Ebay this morning announced its plans to introduce new image search capabilities that will allow the company to better compete with the likes of Pinterest, Google and Amazon, all of which already support the use of photos in order to connect online shoppers with products of interest. There are two parts to eBay‘s implementation of visual search: Image Search and Find It on eBay. With Read More

Mapping expert HERE is launching a Real-Time Traffic service that pulls aggregated data from sensors in Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz vehicles that are actually out driving the road, making it the first commercial traffic service of its kind that collects real-time information from vehicles from competing carmakers, according to HERE. The car companies involved are actually all part owners of Read More

When August Home raised its last big round nearly two and half years ago, the smart lock maker was targeting retail expansion. That‘s still part of the plan for the company‘s new 25 million Series C, but the real story of this latest round is increasing focus on its partnership program, August Access. The service has already made some headway in the rental market, counting Read More

After a beta that kicked off earlier in 2017, crowdsourced navigation app Waze is coming to Android Auto. The Google-owned Waze seemed like a shoe-in for gaining app support for Android‘s native in-car mode, but it‘s taken a while to bring it to Android Auto - but the months-long beta and the time show that Waze wanted to get the experience right for drivers. The Waze Read More

Apple has teamed up with Australian-based Cochlear to bring iPhone users the first made for iPhone Cochlear implant. Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June, Cochlear‘s Nucleus 7 Sound Processorcan now stream sound directly from a compatible iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to a patient‘s surgically embedded sound processor. The device also allows those with Read More

On the heels of announcing a fresh 70 million in funding led bySwedish investment firm Kinnevik AB, Betterment is launching a new messaging feature that will allow users to ask questions and get answers from its team of financial advisors. Read More

Things in the normally placid world of open source hardware are heating up as major figures in the Maker movement have begun speaking out against the current managing director of Arduino AG, Frederico Musto. The Italian engineer became a part owner in the company after buying out one of the original five founders and ultimately came to run Arduino AG, a holding company that owns the trademark Read More

Nintendo is selling its new Switch console as fast as it can make them, with 1.97 million sold during the quarter ended in June, which the company just reported. The total Switch sales to date now stand at 4.7 million, which is very strong for under two quarters of market availability, and on track to eclipse total lifetime Wii U sales in perhaps under a year, especially if Nintendo has a Read More

Jinn, the U.K. same-hour shop on your behalf‘ delivery app, has pulled out of all markets outside London, TechCrunch has learned. According to sources, the startup shut down operations in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds as of yesterday, whilst I understand the Spanish team may have been let go, too. Read More

Since 2010,Marqetahas quietly established itself as the underlying tech provider for businesses that are looking to issue virtual and physical debit and credit cards to employees, partners and customers alike. As it looks to expand internationally and sign up customers around the globe, the company has taken 25 million in strategic investment from payments heavyweight Visa. Read More

China‘s Xiaomi, once the world‘s highest valued tech startup, is getting over a disappointing past two years with a notable spike in sales in its homeland during the second quarter of 2017. That‘s according a new report from analyst firm Canalys, which estimates that Xiaomi, which wasvalued at 45 billion at the end of 2014, shipped 15 million phones during the quarter to Read More

LinkedIn is giving businesses a new way to see what kinds of audiences they‘re attracting with their marketing efforts. The Website Demographics tool allows businesses to break down their website visitors across eight categories including job title, industry, company and location. After all, that‘s the kind of data that we‘re all providing as LinkedIn users. To connect that Read More

Hot on the heels of reports that Facebook is developing its own take on Amazon Echo, China‘s Xiaomi has joined the tech company masses by jumping into the increasingly-crowded smart speaker space. The Mi AI Speaker is Xiaomi‘s first take at rivaling the Echo, which has alreadyinspired a product from Alibaba in China and countsofferings from Googleand Appleamong its Read More

Consumer robot maker iRobot is to acquire its largest European distributor, Robopolis, in a cash deal worth 141 million. The company said it‘s signed a definitive agreement to acquire the privately-held, French company, with the acquisition expected to close in October 2017. Read More

Cleo, the London-based fintech startup that offers an AI-powered chatbot to help you manage your finances, has closed 2 million in further funding, adding to an impressive list of backers that already includes Skype founder Niklas Zennstrm. The new round is led by LocalGlobe, the seed VC firm founded by father and son duo Robin and Saul Klein, with participation from a number of Read More

Elon Musk‘s Boring Company is getting closer to becoming a reality. The businessman conceived the idea in December in response to the pain of clogged up roads and traffic jams, and it has begun to take shape thanks to work carried out this summer. The basic idea is that underground tunnels can transport vehiclesfrom A to B more quickly and efficiently than roads, with no time wasted Read More

Having a baby and want to know if your hospital is particularly C-section happy? Yelp aims to make that process a bit easier with the addition of a new maternity care rate feature. Expectant mothers have been able to get similar information about the maternity care of a particular hospital from state websites already but the information is often hard to find. Yelp, which rolled the feature Read More

Tencent, Asia‘s highest-valued tech company, has continued to invest in India after it backed online education service BYJU‘s. The startup that includes the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Sequoia among its investors. The size of the investment has not been disclosed, but a source close to the deal told TechCrunch that it valuesBYJU‘s around the 800 million mark. Tencent Read More

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg might not be able to agree about much when it comes to AI these days, but the pair do seem to see the same potential inVicarious, a startup applying unsupervised learning techniques to robots.Musk andZuckerberg were two of the early backers ofVicarious. The startup announced that it raised an additional 50 million in financing this morning (via Read More

Facebook is apparently working on its own smart speaker and has acquired digital rights management company Source3, SoftBank could bet billions on Uber, Duolingo raises 25 million and more. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

Beijing-based Momenta announced this morning that it raised a 46 million Series B round led by NIO Capital, Sequoia Capital China and Hillhouse Capital. Momenta produces self-driving car software that applies deep learning to mapping, path planning and object recognition problems.Shunwei Capital, Sinovation Ventures, Unity Ventures andDaimler also participated in the round. Quite a few U.S. Read More

As moviemaking becomes as much a science as an art, the moviemakers need to ever-better ways to gauge audience reactions. Did they enjoy it? How much exactly? At minute 42? A system from Caltech and Disney Research uses a facial expression tracking neural network to learn and predict how members of the audience react, perhaps setting the stage for a new generation of Nielsen ratings. Read More

Spin, the bike-sharing service that lets you pick up and drop off a bike anywhere in a city, is coming to South San Francisco. The company‘s dockless bike-sharing service made its debut in Seattle last week, and is now spinning its way down south to the Bay Area. Read More

Artificial intelligence-focused investment funds are a dime a dozen these days. Everyone knows there‘s money to be made from AI, but to capture value, good VCs know they need to back products and not technologies. This has left a bit of a void in the space where research occurs within research institutions and large tech companies and commercialization occurs within verticalized Read More