Baidu is putting some serious cash behind its self-driving car push after it announced a $1.5 billion fund that’s focused on backing autonomous driving tech companies. The Chinese giant, best known for its internet search service and AI technology, has prioritized autonomous vehicles in a major way in recent years so this comes as little surprise. Baidu made its Apollo self-driving… Read More
from TechCrunch
Flexport handles the boring logistics of a trillion-dollar business: the tranport of shipping containers around the world. Because the work of freight forwarding seemed so bland, it was long ignored by the tech world. But digitizing the paper work let Flexport speed up shipping so clients keep less inventory on hand while never running out. When you apply that optimization to how every… Read More
from TechCrunch
DogBuddy, a pan-European online marketplace for dog sitting, has closed €5 million in Series A funding, money it plans for further expansion. Backing the London-headquartered startup in this round is existing investor Sweet Capital, the investment fund started by the founders of King.com, and a number of new unnamed private investors. It brings total raised by DogBuddy to €10 million. Read More
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Pointy, an Irish start startup that lets local retailers put their stock online so that they can be discovered via search engines, has raised $6 million in Series A funding. The round is being led by Frontline Ventures, alongside Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital, Draper Associates and a number of notable angel investors. Read More
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The fintech revolution continues apace, and while many startups are hoping that newer and better tech will help them take business away from traditional banks, today a company has received a large round of funding to help those incumbent institutions better compete.
10x Future Technologies is a startup that has built a ground-up platform that incorporates machine learning, cloud services… Read More
from TechCrunch
Alchemist Accelerator, known for its specialty in working with enterprise startups, held its 16th demo day at Microsoft’s offices in Mountain View, California. 18 startups pitched ideas ranging from more traditional marketplaces to frontier aerospace technology. Addressing the packed auditorium before the pitches began, Ravi Belani, managing partner at Alchemist, reasserted his core… Read More
from TechCrunch
ICOs — or initial coin offerings — are emerging as a route for startups to raise money from a wide pool of investors through cryptocurrency networks. Now, one of the biggest and best-known accelerators in the world is mulling a way to use cryptocurrency networks and the blockchain to help get more people involved in backing their cohorts, according to its president. “We… Read More
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There are tons of companies trying to solve the problem of managing, monitoring and paying musicians for the songs they make. The latest entrant into this competitive marketplace is HAAWK, which just scored $2.5 million in new financing for its technology. Read More
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In a first for national grocery chains, Albertsons is buying the healthy meal kit delivery startup Plated for an undisclosed amount brokered by Credit Suisse Group AG. According to the Wall Street Journal, Plated will become a subsidiary of Albertsons and customers will soon be able to purchase a rotating selection of meals from the startup for delivery or pickup from the nearest location of… Read More
from TechCrunch
Identify the traits of your top performing employees and hire people like them, but without the discrimanatory bias of traditional recruiting. That’s the promise of Pymetrics, an artificial intelligence startup that today announced $8 million in new funding on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. Pymetrics’ goal is “making the world a fairer place” by dismantling hiring… Read More
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