TechCrunch

Unbound raises $2.7 million for women’s sexual wellness

Unbound, a sexual wellness startup for women, recently raised $2.7 million from Founders Fund, Slow Ventures, Arena Ventures, SoGal Ventures and others. Founded by Polly Rodriguez of Women of SexTech, Unbound aims to empower women to own their sexuality.<p>“Raising money is always hard but it took an …

Ubisoft combines AI research and game development at ‘La Forge’

When it comes to gaming, one usually thinks of “artificial intelligence” as somewhat less exalted than elsewhere; after all, for years we’ve been raging at cheating AI players, bemoaning their bad pathfinding, and laughing at their buggy antics. But AI can be and is being applied creatively, and …

Inside “Fin”, the elite human/AI assistant

“I have FOMO for the future”, says Sam Lessin. That’s why his startup Fin is working backwards from a far-off tech utopia. One day, computers with some human help will answer our every beck and call. Today, Lessin is teaming them up. Every day, Fin gets smarter.<p>For $1 a minute, 24/7, Fin gets your …

Amazon acquires connected camera and doorbell startup Blink

Amazon has acquired Blink (via Slashgear), a startup founded in 2014 that builds connected Wi-Fi home security cameras, as well as a new video doorbell introduced earlier this week. The company got its start via a crowdfunding campaign that raised over $1 million for its totally wireless home …

SingularityNET’s Ben Goertzel has a grand vision for the future of AI

SingularityNET, is an ambitions project to create a decentralized marketplace for AI, has raised a lot of money in its token sale. In around 20 seconds after opening the sale to the public, it sold out of the whole amount of available tokens (the AGI token), bringing the total to $36 …

Pixel art coloring book apps are the newest App Store craze

Has your kid bugged you to let them download Sandbox Coloring? You’re probably not alone. The latest trend blowing up on the App Store is a new twist on the coloring book apps that have been popular for a couple of years. Now, instead of having users pick and choose their colors as before, this new …

Safe’s app answers the question “Have you been tested for STDs?”

The idea for Safe Group, a new Los Angeles company that’s developed a mobile app to track and verify a user’s sexual health, started on the Playa at Burning Man.<p>The company’s chief executive and co-founder Ken Mayer was dating someone at the time who demanded to see the results of a recent STD test …

The tech industry needs to move towards responsible innovation in 2018

For over a decade now, Silicon Valley ideology has been to simultaneously:<p>Move fast and break things.<p>Make the world a better place.<p>Our community — entrepreneurs and investors alike — have had a sense of manifest destiny to move humanity forward with our work. Somewhere along the way however, making …

That time I got locked out of my Google account for a month

How much of your digital life would you lose if you lost a single password? Without it, you are locked out and the cold reality of using free cloud services like Google is that you don’t have a human arbiter to help you. If you think back to earlier times where, say you lost your bank book, your …

Coinbase suspends trading amid cryptocurrency rout

Coinbase, the most popular site for cryptocurrency transactions in the U.S., has suspended all trading activity today amid a crash in cryptocurrency prices.<p>A statement on the company’s website this morning read, “Due to today’s high traffic, buys and sells may be temporarily offline. We’re working …

Original Content podcast: Confronting the light and dark side of ‘The Last Jedi’

This week, TechCrunch’s Original Content podcast takes a break from reviewing the latest streaming titles to tackle the big movie of the week (and arguably the year) — <i>Star Wars: The Last Jedi</i>.<p>One of your hosts (that’s Anthony) laid out his initial reaction in a post, while the other (that’s …

CNN is killing its Snapchat news show only four months after its debut

CNN is giving up on its Snapchat news show, which launch only four months ago. “The Update,” as the program was called, had been designed for Snapchat’s vertical video format, but didn’t feature video produced only for Snapchat, nor did it have dedicated anchors. Instead, the news featured on “The …

A look at 42 women in tech who crushed it in 2017

1/39<p>Stacy Epstein<p><b>Stacey Epstein</b> knows enterprise software. She ran global marketing at the HR software company SuccessFactors when it IPO’d in 2007. She later became CMO at ServiceMax, which made software for field service workers and was later acquired by GE for $915 million. Now, Epstein is using …

The Peak Beyond smart tables

Watch SpaceX’s last Falcon 9 rocket launch for 2017

SpaceX is launching its last mission of 2017 later today, with a planned launch window of 5:27 PM PST (8:27 PM EST). The mission is for client Iridium, and will send a fourth set of 10 satellites into low Earth orbit for Iridium’s NEXT constellation, which will eventually consist of 75 satellites …

