Amazon has reportedly acquired Israeli disaster recovery startup, CloudEndure. Neither company has responded to our request for confirmation, but we have heard from multiple sources that the deal has happened. While some outlets have been reporting that the deal was worth $250 million, we are hearing that it’s closer to $200 million. The company provides
Month: January 2019
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. IBM unveils its first commercial quantum computer The 20-qubit system combines the quantum and classical computing parts it takes to use a
At CES, IBM today announced its first commercial quantum computer for use outside of the lab. The 20-qubit system combines the quantum and classical computing parts it takes to use a machine like this for research and business applications into a single package. That package, the IBM Q system, is still huge, of course, but
AT&T recently started a shady marketing tactic that labeled its 4G network as a 5G network. Now, rivals Verizon and T-Mobile are not having any of it. In an open letter, in which AT&T is not named directly, Verizon says in part “the potential to over-hype and under-deliver on the 5G promise is a temptation
Plaid, a startup that has made a name building APIs for financial services apps aimed at consumers, expanded its horizon today with the purchase of Quovo, a similar company with a focus on the investments side of the financial service business. Bloomberg reported the price tag could be as much as $200 million, but the
Last week, in light of Apple’s revised revenue guidance, my TC colleague Ron Miller made a tongue-in-cheek apology for taking so long to upgrade his old iPhone. He wrote that he had finally bitten the bullet and shelled out to upgrade a more than three-years-old (but still working) iPhone 6 for a shiny new iPhone XR ($750+)
Scape Technologies, a London-based computer vision startup, is de-cloaking today to announce that it has raised $8 million in seed fund and launching the first iteration of its “Visual Positioning Service,” which lets developers build apps that require location accuracy far beyond the capabilities of GPS alone. The technology will initially target augmented reality apps,
Apple isn’t the only smartphone maker steeling itself (and analysts) for disappointing results. Samsung Electronics issued earnings guidance for the final quarter of 2018 today that not only marks its first quarterly profit decline in two years, but also fell far below analysts’ expectations. The company attributed the drop to lower-than-expected demand for its memory
After a recent update some AT&T phones now have a 5G E icon. This icon replaces the one indicated the phone is running on a 4G network. But here’s the thing: The phone is still on a 4G network. AT&T has played these games before, too. This nonsense is a marketing ploy by AT&T. The
The UK government has announced new powers for police to tackle illegal use of drone technology, including powers to land, seize and search drones. This follows the recent Gatwick drone fiasco when, just before Christmas, a spate of drone sightings near the airport caused a temporary shutdown of the runway, and disruptive misery for thousands of people at one of
Several weeks after it was reported by the WSJ that two of the biggest investors in SoftBank’s massive Vision Fund vehicle were cool on its planned $16 billion investment in the coworking company WeWork, those plans have changed radically, says the Financial Times. According to its sources — and confirmed by our own — SoftBank
The heated debate around Amazon’s recently announced Long Island City “HQ2” is showing no signs of cooling down. On Monday morning, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) hosted a briefing in which labor officials, economic development analysts, Amazon employees and elected New York State and City representatives further underlined concerns around the HQ2
Uber is expected to raise $10 billion later this year in one of the largest U.S. initial public offerings in history. The float will value the ride-hailing giant somewhere between $76 billion — the valuation it garnered with its last private financing — and $120 billion — a sky-high figure assigned by Wall Street bankers
If you use wired headphones with your new iPhone, you’re probably familiar with the pain that comes along with trying to listen to music while you’re charging your phone via the Lightning port. Mophie unveiled its solution to this problem at the Consumer Electronics Show today. Thanks to Qi wireless charging, Mophie’s new battery case
If you’re a GitHub user, but you don’t pay, this is a good week. Historically, GitHub always offered free accounts but the caveat was that your code had to be public. To get private repositories, you had to pay. Starting tomorrow, that limitation is gone. Free GitHub users now get unlimited private projects with up
