Airbnb plans for a new kind of travel post-COVID with flexible search
Since going public, most of the news out of Airbnb has been around policy. Today, the company has an announcement that’s all about the product.
As the pandemic evolves the way we do everything, and we collectively realize that much of that new behavior will be permanent, tech companies are lo
YouTube to launch parental control features for families with tweens and teens
YouTube announced this morning it will soon introduce a new experience designed for teens and tweens who are now too old for the schoolager-focused YouTube Kids app, but who may not be ready to explore all of YouTube. The company says it’s preparing to launch a beta test of new features that
Fintech startup Finix closes on $3M in Black and Latinx investor-led SPV
Many founders talk about their desire for a more diverse investor base. Richie Serna took that desire and made it a reality.
Serna, who founded payments infrastructure startup Finix in 2016, had raised more than $95 million in venture funding from the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners, American
Chinese mobile games are gaining ground in the US
Over the past year, the coronavirus crisis has spurred app usage in the United States as people stay indoors to limit contact with others. Mobile games particularly have enjoyed a boom, and among them, games from Chinese studios are gaining popularity.
Games released on the U.S. App Store and Googl
BigCommerce customers can now sell on Walmart’s online marketplace
BigCommerce has partnered with Walmart to allow its customers to sell on the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer’s e-commerce marketplace, it announced this morning. Shares of Austin-based BigCommerce rose sharply in pre-market trading after the news, gaining around 10% before the bell.
Walm
Blueshift raises $30M for its AI-based, integrated approach to marketing
The concept of the “marketing cloud” — sold by the likes of Salesforce, Oracle and Adobe — has become a standard way for large tech companies to package together and sell marketing tools to businesses that want to improve how they use digital channels to grow their business.
Mozilla beefs up anti-cross-site tracking in Firefox, as Chrome still lags on privacy
Mozilla has further beefed up anti-tracking measures in its Firefox browser. In a blog post yesterday it announced that Firefox 86 has an extra layer of anti-cookie tracking built into the enhanced tracking protection (ETP) strict mode — which it’s calling “Total Cookie Protection
Amazon Echo Show 10 review: Unmoved
Every new smart home device invites new questions. Questions of privacy, security and what we're willing to give up for the sake of convenience. It's not an anti-technology stance to welcome these conversations and assess new products as we invite them into our homes.
For my part, my apartm
Everdrop raises $21.8M Series A round led by Felix Capital for its dissolvable cleaning tablet
It's almost too simple. You get a tablet made of household chemicals that can be dissolved in water which can become a cleaning spray for the kitchen, glass and bathroom, with no need to ship the water it is dissolved into because it literally comes out of your tap. That was the premise of Muni
Workiz locks in $13M for productivity tools aimed at home services professionals
Knowledge workers — those whose professions tend to be anchored to desks or computers — have long been the most obvious and primary focus for a lot of B2B apps and services. But as the wider world migrates to doing more and more on smartphones and other connected devices, the opportunit
Joby Aviation takes flight into the public markets via a SPAC merger
Joby Aviation, a startup that has spent a more than a decade developing an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing passenger aircraft, will become a public company through a merger with Reinvent Technology Partners, a special purpose acquisition company from well-known investor and LinkedIn co-
Emotive raises $50M to make text marketing more conversational
While more businesses are turning to text messages as a marketing channel, Emotive CEO Brian Zatulove argued that most of them are just treating it as another “newsletter blast.”
“The reason the channel performs so well is it’s not saturated,” Zatulove said. But that
RecargaPay closes a $70 million Series C
RecargaPay, a Brazil-based fintech that allows users to top off their prepaid cell phones online, announced this morning that they've closed their $70 million Series C. The company, which operates solely in Brazil, was launched in 2010 by Miami-based serial entrepreneur Rodrigo Teijeiro, who is
Symbio is working with Toyota and Nissan to increase robotic assembly efficiency
Bay Area-based AI startup Symbio today announced its “official launch.” Backed by a total of $30 million in funding, the company has struck deals with both Nissan and Toyota to implement its software in U.S.-based factories.
The company says its SymbioDCS technology is capable of dramatically i