Technical

Signaling its ambitions in the process automation market, Microsoft has acquired Minit , a Bratislava, Slovakia-originated process mining technology vendor, for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today. Microsoft says that the purchase will “further empower” it to “help … customers digitally transform” by creating a more complete picture of their processes — and identifying which of those processes are ripe for automation. “Minit currently enables businesses to transform the way they analyze, monitor and optimize their processes. Minit’s solutions have helped businesses gain deep insights into how processes run, uncover root causes of operational challenges and help mitigate undesired process outcomes,” Justin Graham, Microsoft’s general manager of process insights, wrote in a post on Microsoft’s corporate blog. “[With Minit, our] customers will be able to better understand their process data, uncover what operations look like in reality, and drive process standardization an...

Mass transit and shared mobility provider Swvl went public today in a landmark moment for Egyptian and Middle Eastern tech ecosystems . It’s also a test for the company going public despite a market that’s been unfriendly toward combinations with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, of late.  The Egypt-born and Dubai-based company has listed its shares at $10 on the Nasdaq through a merger with U.S. women-led blank check company Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital. The planned merger, which will see Swvl offer 20-30% of its total shares, was announced last July . Following closing, the combined company, now “Swvl Holding Corp,” will trade under GMBT and GMBTW today before switching to SWVL and SWVLW on April 1. Swvl is the first company launched from Africa and the second Middle Eastern company to list on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger . Anghami, an Abu Dhabi-based music streaming platform, did so last February when it listed with Vistas Media Acquisition at a $220 milli...

Earlier this week, a video surfaced of a robot dog walking down the streets of Shanghai with a bullhorn strapped on its back. There are those who will, no doubt, view it as a kind of apocalyptic vision. I’d be lying if the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. It’s a strange thing, living through history and imagining yourself traveling back in time as recently as 2019 and attempting to describe the scene. A quadrupedal robot bounding along down empty streets in a city with a population topping 26 million. The voice emerging from its back is warning citizens to stay inside, as China begins its largest lockdown in two years, as the country is seeing another spike in the ongoing pandemic. The less cynical part of me (it exists! really!) sees a fascinating little microcosm. We can debate lockdown measures (and certainly China’s specific approach to them) another day. But the image of a robot doing a job designed to curb the spread of the virus’s transmission distills a lot of what I’ve been ...

Matt Gatto Contributor Share on Twitter Matt Gatto is a managing director at Insight Partners. He focuses on high-growth software and SaaS businesses across infrastructure, healthcare and enterprise applications, and also has experience with leveraged buyouts. Last year was huge for the cybersecurity market, fueled by rising incidents of cyberattacks, particularly ransomware that disrupted services and held companies hostage. The numbers are striking: Investments in the space more than doubled from the year before to $29.3 billion, according to a recent report by investment bank Momentum Cyber. Two recent funding rounds, in November and February, even exceeded $1 billion. A record 286 M&A deals, worth $77.5 billion, were made, and 14 deals of those were over $1 billion each. This year is off to a promising start with Google’s $5.4 billion acquisition of Mandiant in March. The market is responding to the evolving threat landscape. As new types of attacks arise, sec...

Did The New York Times just ruin Wordle? Thankfully, no. When the popular puzzle game was purchased by the news media company in January for a low seven-figure sum, the deal came with promises that there would be “no changes” to Wordle’s gameplay after the move. But that appeared to be no longer be true this week when a number of Wordle addicts discovered they were getting different solutions than others who were playing the same day’s puzzle as they were. If that’s the case, this could have destroyed one of Wordle’s key selling points. After all, the joy in Wordle isn’t just guessing the five-letter word in under six tries — it’s sharing your results on social media and comparing how well you did with others. Spoilers below for Wordle puzzle 284 on Wednesday, March 30, 2022. On Wednesday, however, many Wordle players discovered the solution to their puzzle was different than others who played the same game, Wordle No. 284. For some, the winning word was “stove” but for others, i...

Amazon is introducing a new Alexa feature that will notify you if an item on your wishlist or in your shopping cart is about to go on sale, the company announced on Thursday. Alexa will now notify users up to 24 hours in advance of a deal going live and then order it on your behalf if you ask it to do so. The feature will also work with items that were marked “saved for later” on the platform. The new feature is now available for Amazon Prime customers in the United States across all newer generation Echo smart speakers. You can enable the feature in the Alexa app by navigating to the “Amazon shopping” section from your notifications settings and selecting “shopping recommendations.” When the feature is enabled, your Amazon Echo ring will turn yellow when an item goes on sale. You can ask Alexa to remind you about the deal when it goes live. You can also say “Alexa, buy it for me” if you want to purchase it. Alexa will then use the default payment and delivery address in your Amazon...

Security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek shook the automotive industry in 2015 by remotely hacking a Jeep Cherokee driven by Wired reporter , and willing participant, Andy Greenberg. The notorious hack caused Fiat Chrysler, Jeep’s parent company, to recall 1.4 million vehicles and pay $105 million in fines to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. The warning might have been a wake-up call to the industry, but it didn’t slow the rise of the connected car.  Today, the “connected car” is commonplace and delivers a long list of services to the driver and passengers, from internet connectivity and vehicle monitoring to safety warnings and the ability to buy goods and services while on the go. And it has crept beyond the passenger vehicle into the emerging autonomous vehicle industry, too.  Perhaps it’s not surprising then that automotive cyberattacks have grown in frequency — up more than 225% in 2021 , compared to 2018. It’s a trend that ha...

