Machine intelligence startups are the black sheep of the startup world. The new kids on the block are challenging investors to do their technical homework and differentiate themselves in intentional ways. Y Combinator joined a growing list of investors offering exclusive services to these companies in a specialized AI track for its latest S17 batch

Wattpad, the social publishing platform behind apps for sharing original stories and chat fiction, is today venturing into video with the launch of a new app called Raccoon. Unlike its predecessors, Raccoon will focus on non-fiction video-based storytelling, with the goal of connecting people who want to create and watch stories that either entertain or

What if you could see if your Instagrams made people happy, surprised or disgusted? That’s just one of the innovative features of new photo-sharing social network Polygram. Using facial detection, Polygram gives you analytics about the emotional reactions people have to the photos you post. Polygram also has augmented reality makeup that lets you look

Real estate tech startup Amitree is making life easier for real estate agents, which it hopes will make life even easier for the homebuyers they work with. The company has raised $7 million to grow its Folio assistant for real estate agents. It’s been a long, strange trip for Amitree. The company originally launched with

San Francisco-based Blend is simplifying the process of mortgage applications for both borrowers and lenders, but is looking to expand into other lending products. To do that the company has raised $100 million in new funding led by Greylock, with participation from a bunch of existing investors. Founded in 2012 by a group of Palantir

WeWork just announced that it’s receiving a massive $4.4 billion investment from SoftBank Group and SoftBank Vision Fund. It’s been less than a month since WeWork announced $500 million in funding for a standalone WeWork China business, which SoftBank participated in. It’s also launching in Japan through a joint venture with SoftBank — so this

Outdoor Voices, the ‘athleisure’ brand that wants to take on Lululemon, has closed a $9 million round of funding. The round was led by Mickey Drexler, with participation from a few strategic partners including Walter Robb (former co-CEO of Whole Foods) and OV’s lead manufacturer. As part of the deal, Drexler will take over as

This morning, Cloud Elements, a five-year old startup, announced the latest release of its API integration platform, which has been designed to put data at the center of its integration strategy. In the not-so distant past, large proprietary software stacks ruled the enterprise. These companies wanted to lock you into their way of operating, and

SparkLabs managing partner Brian Kang SparkLabs Group started in 2012 with a Seoul-based accelerator dedicated to boosting South Korea’s then-nascent startup ecosystem. Now it’s going back to its roots with the launch of a $50 million fund for early-stage Korean startups that want to expand globally. The Korean fund’s anchor investors are SeAH and Korea

Noah Schottenstein Contributor Noah Schottenstein is an associate at Baker Botts LLP. The entrepreneurial ecosystem has seen an unprecedented rush of investment over the past five years. But deal activity slowed considerably in 2016 and has leveled off during the first part of 2017. As trends continue to revert to the pre-2013 means, entrepreneurs should

Swiss startup Dacuda’s 3D scanning division was acquired by Magic Leap in February, but it seems the company’s founder, Michael Born, is just getting started with computer vision. He and three others who didn’t go over to the much-hyped and intensely secretive AR company have formed a new one: PXL Vision AG, focused on real-time

Match Group, the parent company of a variety of dating apps, offered to acquire Bumble for $450 million over the summer, according to sources close to the deal. A source close to the company suggests that Bumble is valued at over $1 billion. The sources independently confirm reporting from Forbes about the deal earlier this

Left to Right: VP Production Dirk Gebser, Head of Recruitment Meggy Sailer, CCO Dr Remo Gerber, and co-founder CEO Daniel Wiegand Lilium is almost as ambitious as European startups come. The Munich-based company is developing an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) jet, which it hopes will one day power an on-demand “air taxi” service,

Pinterest is adding a new feature today that allows users to pinch a photo to zoom in and out on various Pins, matching a feature that’s available on a lot of other services, like Instagram. Pinterest is trying to be a central hub of high-quality photos and videos centered around ideas and products, but this

