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FarmWise and its weed-pulling agribot harvest $14.5M in funding Automating agriculture is a complex proposition given the number and variety of tasks involved, but a number of robotics and autonomy companies are giving it their best shot. FarmWise seems to have impressed someone — it just raised $14.5 million to continue development of its autonomous weeding vehicle.
GoCardless launches US debit payments solution and opens San Francisco office GoCardless, the London fintech that aims to become the one-stop shop globally for businesses that want to let customers pay via recurring bank payments, has launched a U.S. debit solution. The company has also opened an office across the pond in San Francisco’s financial district, headed up by Andrew Gilboy, general manager, North America, who […]
Biology as technology will reinvent trillion-dollar industries We face two major threats today: one to the health of our planet and the other to our own. Fortunately, biology and technology are creating fixes for the planet as well as for the human body.
Tutoring business-in-a-box service Clark has been acquired by edtech startup Noodle Clark, the tutor management business-in-a-box service, has been acquired by the New York-based education startup Noodle for an undisclosed amount, TechCrunch has learned. Founded by John Katzman, the serial entrepreneur behind education technology giants including The Princeton Review and 2U, Noodle offers education search services to help people apply to the right programs that meet […]
Lyft faces lawsuit that alleges kidnapping at gunpoint and rape Lyft is facing another lawsuit pertaining to its handling of alleged sexual assaults at the hands of drivers on its platform. In a suit filed today in the San Francisco Superior Court, Alison Turkos accuses Lyft of 11 counts, including general negligence, vicarious liability for assault with a deadly weapon, sexual assault, sexual battery and […]
GoDaddy upgrades its website builder with customized marketing action plans GoDaddy’s website-building product GoCentral is getting an upgrade today — and along with new features, there’s a new name: Websites+Marketing. As you can probably guess, Websites+Marketing isn’t just a website builder. After all, as Senior Director of Product Management Heidi Gibson put it, a small business website is now part of a “a whole ecosystem […]
Facebook’s new policy Supreme Court could override Zuckerberg A real check to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s control is finally coming in the form of an 11 to 40-member Oversight Board that will review appeals to its policy decisions, like content takedowns, and make recommendations for changes. Today Facebook released the charter establishing the theoretically independent Oversight Board, with Zuckerberg explaining that when it […]
Twitch acquires gaming database site IGDB to improve its search and discovery features Amazon-owned Twitch has made a small but strategic acquisition designed to improve its search capabilities and better direct viewers to exactly the right content. The company is acquiring IGDB, the Internet Games Database (no relation to Amazon’s IMDb), a website dedicated to combining all the relevant information about games into a comprehensive resource for gamers […]
Colorcon, which develops colorants, coatings and films for pharmaceutical giants, has a new $50 million fund Colorcon, a 58-year-old company that develops, supplies and supports specialty products for the pharmaceutical industry — think food colorants, nutritional coatings, the film on time-release medications — is getting into the business of funding startups. It isn’t bringing aboard any traditional venture investors or taping off a corner of its Harleysville, Pa., offices so a […]
Macron announces €5 billion late-stage investment pledge from institutional investors President Emmanuel Macron announced in a speech ahead of France Digitale Day that the French government has convinced institutional investors to invest more heavily in late-stage VC funds and asset managers in one way or another. Institutional investors have committed to investing $5.5 billion (€5 billion). “We’ll have €2 billion that will go in so-called […]
Daily Crunch: The iPhone 11 goes to Disneyland 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. Review: The iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 do Disneyland after dark Matthew Panzarino continues his tradition of testing out the […]
Clever hide-and-seek AIs learn to use tools and break the rules The latest research from OpenAI put its machine learning agents in a simple game of hide-and-seek, where they pursued an arms race of ingenuity, using objects in unexpected ways to achieve their goal of seeing or being seen. This type of self-taught AI could prove useful in the real world as well.
Google starts highlighting key moments from videos in Search Google today announced an update to how it handles videos in search results. Instead of just listing relevant videos on the search results page, Google will now also highlight the most relevant parts of longer videos, based on timestamps provided by the video creators. That’s especially useful for how-to videos or documentaries. “Videos aren’t skimmable […]
Pax Labs’ Bharat Vasan is out as CEO Bharat Vasan is no longer the Chief Executive Officer at Pax Labs, the consumer tech company that makes cannabis vaporizers. A source familiar with the situation said that the board of directors made the decision to remove Vasan from the CEO role. His last day was Friday. We’ve reached out to Vasan for comment. Pax […]
Natural lighting is the key to Apple’s remodeled Fifth Ave. store When it opened in 2006, Apple’s Fifth Avenue flagship quickly became a top destination for New York City residents and tourists, alike. The big, glass cube was a radical departure from prior electronics stores, serving as the entrance to a 24-hour subterranean retail location. Location didn’t hurt either, with the company planting its flag across […]