As Google pushes further and further into enterprise services, it’s looking to leverage what it’s known for — a strong expertise in machine learning — to power some of the most common enterprise functions, including contact centers. Now Google is applying a lot of those learnings in a bunch of new updates for its contact…
ScaleFactor, the Techstars alumnus that’s selling accounting and payroll management software as a service, has raised $10 million in a new round of funding as it looks to scale up its sales and marketing efforts. Founded by longtime accountant, Kurt Rathmann, the Austin-based company has created a software service that collects and analyzes data from…
Catering marketplace company ezCater is already putting its big $100 million funding round to good use. The company is acquiring GoCater, a European marketplace that operates in the same field. This is ezCater’s first international expansion move. If you’re in charge of ordering catered lunch at your office, you probably have heard about ezCater .…
Pokémon GO just got a little surprise update, complete with a curious new feature: “Lucky” Pokémon. Most things in Pokémon GO are adapted from things that already exist in the Pokémon universe. Items like incense, lucky eggs and the like all exist in the main Pokémon series (though what these items actually do tends to…
Xage (pronounced Zage), a blockchain security startup based in Silicon Valley, announced a $12 million Series A investment today led by March Capital Partners. GE Ventures, City Light Capital and NexStar Partners also participated. The company emerged from stealth in December with a novel idea to secure the myriad of devices in the industrial internet…
SoftBank is best known in Japan as a mobile operator but the company, which is behind the near-$100 billion Vision Fund, is increasingly getting into other types of consumer services in its homeland. The Japanese firm last month launched a parking app, it is in the midst of rolling out a taxi-hailing service in conjunction…
In an unusual move, Tesla reportedly asked some suppliers to return part of the money it’s paid them since 2016, including for past work. According to the Wall Street Journal, which reviewed a memo Tesla sent to a supplier last week, the electric auto maker said it is asking suppliers for refunds to help it reach…
There was a time not so long ago when nine-figure venture capital rounds weren’t a near-daily feature of tech business news. But now funding rounds of $100 million or more cross the wires with stunning frequency. The era of supergiant rounds is now the new normal. This is attributable, in part, to billions of dollars flowing into new…
The blockchain is in the middle of a major hype cycle at the moment, and that makes it hard for many people to take it seriously, but if you look at the core digital ledger technology, there is tremendous potential to change the way we think about trust in business. Yet these are still extremely…
Shlomi Dolev is the Chair Professor and founder of the Computer Science department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is the author of Self-Stabilization. Shlomi also is a cybersecurity entrepreneur and the co-founder and chief scientist of Secret Double Octopus. More posts by this contributor The quantum computing apocalypse is imminent The world stands…
