Santander, the Spanish multinational banking giant, is announcing that its fintech venture arm is to be spun out and will be managed more autonomously going forward. Previously known as Santander Innoventures and first established in 2014, the VC is being re-branded to Mouro Capital. It will continue to be headed up by general partner Manuel…
Self-driving cars are still many years away from becoming a ubiquitous reality, but today one of the bigger efforts to build and develop them is taking a significant step out as part of its strategy to be at the forefront for when they do. Yandex — the publicly-traded Russian tech giant that started as a…
Microsoft is shedding its empathetic chatbot Xiaoice into an independent entity, the U.S. software behemoth said (in Chinese) Monday, confirming an earlier report by the Chinese news site Chuhaipost in June. The announcement came several months after Microsoft announced it would close down its voice assistant app Cortana in China among other countries late last year.…
SpinLaunch, a company that aims to turn the launch industry on its head with a wild new concept for getting to orbit, has raised a $35M round B to continue its quest. The team has yet to demonstrate their kinetic launch system, but this year will be the year that changes, they claim. TechCrunch first…
Mark Zuckerberg will appear before Congress on Wednesday to defend Facebook’s controversial ‘cryptocurrency’ project, Libra. In his prepared remarks, the Facebook CEO will tell lawmakers that America risks losing “financial leadership” to China if they don’t get behind his company’s plan. Referring to China’s proposed digital currency, which is expected to launch before the end…
