Lyft is suing the city of San Francisco, claiming that the city is violating its 10-year contract with Lyft that would give the company exclusive rights to operate bike-share programs. San Francisco, however, says the contract does not apply to dockless bike-share, but only station-based bike-share. In its lawsuit, Lyft is seeking a preliminary injunction…
Jessica Powell, Google’s former head of PR from 2012-2018 (years in which Google required a not-insignificant amount of PR leadership), is now a rock star writer whose 2018 debut book, The Big Disruption: A Totally Fictional But Essentially True Silicon Valley Story, was the first novel published by Medium. I recently spoke with Powell for…
Synapse, a San Francisco-based startup that operates a platform enabling banks and fintech companies to easily develop financial services, has closed a $33 million Series B to develop new products and go after international expansion. The investment was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from existing backers Trinity Ventures and Core Innovation Capital . Synapse…
Thumbtack, one of the first players in what is now known as the gig economy, has hit the fundraising circuit once again. The online services marketplace that matches customers with nearby professionals is raising up to $120 million in Series H shares, according to a Delaware stock authorization filing uncovered by the Prime Unicorn Index.…
Eight Inc, the design firm best known for conceptualizing the Apple Store and the now-iconic giant glass cube on 5th Ave in New York, has proposed to restore Notre-Dame’s sadly destroyed roof and spire — with a giant glass roof and spire. I don’t think the French will go for it. The idea is to…
Autonomous vehicle startup Zoox has a history of keeping its progressive and plans to itself. But that’s starting to change. The venture-backed company that is creating ground-up fully autonomous electric vehicles is ready to share a bit more about its tech, strategy and plans. And who better to talk to than co-founder and CTO Jesse…
Google doesn’t want to wait for E3 to unveil more details about Stadia, its cloud gaming platform. The company is holding a live stream conference to talk about its service, including pricing, games and launch details. The conference starts at 9 AM Pacific Time, 12 PM Eastern Time, 5 PM in London and 6 PM…
Fintech startup Bunq provides full-fledged bank accounts. But if you’re happy with your existing bank, the company is launching a new free tier so that you can cut down on banking fees. The Bunq Travel Card is a Mastercard without any foreign exchange fee. The company uses the standard Mastercard exchange rate but doesn’t add…
Apple is closing a loophole that allowed app developers to access users’ potentially sensitive and private data. With the launch of iOS 13, apps that request access to users’ Contacts will no longer be able to read the data in the “Notes” field of those address book entries. For years, security professionals have warned people…
Amazon is serious about robotics. For most other companies, the technology may still feel like some distant novelty, but the e-commerce giant has already begun to deploy robotics systems en masse. Robotics VP Brad Porter noted onstage today at the re:MARS conference in Las Vegas that the company has deployed 200,000 robotics drives globally. Earlier…
