Day: February 12, 2020

Japanese orbital debris removal technology startup Astroscale is going to be working with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on the agency’s first mission to remove some of the junk that currently exists on orbit. They’ve been selected by the age y to participate in its Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration project (CRD2) which includes […]

Around 70% of the world’s population now has some form of bank account or — thanks to mobile phones — a facility to receive and send money virtually, according to the World Bank. But when it comes to people crossing borders and setting up lives in new countries, they essentially leave behind their financial histories, […]

WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app, revealed today just how big it has become. The Facebook -owned app said it has amassed two billion users, up from 1.5 billion it revealed two years ago. It also remains free of ads and does not charge its users any fee. The announcement today makes WhatsApp only the second […]

Mike Volpi Contributor Share on Twitter Mike Volpi is a general partner at Index Ventures. Before co-founding the firm’s San Francisco office with Danny Rimer, Volpi served as the chief strategy officer at Cisco Systems. More posts by this contributor How open-source software took over the world Much has been made about the roles and […]

Model9, an Israeli startup launched by mainframe vets, has come up with a way to transfer data between mainframe computers and the cloud, and today the company announced a $9 million Series A. Intel Capital led the round with help from existing investors including StageOne, North First Ventures and Glenrock Israel. The company reports it […]

The worlds of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity have become deeply entwined in recent years, as organizations work to keep up with — and ideally block — increasingly sophisticated malicious hackers. Today, a startup that’s built a deep learning solution that it claims can both identify and stop even viruses that have yet to be identified […]

Pick any app on your phone, and there’s a greater than average chance that it’s tracking your location right now. Sometimes, they don’t even tell you. Your location can be continually collected and uploaded, then monetized by advertisers and other data tracking firms. These companies also sell the data to the government — no warrants […]

Last year we embarked on a mission to democratize information for startups, and today we are celebrating the one-year anniversary of our membership program, Extra Crunch.  Since launching Extra Crunch, we’ve published more than 1,000 articles, onboarded a few new hires, overhauled our technical infrastructure, expanded into five new European countries, made a handful of […]

Battery Ventures, the now 37-year-old investment firm, just closed on two new funds with $2 billion in capital commitments — nearly double the record-breaking $1.2 billion that the firm closed on exactly two years ago. The raise is part of a broader trend of firms rushing back to market every two years to lock down […]

The UK government has taken the next step in its grand policymaking challenge to tame the worst excesses of social media by regulating a broad range of online harms. As a result, it has named Ofcom, the existing communications watchdog, as its preferred pick for enforcing rules around “harmful speech” on platforms such as Facebook, […]