head News of 04/09/20

Headspace Appoints Former Intuit Exec CeCe Morken As President And COO

As it looks to continue along its path of developing clinically validated digital therapeutics for consumer and clinical mental health and wellness, Headspace has bulked up its executive team with the addition of longtime Intuit executive, CeCe ...

Emergent BioSolutions Gets $14.5m In Federal Funding To Expedite COVID-19 Plasma Therapy Development

Last week, we spoke to the Head of Emergent BioSolutions’ Therapeutics Business Unit Dr. Laura Saward about h er company’s work developing plasma-based potential treatments for COVID-19 . Now, the company announced that it has received ...

Microsoft Brings Teams To Consumers And Launches Microsoft 365 Personal And Family Plans

Microsoft brings Teams to consumers and launches Microsoft 365 personal and family plans image Microsoft today announced a slew of new products, but at the core of the release is a major change to how the company is marketing its tools and services to consumers. Office 365, which has long been the brand for the company’s subscription ...

Tesla Email Reveals Two Employees Have Tested Positive For COVID-19

Two Tesla employees, who had been working at home for nearly two weeks, have tested positive for COVID-19, according to an internal email sent Thursday morning by the company’s head of environmental, health, and safety department and viewed ...

How One Company Is Fast-Tracking Development Of Potential Plasma-Based Treatments For The Coronavirus

Medical biotech company Emergent BioSolutions is one of the many health industry players turning its efforts towards addressing the current global coronavirus pandemic. Their work includes a two-pronged effort to pursue plasma-based treatments that ...

Ford, GM, Tesla Given The ‘Go Ahead’ To Produce Ventilators, Trump Says

Ford, GM and Tesla have been given the “go ahead” to make ventilators to help alleviate a shortage amid the COVID-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump said in a tweet Sunday that ended with a challenge to auto executives to show how good ...

Meditation Apps Offer Free Mindfulness, As Social Distancing Takes A Toll

Meditation apps offer free mindfulness, as social distancing takes a toll image I’m not sure how many days we are into this “15 days” thing . Frankly, I’m not really sure what day of the week it is. As we collectively lose our grip on reality and socialization and increasingly turn to technology to cope, a number of ...

Around Is The New Floating Head Video Chat Multitasking App

Around is the new floating head video chat multitasking app image You have to actually get work done, not just video call all day, but apps like Zoom want to take over your screen. Remote workers who need to stay in touch while staying productive are forced to juggle tabs. Meanwhile, call participants often look ...

Trump Says Google CEO Sundar Pichai Called To Apologize

Trump says Google CEO Sundar Pichai called to apologize image At what is now a daily coronavirus press briefing at the White House, President Trump today said that Google CEO Sundar Pichai called him to apologize. What Pichai apologized for wasn’t immediately clear, but Trump then went on to praise ...

NEA, Venture Capital’S Quiet Giant, Closes On $3.6 Billion

While many venture capital firms spend their days either chasing the limelight or shunning it, for the last 42 years New Enterprise Associates has just done the work of investing capital and building startup businesses. Now the firm has closed ...

As National COVID-19 Cases Top 1000, Insurers Waive Treatment Fees And U.S. Preps Stimulus

The number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. crossed 1,000 on Tuesday as President Donald Trump met with the nation’s largest insurers and members of his cabinet to discuss how to pay for treatment and lessen the financial blow of the ...

XYZ Reality Secures £5m To Bring A Hologram Headset To The Construction Industry

Augmented reality technology did not, it turns out, light the touch paper on a booming new industry. What we got instead were a few cute applications on smartphones and devices like Microsoft’s HoloLens, which has seen pretty limited success. ...

U.S. Response To The COVID-19 Coronavirus Moves From “Containment” To “Mitigation”

U.S. response to the COVID-19 coronavirus moves from “containment” to “mitigation” image In interviews across major television networks on Sunday, U.S. officials all-but-admitted that efforts to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, have failed and that the country now needs to move to mitigate the effects of the ...

These Leaders Are Coming To Robotics + AI On March 3. Why Aren’T You?

TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics + AI brings together a wide group of the ecosystem’s leading minds on March 3 at UC Berkeley. Over 1,000+ attendees are expected from all facets of the robotics and artificial intelligence space — ...

HTC Debuts ‘Project Proton’ Concept Vive Headset

HTC debuts ‘Project Proton’ concept Vive headset image Like practically everyone else in the mobile world, the cancellation of MWC on extremely short notice left HTC in the lurch. While the company has moved much of its efforts away from smartphones in general, the Taiwanese manufacturer has begun to use ...

Tradeshift Cuts Headcount By Three Figures In Effort To Turn Towards Profitability

Last month Tradeshift, a platform for supply chain payments which has achieved unicorn startups in recent years, had some good news and some bad news. It announced a Series F funding round of $240 million in equity and debt, raised from a ...

Financing For Social Impact And Climate Businesses Gets A Billion Dollar Boost With New KKR Fund

KKR , the multi-billion dollar, multi-strategy investment firm, has closed on over $1.3 billion for companies focused on social and environmental challenges. KKR Global Impact says its fund will focus on identifying and investing in companies ...

Will Apple, Facebook Or Microsoft Be The Future Of Augmented Reality?

Will Apple, Facebook or Microsoft be the future of augmented reality? image Tim Merel Contributor Tim Merel is managing director of Digi-Capital . More posts by this contributor VR/AR startup valuations reach $45 billion (on paper) Despite short-term questions, games ...

The Engineers Behind Google’S Bookbot Have Launched A Delivery Robot Startup

The engineers behind Google’s Bookbot have launched a delivery robot startup image The engineers behind Google’s short-lived Bookbot — a robot created within the company’s Area 120 incubator for experimental products — have launched their own startup to bring the sidewalk delivery bot back to life. The secretive ...

Calm Co-CEO Michael Acton Smith Explains Strategy Behind ‘Mental Fitness’ App

Mental wellness unicorn Calm has more than two million subscribers to its mindfulness and meditation app, raising over $140 million in funding to bring “mental fitness” practices into the daily lives of mainstream consumers. Anchored in ...