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Venture capital has a diversity problem . BLCK VC , a new organization founded by Storm Ventures associate Frederik Groce and NEA associate Sydney Sykes to connect, engage and advance black venture capitalists, is ready for a new era in the industry. Their mission: Turn 200 black investors into 400 black investors by 2024. “We think of ourselves as an organization formed by black VCs for blacks VCs to increase the representation of black investors,” Sykes told TechCrunch. “You can look around and say well ‘I know five black VCs,’ but you can also say this firm does not have a single black VC, they may not even have a single underrepresented minority … We want to make firms reckon with the fact that there is a racial diversity problem; there is a lack of black VCs and every firm should really care about it.” BLCK VC has been at work since the beginning of 2018, building and expanding a network of black investors in the San Francisco area, Los Angeles and New York. They seek to provide a...

Abbyy has been around for a long time helping companies with scanning and workflow tools, but like many older vendors it has been looking for ways to extend its traditional business model. One way to do that is by teaming up with robotics process automation companies like UIPath . Today, the company announced it has launched the Abbyy FlexiCapture Connector in the UiPath Go! App store. Bruce Orcutt, senior vice president for product marketing at Abbyy says the connector provides the ability to pull content into UIPath or to take Abbyy content and push it to another part of the automated workflow in UIPath. UIPath is on a tear these days. Just two months ago, it scored a $225 million Series C investment on a $3 billion valuation. It was able to grow from $1 million to $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just 21 months. As I wrote at the time of the funding, “[UIPath] allows companies to bring a level of automation to legacy processes like accounts payable, employee onboarding...

On the heels of Tinder’s plans to go more casual , Facebook is today expanding access to its own dating service, Facebook Dating. First launched two months ago in Colombia for testing purposes, the social network is today rolling out Facebook Dating to Canada and Thailand. The company is also adding a few new features to coincide with the launch, including the ability to re-review people you passed on and take a break by putting the service on pause, among other things. If that latter feature sounds familiar, it’s because it’s also something dating app Bumble recently announced, as well. Bumble in September  launched a Snooze button for its own app, which addressed the problem many online daters have – the need for a detox from dating apps for a bit. Sometimes that’s due to frustration or just being busy; while other times it’s because they’ve matched with someone and want to give them a chance. Facebook says you can still message people you already matched while on pause. Meanwhile,...

This time last week, Google employees held massive walkouts across the country to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment in the wake of a damning New York Times piece . This morning, CEO Sundar Pichai sent a note to employees about the events that was also shared via the company’s blog . “We recognize that we have not always gotten everything right in the past and we are sincerely sorry for that,” the executive says in the letter. “It’s clear we need to make some changes.” The memo follows another recent letter, in which Pichai noted the termination of 48 employees for sexual harassment over the past two years. This latest letter also makes note of a private “action plan.” While not spelled out in its entirety, Pichai breaks down a  handful of policy changes, including  mandatory training for employees and the ways in which the company will handle sexual harassment claims going forward. Here are the bullet points, We will make arbitration optional for individual sexual ...

Nintendo has sold over 22 million Switch consoles since launch, with plans to sell another 20 million this financial year. That said, Nintendo hasn’t seemed too focused on building out its portfolio of non-gaming apps. Thus far, only Hulu has managed to get aboard the Switch train. But today, YouTube joins the mix. Switch owners can download the YouTube app here . Also of note: the YouTube app on Nintendo Switch supports 360-degree video. Given Nintendo’s portfolio of Switch-compatible games, including Zelda, Super Mario Odyssey, Pokemon, and Fortnite, YouTube’s integration with the console makes sense. Both the Switch and YouTube skew towards younger demographics . Part of the reason that it’s taken so long for streaming apps to make their way to the Switch is because of Nintendo’s focus on growing its gaming library for the console. “We’ve said that other services will come in due time,” said Reggie Fils-Aimé, Nintendo’s chief operations officer, in an interview from last month . “...

