Robots have a hard time improvising, and encountering an unusual surface or obstacle usually means an abrupt stop or hard fall. But researchers at Facebook AI have created a new model for robotic locomotion that adapts in real time to any terrain it encounters, changing its gait on the fly to keep trucking when it…
Uwe Horstmann Contributor Uwe Horstmann is co-founder and partner of the Berlin-based venture capital firm Project A Ventures. The narrative suggests that Germany is lagging behind its European neighbors when it comes to building a globally competitive venture capital market. But I think that the next five years will be huge for the German venture…
As environmental issues really came of age in the 1990s, certain German automakers were meeting in secret groups to make sure their cars would continue to industriously contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. According to the European Union, Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, BMW and Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler have been illegally colluding to restrict competition in emission…
In 2013, eight tech companies were accused of funneling their users’ data to the U.S. National Security Agency under the so-called PRISM program, according to highly classified government documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Six months later, the tech companies formed a coalition under the name Reform Government Surveillance, which as the name would…
Swiss Post, the former state-owned mail delivery firm which became a private limited company in 2013, diversifying into logistics, finance, transport and more (including dabbling in drone delivery) while retaining its role as Switzerland’s national postal service, has acquired a majority stake in Swiss-Hungarian startup Tresorit, an early European pioneer in end-to-end-encrypted cloud services. Terms…
As most Indian edtech startups work on broadening their catalog with live and recorded courses for students, some are beginning to take a different approach to tackle the South Asian nation’s large education market. Teachmint, a one-year-old startup, is betting on empowering teachers to create their own virtual classrooms with a few taps on their…
A new pilot program from TikTok would inject a little LinkedIn into the youthful video-based social network. TikTok announced that, starting today, it will invite users to submit video resumes to participating companies, including Target, Chipotle, Shopify, Meredith, NASCAR and the WWE. The company encourages applicants to show off their skills in a creative way…
Mikal is an early-stage investor at Wavemaker Partners investing in startups across North America, MENA and Asia and author of the newsletter Emergent, analyzing one fast-growing startup in an emerging market every week. Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous country, has been slow to adapt to the internet economy. Unlike other emerging economies such as…
It’s been quite the year for crypto capital, what with Coinbase’s blockbuster debut earlier this year in a direct listing and A16Z raising $2.2 billion for its third crypto-focused fund. But as the numbers in this frenetic market continue to skyrocket to dizzying highs, there is an open question for a lot of crypto founders:…
A startup founder, who hasn’t had much sleep all week, woke up on a recent Sunday to a phone call from his co-founder. A senior engineer was feeling burnt out and was contemplating leaving. For the founder, who had several calls scheduled with many high-profile Silicon Valley investors later in the day, talking this developer…
