As we wrote last week in How Salesforce paved the way for the SaaS platform approach, the ability to build extensions, applications and even whole companies on top of the Salesforce platform set the stage and the bar for every SaaS company since. Vlocity certainly recognized that. Targeting five verticals, it built industry-specific CRM solutions […]

Around 10 years of ecosystem development has left European high-growth companies in a much stronger position counter their global rivals, according to new research from the FT and Statista dubbed the FT 1000. And in the realm of tech startups, they continue to create the software which is, famously, eating the world. Despite trade wars, […]

After months and months of rumors it’s finally been confirmed that ride-hailing giant Uber is picking up its Middle East rival Careem in an acquisition deal worth $3.1 billion — with $1.7BN to be paid in convertible notes and $1.4BN in cash. Uber writes that it expects the transaction to close in Q1 2020, pending […]

Apple flexed its wallet today in a way Facebook has been scared to do. Tech giants make money by the billions, not the millions, which should give them an easy way to break into premium video distribution: buy some must-see content. That’s the strategy I’ve been advocating for Facebook but that Apple actually took to […]

We’ve been writing about Abundant Robotics for roughly three years at this point. Now the SRI spin out is finally ready for primetime. Abundant announced this week that New Zealand-based T&G Global will be using its robots to harvest apples. Abundant says the news is part of a plan to be involved in year-round picking, […]

No Man’s Sky just figured out a way to make a wildly absorbing space exploration game even more immersive. Announced during Sony’s first PlayStation State of Play update, No Man’s Sky devotees will soon be able to explore an endless procedurally generated universe in virtual reality. Hello Games’ Sean Murray followed Sony’s news with a […]

Mike Novogratz, a former hedge fund manager who was once captain of Princeton’s college wrestling team, has been described as many things, including in just one New Yorker article in which he was featured last year.  An on-and-off-again billionaire. A sidelined Wall Street legend. “Bombastic.” “Full of shit.” A former party animal whose “lifestyle issues” […]

Apple rolled out major updates to main consumer services today, including a new Apple credit card, an ad-free TV subscription service, a paywalled version of News (that includes Extra Crunch), and a gaming platform upgrade. TechCrunch Editor-In-Chief Matthew Panzarino attended live to hear the latest, and I can tell you that he has already developed […]

McDonald’s is announcing an agreement to acquire personalization company Dynamic Yield. The announcement does not include a price, but a source with knowledge of the deal said that it’s more than $300 million. This is the fast food chain’s largest acquisition in 20 years. Dynamic Yield works with brands across e-commerce, travel, finance and media […]

Deep Science AI made its debut on stage at Disrupt NY 2017, showing in a live demo how its computer vision system could spot a gun or mask in CCTV footage, potentially alerting a store or security provider to an imminent crime. The company has now been acquired in a friendly merger with Defendry, which is looking to deploy the tech more widely.

The Game Developers Conference was held last week in San Francisco and we wanted to get together to discuss what we saw at the show for Extra Crunch members. VR, gaming engines, Unity, Unreal and Epic were just some of the topics we touched upon. But perhaps the biggest of all was Google’s new game-streaming […]

Australia-based Airwallex is the latest tech startup to enter the billion-dollar “unicorn” club. The company announced today that it has closed a $100 million Series C round that values its business above $1 billion. Started in Melbourne in 2015 by four Chinese founders, Airwallex provides a service that lets companies manage cross-border revenue and financing […]

In 1999, Mike Lincoln co-founded the first East Coast office of top Silicon Valley law firm Cooley LLP. Over the last two decades, he has built out the practice to extend well beyond the region, today covering Boston and New York too, while also heading up the firm’s business department, and serving as an adjunct […]

While creating self-driving car systems, it's natural that different companies might independently arrive at similar methods or results — but the similarities in a recent "first of its kind" Nvidia proposal to work done by Mobileye two years ago were just too much for the latter company's CEO to take politely.