Year: 2018

 Science Inc, the Santa Monica, Ca.-based incubator and investment firm, has closed a new venture capital fund with $75 million in commitments, shows a new SEC filing. According to the six-year-old firm, the vehicle is its first official venture fund — with traditional limited partners, including a fund of funds, sovereign wealth funds, foundations, and other institutional investors.… Read More

 Sony is getting a new CEO after it announced that CFO Kenichiro Yoshida will replace Kazuo Hirai as the head of the Japanese firm. The move will happen April 1, with Hirai shifting to the role of Chairman. “I have dedicated myself to transforming the company and enhancing its profitability, and am very proud that now, in the third and final year of our current mid-range corporate plan,… Read More

 Tesla is using its car leases as collateral for a big $546 million loan as it turns to debt markets to raise additional cash to combat the blistering burn rate of its auto and energy business, according to multiple reports. The bonds are pegged to leases of its Model S and X cars, and it marks the first time that Elon’s electric albatross has turned to asset backed securities for new… Read More

 Seems like just yesterday Airbus’ Vahana autonomous electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) craft was little more than a painted concept, but now it’s actually flown, during a full-scale prototype test that lasted just under a minute, and during which the Vahana aircraft was fully self-piloted and fling at a height of 16 feet off the ground. The Vahana VTOL, which resembles… Read More

 It has long been believed that the big three in the cloud consisted of AWS, Microsoft and Google with IBM not doing too badly either, but in its earnings call with analysts today, the company revealed it’s pulling in a billion dollars a quarter in combined cloud revenue. That’s a figure that Google’s Diane Greene says already puts her company on elite footing, but which is… Read More

 David Marcus, Facebook’s vice president of Messaging Products, responded to the backlash against Messenger Kids when he spoke at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles on Thursday. “Families will be better off because it exists,” said Marcus. “I firmly believe that it is a good product.” Read More

 Artificial intelligence has long been a focus for MIT. The school’s been researching the space since the late ’50s. But the university thinks it can do more to elevate the rapidly expanding field. This week, the school announced the launch of the MIT Intelligence Quest, an initiative aimed at leveraging its AI research into something it believes could be game-changing for the category. Read More

 Crypto investors are seeing red this week. Bitcoin plunged to two-month lows on Thursday, dipping below $9,000 for the first time since November. This week has seen coins across the board in the red — a sign that investors are jumping ship to fiat currencies this time instead of swapping into altcoins as we’ve seen in the recent past. Read More

 Factual announced this morning that it’s expanding its Geopulse ad-targeting suite, with new products designed to help advertisers measure whether their campaigns drive in-store visits, and to give them more guidance on overall strategy. You may remember that Factual was founded a decade ago by Gil Elbaz, with the aim of creating an open repository for data. Over time, the company… Read More

 As far as sales figures go, this last quarter wasn’t entirely rosy for Apple. During today’s earnings report, the company posted sales of 77.3 million iPhones, down just under a million from this time last year. Of course, that 78.2 million figure from 2017 represented a new record for the company. But Wall Street still expected another increase, up to 80.2 million phones for… Read More