Enterprise messaging platform provider Slack Technologies Inc. is said to have raised up to $160 million Series E on a $2.76 billion valuation. The round hasn’t been officially confirmed by the company, however The Wall Street Journal reported that new investors have committed $135 million to the round, with Slack having the option to raise another $25 ...

Google Inc. announced a handy new feature for its Cloud Platform Thursday that will make life a lot easier for first timers or those looking to save time: the Cloud Launcher. The launcher offers easy installation of over 120 open source packages that have been configured by Bitnami, for Google, for deployment. To use, users ...

Facebook Inc. embraced the app as a platform trend at the F8 Conference Wednesday with a new announcement that aims to make Facebook a one stop destination for just about everything. According to the official announcement, the Messenger Platform will enable developers to build apps that integrate with Messenger, so users can find “new, fun ways ...

Bitcoin and altcoin exchange Cryptoine is claiming to have been hacked and has ceased trading, adding to the ongoing list of cyptocurrency exchanges that have disappeared this year with similar claims According to a statement on the Cryptoine website, the firm claims that a “hacker found some race condition bug in our trading engine. Manipulation of orders ...

Machine Intelligence startup Ayasdi, Inc. has raised $55 million Series C in a round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers that included existing investors Institutional Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, FLOODGATE, Citi Ventures, and new investors, Centerview Capital Technology and Draper Nexus. Ayasdi offers Machine Intelligence software that is said to solve “the most complex and ...

Sony Computer Entertainment will deliver on its long-promised updates to the Playstation 4 Thursday with what they’re calling an “onslaught of features.” At the top of the list of updates is the ability to suspend and resume games. The feature is said to be supported by nearly all PS4 games, and users can jump in and ...

Intuit Inc. has acquired San Francisco based StartX alumni Playbook HR for an undisclosed amount. Playbook HR offers a solution for on-demand marketplaces to manage the hiring, on-boarding and compliance needs of independent contractors. Its initial product release offers an applicant tracking system, but the company had plans to move into workforce management and, later, ...

Large-scale simulated worlds startup Improbable Ltd. has raised $20 million Series A in a round that included Chris Dixon and Andreessen Horowitz. Founded in 2012, the company is developing an operating environment that makes building simulated worlds possible. No, it’s not the Sims, versus actual simulated worlds which are run in real time and simulate the ...

Apple Inc. has acquired NoSQL database startup FoundationDB Inc. for an unknown sum. According to reports, the acquisition was due to FoundationDB’s attractiveness in the speed at which it handled Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, Durable (ACID) compliant transactions coupled with strong scalability. Founded in 2009, the company has as it mission to provide data storage technology “that frees engineers ...

Vessel Group, Inc. (Vessel), the company founded by former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, now offers exclusive content from YouTube stars for a price. The service was launched Tuesday after a period of private beta testing. The site, which according to reports provides a range of YouTube stars for a fee, has been recruiting YouTube stars since mid-to-late 2014, ...