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Xnor’s AI2GO serves up custom edge AI models with a few clicks

16 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Devin Coldewey

AI would be useful for tons of everyday tasks for small businesses and other operations — if people just knew how to build and deploy their own machine learning agent. Unfortunately, few do. Edge-based AI startup Xnor.ai aims to let non-experts put state of the art AI to work as easily as they might update their website.

The company just kicked off a new platform called AI2GO that basically collects all the most common applications and hardware platforms for edge-based AI in one place and lets you download them with little or no expertise.

“Developing AI is just hard,” founder and CEO Ali Farhadi told TechCrunch. “There’s not a lot of people who can do it. And deploying to an edge device is even harder — you have to worry about power consumption, memory limits, and all that. So now you have to have both AI and systems experts.”

Good luck snagging those if you’re a small business owner who just thinks it’d be cool to know how many people are in their restaurant at any given time. Even relatively accessible, widely available frameworks like TensorFlow on which to train and deploy AI are impractical for anyone …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Last call: Sign up for the TC Hackathon at VivaTech 2019

15 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Emma Comeau

This one’s dedicated to all the genius hackers, coders and creators who also happen to be inveterate procrastinators. Right here, right now — this is your final opportunity to participate in the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 in Paris on 17-18 May. The application is free and the process couldn’t be easier, so drop whatever you’re doing and sign up today.

If you snooze, you lose — lose the chance to flex your mighty coding skills and build something creative and amazing from scratch in 24 hours. Don’t be that person. A rich, exciting — and potentially lucrative — experience awaits. Here’s what goes down at the TC Hackathon at VivaTech.

Teams of 4-6 people will select one of the five sponsored hack challenges. Don’t worry if you arrive solo, we’ll help you find a team once you’re onsite. Our sponsors include EDHEC, Eramet, Sanofi–Cegedim–IBM, Galeries Lafayette / Publicis Sapient and Corvid by Wix. Specifics on the challenges are below:

EDHEC Challenge

Making an impact can have different meanings, and we believe that one of them is about improving how we support students’ careers. Have you ever asked yourself “have I …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Shares of SoftBank Group, Uber’s biggest stakeholder, slide after its disappointing IPO

14 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Catherine Shu

As Uber’s biggest shareholder, SoftBank Group had high hopes for the ride-sharing company’s stock market debut last week. Instead, the Japanese conglomerate’s shares have been sliding along with Uber’s following its disappointing initial public offering. SoftBank shares began sliding at the end of last week after Uber set its IPO price at the low end of its planned range. Since the start of trading on Friday morning, SoftBank Group shares have fallen 14.4 percent in value from 11,700 yen (about $106.69) to 10,020 yen (about $91.37)

On paper, SoftBank Group, which became an investor in Uber in early 2018, had expected to make a profit of $3 billion from its debut. According to its IPO filing, SoftBank Group is Uber’s largest shareholder, owning 16.3 percent of pre-IPO shares through its Vision Fund.

After shares continued falling on their second day of trading, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees in a memo that “like all periods of transition, there are ups and downs. Obviously, our stock did not trade as well as we had hoped post-IPO. Today is another tough day in the market, and I expect the same as it relates …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Equity Shot transcribed: Judging Uber’s less-than-grand opening day

12 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Kate Clark

Another day, another episode of Equity. This time it was an emergency episode, because Uber (finally) went public and a lot of financial folks were quite looking forward to how it would perform on opening day. Turns out it didn’t do so well.

Kate and Alex had a lot of questions about why? Was it the company’s fault? Was it simply the macro market? Was it something else altogether? And then there was the fact that it wasn’t a great week for the stock market or U.S.-China trade relations.

But don’t cry for Uber. As Kate Clark reported, the ride-hailing company still has $8.1 billion to play with to grow itself into a more profitable company.

And now we watch as Uber navigates the public markets.

Kate: Uber was a different story [than Lyft]. I think we expected a really similar pricing scheme, but we saw Uber set a price range of 44 to $50 per share. And they ultimately priced at $45 per share only to sink pretty significantly right off the bat. They began trading this morning at $42 a share and now they’re-

Alex: Shocking.

Kate: Yeah. Now they’re, what? Floating at around $41. So they’re dropping. I think everybody is …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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After burning through $1 billion, Jawbone’s Hosain Rahman has raised $65 million more

11 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Connie Loizos

Not everyone gets a second chance in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneur Hosain Rahman has been given many more than that. Though his last company, Jawbone, which produced wireless speakers and Bluetooth earpieces, went kaput in 2017 after burning up $1 billion in venture funding over the course of ten years, Rahman has managed to raise $65.4 million for his new company. So shows a new SEC filing that, coincidentally or otherwise, was processed late yesterday while most of the world’s attention was focused on Uber’s IPO.

The company, Jawbone Health, isn’t brand new. According to reports of two years ago and Rahman’s LinkedIn bio, he began working in earnest on his newest endeavor when the original Jawbone was running on fumes in the summer of 2017.

In fact, according to LinkedIn, Jawbone Health now employs 51 people, including some who worked with Rahman previously. Among these is the new outfit’s VP of engineering, Jonathan Hummel, who’d been a senior engineering manager at Jawbone during the last two years of its life. Others are new to the organization because of its focus on healthcare. These include Yaniv …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Equity transcribed: Why Om Malik thinks ‘the VC subsidized life is over’

11 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Kate Clark

It’s time for another transcribed edition of Equity. This week for the regularly scheduled episode we had the whole crew pop into the San Francisco studio. Kate Clark, Connie Loizos and Alex Wilhelm were joined by Om Malik, former journalist and current VC at True Ventures.

