IBM and MIT partner up to create AI that understands sight and sound the way we do

 When you see or hear something happen, you can instantly describe it: “a girl in a blue shirt caught a ball thrown by a baseball player,” or “a dog runs along the beach.” It’s a simple task for us, but an immensely hard one for computers — fortunately, IBM and MIT are partnering up …

The company behind Standard Hotels is launching One Night, a same-day booking app to rival Hotel Tonight

 Anyone interested in the intersection of travel and technology knows that Hotel Tonight basically revolutionize the same-day hotel booking industry. Launched in 2011, Hotel Tonight’s app let you book a heavily discounted hotel room on the day of your stay in just a few taps. But in pursuit of sustained growth the startup began expanding its …

Vroom raises $50 million to make buying a used car as easy as shoe shopping online

 Gunning to become the top seller of used cars online, Vroom Inc. has raised $50 million in a Series E round of equity funding, bringing its total capital raised to $218 million to-date. The market for used cars in the U.S. alone surpasses $400 billion annually. According to the Edmunds.com Used Vehicle Market Report …

Twitter lays off around 20, shuts down engineering in Bangalore, India

 Reports may be swirling about Twitter exploring a sale of all or a part of its company, but in the meantime, the social media platform is trimming down internationally. Twitter is shutting down its engineering operations out of Bangalore, India, and it is laying off around 20 engineers in the process, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. “As …

Healthtech, Fintech and AI dominates Techstars London Demo Day

 Healthtech, Fintech and AI dominated Techstars London Demo day today in London. At a packed venue (the famous Royal Institution, no less) the teams demo’d their products in short pitches. Here is a run-down of the teams, with some more details of those that stood out. You can watch a Facebook Live recording of …

Robo Wunderkind raises $500k and releases new apps for its robot that anyone can build

{$inline_image}  When we last saw Robo Wunderkind, the company was on stage as part of the Startup Battlefield competition at Disrupt SF 2015. This week it is announcing that it has closed an additional $500,000 in funding. The round was led by Arkley VC, angel investor Juergen Habichler and the Austrian Federal Promotional Bank (AWS) …

Higher education goes Hollywood

 As I began my career in higher education in the late 1990s, technology seemed poised to upend the entire academic enterprise. The zeitgeist was that a star system was about to be born, with million-dollar online courses starring celebrity faculty. Read More

Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

 As Barack Obama’s second term comes to an end, an increasingly loud chorus of voices are calling for a dramatic final presidential act: the pardoning of Edward Snowden. Authoritarians are horrified by this, and, as usual, they are wrong. A pardon really isn’t enough. As I’ve argued before, Snowden deserves a medal. Read More