Maria Deutscher
Latest from Maria Deutscher
Voice interface startup Pulse Labs raises $2.5M round backed by Amazon
The rapid adoption of smart speakers and other voice-enabled devices such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Echo has created a new channel through which companies can engage consumers. Pulse Labs Inc., a Seattle-based startup focused on unlocking this opportunity, today announced the completion of a $2.5 million funding round. Madrona Venture Group led the investment. It was joined ...
Lyft opens a new autonomous driving lab in Germany
Lyft Inc. last month expanded outside the U.S. for the first time by making its ride-hailing app available in Toronto. Today, the startup passed another milestone, announcing the opening of a new autonomous driving lab across the pond in the German city of Munich. Lyft said in a blog post that the team at the ...
Project collaboration firm Asana picks up $75M in funding
Asana Inc., a productivity startup led by Facebook Inc. co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, late Tuesday announced that it has secured $75 million in fresh funding. The round was led by Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management LLP. Other participants included 8VC, Founders Fund and Y Combinator president Sam Altman, with Dustin Moskovitz himself chipping in as well. Asana revealed that ...
GitLab picks up code security startup Gemnasium
San Francisco-based GitLab Inc. provides a code hosting platform that has been adopted by more than 100,000 organizations to manage their software projects. Now, the company is moving to make it easier for those customers to ensure that their applications don’t contain any security flaws. GitLab announced today that it has acquired Gemnasium Inc., a maker of tools ...
Waymo orders thousands of Chrysler minivans for self-driving taxi fleet
Waymo’s fleet of self-driving taxis is about to get a lot bigger. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV revealed this morning that the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary has placed an order for “thousands” of hybrid minivans to bolster its upcoming autonomous shuttle service. The vehicles are based on the automaker’s 2018 Chrysler Pacifica series, which retails from $39,995 and ...
Andrew Ng launches $175M AI Fund that will build startups from scratch
Andrew Ng, a prominent artificial intelligence researcher and onetime founder of Alphabet Inc.’s Google Brain project, has launched a $175 million fund to back AI startups. Ng shared the news in a Medium post today. The capital for the AI Fund comes courtesy of New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and SoftBank Group Corp., the Japanese ...
Google partners with Appthority to protect enterprises from unsafe Android apps
In the past few weeks, Google LLC has had to remove dozens of apps from Google Play after they were found to contain malware. The search giant’s latest partnership aims to address security concerns of this nature for companies whose employees use Android. Appthority Inc., a San Francisco-based mobile security startup, today announced a collaboration with the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary to ...
Boundless tackles geospatial data with new cloud-based analytics platform
There’s more to business intelligence than just raw numbers for retailers and other enterprises that have a large physical footprint. Data such as sales performance have to be put in a geographic context to be meaningful, which is what Boundless Spatial Inc. hopes to enable with its latest product. The five-year-old startup today unveiled a ...
BrowserStack reels in $50M from Accel to help debug the web
BrowserStack Inc. helps thousands of companies including Microsoft Corp. and Twitter Inc. ensure that their websites work well on different devices. Today, the startup announced that it has raised $50 million from Accel to bring its technology to yet more parts of the internet. BrowserStack offers a cloud platform that gives developers access to preconfigured devices for ...
In data-focused deal, Relx Group agrees to buy ThreatMetrix for $817M
Relx Group plc, a British analytics provider with annual revenues of about $10 billion, today announced plans to acquire California-based ThreatMetrix Inc. for £580 million ($817 million). The deal is the company’s biggest in a decade. The size of the transaction reflects the importance of the assets that Relx stands to absorb. ThreatMetrix sells fraud detection ...