In a feat that could eventually unlock the possibility of speech for people with severe medical conditions, scientists have successfully recreated the speech of healthy subjects by tapping directly into their brains. The technology is a long, long way from practical application but the science is real and the promise is there. Edward Chang, neurosurgeon…
In the future, everyone will have a podcast — and by “future,” I mean like mid-2020. But one step at a time, starting with Facebook founder, CEO and definite human person, Mark Zuckerberg . Facebook announced the podcast’s Spotify link on Twitter. How’s that for platform synergy? The rather dryly named “Tech and Society With…
Holded, the Barcelona-based startup that offers a SaaS to help SMEs with a range of business tasks, has raised €6 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Lakestar, with previous backers Nauta Capital and Seedrocket 4Founders Capital following on. Founded in 2016 by Bernat Ripoll and Javi Fondevila, Holded describes itself as…
Better late than never, Tumblr has rolled out HTTPS across its entire site. In a brief post on Tumblr’s engineering page, the company said all Tumblr sites will now have the web encryption setting enabled by default, though it admitted the move was “long-overdue.” Tumblr, which like TechCrunch is owned by Verizon, has 464 million…
Aebi Schmidt, a European manufacturing giant with operations in the U.S., has been hit by a ransomware attack, TechCrunch has learned. The Switzerland-based maker of airport maintenance and road cleaning vehicles had operations disrupted Tuesday following the malware infection, according to a source with knowledge of the incident. Systems went down across the company’s international…
Less than a month after rebranding as Canoo, the startup electric vehicle company formerly known as Evelozcity is on the hunt for $200 million in new capital. The startup, which is backed by a clutch of private individuals and family offices hailing from China, Germany, and Taiwan, is hoping to line up the new capital…
KeepTruckin, a developer of hardware and software that helps truck drivers manage their vehicles and cargo, has raised $149 million in Series D funding. Greenoaks Capital has led the round, with participation from existing backers GV, IVP, Index Ventures and Scale Venture Partners . The round values the business at $1.25 billion, according to KeepTruckin…
As the internet TV services have matured, their pricing has as well. The majority have raised their price points — some have even done so multiple times. Today, Philo is following suit…but only by a little. The streaming TV service has been one of the cheapest on the market, with an entry-level plan that began…
China’s Luckin Coffee has registered plans with the SEC to go public on the Nasdaq, setting a placeholder amount of $100 million, shows its filing. The development comes less than a week after the 18-month-old company announced $150 million in Series B “plus” funding led by the private equity firm Blackrock, which pumped $125 million…
Facebook today announced that it has made its first major API contribution to Google’s Chrome browser. Together with Google, Facebook’s team created an API proposal to contribute code to the browser, which is a first for the company. The code, like so much of Facebook’s work on web tools and standards, focuses on making the…