Another autonomous ride-hailing test project has popped up in the U.S. This time, Daimler and Bosch, one of the largest automotive tech and hardware suppliers in the world, are partnering to pilot a robotaxi service in San Jose, California. The program will use automated Mercedes-Benz S Class vehicles, the German automaker’s full-sized luxury flagship sedans, the company announced Thursday. The robotaxi trials will begin in the second half of 2019 in a geofenced area in the San Carlos and Stevens Creek corridor between downtown and west San Jose. The pilot will use an on-demand ride-hailing service app operated by Daimler Mobility Services. Select members of the public will be given access to the app and be able to hail a self-driving car from a designated pick-up location. The rides will all be monitored by a safety driver. “The pilot project is an opportunity to explore how autonomous vehicles can help us better meet future transportation needs,” says San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo said...

Amazon today launched an Alexa app for Windows 10 PCs on the Microsoft Store. The voice application allows PC owners to speak to Alexa to set reminders, timers, alarms; create lists and to-dos; track their calendar appointments; get news, weather and other information; play music; listen to podcasts and audiobooks; control the smart home, and more. The app is another way that Alexa is being unhitched from Echo speakers and other devices that generally stay in the home. Similar to the Alexa app for mobile devices, the Windows 10 app means you can use Alexa when you’re traveling for access to content and information, as well as to do things like lock your doors or check your security cameras, for example. The app also offers access to tens of thousands of Alexa skills, says Amazon. However, some features – including video, communications, Spotify and Pandora – are not supported on the Alexa app for Windows 10 at launch. The app’s arrival comes shortly after Amazon and Microsoft opened...

Today, Google Cloud announced Kubeflow pipelines and AI Hub, two tools designed to help data scientists put the models they create to work across their organizations. Rajen Sheth, director of product management for Google Cloud’s AI and ML products says that the company recognized that data scientists too often build models that never get used. He says that if machine learning is really a team sport, as Google believes, models must get passed from data scientists to data engineers and developers who can build applications based on them. To help fix that, Google is announcing Kubeflow pipelines, which are an extension of Kubeflow, an open source framework built on top of Kubernetes designed specifically for machine learning. Pipelines are essentially containerized building blocks that people in the machine learning ecosystem can string together to build and manage machine learning workflows. By placing the model in a container, data scientists can simply adjust the underlying model as n...

Datacoral aims to make it easier for enterprises to build data products by abstracting away all of the complex infrastructure to organize and process data. The company today announced that it has raised a $10 million Series A financing round led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from Social Captial, which also led its $4 million seed round in 2017. Datacoral CEO Raghu Murthy tells me that the company plans to use the new funding to grow its business team in order to be able to reach more potential customers and to expand its engineering team as well. The promise of Datacoral is to offer enterprises an end-to-end data infrastructure that will allow businesses and their data scientists to focus on generating insights over having to manage and integrate their data sources. Since nobody wants to move large amounts of data between clouds — and take the performance hit that comes with that — Datacoral sits right inside a company’s AWS systems. It’s still a fully managed service, ...

IAC is changing the way its business is organized, the company reported during its Q3 2018 earnings on Wednesday. The company’s video platform Vimeo and DotDash ( previously About.com ) will become their own separate segments at IAC starting in Q4. That means they’ve reached the point their revenues can stand on their own. The company  beat on third quarter revenue expectations  in the quarter with a revenue increase to $1.1 billion from $828.4 million a year ago, ahead of FactSet analyst expectations of $1.07 billion. However, net income was $145.8 million, or $1.49 a share, down from $179.6 million, or $1.79 a share, a year earlier. The drop was attributed to a tax benefit that it received in the year-ago period. Vimeo’s revenue growth in the quarter increased 29 percent, and it grew its subscriber base by 10 percent to 932,000, IAC said. “The business has the scale and potential to now stand on its own, and we want to begin to put a spotlight on it,” said IAC CEO Joey Levin, in a ...

First, a couple of quick follow-ups to our coverage of Form Ds yesterday , and then a deeper dive into the challenges SoftBank is facing with regards to its revenue in Japan. Finally, some notes on recent articles we have read. We are experimenting with new content forms at TechCrunch. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the authors: Danny at danny@techcrunch.com or Arman at Arman.Tabatabai@techcrunch.com if you like or hate something here. Form D(isappearing) Form Ds are (usually) filed by startups to the SEC when they take on venture capital. However, there appears to be an increasing pattern of startups foregoing the filing, which has implications for both reporters (we have less info about what’s happening in the venture world) as well as with aggregate VC stats, which often rely at least partially on filings to determine the state of venture capital. A number of readers emailed us with their views on the matter. One lawyer and multi-time s...

