Open-source conversational artificial intelligence startup Rasa Technologies Inc. has raised $26 million in new funding to invest in continuing growth, AI research and developer and community education. The Series B round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included the Cultural Leadership Fund, Accel, 468 Capital, Basis Set Ventures and Mango Capital. Founded in 2016, Rasa offers ...

Twitter Inc. apologized today after it discovered that billing information from business customers had been potentially exposed because of the way the site caches data. Described as a “data security incident” by Twitter, the exposure affects customers of Twitter Ads and Analytics Manager. Information inputted by those customers, including email addresses, phone numbers, billing addresses ...

Concern has been raised about the future of the Open Technology Fund, a U.S.-government funded nonprofit corporation that develops internet freedom tools after a possible shift in its focus driven by the Trump administration. Founded in 2012 and funded as an independent grantee corporation of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the OTF aims to ...

Robotic lawyer startup DoNotPay Ltd. announced today it has raised $12 million in new funding to expand its business in the U.K. The Series A round was led by Coatue and included Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Felicis Ventures, the latter having invested in the company through a seed round in July. Founded in 2016, DoNotPay offers ...

Facebook Inc. today announced it’s discontinuing the development and sale of its Oculus Go virtual reality headset just two years after it launched. Announced in October 2017, Oculus Go was Facebook’s first standalone VR headset — standalone in that it didn’t need to be tethered to a personal computer like the original Oculus headset did. ...

A new case study published today by Google Cloud shows how rapidly the tech giant’s cloud unit, in particular its Google Kubernetes Engine, can be rapidly scaled up to meet intense data processing needs. The case involves Bayer Crop Science data scientists requiring huge amounts of data processing power to process genotype data to decide ...

Data stolen from hundreds of police departments across the U.S. have been published online in a hack dubbed “BlueLeaks.” The 269 gigabytes of data was published online by a group calling itself Distributed Denial of Secrets and includes hundreds of thousands of police and U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation reports, bulletins, guides and more. The ...

Microsoft Corp. has acquired industrial cybersecurity startup CyberX Inc. for an undisclosed sum. Various reports today suggest that the acquisition price was $165 million, following initial reports of the deal in May. Founded in 2013, CyberX offers an industrial cybersecurity platform built by former military cybersecurity experts with nation-state expertise defending critical infrastructure. The company’s platform focuses on continuously reducing ...

Facebook Inc. today said it has acquired virtual reality games developer Ready At Dawn Studios LLC for an undisclosed price to enhance its Oculus VR gaming division. Founded in 2003, Ready at Dawn initially started as a regular games studio before moving into VR in the mid-2010s. In July 2017 the company released Lone Echo ...

ServiceNow Inc. today said it has agreed to acquire configuration data management startup Sweagle NV for an undisclosed price. Founded in Belgium in 2017 with offices in Brussels, Paris, London and New York City, Sweagle offers configuration data management on a software-as-a-service basis. The company’s platform allows users to manage their configuration data — settings, ...