Four long years ago John O’Nolan released a content management system for bloggers that was as elegant as it was spooky. Called Ghost, the original app was a promising Kickstarter product with little pizazz. Now the app is ready to take on your toughest blogs. O’Nolan just released version 1.0 of the software, a move

Without the heavyweight backing for the platform from former CEO Travis Kalanick, Uber’s head of developer product Chris Saad is leaving the company. He believes it’s unclear where the platform will rank in Uber’s revised priorities as it tries to right the ship, and so is moving on to a company where working with outside

Narrativ founder and CEO Shirley Chen said there’s a big revenue opportunity that’s gone largely untapped by online publishers — namely, the links those publishers are already using to direct readers to buy the products mentioned in an article. Sure, affiliate links are a common business model, where publishers get a cut of the business

Attention nonprofits and NGOs! Apply to showcase in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt SF on Wednesday, September 20th. In 2014, TechCrunch launched the Include Program to promote diversity within the tech world. As part of this program, TechCrunch invites select nonprofits and NGOs to exhibit in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco. Showcasing in

Time is marching on — sometimes at an alarming rate — and we’re quickly approaching TechCrunch’s annual huge conference in San Francisco. TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 is less than a month away at 48 Pier in San Francisco. This year’s lineup includes a stellar group of speakers, including Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann, Golden State Warriors superstar

Last night, OpenAI’s Dota 2 bot beat the world’s most celebrated professional players in one-on-one battles, showing just how advanced these machine learning systems are getting. The bot beat Danil “Dendi” Ishutin rather easily at The International, one of the biggest eSports events in the world, and remains undefeated against the world’s top Dota 2

If you don’t care too much about loyalty programs, chances are that you’ve been relying on platforms like Booking.com and Expedia to find the cheapest flights and hotel rooms. Moneytis wants to do the exact same thing, but for foreign exchange services. TransferWise is arguably the biggest consumer brand in international transfers. Instead of telling

U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is concluding his tech tour of the West Coast today with a visit to Google’s Mountain View campus. Mattis spent time at Amazon and DiuX, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, earlier in the week. His key takeaway from all the socializing with tech leaders is that the Department of

Y Combinator backed Plasticity is tackling the problem of getting software systems to better understand text, using deep learning models trained to understand what they’re reading on Wikipedia articles — and offering an API for developers to enhance their own interfaces. Specifically they’re offering two APIs for developers to build “more robust conversational interfaces”, as

Hey startups! Disrupt San Francisco (September 18-20) is just a few weeks away and registration is open for startups looking to showcase their product or company to thousands of people on the Disrupt floor. According to Crunchbase, startups that exhibited in Startup Alley at Disrupt SF 2016 raised more than $35 million in seed and

Sleeperbot, which has raised about $2M in seed funding from Birchmere VC and Expa, and boasts hundreds of thousands of users, calls itself Slack for sports. It’s essentially an app (and website) that lets sports fans have conversations around different subjects they’re passionate about. These discussions happen in channels – some of which are created

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly venture-themed podcast where we dive into the numbers behind the noise. Forget the summer lull, friends. This week was chock full of news that broke right up until the very last minute. Matthew Lynley was off this week, but Katie Roof and myself were incredibly lucky to

On a Tuesday morning in Lima, Peru, MapQuest co-founder Chris Heivly stood onstage before 600 attentive listeners at Peru Venture Capital Conference, a photo of an Amish buggy projected behind him. “It’s a common sight in the town MapQuest was created,” Heivly says. “If you can build MapQuest in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, think of what you

Cryptocurrencies are back. But did they ever go away? If you ask cryptocurrency advocates, they’re going to tell you that it’s been a slow and steady rise filled with initial coin offerings, forks and updates. That’s why we’re excited to welcome Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and AngelList co-founder and CEO Naval Ravikant at TechCrunch Disrupt

The ascendance of the so-called “hard right” in the US and the Trump administration’s work to protect its power means it’s unlikely the movement will be beaten by Democrats or left leaning parties at this point. The power of the hard right in red-states has becomeinstitutionalized. So perhaps the answer is, instead, empowering traditional Conservatives