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Our favorite startups from 500 Startups’ 20th class
41 startups graced the stage at 500 Startups’ 20th demo day at the Parc55 hotel in downtown San Francisco. The event came complete with mascots, a summer of love theme and a diverse array of early-stage companies.
This time around, 500 focused in heavily on health startups. A number of the founders demoing presented businesses in the interest of the public good —… Read More
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DeepGraph feeds enterprise sales teams with hyper-targeted warm leads
The best way to grow sales is to better understand sales, but unfortunately that’s often easier said than done. Kemvi, a seed-stage startup, is launching out of stealth today to announce DeepGraph, which helps sales teams reach the right potential customers at the right time. The company has closed north of $1 million in seed financing from Seabed VC, Neotribe Ventures, Kepha… Read More
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Tencent doubles down on game studio Pocket Gems with $90M investment
Chinese internet Tencent has continued its recent investment spree after it backed U.S.-based game studio Pocket Gems to the tune of $90 million. Tencent invested in Pocket Gems back in 2015, when it put in a reported $60 million for a 20 percent stake. This time around the Wall Street Journal reported the investment as $90 million, which TechCrunch has confirmed independently. That deal,… Read More
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Salesforce aims to save you time by summarizing emails and docs with machine intelligence
We have all seen the studies — some American workers spend upwards of six hours a day handling email. It’s not a great use of time, it destroys productivity and it ultimately costs businesses money. A new paper written by a team Salesforce MetaMind researchers could eventually provide summaries of professional communication. More effective text summarization tools would… Read More
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Dell Technologies Capital emerges from stealth, announces over 70 investments
Most venture capital funds that have 27 exits under their belt are not in stealth. In fact, most venture capital firms today don’t even know what 27 exits looks like. But Dell Ventures, in stealth until today, has been steadily investing at a rate of about $100 million per year. The group certainly knows what the market is willing to buy. It’s seen nearly 37 percent of… Read More
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Growlabs nabs $2.2M to automate outbound sales
Just six months into its life, Growlabs, a startup using machine intelligence to support outbound sales teams, has raised a $2.2 million seed round. Growlabs helps businesses reduce their customer acquisition costs by enabling smalls sales teams to do more with less. Twilio stock plummets as major client Uber distances itself
A good report on revenue wasn’t enough to keep Twilio stock from taking a dive in after-hours trading. What at first glance appeared to be a positive story very quickly divulged into a financial nightmare. Shares in the cloud-communications company have fallen 27 percent in after-hours trading. On the earnings call, CEO Jeff Lawson addressed the unexpected guidance by explaining that… Read More
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Startup step-by-step: Why I’m doing another startup
The desire to create is a hard one to kill. I’ve had it all my life, from the comic books and music I made with my grade school friend Rick to the books I wrote and tried to write to the projects I built over the years. Now it’s become easier and, in a way, harder, to make something meaningful online, so after shutting down one startup last year, I’ve decided to work on… Read More
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Tencent to open AI research center in Seattle
Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent will be opening a new AI research center in Seattle, according to The Information. The company has long had a core office in Palo Alto, but this will be its first major machine intelligence R&D effort in the country. Earlier this week Tencent announced that it would open its first data center in Silicon Valley. Read More
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Baidu is acquiring xPerception, a U.S. startup focused on computer vision
Baidu is acquiring xPerception, a US startup specialized in computer vision, according to Reuters. Details are sparse, but we know the startup has its own module for object recognition and depth perception that can be deployed on robots and drones. The Chinese tech giant has been active in machine intelligence M&A this year. Back in February it acquired Raven Tech, a Chinese startup… Read More
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