As robots and gadgets continue to pervade our everyday lives, they increasingly need to see in 3D — but as evidenced by the notch in your iPhone, depth-sensing cameras are still pretty bulky. A new approach inspired by how some spiders sense the distance to their prey could change that. Jumping spiders don’t have room…
The new all-electric Mini Cooper SE, the first Mini designed from the ground up as an electric car, is going to retail in the U.S. starting at $29,900 (plus an $850 Destination and Handling fee) — before any tax incentives are applied. That puts final pricing as low as around $17,900 when you consider federal…
Koyo, a fintech startup using open banking to offer loans to people with “thin” credit files and currently poorly served by the market, has closed $4.9 million in funding. The round — a mixture of debt and equity funding — is led by Forward Partners, with participation from Seedcamp. Other investors include Christian Faes (founder…
Weave, a developer of patient communications software focused on the dental and optometry market, was the first Utah-headquartered company to graduate from Y Combinator in 2014. Now, it’s poised to enter a small but growing class startups in the ‘Silicon Slopes’ to garner ‘unicorn’ status. The business announced a $70 million Series D last week…
Welcome back to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of the latest events that happened at major Chinese tech companies and what they mean to tech founders and executives around the world. Alibaba’s nemesis Alibaba’s new rival is shaking up China’s internet landscape. This week, four-year-old e-commerce upstart Pinduoduo displaced JD.com to be the fourth-most valuable…
Hey everyone. Thank you for welcoming me into you inbox yet again. Last week, I talked about Zuckerberg’s quest to tell us that Facebook has governing principles when he’s really just building the stairs one step at a time. If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox here,…
A new space race is forming globally, energized by venture capital and the hype around companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. The privately-funded space industry is still in its infancy, but there has been an explosion of startups and investors in the sector, and the fever has, in the last few…
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about All Raise’s expansion, Uber the TV show and the unicorn from down under. Remember, you can send me tips,…
It has been a tough week for China-U.S. relations. Vice President Mike Pence ratcheted up the administration’s rhetoric yesterday, calling the NBA “a wholly owned subsidiary of the authoritarian regime” in China while the league’s commissioner Adam Silver continued to try to tamp down the intensity of criticism over the league’s business, saying in an…
The U.S. Department of Defense today announced that Microsoft has won its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud contract, worth up to $10 billion over a period of 10 years. With this, Microsoft will provide infrastructure and platform services for both the Pentagon’s business and mission operations. “The National Defense Strategy dictates that we must…
