Drink-a-day startup Hooch raises $5M as it plans blockchain initiative
Right on the heels of launching its concierge service Hooch Black, Hooch announced today that it has raised $5 million in seed funding. The company’s basic subscription of $9.99 gets you one free drink per day from a variety of partner bars and...
This UK startup thinks it can win the self-driving car race with better machine learning
A new U.K. self-driving car startup founded by Amar Shah and Alex Kendall, two machine learning PhDs from University of Cambridge, is de-cloaking today. Wayve — backed by New York-based Compound, Europe’s Fly Ventures, and Brent Hoberman’s...
Instagram says ‘you’re all caught up’ in first time-well-spent feature
Without a chronological feed, it can be tough to tell if you’ve seen all the posts Instagram will show you. That can lead to more of the compulsive, passive, zombie browsing that research suggests is unhealthy as users endlessly scroll through stale...
Whisk, the smart food platform that makes recipes shoppable, acquires competitor Avocando
Whisk, the U.K. startup that has built a B2B data platform to power various food apps, including making online recipes ‘shoppable’, has acquired Avocando, a competitor based in Germany. The exact financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed,...
House committee accepts amendment to uphold ZTE ban
The bizarre recent tale of ZTE is getting another wrinkle. Earlier today, a bipartisan House Appropriations Committee unanimously voted to accept an amendment to uphold sanctions against the company. The amendment to the 2019 Commerce, Justice, and Science...
La Belle Vie wants to compete with Amazon Prime Now in Paris
French startup La Belle Vie announced a new funding round of $6.5 million earlier this week (€5.5 million). Julien Mangeard, Thibaut Faurès Fustel de Coulanges, Louis Duclert, Kima Ventures and Shake-Up Factory participated in the founding round....
Fortnite is finally coming to Android this summer
Fortnite is finally coming to Android…in a matter of months. After dominating the iOS gaming charts since March, the wildly popular sandbox survival game will be hitting the world’s top mobile operating system at some point this summer. Creator Epic...
zGlue launches a configurable system-on-a-chip to help developers implement customized chipsets
The complexity and cost of packing an array of sensors and power inside a small amount of space has opened the door to a wider and wider variety of use cases for internet-connected devices beyond just smart thermostats or cameras — and also exposed...
Does Google’s Duplex violate two-party consent laws?
Google’s Duplex, which calls businesses on your behalf and imitates a real human, ums and ahs included, has sparked a bit of controversy among privacy advocates. Doesn’t Google recording a person’s voice and sending it to a data center...
Job search engine Adzuna raises £8M Series C from Smedvig Capital
Adzuna, the meta-search engine for jobs, has raised £8 million in Series C funding from Smedvig Capital. The U.K. company’s previous backers include Index Ventures, Passion Capital, LocalGlobe, and over 400 Crowdcube investors. It takes total funding...
