsGuard, a plug-in that guides users on which news websites can be trusted, on mobile versions of its Edge browser (Jim Waterson/The Guardian)
- 03:03 PM
- Q&A with the ACLU's Jon Callas, formerly of Apple, on the need for tech expertise in policymaking, the biggest challenges for the security industry, and more (Kim Zetter/Motherboard)
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- 02:11 PM
- Alexa AI scientists describe in a paper a technique that uses millions of unannotated interactions with Amazon's voice assistant to reduce NLP error rate by 8% (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- 01:19 PM
- Desktop Metal, a maker of 3D metal printing systems for commercial and industrial use, raises $160M led by a subsidiary of Koch Industries at a ~$1.5B valuation (Dan Primack/Axios)
- 12:53 PM
- Despite Bitcoin's dive, thousands of Georgians have sold cars to buy computers to mine Bitcoin; ~10% of the country's energy output goes into mining Bitcoin (Liz Alderman/New York Times)
- 10:43 AM
- A look at the history of LiveJournal, the early blogging platform that boasted 10M+ accounts at its height but faltered after questionable business decisions (Steven T. Wright/Ars Technica)
- 08:33 AM
- How Huawei made steady progress expanding into Europe over many years by spending big, only to have it unravel over security concerns from the US, UK, others (New York Times)
- 06:49 AM
- In Colorado, over two dozen law enforcement agencies statewide have encrypted their radio communications, making it hard for crime reporters to cover their beat (Jonathan Peters/Columbia Journalism ...)
- 05:31 AM
- Google announces it will contribute an additional $3.1M to Wikimedia and give Wikipedia editors free access to Custom Search API and Cloud Vision API (Louise Matsakis/Wired)
- 04:39 AM
- New research details how two widely received spam email campaigns over the past few months were made possible by a previously detailed weakness at GoDaddy.com (Brian Krebs/Krebs on Security)
- 03:21 AM
- Google spent $21.2M on US govt lobbying in 2018, up from $18.04M in 2017; Facebook spent $12.62M, up from $11.51M; and Microsoft spent $9.52M, up from $8.5M (Paresh Dave/Reuters)
- 02:30 AM
- NPD Group: US video game revenue in 2018 reached a record $43.4B, up 18% YoY, with software earning $35.8B, up 18% YoY, and hardware earning $7.5B, up 15% YoY (Rebekah Valentine/GamesIndustry.biz)
- 12:46 AM
- Viacom to acquire Pluto TV, a free, ad-supported streaming service, for $340M in cash; Pluto TV to operate as an independent subsidiary when the deal closes (Sara Fischer/Axios)
- 12:46 AM
- IBM beats with Q4 revenue of $21.76B, down 3% YoY, vs. $21.71B analyst estimate, and full-year cloud revenue of $19.2B, up 12% YoY; stock up 6%+ after hours (Pushkala Aripaka/Reuters)
- 12:46 AM
- The Motion Picture Association of America has added Netflix as a member, the first internet-based service to be added (Anthony D'Alessandro/Deadline)
- January 22nd, 2019
- 11:54 PM
- Twitter begins limited rollout of a new web interface with a two-column layout, keyboard shortcuts, a dedicated emoji button, and a revised trends section (Jon Fingas/Engadget)
- 11:54 PM
- In a filing, the Department of Labor has accused Oracle of discrimination against women and people of color, including more than $400M in lost wages (Sam Levin/The Guardian)
- 11:54 PM
- Match Group and the media brand Betches have partnered to launch Ship, an iOS dating app that allows users to help their friends pick out potential dates (Ashley Carman/The Verge)
- 11:02 PM
- Google says 30M Chromebooks are used in education, up 5M from May 2018, and that 80M people use its G Suite for Education platform (Abner Li/9to5Google)
- 10:36 PM
- TomTom announces it's selling its telematics unit, which includes fleet management solutions, to automotive giant Bridgestone Europe for €910M (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)
- 10:36 PM
- DHS issues rare "emergency" directive ordering federal agencies to secure credentials for DNS records; sources: six agencies have seen malicious DNS activity (Sean Lyngaas/CyberScoop)
- 10:36 PM
- SCOTUS declines to hear case over whether Yelp is responsible for removing defamatory reviews from its site after CA Supreme Court ruled in Yelp's favor in 2018 (Adi Robertson/The Verge)
- 09:44 PM
- Source: Zynga founder Mark Pincus is raising up to $700M for a new investment fund that will focus on publicly traded tech firms needing strategic restructuring (Dan Primack/Axios)
- 09:18 PM
- Analysis of millions of Glassdoor reviews finds 400+ companies, including SpaceX and Slack, have unusual single-month increases in mostly positive posts (Wall Street Journal)
- 08:52 PM
- Google will retire classic Hangouts for G Suite customers in October, after its previous announcement that Hangouts would be split into Hangouts Chat, Meet apps (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- 08:00 PM
- Hailo, an Israel-based developer of a microprocessor for deep learning on edge devices, expands its Series A by an additional $8.5M to $21M (FinSMEs)
- 08:00 PM
- Vox Media is acquiring The Coral Project, an open-source publishing platform housed within the Mozilla Foundation (Sara Fischer/Axios)
