Category: Tech news

 More than two years ago we wrote about what we learned from the 20 campaigns our startups had run. Fast-forward to 2017: The B2C startups HAX has invested in now count more than 75 successful campaigns (our 200-strong portfolio is about half B2C). Here’s what you need to know to succeed in 2017. Read More

 There are four automotive manufacturers at the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona this year: Daimler, BMW, Ford, and Peugeot. And if CES is any indicator, expect more to follow in the next few years.
Peugeot is going the furthest in bringing a world-premiere concept car to MWC, the Peugeot Instinct. The car demonstrates the company’s partnership with the Samsung Artik Cloud IoT… Read More

 Samsung just released a press statement declaring its Galaxy S7 edge as winning the best smartphone award at Mobile World Congress 2017. That didn’t happen. This is what really happened, and Samsung should retract this press release as it’s misleading and disingenuous.
GSMA is the trade organizing that hosts Mobile World Congress and every year they host an awards ceremony for… Read More

 Once in a while I come across a company that seems like a complete no-brainer. An idea that induces a ‘why hasn’t this been done already’ moment. That was certainly the case when I jumped on a call with Aja Guldhammer Henderson, CEO of Reshopper, a Danish startup that has built a mobile app for parents to buy and sell used items. Read More

 Facebook’s new video app is now available on Samsung Smart TVs – which makes Samsung the first platform to feature the social network’s latest application. Facebook had announced earlier this month that it was soon releasing a video app aimed at connected TVs and other media players, like Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV, but didn’t unveil a specific launch date for any… Read More

 When you think of the biggest cloud players in the world, one company you might not consider is Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant that held a record $25 billion U.S. IPO in 2014. Alibaba entered the cloud computing business in 2009, just three years after Amazon launched its cloud division, AWS — and Alibaba’s cloud computing efforts are among the ambitious projects that… Read More

 Every year, Google mixes up its presence at MWC a bit. After a few years of handing out smoothies and Android pins inside one of the halls here in Barcelona, Google made the move outside in recent years. That works great when it’s warm, but on a chilly day, it doesn’t exactly make for a pleasant experience. Here is what Google had to offer this year. Read More

 Uber-owned Otto’s co-founder Anthony Levandowski must be mightily relieved after an onstage Q&A here at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow passed by with zero awkward moments. For example, there was no mention of the fact his former employer is suing his current employer over allegations of IP theft… Read More

Waymo is suing Otto and Uber for allegedly stealing its trade secrets, Layer gets more funding and acquires Cola, a major Cloudflare bug leaked sensitive data from customers’ websites and Elon Musk addresses unionization concerns at Tesla. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

 Cloudflare revealed yesterday that a bug in its code caused sensitive data to leak from some of the major websites that use its performance enhancement and security services. Uber, Fitbit, OkCupid and 1Password are among Cloudflare’s millions of clients, and it’s possible that personal data such as passwords and cookies leaked from many client websites during the five months… Read More

 You can add the cult classic Super Smash Bros Melee to the list of games soon to be dominated by AIs. Research at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has produced a computer player superior to the drones you can already fight in the game. It’s good enough that it held its own against globally-ranked players. Read More

 This past weekend, something kind of incredible happened; basketball aficionados from across the globe were able to don high-tech goggles to live-stream stereoscopic virtual reality of a highly paid athlete receiving a bounce pass from a custom-designed drone to perform a highly technical slam dunk.
This is the NBA in 2017.
New technologies have always played a major role in how sports… Read More

 After the success of the Startup Battlefield Scholarship Fund at Disrupt SF and Disrupt London, we are pleased to announce that we will once again be offering scholarships to Startup Battlefield companies at Disrupt NY 2017, taking place May 15-17. Startup Battlefield is TechCrunch Disrupt’s startup competition that takes place three times a year. Applications to participate in… Read More

 Uber is under attack once again today as the Twittersphere quickly concluded it was behind a smear campaign against a former engineer for the company, Susan Fowler Rigetti, who dropped a scathing blog post earlier this week detailing sexual harassment claims while working at Uber over the course of a year. But Uber swears it isn’t them. Rigetti took to Twitter this morning to post… Read More

 Entrepreneurs who pitch on ABC’s Shark Tank typically make packaged goods and apparel. Occasionally, the high tech breaks through. XCraft, the company behind the PhoneDrone Ethos, scored a rare investment from all of the judges on the ABC show last spring, for example. And tonight, drones are once again flying “in the Tank” as DARTdrones seeks funding to build… Read More