Lego Mindstorms have paved the way for many programmable toys. And Austrian startup Robo Wunderkind is building a new kind of Lego-like programmable kit. The startup first launched on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage and just raised $1.2 million (€1 million) from SOSV, Austrian Federal Promotional Bank and multiple business angels. Compared to many programmable toys

If you’re looking to travel abroad — and especially if you’re looking to work while doing so — it might be tough to convince yourself you can find a cool boutique hotel that caters to a lot of different price points, as well as surround yourself with people that will help you feel like you

Earlier this week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is slated to testify on the use and protection of user data in Washington D.C. on April 11. Turns out, Zuckerberg will have a busier week in D.C. than expected, with the Senate Judiciary and Senate Commerce Committees announcing a

You only get one link on Instagram, but Tap Bio lets you point that to a customized landing page full of all the sites you want to share. Rather than constantly changing your Instagram profile URL, you can easily add slides equipped with links to your Tap Bio corresponding to your latest Instagram posts. Tap

Instacart, the grocery delivery startup that has a partnership of sorts with Whole Foods, is raising $150 million in funding, Axios first reported. This is on top of Instacart’s $200 million raise at a $4.2 billion valuation in February. Instacart has since confirmed the raise, bringing its total Series E round up to $350 million

The rise of chatbots and smart speaker-powered voice assistants, such as Alexa and Google Home, has produced the need for specialist analytics so that developers can track how well those conversational interfaces are working. Hoping to take a chunk of this nascent market, including competing with Google’s own chatbot analytics product Chatbase, is Istanbul and

Comet.ml allows data scientists and developers to easily monitor, compare and optimize their machine learning models. The New York-based company is launching its product today, after completing the TechStars-powered Amazon Alexa Accelerator program and raising a $2.3 million seed round led by Trilogy Equity partners, together with Two Sigma Ventures, Founders Co-Op, Fathom Capital, TechStars Ventures

We keep hearing about the value of customer experience from some of the world’s biggest software companies. Last week Adobe trotted out the customer experience system of record at Adobe Summit. Meanwhile, Salesforce announced its Integration Cloud. Today Kahuna, a Redwood City, California startup, announced a platform to compete with the giants to help brands

Fetch Robotics capped off 2017 with a $25 million Series B, bringing its total up to $48 million. It’s clear that investors are taken with the San Jose-based automation company. By most accounts, increasingly automated warehouses are undergoing a staffing crunch, and Fetch offers the promise of humans and robots working peacefully in tandem. Today

It’s become a common complaint that social media allows everyone to limit their news consumption to stories that reinforce what they already believe. But the team at Knowhere says it’s found a solution: News stories written by machines. The idea is that Knowhere’s technology can eliminate some of the in-built human bias, and also pull from

Digital media company Fullscreen announced this morning that it has acquired Reelio . The startup has described itself as “the Match.com of brands and creators on YouTube,” collecting data about video creators and connecting them with marketers who want to use their skills and reach their audience. In the announcement, Fullscreen suggests that Reelio’s technology

Mark Zuckerberg will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11. E&C Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) made this announcement this morning, clarifying that Zuckerberg will speak on the company’s use and protection of user data. Here’s what the Congressmen had to say in a

Duo Security is opening a new office in Downtown Detroit, expanding from its headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan . The company will immediately relocate 30 team members to a shared space in Bamboo Detroit in the Madison Building and by the end of the year, and plans on moving into a 9,000 square foot space

JUMP Bikes, the on-demand biking service that integrates with Uber, has been weighing both acquisition and investment offers. A decision has not yet been reached, but right now possible options include a sale to Uber at a price that exceeds $100 million, or a venture investment round, multiple sources tell TechCrunch. One of the possible

MIT is disassociating itself from Nectome, the Y Combinator-backed startup promising to preserve customers’ brains for the possibility of future digital upload. Co-founder Robert McIntyre described the procedure as “100 percent fatal” — it involves connecting terminally ill patients to a machine that pumps embalming fluids into their arteries. The company has collected (refundable) $10,000

Snapchat has today introduced a new group video chat feature, letting users chat with up to 16 of their closest friends. If users need more people in the chat (which, for those of us who have large conference calls, sounds awful!), Snap is also offering group voice calls with up to 32 participants. The feature

Digital music giant Spotify is joining the stock market on Tuesday, making it the biggest consumer tech company to go public since Snap debuted early last year. But unlike Snap, Spotify isn’t doing an IPO. The “o” part of IPO stands for offering and Spotify isn’t raising any money. Instead, existing Spotify shareholders will be

Robinhood is rolling out its Coinbase-killer that’s already helped the fintech startup’s valuation grow 4X in a year. Zero-fee trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum is now available to all investors in California, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Montana. Everyone else is still on the waitlist. Robinhood users everywhere can already track 16 crypto coins including BTC, ETH, Litecoin,

While taking some time off to travel before his next gig, Sisun Lee spent a lot of time in Korea — where he found himself drinking alcohol pretty much every night and then getting rolling the next morning, regardless of hangover status. He also found that there were popular local herbal hangover drinks that everyone

As expected since February, Alibaba will buy all outstanding shares of Ele.me that it doesn’t already own. Best-known for food deliveries, Ele.me claims to be China’s biggest online delivery and local services platform. In an announcement, Alibaba said the deal values Ele.me at $9.5 billion. Alibaba, which first invested in Ele.me two years ago, and

Uber is closing the doors on its on-demand package delivery service for merchants, RUSH, in New York City, San Francisco and Chicago, TechCrunch has learned. In an email to users, Uber said it plans to close RUSH operations June 30, 2018. “At Uber, we believe in making big bold bets, and while ending UberRUSH comes

A company called Clipisode is today launching a new service that’s essentially a “talk show in a box,” as founder Brian Alvey describes it. Similar to how Anchor now allows anyone to build a professional podcast using simple mobile and web tools, Clipisode does this for video content. With Clipisode, you can record a video

Whenever you are doing something online that requires you to present an official ID like a passport or driver’s license to complete the transaction, it presents risk to both parties. Consumers want to know they are secure and brands want to know the person is using valid credentials. That’s where Veriff comes in. Kaarel Kotkas,

ClearVoice recently launched a new feature to give freelancers a better way to show off their work and get new jobs. CV Portfolios offer an easier alternative to personal websites that are often sparsely populated, out-of-date or otherwise neglected. Thanks a technology that the company is calling VoiceGraph, writers no longer have to keep the