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…
Apple has released an open-source version of the HomeKit Accessory Development Kit. You can now fork it on GitHub and play around with it to integrate smart home devices in the Home app and beyond. Today’s news is related to the Connected Home over IP effort, an industry-wide effort to build an open-source standard for…
Ghostery has launched a new tool called Midnight, which brings the company’s ad-blocking and privacy protection features to all your desktop applications. When Ghostery first announced Midnight earlier this year, President Jeremy Tillman told me that the company (acquired by browser company Cliqz in 2017) created Midnight because desktop apps — particularly email clients —…
Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2019 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’re here to help! We’ll be rolling out gift guides from now through the end of December. You can find our other guides right here. To those who are in it, gaming is more than just a hobby. It’s a way to connect with…
Facebook doesn’t want its hardware like Oculus and Portal to be at the mercy of Google because they rely on its Android operating system. That’s why Facebook has tasked a co-author of Microsoft’s Windows NT named Mark Lucovsky with building the social network an operating system from scratch, according the The Information’s Alex Heath. “We…
Facebook has acquired PlayGiga, a Madrid-based cloud gaming startup. The company confirmed the deal to CNBC today, the week after Cinco Dias reported it was in talks to buy PlayGiga for about 70 million euros ($78 million). PlayGiga was founded in 2013 and received Series A funding from Adara Ventures, according to Crunchbase. In May,…
Small-satellite launch company Rocket Lab just officially declared its second launch pad open, but it has already broken ground on a third. The new one will be located in New Zealand on the Mahia peninsula, right next to its first launch pad at the company’s original launch facility — which is already the first and…
Amazon is ramping operations for its Kuiper project, its forthcoming high-speed satellite internet product, with a new HQ and R&D facility. From a small satellite constellation operating in low Earth orbit, Kuiper will provide internet connectivity to underserved communities — and in some cases, to people without any access at all. If that tune sounds…
Amazon’s original Echo Wall Clock was mostly fine. Some consumers ran into connectivity issues with the device, but it was mostly okay. It’s one of the most passive members of the Echo family of devices, mostly doing its wall clock thing, until you need a time set. The latest addition to the line has something…
Nigerian startup Rensource Energy has raised a $20 million Series A round co-led by CRE Venture Capital and the Omidyar network. The renewable energy company builds and operates solar powered micro-utilities that provide electricity to commercial community structures, such as open-air trading bazaars. Launched in 2016, the startup has shifted its operating strategy. “We’ve pivoted…
