Microsoft is buying Talko, the mobile messaging startup founded by Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s former Chief Software Architect until 2010. The company says today the acquisition, whose terms were not disclosed, involves the Talko technology and the team. Talko employees will now join Skype, while Talko itself is being shut down. Ozzie, however, will not be rejoining Microsoft as a part of… Read More
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2015 was not a good year for IPOs. In fact, it was the worst year for tech IPOs since the financial crisis in 2009, with more and more startups opting to remain private longer. Stock market swings stemming from an oil crisis and a delayed interest rate decision meant that some companies in the pipeline decided to postpone their IPO until 2016. “Investors in the market were looking… Read More
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The Dell-EMC deal has had so many moving pieces since it was announced in October, it’s hard to tell the players without a score card. This morning, Pivotal, which is jointly owned by EMC and VMware (and General Electric) announced it was buying CloudCredo, a Cloud Foundry service provider based in the UK. The deal also includes stayUp, a log analysis company partly owned by… Read More
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Administrate, the Scottish startup that offers a Sofware-as-a-Service for training providers, has raised a $2.5 million funding round. So far, so routine. But the company is also talking up a recent HR “innovation”: Its entire staff have moved to a four-day week, with no loss in productivity, apparently. Read More
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Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll) is looking to raise $50 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange commission. That’s only natural for the startup, which is increasingly competing with the well-funded — and cash burning — Zenefits. So far, the company has raised about $22.2 million of its funding round, according to that filing. It looks like General… Read More
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Chinese tech trends are distinctly different to North America’s but today, in a move that bears parallels to WeChat-only companies, popular messaging app Kik acquired the small company behind one of the most successful apps (bots) on the Kik service. Read More
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CellSavers CEO Itai Hirsch was not a fan of driving to a local repair shop after he’d broken many of his phones and tablets. So he decided to take a run at building CellSavers, an on-demand repair service that’s like an Uber for smartphone repairs. To do that, CellSavers has raised $3 million in seed funding from Sequoia Israel. CellSavers connects users with technicians that will… Read More
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Qihoo, a Beijing-based developer of security software and Internet browsers, announced on Friday that it will go private in a deal worth $9.3 billion. As Reuters notes, this makes Qihoo the latest in a growing list of U.S.-listed Chinese tech firms that have decided to go private. Read More
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Microsoft announced today that it has purchased Metanautix, a big-data focused startup that came out of stealth in 2014. The company was backed by $7 million in capital, including cash from well-known venture firm Sequoia. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to TechCrunch’s prior coverage of Metanautix, the company’s external funding came in majority at the time of… Read More
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The first millennial CEO is leading the end of “two-pocket thinking” Read More
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