Tech News

Sub-brands are the new weapon in China’s smartphone war

Sub-brands are the new weapon in China’s smartphone war

One of China’s top smartphone brands Vivo appears to have joined its fellows Oppo, Huawei and Xiaomi in setting up a new sub-brand as a softening market and heightened competition at home drive players to venture upon their original reach. A new smartphone brand called iQoo made its debut on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, on […]

Sean Parker’s govtech Brigade breaks up, Pinterest acqhires engineers

Sean Parker’s govtech Brigade breaks up, Pinterest acqhires engineers

Facebook co-founder Sean Parker bankrolled Brigade to get out the vote and stimulate civic debate, but after five years and little progress the startup is splitting up, multiple sources confirm to TechCrunch. We’ve learned that Pinterest has acqhired roughly 20 members of the Brigade engineering team. The rest of Brigade is looking for a potential […]

Is Europe closing in on an antitrust fix for surveillance technologists?

Is Europe closing in on an antitrust fix for surveillance technologists?

The German Federal Cartel Office’s decision to order Facebook to change how it processes users’ personal data this week is a sign the antitrust tide could at last be turning against platform power. One European Commission source we spoke to, who was commenting in a personal capacity, described it as “clearly pioneering” and “a big deal”, […]

Transportation Weekly: Amazon’s secret acquisition and all the AV feels

Transportation Weekly: Amazon’s secret acquisition and all the AV feels

Welcome to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. I cover all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in the future — whether it’s by bike, bus, scooter, car, train, truck, robotaxi or rocket. Sure, let’s include hyperloop and eVTOLs, or […]

Deepomatic raises $6.2 million for its industrial computer vision technology

Deepomatic raises $6.2 million for its industrial computer vision technology

French startup Deepomatic just raised a new funding round of $5.1 million in equity funding and $1.1 million in debt. Hi Inov is leading the round, with Alven Capital and Bertrand Diard also participating. Deepomatic lets you build your own computer vision applications for your industrial needs. The company gives you all the tools to […]

The next integration evolution — blockchain

The next integration evolution — blockchain

Here is one way to look at distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and blockchain in the context of integration evolution. Over the years, businesses and their systems are getting more integrated, forming industry-specific trustless networks, and blockchain technology is in the foundation of this evolutionary step. Enterprise integration Large organizations have a large number of applications […]

Databricks raises $250M at a $2.75B valuation for its analytics platform

Databricks raises $250M at a $2.75B valuation for its analytics platform

Databricks, the company behind the Apache Spark big data analytics engine, today announced that it has raised a $250 million Series E round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Coatue Management, Microsoft and NEA, also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to $498.5 million. Microsoft’s involvement here is probably a bit of a […]

Healthcare wearables level up with new moves from Apple and Alphabet

Healthcare wearables level up with new moves from Apple and Alphabet

Announcements that Apple has partnered with Aetna health insurance on a new app leveraging data from its Apple Watch and reports that Verily — one of the health-focused subsidiaries of Google‘s parent company — Alphabet, is developing a shoe that can detect weight and movement, indicate increasing momentum around using data from wearables for clinical health applications and […]

Austin in January: Cash rich and maturing

Austin in January: Cash rich and maturing

Mary Ann Azevedo Contributor Mary Ann Azevedo covers startups and tech at Crunchbase News. 2019 has been good to the Austin startup scene so far. Combined, Austin startups have raised $240.3 million in January. That’s not much less than the nearly $300 million raised in all of Q4 2018. And since the beginning of the year, […]