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- 07:08 PM
- Amazon launches direct sales of merchandise in Brazil after months of delays caused by complicated logistics, testy vendor relations, and a complex tax system (Gabriela Mello/Reuters)
- 07:08 PM
- Inside Uber's Special Investigations Unit, a 60+ team handling severe reported incidents, nearly 1,200/week, often leading to stress and emotional trauma (CNN)
- 07:08 PM
- Online birth control prescription and delivery service The Pill Club raises $51M Series B led by VMG Partners, bringing total raised to $67M (Kate Clark/TechCrunch)
- 07:08 PM
- Microsoft unveils Microsoft Classroom Pen, optimized for the Surface Go and sold in packs of 20 to schools, and 7 new PCs from Acer, Dell, Lenovo from $189-$320 (Tom Warren/The Verge)
- 07:08 PM
- Microsoft expands its coding language for visually impaired children, now called Code Jumper, partnering with a non-profit to expand internationally (Devindra Hardawar/Engadget)
- 05:50 PM
- Sources: Netflix is in advanced talks to join the Motion Picture Association of America and would be the first internet-based service to do so if it does (Steven Overly/Politico)
- 05:50 PM
- Dosh raises $40M, sources say at a $300M valuation, following a $44M Series A nine months ago, as its cash back app has doled out ~$50M to shoppers (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)
- 05:50 PM
- Digital identity management firm Keyfactor, formerly Certified Security Solutions, announces $77M in growth funding led by Insight Venture Partners (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- 04:58 PM
- UPS and Latch, which launched a pilot of their Amazon Key-like delivery service in SF and NYC last year, plan to expand to 10 new US cities by mid-year (Molly Price/CNET)
- 04:06 PM
- Japanese early stage incubator Digital Garage teams up with Blockstream to develop blockchain-based financial services in Japan (Jon Russell/TechCrunch)
- 04:06 PM
- A look at Hainan, China's latest free-trade zone with a visa free policy, which offers startups free rent, reduced taxes, and access to govt-backed VC funding (Yingzhi Yang/South China Morning Post)
- 03:40 PM
- Apple Pay expands to Target and Taco Bell, now covers 74 of the top 100 US merchants (Apple)
- 12:38 PM
- Sources: Foxconn is considering producing iPhones in India, a move that could reduce Apple's dependence on China and help lower iPhone prices in India (Wall Street Journal)
- 12:38 PM
- Dutch navigation company TomTom to sell Telematics, its fleet management business, to Japan's Bridgestone for €910M (Toby Sterling/Reuters)
- 12:38 PM
- Sources: Apple is likely to drop LCD displays altogether in its 2020 iPhone lineup in favor of OLED displays, which allow for more flexible handset designs (Takashi Mochizuki/Wall Street Journal)
- 09:10 AM
- The rise of mobile video in India is requiring YouTube and others to innovate to better serve Indian users, who average 40+ hours/month of video from data plans (Eric Bellman/Wall Street Journal)
- 04:50 AM
- Twitter, citing rules violation, suspends account that helped amplify the video of an encounter between a Native American elder and students wearing MAGA hats (Donie O'Sullivan/CNN)
- 03:58 AM
- In email to customers, Munchery says it will end operations effective immediately and will refund any outstanding orders (Carolyn Said/San Francisco Chronicle)
- 03:33 AM
- Chinese online ticketing app Maoyan postpones Hong Kong IPO to Feb. 4 after naming Xiaomi as one of three new cornerstone investors, seeks to raise up to $350M (Laura He/South China Morning Post)
- 02:15 AM
- Apple says its Giving program has raised $365M+ for nonprofits since it began eight years ago, with $125M+ in donations and 250M+ hours volunteered in 2018 (Benjamin Mayo/9to5Mac)
- 12:31 AM
- Gartner survey of more than 3,000 CIOs in 89 countries finds that deployment of AI in enterprise grew 270% in the past four years and 37% in the last year (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
- January 21st, 2019
- 11:13 PM
- Researcher says AIESEC, a non-profit claiming to be the "world's largest youth-run organization" left 4M+ intern applications with sensitive info exposed online (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)
- 10:21 PM
- Russia says it's taking "administrative action" against Facebook and Twitter, alleging it hasn't received details of their compliance with data-localization law (Ann M. Simmons/Wall Street Journal)
- 10:21 PM
- A Dutch surgeon formally disciplined for medical negligence wins legal action to remove Google results about her case in landmark "right to be forgotten" ruling (Daniel Boffey/The Guardian)
- 07:45 PM
- Spotify is testing a feature on iOS that will allow users to block any artist (Mehedi Hassan/Thurrott)
- 06:53 PM
- A casino group that runs sites like easybet.com left 108M+ records exposed on a server including players' bets, withdrawals, names, home addresses, and phone #s (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)
- 05:35 PM
- Google fined €50M by the French data regulator CNIL under GDPR for lack of transparency, inadequate info, and lack of valid consent about ads personalization (Romain Dillet/TechCrunch)