Equity podcast: Stitch Fix tumbles, stocks go crypto and VCs still love unicorns

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.<p>This week the crew — Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, Alex Wilhelm — were joined Jeff Richards, a managing partner at GGV. (GGV has raised nearly $4 billion to invest, …

Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

Bitcoin has been on a tear this past with the value of the cryptocurrency jumping from $8,000 to nearly $20,000. Well that run hit an abrupt end today as the price crashed as much as 23 percent on Coinbase. The price briefly dipped below $12,000 on some exchanges at around 7:30 am London time.<p>The …

Meet Molekule, the sleekest air purifier on the market

Molekule, a San Francisco-based startup with a sleekly designed molecular air purifier started as an immigrant dream twenty years ago and ended up being named one of Time’s top 25 inventions of 2017.<p>The inventor Yogi Goswami came up with the idea when his baby son Dilip started having a hard time …

Mumbrella, a media startup focused on APAC’s marketing industry, gets acquired

<i>Insider baseball klaxon</i>: media writing about media story incoming:: Mumbrella, the Australia-based media company, has been sold by its founders to U.S./APAC events company Diversified Communications.<p>Mumbrella operates media and marketing industry-focused websites for Australia and Asia, an events …

Goldman is reportedly getting into bitcoin and crypto trading

Global banking giant Goldman is setting up up a trading desk focused on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, according to a report from Bloomberg.<p>The bank is said to be in the early stages of setup, which means hiring and figuring out the logistics, including how the bank will hold the assets and …

Sequoia Capital’s Next Fund Could Be $5 Billion

<b>Today’s Stories</b><p>Daimler acquires majority stake in French Uber competitor<br>• Sequoia is looking to raise a $5 billion investment fund<br>• Long Island Iced Tea shares went gangbusters after changing its name to Long Blockchain<p><b>Credits</b><p><b>Written by:</b> Tito Hamze <b><br>Hosted by:</b> Tito Hamze <b><br>Filmed by:</b> Tito Hamze <b><br>Edited by:</b> …

Mattermark to shut down after selling to Full Contact

Mattermark, the site for startup and company data, is shutting down its own business after selling in a disappointing outcome to Full Contact.<p>In a document obtained by TechCrunch, co-founder and CEO Danielle Morrill wrote that “common stockholders will not be receiving anything in this deal.” In …

Laser-equipped shoes help Parkinson’s patients take the next step

Here’s an unexpected but pleasant little way tech might be able to improve a few lives: laser shoes. Yes, seriously. Shoes equipped with small laser emitters were shown in recent tests to help sufferers of Parkinson’s disease to walk normally.<p>One of the possible symptoms of Parkinson’s is what’s …

Google Home Max review

The days of buying devices or smart assistants will be over soon enough. Amazon and Google have both made clear their intention to make their respective AI device agnostic, so the days of the standalone Google Home or Amazon Echo might well be numbered.<p>Assistant and Alexa are already being built …

Apple’s Design Delirium

I watch with increasing trepidation at the direction Apple is taking its products. The most recent concern came yesterday from Bloomberg that Apple intends to offer its software developers new libraries that will allow apps to serve both touchscreen interfaces like the iPhone as well as traditional …

Podia helps content creators build their online business

More than a year and a half ago, I wrote about Coach, a startup offering tools for tutors and other freelancers to make money and operate their business online. Since then, the company has shifted focus in a big way, and it recently announced that it’s raised $3 million in seed funding.<p>It’s got a …

Sequoia Capital's Next Fund Could Be $5 Billion | Crunch Report

A new bipartisan Senate bill seeks to bolster U.S. election security at the state level

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate has introduced a bill designed to protect the technical integrity of American elections as the nation moves toward midterm season. Introduced in the Senate, the bill known as the Secure Elections Act is sponsored by Republican Senators James Lankford, …

Instagram now lets you share live videos through direct messages

Instagram has been steadily beefing up its Direct Messaging feature in recent months, as it has begun to toy with the idea of spinning out messaging into its own, separate app. Among its more recent tweaks was last month’s added option for photo and video message replays, and earlier enhancements …

There’s no magic bullet for reversing the FCC’s net neutrality decision

Huge numbers of people are upset at the FCC’s decision to undo its own highly popular net neutrality rules. But the grand plans to undo this mischief being announced left and right should be taken with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, it all comes down to politics.<p>Several senators and members of …