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. Nvidia launches the $349 GeForce RTX 2060 Nvidia broke with tradition and put a new focus on gaming at CES. Last
Motorola Solutions, which split off from Motorola Mobility back in 2011, has added a new license plate capture tool to it law enforcement suite with the acquisition of VaaS International Holdings today for $445 million in cash and equity. The acquisition should help enhance the company’s set of law enforcement products. “Within the public safety space [Motorola Solutions]
Spotify has begun testing a new type of ad in Discover Weekly, its personalized playlist of music that’s the streaming service’s flagship feature. The company says that, for the first time, it will allow a brand to “sponsor” this playlist as opposed to just running ads. It believes many advertisers will be interested in this
Standard Cognition helps retail stores stand up to Jeff Bezos’ juggernaut. The $50 million-funded autonomous checkout startup is racing to equip bigger shops with scanless payment technology that lets customers walk out the door without ever stopping at a cashier. While Amazon Go opens its own 2,000 square foot boutiques, Standard Cognition is working on
The curse of open source software is that it is used in pretty much every application and device on the planet, and yet, has pretty much no business model. Sustaining open source is a critical problem for the future of software, because without a durable source of income, the developers behind these critical projects cannot
Pouch, the U.K.-based money-saving browser extension, has been acquired by German ‘publishing technology’ platform Global Savings Group. Exact financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although I understand it to be a cash purchase and in the 7-figure U.S. dollar range, plus performance related bonuses. The entire Pouch team are joining Global Savings Group, and
[embedded content] LG is opening the show with its CES press conference. Many consumer electronics companies are going to show us their new and shiny products all day long. And LG is starting at 8 AM Pacific, 11 AM Eastern, 2 PM in London. You can expect new TVs (4K? 8K? The sky is the
[embedded content] Nvidia is holding its CES press conference today at 8 PM Pacific, 11 PM Eastern. The company will talk about self-driving cars and all things GPUs. It’s a great way to see what’s ahead for Nvidia. We’ll have a team on the ground, so you should also check out our full CES coverage.
French startup Ledger unveiled its new hardware wallet to manage your cryptocurrencies. The Ledger Nano X is a Bluetooth-enabled wallet, which means that you’ll be able to send and receive tokens from your phone. The previous version of the device required you to plug the key to your computer using a microUSB cable in order
Netatmo is announcing its first new product following its acquisition by Legrand — and it’s a connected doorbell. The company says that it is the first Apple HomeKit compatible doorbell but other companies could still beat Netatmo by releasing their product sooner. If you’ve been thinking about getting a connected doorbell, the main issue is
ClassPass, the five-year-old fitness marketplace startup with $239 million in financing, is acquiring competitor GuavaPass, which was founded by Rob Pachter and Jeffrey Liu in 2015. ClassPass is in the midst of an expansion sprint, both domestically and internationally. The company is hyper-focused on Asian markets, where GuavaPass had carved out its own place with
Huawei, currently the world’s second-largest smartphone company by sales, has won over users partly by loading its devices with a ton of new features, from wireless charging to top-class cameras and catchy cosmetic features like the colorful gradients on their shiny backsides. Now, a leaked image of its next flagship Android phone appears to reveal a
Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead crying foul over perceived hypocrisy. The problem for this subset
HP today announced the Pavilion 27 and it looks spectacular. This is the first display that offers a QLED screen — HP calls it by it’s official name Quantum Dot — that’s on glass instead of film. The differences should be clear. When offered on glass, the images are sharper and cleaner — though so
Gousto, the U.K. cook-at-home meal kit service that competes most directly with HelloFresh, has raised a further £18 million in funding. The round is backed by Instagram “health influencer” Joe Wicks, along with existing investors Unilever Ventures, Hargreave Hale, BGF Ventures, MMC Ventures, and Angel CoFund. The new funding brings the total raised by Gousto