sky News of 12/10/19

Airbnb Officially Bans All Open-Invite Parties And Events

One month after Airbnb confirmed plans to verify all of its listings , the home-sharing giant has announced additional efforts to protect its hosts and guests. Airbnb will provide a “clear and actionable enforcement framework” for ...

Atomico Partner Tom Wehmeier Reviews ‘The State Of European Tech’ 2019 Report

Atomico Partner Tom Wehmeier reviews ‘The State of European Tech’ 2019 report image Atomico , the European venture capital firm founded by Skype’s Niklas Zennström , has released its latest annual The State of European Tech report, published in partnership with Slush and Orrick. As part of the report, the authors ...

Leading Robotics VCs Talk About Where They’Re Investing

The Valley’s affinity for robotics shows no signs of cooling. Technical enhancements through innovations like AI/ML, compute power and big data utilization continue to drive new performance milestones, efficiencies and use cases. Despite the ...

Messaging App Wire Confirms $8.2m Raise, Responds To Privacy Concerns After Moving Holding Company To The US

Big changes are afoot for Wire , an enterprise-focused end-to-end encrypted messaging app and service that advertises itself as “the most secure collaboration platform”. In February, Wire quietly raised $8.2 million from Morpheus ...

JetPack Aviation Raises $2m To Build The Prototype Of Its Flying Motorcycle

Flying cars are fine – but why use a car when you can have a motorcycle instead? YC-backed startup JetPack Aviation wants to answer that question with the world’s first flying motorcycle, a personal aircraft dubbed ‘The Speeder,’ ...

Airbnb To Verify All Of Its Listings

Following the death of five people at a Halloween party hosted at a California Airbnb rental, and a scathing Vice report outlining Airbnb’s failure to prevent nation-wide scams, the company says it will begin verifying all seven million of ...

Airbnb To Ban ‘Party Houses’ In Wake Of Halloween Shooting That Left 5 Dead

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said Saturday the company will ban “party houses” and take other steps to safeguard hosts and guests after five people died at a Halloween party hosted at California home that was rented on the service. Chesky ...

Superhuman Founder Seeks To Raise Debut Venture Fund

The founder of one of 2019’s most buzzworthy startups is putting on his VC hat. Rahul Vohra, the creator of the $30/month subscription emailing service Superhuman , and Todd Goldberg, the founder of the marketing business Mailjoy , are ...

Airbnb’S WeWork Problem

Airbnb’s WeWork problem image Airbnb may be another overvalued “unicorn,” but it’s no WeWork. The Information this morning reported new Airbnb financials — indicating a massive increase in operating losses — that immediately call Airbnb’s future ...

The Station: A New Self-Driving Car Startup, Inside Tesla’S v10 Software, Lilium’S Big Round

The Station: A new self-driving car startup, Inside Tesla’s V10 software, Lilium’s big round image If you haven’t heard, TechCrunch has officially launched a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in the future — whether it’s by bike, bus, scooter, car, train, truck, flying ...

Sources: Lilium Is Looking To Raise Up To $500m For Its Electric Flying Taxis

“Flying cars” — airborne vehicles designed for urban and other short-distance commutes to replace conventional private automobiles — are (at best) still years away from being a reality, with significant safety, technology and ...

Gatsby Raises $15m Series A For Its Modern Web Development Platform

Gatsby raises $15M Series A for its modern web development platform image Gatsby , a platform that uses modern web technologies like React and GraphQL to help developers build better sites faster, today announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A round led by CRV. Previous investors Trinity Ventures, Mango Capital, ...

Starship Technologies CEO Lex Bayer On Focus And Opportunity In Autonomous Delivery

Starship Technologies is fresh off a recent $40 million funding round , and the robotics startup finds itself in a much-changed market compared to when it got its start in 2014. Founded by software industry veterans, including Skype and Rdio ...

Skype Upgrades Its Messaging Feature With Drafts, Bookmarks And More

Skype upgrades its messaging feature with drafts, bookmarks and more image Skype is best known for being a video calling app and, to some extent, that’s because its messaging feature set has been a bit underdeveloped. Today, the company is working to change that image with a series of improvements to Skype’s ...

Frontier Technologies Are Moving Closer To The Center Of Venture Investment

As the technologies that were once considered science fiction become the purview of science, the venture capital firms that were once investing at the industry’s fringes are now finding themselves at the heart of the technology industry. ...

YC Is Doubling Down On These Investment Theses In Its Most Recent Batch

Nearly 200 startups have just graduated from the prestigious San Francisco startup accelerator Y Combinator . The flock of companies are now free to proceed company-building with a fresh $150,000 check and three-months full of tips and tricks from ...

Waymo Self-Driving Cars Head To Florida For Rainy Season

Waymo is taking some of its autonomous vehicles to Florida just in time for hurricane season to begin testing in heavy rain. The move to Florida will focus on testing how its myriad of sensors hold up during the region’s rainy season as ...

Microsoft Tweaks Privacy Policy To Admit Humans Can Listen To Skype Translator And Cortana Audio

Microsoft is the latest tech giant to amend its privacy policy after media reports revealed it uses human contractors to review audio recordings of Skype and Cortana users. A section in the policy on how the company uses personal data now reads ...

Self-Driving Truck Startup Starsky Launches Hutch, Its API And Nerve Center

Self-driving truck startup Starsky launches Hutch, its API and nerve center image Starsky Robotics has been building its self-driving — and human-driven — truck business for three years now. And it’s finally ready to show off its first product. It’s not, as one might presume, a self-driving truck. This ...

Apple Is Under Formal Antitrust Probe In Russia

Make way for another antitrust investigation into big tech. Step forward Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), which has opened an official probe of Apple — following a complaint lodged in March by security company Kaspersky Labs. ...