There’s a new Sony PS4 Pro and it’s much quieter than the original. Right now, it’s only available in a Red Dead Redemption bundle but eventually, it will likely be available as a standalone product, too. The new CUH-7200 version reportedly dropped the console’s noise from 50 decibles to 44 decibels though as EuroGamer notes , it can still top out at 48 decibels. The noise reduction is reportedly thanks to improved cooling, which in turn, reduces the strain on the cooling system within the PS4 Pro. The original Playstation Pro came out two years ago, and at times, it can roar like a jet engine. The revised model looks the same as the original so check the model number on the box to ensure you’re getting the quieter option.

I’ll admit that I’ve been caught up in the Bose hype. I’ve worn q Bose Sony WH-1000XM3, a pair of wireless/wired cans that truly give everything else I’ve tried a bad name. These $349 headphones come with a USB cable, audio cable, international audio adapter, and a compact case that holds the whole thing in a tight package. The headphones also support Bluetooth and will automatically swap to wired mode when you insert the headphone cable. The WH-1000XM3s support full noise cancellation that turns even the noisiest situation into a blissful escape. An ambient audio feature lets you listen to external sounds at the touch of a button and there is even a “Quick Attention” feature that turns the headphones down instantly when you need to speak to someone. Sony touts 30 hours battery life on one charge, a claim that I won’t refute as I haven’t recharged these things after multiple flights and they’re still going strong. In short, these things are great. Sony likes to brand all of its featur...

Bonobo AI , an AI-based platform that helps companies get insights from customer support calls, texts, and other interactions, announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by G20 Ventures and Capri Ventures. Founded in 2016 and led by co-founder and CEO Efrat Rapoport, the Tel Aviv-based startup claims that its technology has been used to analyze more than a billion interactions so far and that it has signed up a “few dozen” clients including DreamCloud and Honeybook. The idea behind Bonobo is that even though customer service texts and voice calls can provide companies with a trove of valuable information, these data points are difficult to aggregate and analyze at scale. Bonobo’s technology integrates into the platforms that its clients use to communicate with customers, like Gmail, Zendesk, or Twilio) and CRM platforms like Salesforce or Hubspot. Then it analyzes interactions for “events of interest in calls,” Rapoport told TechCrunch, like “when customers ask...

Spotify’s artist dashboard already allows musicians and their managers a way to track the success of their tracks and album releases, as well as view other data about their fans. Now, the streaming music service is debuting its first analytics tool aimed at music publishers. The new tool is launching into beta this morning, and will allow publishers to track daily streaming stats, including playlist performance, and view data across all the songwriters on their roster. “We know that there are usually many more people involved in the creation of your favorite song than just the artist whose face appears on the billboard,” explains the company, in its announcement . “Spotify Publishing Analytics is the first analytics tool from a music streaming service built specifically for publishers, so they can better serve their songwriters.” The platform was built in collaboration with partners, including BMG and Reservoir, who offered statements of their own about its launch. It’s designed to of...

“Who am I going to be worried about? Oh Facebook seeing? No, I’m not worried about Facebook seeing. They’re going to look at my great art collection and say they want to come steal it? No, I never really thought about it.” That’s my 72-year-old mother Sally Constine’s response to whether she’s worried about her privacy now that she has a Facebook Portal video chat device. The gadget  goes on sale and starts shipping today at $349 for the 15.6-inch swiveling screen Portal+, $199 for the 10-inch Portal, and $100 off for buying any two. The sticking point for most technology reporters — that it’s creepy or scary to have a Facebook camera and microphone in your house — didn’t even register as a concern with a normal tech novice like my Mom. “I don’t really think of it any different from a phone call” she says. “It’s not a big deal for me.” While Facebook has been mired by privacy scandals after a year of Cambridge Analytica and its biggest-ever data breach, the concept that it can’t be ...

The Portal is a head scratcher. It’s a chat app that manifested itself into a hardware through sheer force of will. The first commercially available product from Building 8 isn’t as instantly iconic a piece of hardware as Snap’s Spectacles. In fact, at first glance, the device seems like little more than an Echo Show/Google Home Hub competitor. And then there’s the matter of timing. In a meeting with TechCrunch ahead of launch, Facebook’s hardware team was quick to list the various ways the company is proactively protecting user privacy, from a camera button to a physical lens cap. The social media giant has always been a lighting rod for these issues, but 2018 has been particularly tough, for reasons summed up well in Taylor’s simply titled post, “ Facebook, are you kidding? ” What’s most peculiar, however, is in this age of multi-tasking devices, the Facebook Portal and Portal+ are devices that are designed to do one thing really well. Rather than pushing to develop a true Echo comp...

