Google announced this morning via blog post that it has partnered with the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation to give away 100,000 Home Mini units to people living with paralysis. The news is designed to mark the 29th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was signed into law on this day in…
Elon Musk’s tunneling and transportation startup The Boring Company has raised its first outside investment through the sale of $120 million in stock, according to a securities filing. The details of authorized sale of stock were first reported by Bloomberg News, which reviewed the filing obtained by Prime Unicorn Index. The main investors in the stock…
SoftBank Group announced today that it will launch its second Vision Fund with participation from Apple, Foxconn, Microsoft and other tech companies and investors. Called the Vision Fund 2, the fund will focus on AI-based technology. SoftBank said the fund’s capital has reached about $108 billion, based on memoranda of understandings. SoftBank Group’s own investment…
Earlier this month, TechCrunch held its annual Mobility Sessions event, where leading mobility-focused auto companies, startups, executives and thought leaders joined us to discuss all things autonomous vehicle technology, micromobility and electric vehicles. Extra Crunch is offering members access to full transcripts key panels and conversations from the event, including our panel on micromobility where…
With as successful launch from the Gobi desert blasting off at around 1:10 PM Beijing time (1:10 AM ET), Chinese space launch startup iSpace (which, awesomely, is also called ‘StarCraft Glory Space Technology Co.’) became the first private Chinese commercial space launch provider. The company’s SQX-1 Y1 rocket delivered two commercial satellites to an orbit…
Salesforce, the 20-year-old leader in customer relationship management (CRM) tools, is making a foray into Asia by working with one of the country’s largest tech firms, Alibaba. Alibaba will be the exclusive provider of Salesforce to enterprise customers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, and Salesforce will become the exclusive enterprise CRM software…
When it was unveiled on stage, the Galaxy Fold was heralded as the next big thing. Samsung seeded units to reviews and prepared for launch. And then a funny thing happened on the way to a smartphone paradigm shift: it started breaking. Multiple review units were sent back to Samsung with busted screens. It was…
Postmates’ cooler-inspired autonomous delivery robot, which will roll out commercially in Los Angeles later this year, will rely on lidar sensors from Ouster, a burgeoning two-year-old startup that recently raised $60 million in equity and debt funding. Postmates unveiled the first generation of its self-described “autonomous rover” — known as Serve — late last year.…
As part of the investigation against Facebook’s privacy lapses, the FTC announced today that it is suing Cambridge Analytica. The agency has already agreed to settlement with former Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix as well as app developer Aleksandr Kogan. The Federal Trade Commission described the administrative complaint in a press release. It alleged that…
LIV, a Prague-based company that wants to make VR gaming more fun to watch, and in turn bring players and spectators closer together, has picked up $1 million in funding. That’s a pretty modest raise as far as ambitious upstarts go — and LIV is certainly ambitious. However, the list of backers includes noteworthy names,…
