Microsoft Azure announces its first region in Austria

Microsoft today announced its plans to launch a new data center region in Austria, its first in the country. With nearby Azure regions in Switzerland, Germany, France and a planned new region in northern Italy, this part of Europe now has its fair share of Azure coverage. Microsoft also noted that

Call analytics platform Invoca expands into sales, e-commerce and customer experience

Invoca, which helps companies extract and use data from customer phone calls, is expanding today with the launch of products for e-commerce, customer experience and sales teams, as well as a new Invoca Exchange, where businesses can find all of the platform’s third-party integrations. The com

Google calls DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit ‘deeply flawed’ in GIF-laden blog response

Google was clearly anticipating today’s U.S. Department of Justice antitrust complaint filing — the company posted an extensive rebuttal of the lawsuit to its Keyword company blog. The post, penned by SVP of Global Affairs and Google Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, suggests that the DO

Google Photos revives its prints subscription service, expands same-day print options

Google Photos is reviving its photo printing subscription service and introducing same-day prints. The company earlier this year had briefly tested a new program that used A.I. to suggest the month’s 10 best photos, which were then shipped to your home automatically. But Google ended the test

Beam is building a web browser that gathers knowledge from your web activity

Remember Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer? Those applications from the 1990s used emphatic metaphors in their names to talk about a simple task — browsing the web. Today, nobody would say that Google Chrome is a web explorer. Browsing the web has become an effortless — and often mindles

Robotic kitchen startup YPC raises a $1.8M seed round

Montreal-based YPC Technologies today announced that it has raised a $1.8 million seed round. Led by Hike Ventures and Real Ventures, the funding includes participation from Toyota AI Ventures and Uphill Capital, among others, designed to help the company pilot its kitchen robotics technology. Toyo

As Blizzard sunsets StarCraft II, some of its key creators raise cash for a new gaming studio

"speakable-summary" dir="ltr">Even as Blizzard pulls the plug on new updates for its StarCraft II game, nearly a decade after its launch, gaming investors are financing the next new thing coming from key members of the game’s early development team. Blizzard vets Tim Morten, the former product

Leading a $15 million round, Prosus Ventures makes the challenger bank Klar its first bet in Mexico

Klar, a new online bank based in Mexico City, has become the first big bet that Prosus Ventures (the firm formerly known as Naspers Ventures) is taking in Latin America outside of Brazil. Founded by Stefan Moller, a former consultant at Bain & Co. who advised large banks, Klar blends MollerR

Sym raises $9M Series A for its security workflow platform

Sym, a new platform that makes it easier for developers to integrate security and privacy workflows into their process, today announced that it has raised a $9 million Series A round led by Amplify Partners. Earlier this year, the company announced its $3 million seed round lead by Andy McLoughlin

Unusual Ventures’ Sarah Leary and John Vrionis join Extra Crunch Live now

Today at 2 p.m. EDT/11 a.m. PDT, Unusual Ventures’ Sarah Leary and John Vrionis are joining us over at the Extra Crunch Live stage! The Unusual Ventures team has investments spanning the consumer and enterprise space, including Robinhood, AppDynamics, Mulesoft, Winnie and more. That short lis

Pickle app puts on users, as millennials/Gen Z latch onto location apps to fight COVID lockdowns

As the coming of winter, combined with the coronavirus, continues to put new restrictions on peoples' movements, location-based apps are on the rise again. People are looking to find out who is close to them. Who is in their community. People are understandably looking for new friends and resou

The Polaris Slingshot R is a 3-wheel pocket rocket begging for electrification

The Polaris Slingshot has always wowed. Three wheels, open cockpit and a design reminiscent of the Batmobile. It draws a crowd and is a blast to drive. I spent several weeks in the reworked Polaris Slingshot. The company just unveiled a new version that is finally available with an automatic transm

Instagram rolls out fan badges for live videos, expands IGTV ads test

Instagram is today introducing a new way for creators to make money. The company is now rolling out badges in Instagram Live to an initial group of over 50,000 creators, who will be able to offer their fans the ability to purchase badges during their live videos to stand out in the comments and sho

Stampli, an invoice management software startup, launches a payments product

Stampli, a collaborative invoice management software company, introduced a payments product today called Stampli Direct Pay. The startup launched back in 2015 with a mission to simplify invoice management through collaboration (and a dash of AI). Interestingly, Stampli said it was uninterested at t