Articles about Startup

Blockchain and bitcoin start-ups have raised almost $300 million in funding in the first half of 2016, Juniper Research claims. This goes to show just how important the new way of doing business and paying for goods and services is.

There are more than 30 startups in the world which Juniper looked at for this research.

Continue reading →

Salesforce has announced it is buying data analytics startup BeyondCore. In a tweet posted earlier this week, Marc Benioff says: "I am thrilled announce @Salesforce has acquired @beyondcoreinc to enhance the AI capabilities of Analytics Cloud".

Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we do know that BeyondCore will integrate into Saleforce’s Analytics Cloud, and will leverage its AI knowledge.

Continue reading →

General Motors (GM) currently holds some nine percent stake at Lyft, the US ride-sharing startup. However, according to new reports, firstly coming out of The Information, GM was interested in purchasing the other 91 percent, as well.

How much money would that be? Well, if nine percent is $500 million, the entire company would be around $5.5 billion. Lyft, apparently, turned the offer down and instead wants to go for another round of funding.

Continue reading →

Intel is buying machine learning start-up Nervana, and it’s paying some serious money for it. According to multiple media sources, the 48-person start-up was acquired for a stunning $408 million (£312m).

Nervana is an artificial intelligence company which is looking to integrate AI beyond the usual software -- it wants to squeeze it into the chips themselves. And who better to team up with to achieve that goal than Intel -- one of the biggest chipmakers in the world.

Continue reading →

Airbnb, the home rental startup, is raising another $850 million (£651m), according to a new report by Bloomberg, at a valuation of $30 billion, making it the second most valuable start-up, right behind the $68-billion-worth car-sharing Uber.

The document, filed with the state of Delaware, does not show who the investors are, and Airbnb has yet to make a comment.

Continue reading →

Uber is the latest poster child for technological disruption. The company found an industry stagnated by anti-competitive regulations and, with the simple addition of a mobile app that enabled its users to provide what only taxis and limousines could do before, it stood that industry on its ear. And ever since, we have faced a litany of startups that call themselves the "Uber of" something or other.

There’s just one problem: not everyone can be an Uber.

Continue reading →

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has acquired the San Francisco-based startup Cloud9 for an undisclosed sum in an effort to add more development tools to its web services stack.

The company was founded in 2010 and gives remote teams of developers the ability to work together to develop, edit and test code across 300 different browsers and operating systems.

Continue reading →

Google wants to help UK’s young start-ups make it big, and it’s kicking off a start-up camp to make it happen.

A nationwide search has kicked off, with the goal of finding 10 start-ups "who think big". Applications are now open and will remain so until July 29. The 10 start-ups that do get selected, will have access to "bespoke support", including insights from London’s most experienced mentors and investors.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has today announced a new department designed to invest into disruptive start-ups in their early phases.

The department, led by Nagraj Kashyap (corporate vice president) and executive vice president of business development Peggy Johnson, holds the name Microsoft Ventures.

Continue reading →

Venture capitalists have scaled back the size and amount of their deals across the world and UK-based startups received less funding during Q1 2016 than in Q4 2015 as a result.

A new report from the analytics company CB Insights and the advisory firm KPMG Enterprise has revealed that, between January and March, startups in the UK were able to raise $1.3 billion across 105 deals. Across Europe as a whole venture capitalist (VC) funding totaled $3.5 billion across 338 deals. Thirty-six percent of all VC funding in Europe went to companies in the UK.

Continue reading →

Salesforce has acquired MetaMind and plans on ending the startup’s services on May 4. The deep learning company launched in 2014 with $8 million in initial funding from Salesforce’s cofounder and CEO Marc Benioff and Khosla Ventures.

MetaMind has really set itself apart from its competition through its image recognition capabilities. The site is able to identify the items in images and a demo called MetaMind Food Identification first gave users of the service a taste of what it was capable of.

Continue reading →

Back in the spring of 2012 Congress passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the JOBS Act) to make it easier for small companies to raise capital. The act recognized that nearly all job creation in the US economy comes from new businesses and attempted to accelerate startups by creating whole new ways to fund them.

The act required the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by the end of 2012 to come up with regulations to enable the centerpiece of the act, equity crowd funding, which would allow any legal US resident to become a venture capitalist. But the regulations weren’t finished by the end of 2012. They weren’t finished by the end of 2013, either, or 2014. The regulations were finally finished on October 30, 2015 -- 1033 days late.

Continue reading →

You might think Apple or Google have the greenest datacenters, but it’s actually a German startup called Cloud&Heat that takes the crown.

The company said it managed to realize the lowest energy consumption and has "undercut Google’s optimum value by 40 percent".

Continue reading →

Starting any business can be fraught with difficulties, but a tech business can be even trickier. We look at what things you should do to make your business a success.

Starting a business is the dream for anyone with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit, but turning dreams into reality is never easy. This year alone, more than 70,000 start-ups have opened for business according to Startup Britain. Each year, more than half a million people start a business.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has announced that it has acquired Metanautix, a startup company that was developing its Quest data compute engine which aims to help large enterprises filter through their vast amounts of in-house data.

Metanautix, which was co-founded in 2012 by Theo Vassilakis and Toli Lerios, was launched in September 2014 after raising $7 million of funding after Quest had been two years in development.

Continue reading →