It took about six months for popular consumer drone maker DJI to fix a security vulnerability across its website and apps, which if exploited could have given an attacker unfettered access to a drone owner’s account. The vulnerability, revealed Thursday by researchers at security firm Check Point, would have given an attacker complete access to a DJI users’ cloud stored data, including drone logs, maps, any still or video footage — and live feed footage through FlightHub, the company’s fleet management system — without the user’s knowledge. Taking advantage of the flaw was surprisingly simple — requiring a victim to click on a specially crafted link. But in practice, Check Point spent considerable time figuring out the precise way to launch a potential attack — and none of them were particularly easy. For that reason, DJI called the vulnerability “high risk” but “low probability,” given the numerous hoops to jump through first to exploit the flaw. “Given the popularity of DJI drones, ...

Taiwan’s KKday , a startup in the increasingly competitive travel activities space, has pulled in an undisclosed funding round that adds two strategic investors to its business: Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba and Japanese chat app company Line. KKday was founded in 2015 to help people who travel overseas to find and book activities, ranging from tours to tourist attraction, transportation, museums and more. The company said it offers over 20,000 “unique experiences” in over 500 cities across 80 countries. There is much potential to move into, it seems, with analyst firm Phocuswright predicting that the travel tour and activities market will grow by one-third to reach $183 billion by 2020. Unlike Hong Kong-based regional rival Klook, which is valued at over $1 billion and has ventured into Europe and the U.S, KKday is focused on Asian markets only. We last wrote about the startup in January when it raised a $10.5 million round led by Japanese travel operator H.I.S , and this new Se...

Lilium , the developer of a new, electric, vertical take-off and landing vehicle for a novel flying taxi service, has poached some pretty big former executives from Airbus and Audi as it builds out its technology and gets ready to bring its service to market. Mirko Reuter, the former head of automated driving at Audi, has come on board as the head of autonomous flight at Lilium. Jakob Waeschenbach, who worked as the head of equipment installation at Airbus, and Rochus Moenter, former vice president of Airbus’ finance and leasing group, have joined Lilium as head of aircraft assembly and general counsel and head of legal, respectively.  Co-founded in 2015 by Daniel Wiegand, Sebastian Born, Patrick Nathen and Matthias Meiner, Lilium’s vision is to create a network for its proprietary vertical take off and landing vehicles that will slash the costs of air travel and can ostensibly take a passenger from Paris to London in about an hour. Reuter, a longtime head of automated driving at A...

The scooter startups are taking over the world — or trying to. Earlier this week, Bird debuted its electric scooters in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; today, Lime is announcing its foray into the land down under with the launch of a three-month scooter pilot at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Lime has also released several hundred of its dockless electric bikes in Sydney and plans to introduce its scooters there, as well as in Brisbane, soon. “Sydney’s need for innovative transport solutions, which cater to the first and last mile, gives us confidence we will see high uptake of Lime electric bikes within the community,” said Mitchell Price, Lime’s director of government affairs and strategy in Australia and New Zealand. The company is also announcing that it’s clocked in 20 million rides just two months after it  surpassed 10 million . Using the nearly half a billion dollars it’s raised to date, Lime is rapidly expanding across the globe and filling out its C-suite...

Buoyed by international attention from U.S. and Chinese investors and technology companies, new financing keeps flowing into the coffers of Latin American venture capital firms. One day after the Brazilian-based pan-Latin American announced the close of its $150 million latest fund comes word from our sources that ALL VP , the Mexico City-based, early stage technology investor, has held a first close of $73 million for its latest investment vehicle. The firm launched its first $6 million investment vehicle in 2012, according to CrunchBase , just as Mexico’s former President Enrique Peña Nieto was coming to power with a pro-business platform. One which emphasized technology development as part of its strategy for encouraging economic growth. ALL VP founding partner Fernando Lelo de Larrea said he could not speak about ongoing fundraising plans. And while the broader economy has stumbled somewhat since Nieto took office, high technology businesses in Mexico are surging. In the first ha...