Infosys, the India-headquartered consulting and IT firm, is getting into sports and wearables after it announced a $3 million strategic investment in Whoop, a Boston-based company that provides performance data to professional athletes and sports teams. Read More
from TechCrunch
Brussels-based Doctena, founded in 2013, represents a familiar European startup story. It sells a medical booking platform that lets doctors offer online booking to their patients and has successfully launched in three European countries — Luxembourg, Netherlands and Belgium — juggling regulatory differences in each country and doing it all with modest funding. Read More
from TechCrunch
Korea’s Yello Mobile has made a name for itself raising $100 million and using it to hoover up more than 60 startups to build a mobile apps business, which now serves 18 million users. Now, the startup is raising again: Yello Mobile has racked up another $47.2 million in funding, led by existing investor Formation 8 — financing that is being done as convertible debt at a… Read More
from TechCrunch
On the back of Airbnb raising yet more billions to fuel its private home accommodation business, Love Home Swap — a marketplace for people to exchange homes for short stays — is on a consolidation tear of its own. The UK-based company has acquired Holland’s HomeForExchange, which LHS founder and CEO Debbie Wosskow tells TechCrunch will help her company build up its stock… Read More
from TechCrunch
Alibaba has jumped into the news business after the Chinese company confirmed on Friday that it has agreed to acquire the South China Morning Post (SCMP). The Hong Kong-based newspaper and SCMP Group’s other assets, which includes local editions of Esquire and Elle, will cost Alibaba a little over HK$2 billion — around US$262 million — according to a regulatory filing. Read More
from TechCrunch
With just 28 technology companies entering the U.S. public markets, 2015 was the worst year for IPOs since 2009, according to Dealogic. This compares to 62 last year and 48 the year before, with 131 “unicorns” opting to remain private longer. “We haven’t seen so few tech IPOs since the 2008-09 U.S. financial crisis,” notes Kathleen Smith, principal at IPO ETF… Read More
from TechCrunch
Today, OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company was announced to the world. Its director is a research scientist at Google, Ilya Sutskever. This comes a day after Facebook open-sourced its AI hardware.
Its reason for existing was explained in an introductory post:
Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole… Read More
from TechCrunch
“They’re going to be very embracing of risk and trying out new things and seeing what works,” says Caitlyn Fox, chief of staff of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. After weeks of critics jumping to conclusions before seeing details or results, Fox spoke with me for nearly an hour about the strategy for Priscilla and Mark’s philanthropic foundation. Read More
from TechCrunch
There is an increasingly large roster of personal assistant apps that use artificial intelligence in an attempt to make users’ lives easier. Mezi is the newest contender and while it has plenty of competition, the service wants to set itself apart with what its founders call a “maniacal” focus on e-commerce, helping users with the most time-consuming shopping errands. Read More
from TechCrunch
Seerene, an analytics platform that helps companies see how their other software is performing, has raised $5 million in seed funding and opened an office in Hong Kong, its first in Asia. The round was led by Earlybird Venture Capital and will support Seerene’s international growth. Read More
from TechCrunch