The coolest mission you haven’t heard of just hit a major milestone: the Japanese Hayabusa 2 probe has reached its destination, the asteroid Ryugu, and just deployed a pair of landers to its surface. Soon it will touch down itself and bring a sample of Ryugu back to Earth! Are you kidding me? That’s amazing!…
In the days leading up to TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, The Economist published the cover story, ‘Why Startups Are Leaving Silicon Valley.’ The author outlined reasons why the Valley has “peaked.” Venture capital investors are deploying capital outside the Bay Area more than ever before. High-profile entrepreneurs and investors, Peter Thiel, for example, have left. Rising…
TC Sessions: AR/VR on October 18 at UCLA is gearing up to be a great show.Early-bird sales end after today, September 21. Don’t miss out on the biggest savings for this event — book your $99 tickets here before prices go up by $100. The stage will feature some of the industry’s most groundbreaking companies…
Amazon unleashed a flurry of new products this week at a U.S. press event, but halfway across the world, it is getting deeper into physical retail in the Indian market. The U.S. e-commerce giant is buying up 49 percent of More in a deal that sees Amazon partner and PE firm Samara Capital pick up the…
When Cleo, the London-based “digital assistant” that wants to replace your banking apps, quietly entered the U.S., the company couldn’t have expected to be an instant hit. Many better-funded British startups have failed to “break America.” However, just four months later, the fintech upstart counts 350,000 users across the pond — claiming more than 600,000…
One of the bigger surprises at today’s big Amazon event was something the company didn’t announce. After a couple of years of speculation that the company was working on its own version of the HomePod and Google Max, we still don’t have a truly premium Echo. That’s due, in part, to the fact that Amazon…
The investment arms of BMW and the Chinese search technology giant, Baidu, along with a large original equipment manufacturer for the auto industry and a slew of technology investors have all come together to back Lunewave, a startup developing new sensor technologies for autonomous vehicles. The $5 million seed round which the company just closed…
The earliest adopters of Bitcoin — the libertarian anarchist “cypherpunk” crowd — were mostly men. Today, roughly a decade after Satoshi Nakamoto’s famed white paper was released, the majority of cryptocurrency holders are still men. This poses a problem for the companies betting on the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency. At this point, they’ve already tapped into…
Livspace, an India-based startup that helps consumers manage home renovations and interior design, has pulled in a $70 million Series C deal that’s led by Goldman Sachs and TPG Growth. Existing investors Jungle Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Helion Ventures also took part in the round, which takes Livspace total funding to date to over $100 million.…
Lyft has officially entered the public transit space with the launch of Nearby Transit, a feature currently available just in Santa Monica, Calif. This comes just a couple of days after Lyft deployed electric scooters in the city. Today, Lyft customers in Santa Monica will see the Nearby Transit option, which includes route information and…
