Author: pekandesigns

 Alexa’s ability to help you find the right music got a boost this week. The virtual assistant is now able to pull up music for a wide range of activities – like music to focus to, music to nap to, to run to, to meditate to, to cook to, and much more – just by […]

 Toyota has agreed to purchase a five percent stake in Mazda, and will build a joint plant in the U.S. worth $1.6 billion, the automaker revealed today. Toyota also said it’s going to increase its investment in “crucial fields” related to the future of automotive technology, including self-driving, artificial intelligence and green vehicle tech. The […]

 Facility management might not sound like the sexiest use of AI technology. But office space can be a huge expense for larger businesses — the biggest after staff costs — which is why Y Combinator-backed startup, VergeSense, says it’s settled on facility management as the initial target for an AI-powered sensing device it’s been developing […]

 Indeed, the job platform with over 200 million people searching for jobs each month, is acquiring Interviewed, the online job assessment tool. The terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but all 12 of Interviewed’s employees, including the three co-founders, will be going to work at Indeed. Based in San Francisco, Interviewed was part of […]

 Auris Surgical Robotics, a 10-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based surgical robotics company that was founded by serial entrepreneur Frederic Moll, has quietly raised $280 million in Series D funding led by Coatue Management. The company had previously raised at least $184 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its other backers include Mithril Capital Management (cofounded by Peter […]

 Elon Musk might make his own Hyperloop after all, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is said to be planning to build the Hyperloop portion of his planned underground tunnel-based Hyperloop network himself, rather than relying on outside partners already developing commercial Hyperloop technology. The ‘Hyperloop’ trademark has already […]

 Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-themed podcast where we walk through the numbers driving Silicon Valley each and every week. This episode, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and I — Alex Wilhelm — were joined by NEA partner Rick Yang to dig into the week’s earnings, IPOs, and surprise M&A. It was a packed news cycle, with so […]

 Streaming music service Spotify should finally make its way to Microsoft’s Xbox One sometime soon, as a report from The Verge confirms user posts from Reddit that a beta version of the app is being tested internally at Xbox. The Spotify app has been available on PlayStation 4 since 2015, so its arrival on Microsoft’s […]

 Face-morphing app FaceApp, which uses a neural network for editing selfies in a photorealistic fashion, has updated its app to what it’s calling FaceApp 2.0 — further fleshing out its monetization play with a Pro version that contains a series of selfie styling/beautifying filters. Read More Source: New feed

 If you’re one of those people that worries that you haven’t accomplished much in your life, you probably shouldn’t read this profile of Kavya Kopparapu, a teenager who has probably done more in her time at high school than I’ve done since I graduated. Read More Source: New feed