Spotify this morning officially announced the limited U.S. release of its first hardware device, the oddly named Car Thing, aimed at Spotify Premium subscribers. The new device — which Spotify is surprisingly offering for free plus shipping — has evolved substantially from the version that first began testing in 2019. Read more…
Are you 100% sure that your children are brushing their teeth properly? A New York-based startup called Willo has been working for several years on a device that should transform the tooth-brushing experience for children. Willo isn’t a new toothbrush — electric or not. It’s an oral care device that Read more…
Meroxa, a startup that makes it easier for businesses to build the data pipelines to power both their analytics and operational workflows, today announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Drive Capital. Existing investors Root, Amplify and Hustle Fund also participated in this Read more…
The social network says it mistakenly took down the town’s official page. Source: BBC
Tom Tugendhat, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair, says he was advised Gmail was ‘more secure’. Source: BBC
The YouTuber has not yet commented on allegations from Paradise, a TikTok star. Source: BBC
NI Screen and Hypixel Studios launch incentive to encourage people to work in local gaming industry. Source: BBC
The overhaul will force the Alibaba-backed group to become a financial holding firm. Source: BBC
Son Nguyen, founder and chief executive officer of Dat Bike Dat Bike, a Vietnamese startup with ambitions to become the top electric motorbike company in Southeast Asia, has raised $2.6 million in pre-Series A funding led by Jungle Ventures. Made in Vietnam with mostly domestic parts, Dat Bike’s selling point Read more…
Decentralized finance startup MOUND, known for its yield farming aggregator Pancake Bunny, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding led by Binance Labs. Other participants included IDEO CoLab, SparkLabs Korea and Handshake co-founder Andrew Lee. Built on Binance Smart Chain, a blockchain for developing high-performance DeFi apps, MOUND says Pancake Read more…
Drones capable of 90mph are being raced in a league which supporters say is close to the big time. Source: BBC
Equipment at Battery Resourcers’ new cathode sintering and analysis facility in Novi, Michigan. (Photo: Battery Resourcers) As a greater share of the transportation market becomes electrified, companies have started to grapple with how to dispose of the thousands of tons of used electric vehicle batteries that are expected to come Read more…
Microsoft makes a big healthcare tech acquisition, Twitter is building a presence in Africa and Apple may be cooking up some new smart home products. This is your Daily Crunch for April 12, 2021. The big story: Microsoft acquires Nuance for $19.7B Microsoft announced this morning that it’s acquiring speech-to-text Read more…
Northrop Grumman hit a new milestone in extending the life of active spacecraft as a purpose-built spacecraft, MEV-2, docked with Intelsat’s IS-10-02 satellite to give it another five years of life. It’s a strong demonstration of the possibilities in a growing field of orbital servicing operations. MEV-2 launched in August Read more…
Ben Sun Contributor Share on Twitter Ben Sun is co-founder and general partner at Primary Venture Partners, a seed-stage VC firm based in NYC. A month ago, Coupang arrived on Wall Street with a bang. The South Korean e-commerce giant — buoyed by $12 billion in 2020 revenue — raised Read more…
Blue Origin is making progress toward its goal of flying human astronauts aboard its spacecraft, with a plan to run an “astronaut rehearsal” during a launch it has planned for Wednesday, April 14. The launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital, reusable rocket will be a key step in verifying Read more…
Tiger Global has invested in DealShare, a startup in India that has built an e-commerce platform for middle- and lower-income groups of consumers, just three months after the Indian firm concluded its previous $21 million Series C funding round. The New York-headquartered firm has led the $100 million Series D Read more…
WeRide, the Chinese autonomous vehicle startup that recently raised $310 million, has received a permit to test driverless vehicles on public roads in San Jose, California. WeRide is the seventh company, following AutoX, Baidu, Cruise, Nuro Waymo and Zoox, to receive a driverless testing permit. In the early days of Read more…
A collection of tech and auto industry executives met with the White House to discuss solutions for the worldwide chip shortage Monday. CEOs from Google, Intel, HP, Dell, Ford and General Motors attended the virtual summit on semiconductors and resilience in supply chains. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of Read more…
The US tech giant is buying artificial intelligence firm Nuance, best known for developing Apple’s Siri. Source: BBC