They convened just after Uber priced, so they had a lot to dig into: The low price, would it pop and would the former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick be at the ringing of the bell in New York (he wasn’t).

But it wasn’t all Uber; they talked Carta, Cruise and Harry’s. Below is an excerpt. And come back soon for an emergency episode where Alex and Kate will go deeper on the Uber IPO. For access to the full transcription, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free.

Alex: Well, I want to go back to the price really quick because $82 billion is below the 90 we had heard after we’d heard the 120 back in October. So this is a dramatic downgrade in price, which I think as said Om said is actually pretty smart because they’ll have a nice pop and things will get better.

Connie: …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Singapore’s Grain, a profitable food delivery startup, pulls in $10M for expansion

10 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Jon Russell

Cloud kitchens are the big thing in food delivery, with ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s new business one contender in that space, with Asia, and particularly Southeast Asia, a major focus. Despite the newcomers, a more established startup from Singapore has raised a large bowl of cash to go after regional expansion.

Founded in 2014, Grain specializes in clean food while it takes a different approach to Kalanick’s CloudKitchens or food delivery services like Deliveroo, FoodPanda or GrabFood.

It adopted a cloud kitchen model — utilizing unwanted real estate as kitchens, with delivery services for output — but used it for its own operations. So while CloudKitchens and others rent their space to F&B companies as a cheaper way to make food for their on-demand delivery customers, Grain works with its own chefs, menu and delivery team. A so-called ‘full stack’ model if you can stand the cliched tech phrase.

Finally, Grain is also profitable. The new round has it shooting for growth — more on that below — but the startup was profitable last year, CEO and co-founder Yi Sung Yong told TechCrunch.

Now it is reaping the rewards of a model …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Tink, the European banking platform, partners with British incumbent NatWest

09 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Steve O’Hear

It’s easy to push a narrative of fintech upstarts versus the big incumbent banks, but the more subtle reality is that as well as competing on numerous fronts, there are partnerships being formed across the board. The latest such move sees Tink, the Sweden-based banking platform that raised €56 million in new funding in February, partner with British bank NatWest.

The agreement gives NatWest access to Tink’s Personal Finance Management (PFM) and “Data Enrichment” products, which will be integrated into NatWest’s core mobile banking app. This will allow NatWest to improve its mobile banking offering by giving NatWest customers personalised insights into their finances based on transaction history. The features built with Tink’s technology are planned to go live in Q4 2019.

The bigger picture is that by partnering with Tink, NatWest is aiming to meet increased customer expectations with regards to digital financial services. Undoubtedly, a plethora of fintech startups and challenger banks have raised the UX and feature bar significantly in the U.K. and right across Europe, not least via high quality mobile apps and better use of data, while incumbent banks have been scrambling to catch up.

“Historically banks have tried to build everything themselves, but we are …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Match Group records solid first-quarter revenue thanks to an increase in Tinder subscribers

08 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Catherine Shu

Match Group‘s revenue saw solid growth in the first quarter thanks to an increase in Tinder subscribers. The company, whose portfolio of dating apps also includes Match.com, PlentyOfFish, OkCupid and Hinge, among others, said in its earnings report today that total quarterly revenue grew 14% year over year to $465 million. If the effects of foreign exchange aren’t included, growth would have been 18%.

Net earnings attributable to shareholders grew 23% to $123 million, or 42 cents per share, from $99.7 million, or 33 cents in the same period a year ago. Operating income increased 6% to $119 million from $112 million. During the first quarter of 2019 and 2018, Match Group recorded an income tax benefit of $28 million and $12 million, respectively, related to the exercise of vesting of stock-based awards.

During the first quarter, Tinder average subscribers were 4.7 million, up from 384,000 in the previous quarter and 1.3 million year over year. In total, Match Group’s average subscribers increased 16% to 8.6 million, up from 7.4 million a year ago. Match Group said the growth in subscribers and increase in average revenue per user (ARPU) at Tinder boosted its revenue, but …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Tourlane raises a $47M C round led by Sequoia and Spark Capital

07 May 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Mike Butcher

There still exists an old-fashioned problem in travel: group travel which requires individuals and groups to plan and book personalized, multi-day tours online.

Tourlane is a major player in this sector and has today announced it’s raised $47 million in a round led by Sequoia and Spark Capital alongside investors from the B round, including DN Capital and HV Holtzbrinck Ventures. This Series C funding comes 6 months after the B, and will be used for further international expansion, hiring and product development.

Julian Stiefel, Co-CEO & cofounder of Tourlane said in a statement: “The additional capital will help us strengthen our position and continue our international growth to create the best experience in travel. We’re thrilled to continue working with our high-class investors and are extremely proud of the hard work, commitment and effort of our great team at Tourlane.”

Tourlane works directly with service providers and offers customers flights, accommodations, tours, activities, and transfer options in one place, thus saving time when coordinating multiple bookings from different vendors or working with offline travel agents. The platform provides real-time pricing, availability, instant trip visualization, and drag-and-drop adjustments to make multi-day trip planning easier.

Andrew Reed, Partner at Sequoia, said: “Tourlane’s impressive growth …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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