NASA has awarded Maxar an estimated $142 million contract to demonstrate in-orbit spacecraft refueling and assembly of new components using a custom robotic platform in space. The space infrastructure dexterous robot, or SPIDER, program will be part of NASA’s Restore-L mission to demonstrate automation of proposed orbital tasks like reconfiguring or repairing a satellite or
Month: January 2020
Today’s your last day to score early-bird pricing on tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020, which takes place on March 3. If you want to keep $150 in your wallet, beat the deadline and buy your ticket here before the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PT) tonight! Our one-day conference dedicated to robotics and
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today we’re digging into One Medical’s IPO pricing, especially as it relates to the company’s valuation and resulting revenue multiples. Our goal this morning is to understand how the IPO process priced One Medical last
Twitter has confirmed it has temporarily suspended the account of controversial rightwing commentator, Katie Hopkins. The move was reported earlier by the BBC. Hopkins, a former MailOnline columnist and presenter on LBC radio, is a veteran of the social media platform, joining Twitter just under a decade ago — and using it amplify her brand of
When analyzing the cloud market, there are many ways to look at the numbers; revenue, year-over-year or quarter-over-quarter growth — or lack of it — or market share. Each of these numbers tells a story, but in the cloud market, where aggregate growth remains high and Azure’s healthy expansions continues, it’s still struggling to gain
After opening an office in the city last year, Indian ride-hailing firm Ola said it would officially begin operations in London on February 10. London is one of the world’s biggest markets for ride-hailing services, and the expansion is a key development in Ola’s international strategy as the company widens its competition with Uber, another
Lip-syncing app Dubsmash was on the brink of death. After a brief moment of virality in 2015 alongside Vine (R.I.P), Dubsmash was bleeding users faster than it could recruit them. The app let you choose an audio track like a rap song or movie quote and shoot a video of you pretending to say the
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. As One Medical looks to become the first venture-backed company to price its IPO in 2020 this afternoon and Casper aims to price its own shares next Wednesday, the market is gearing up for a
The Bouqs plans to take a slice of Japan’s $6 billion flower market this year with a $30 million strategic growth round from Japanese enterprise business investor Yamasa. While The Bouqs still must compete with bigger contenders like 1-800-Flowers and FTD in the U.S., it will now have to take on incumbents like Ayoma Flower
OpsRamp, a service that helps IT teams discover, monitor, manage and — maybe most importantly — automate their hybrid environments, today announced that it has closed a $37.5 million funding round led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, with participation from existing investor Sapphire Ventures and new investor Hewlett Packard Enterprise. OpsRamp last raised funding in
Maze wants to reinvent usability tests by letting you turn design prototypes into tests in just a few clicks. It could become the equivalent of a developing test suite for developers, but this time for designers — it could be something that you run before shipping an update to make sure everything works fine. The
Flexibits, the company behind popular calendar app Fantastical, is releasing Fantastical 3.0 on all platforms today — macOS, iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. New features include event proposals, interesting calendars, new calendar views and weather forecasts. I’ve been using the app on my Mac, iPhone and iPad for a week. The main difference with Fantastical 2
In 1998, the startup company Illumina launched a revolution in the life sciences industry by developing technology to slash the costs of identifying and mapping genetic material. Now, a little over 20 years later, Mammoth Biosciences is hoping to do the same thing for gene editing tools. The company, co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, who did some
Insticator, a startup helping publishers add to their content elements like polls, quizzes and suggested story widgets, has made its first acquisition — a commenting platform called Squawk-It. Insticator CEO Zack Dugow said his platform benefits online publishers by keeping audiences engaged and bringing in new ad revenue (which is split between Insticator and the
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. Facebook hits 2.5B users in Q4 but shares sink from slow profits In its latest quarterly earnings report, Facebook said it
IBM announced today that the Board of Directors has elected IBM Senior Vice President for Cloud and Cognitive Software Arvind Krishna to replace current CEO Ginni Rometty. He will take over on April 6th after a couple of months of transition time. Rometty will remain with the company as Chairman of the Board. Krishna reportedly
Avast has made a huge business out of selling antivirus protection for computers and mobile devices, but more recently it was revealed that the Czech-based cybersecurity specialist was also cultivating another, more controversial, revenue stream: harvesting and selling on user data, some of which it amassed by way of those security tools. But as of
If you were the star of every show, would you watch more mobile television? Snapchat is betting that narcissism drives resonance for its new weekly videos that put you and your friends’ customizable Bitmoji avatars into a flurry of silly animated situations. Bitmoji TV premieres on Saturday morning, and it’s remarkably funny, exciting, and addictive.
On the same day that a Mississippi family is suing Amazon -owned smart camera maker Ring for not doing enough to prevent hackers from spying on their kids, the company has rolled out its previously announced “control center,” which it hopes will make you forget about its verifiably “awful” security practices. In a blog post
No one ever wants to pay more, and that’s as true for well-financed companies as it is for early-stage startup founders on a shoe-string budget. So if you love robots and machine learning, why spend more on your ticket to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020? Prices go up on January 31, which means you
SoftBank wants its competing portfolio companies to stop losing so much money and, in some cases, to merge. That’s the news out from the Financial Times today, which reported that Uber and DoorDash discussed merging last year. The talks didn’t wind up in a deal. The two companies, each heavily backed by SoftBank and its
A social media boosting startup, which bills itself as a service to increase increase a user’s Instagram followers, has exposed thousands of Instagram account passwords. The company, Social Captain, says it helps thousands of users to grow their Instagram follower counts by connecting their accounts to its platform. Users are asked to enter their Instagram
The open source Hyperledger Foundation announced the release of Hyperledger Fabric 2.0 today, the first such project to reach a 2.0 release. It’s a notable milestone. The blockchain as a business tool has certainly had a rocky road over the last few years, but there is still plenty to like about smart contracts that have
Medloop, which allows patients to manage healthcare needs and providers, has secured €6 million from Kamet Ventures and AXA. The cash will be used to enhance its product offering and continue expansion across Germany and the UK. Medloop is also developing an evidence-based medical rule engine embedded on the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) of patients.
The European parliament has voted overwhelmingly for tougher action to reduce e-waste, calling for the Commission to come up with beefed up rules by July 2020. Specifically, the parliament wants the Commission to adopt the delegated act foreseen in the 2014 Radio Equipment Directive by that deadline — or else table a legislative measure by the
At the FAA’s 23rd Annual Commercial Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, DC on Wednesday, a panel dedicated to the topic of trends in VC around space startups touched on public vs. private funding, the right kinds of space companies that should even be considering venture funding, and, perhaps most notably, the big L: Liquidity.
GoDaddy has reached an agreement to acquire Over, the startup behind an app that helps businesses create the photos and videos they need for social media. Justin Tsai, GoDaddy’s vice president of growth and product, said this acquisition is about acknowledging “a world of entrepreneurs who may never have a website.” He told me, “Over’s
As we spend more and more time on our phones, working busier and busier jobs, and leading more and more overwhelming lives, personal connection with others is harder and harder to come by. HeyMama wants to change that. The premium social network is aimed squarely at working mothers, looking to give them a space to
The proliferation of data breaches based on leaked passwords, and the rising tide of regulation that puts a hard stop on just how much user information can be collected, stored and used by companies have laid bare the holes in simple password and memorable-information-based verification systems. Today a startup called Persona, which has built a
French startup Bankin’ has introduced Bridge Pay this week, an API that lets you initiate payments using bank transfers from your app. Think about it as a sort of Stripe, but for bank transfers. The API currently covers 12 major French banks, which represent around 90% of retail bank accounts in France. Bankin’ is both
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