There were already several hints that YouTube was getting more serious about podcasts, after reports indicated the company hired a podcast executive , Kai Chuk, to lead its efforts in the space and had even begun offering cash to popular podcasters to film their shows. Now, a leaked document has unveiled more about YouTube’s plans in this area, pointing to a future podcasts homepage on YouTube.com and other monetization features. The details were published by Podnews , which recently got its hands on an 84-page presentation where YouTube described its podcasts roadmap. Here, the company says it will improve podcast ingestion by piloting the ability to pull in podcast RSS feeds. It also noted it plans to centralize podcasts on a new homepage at YouTube.com/podcasts. The URL doesn’t yet work; but it also doesn’t automatically redirect to the YouTube homepage — which is what it does if you put other random words after the slash. Not surprisingly, Google sees podcasts as a way to expand...

It’s not a coincidence that TechCrunch has covered more African startups in the last year than any period in our history. Many of those companies are Nigerian, and when we look at venture capital data, we can see why. The country had an incredible 2021 as the most active venture capital scene in Africa, collecting more than $1.8 billion, or 34% of the $5 billion raised across the continent, according to Partech , a pan-African VC firm that also tracks investments. The country has posted steady progress in the last three years as the leading African startup market. In 2019, startups based in Nigeria attracted $747 million, or 37% of Africa’s total VC investment. Those numbers decreased to $307 million, or 21% of the continent’s total, the following year, though 2020 was a venture capital year much impacted by outside forces. YC W22 batch nets 24 African startups, including 18 from Nigeria Thanks in part to a global boom in venture capital activity last year, Nigeria became the f...

Plastic bags are bad. Ban them from supermarkets, and the problem is solved, right? Right? Right? Turns out, as is often the case, there may be a little bit more to that story. Researchers at the University of Georgia suggest that banning the sale of plastic bags may come with a side-dish of unintended consequences. The new analysis suggests that plastic bag ban policies — while well-intentioned — may end up having the opposite effect. The issue that comes up is that grocery bags are viewed as single-use items, but they often get a (brief) second lease on life as liners for small trash cans. Without the shopping bags available, people look for alternatives — which the researchers suggest means they buy small plastic garbage bags. “We know there is a demand for using plastic bags, and we know, if these policies go into effect, some bags will disappear or will become more costly to get,” said Yu-Kai Huang, a postdoctoral researcher at the UGA Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Res...

Quantum Machines , the well-funded Israeli startup that specializes in building control systems for quantum computers, today announced that it has acquired QDevil , a well-known Danish company that specializes in building control hardware for quantum systems. The two companies did not disclose the financial details of the transaction and, according to Crunchbase , the company only raised about €1 million, mostly in the form of grants. But it has become a significant player in the market and counts many of the established quantum computing research institutes and commercial entities as its customers. Quantum Machines founder and CEO Itamar Sivan told me he first met the QDevil team in person at the last in-person APS March meeting back in 2019 and the companies continued to talk over the course of the next few years. “At some point, we realized that it would be highly impactful to join forces, because their products are actually complementary to ours. And therefore, we can now provid...

Since inception, Y Combinator has invested in thousands of startups, and more recently, even hundreds within a single batch. Given the accelerator’s growth, competitive tensions feel nearly inevitable. Still, one has to wonder if there is a fundamental shift afoot. Whereas YC always backed companies that might at some point overlap, the outfit appeared to casting its net far and wide, bringing in different startups at different stages from different geographies — companies that used each other’s products, in fact, and formed tight bonds through YC’s active alumni network. Now, however, YC seems to be actively leaning into startups that are roughly the same age, operating in the same countries and targeting exactly the same opportunity with nearly identical business models. Indeed, while similar types of companies within a class had grown inescapable as YC’s class sizes have ballooned, a kind of sameness is more apparent than ever with it latest batch of 400 startups. In fact, it’s...

Five years ago, Jonathan Tan and Roger Basu were on the hunt to find an industry where they could take their expertise in thin-film technology and make the biggest and fastest impact possible. They chose batteries — or more specifically, battery degradation and lifespan. It wasn’t — and still isn’t — an industry lacking in investment, research or companies claiming to have struck battery breakthrough gold. But the pair contend they have zagged where everyone else has zigged. Tan and Basu, who co-founded California-based startup Coreshell in 2017, said they steered clear of trying to develop a new battery from scratch, an expensive and lengthy undertaking that numerous companies were already working on. Instead, they focused their efforts on nanolayer coating technology that can be added to a battery cell manufacturer’s existing production system. This coating increases usable battery capacity by 30% or more and increases heat tolerance by 200%, all while lowering costs and improvin...

Earlier this month, Apple announced its first live sports deal with Major League Baseball to bring a number of games and other MLB content to the Apple TV+ service for the 2022 season. Today, Apple unveiled the first 12 weeks of its “ Friday Night Baseball ” doubleheader schedule, which it now says will be freely available to anyone with internet access — without the need for an Apple TV+ subscription. Previously, Apple had hinted some of its Friday Night games would be available for free for a “limited time,” but didn’t detail how many. The offering could entice more users to try out Apple TV+ before committing to a subscription. Apple confirmed to TechCrunch consumers won’t need to sign up for a TV+ subscription, nor a free trial, in order to stream the games for free. Apple says the first half of its “Friday Night Baseball” schedule is set to premiere on April 8. The first game in the schedule will see the New York Mets facing off against the Washington Nationals, live from Natio...

As more banking, e-commerce and insurance startups work to improve the way business is done in emerging countries, it should come as no surprise that this winter’s Y Combinator batch is rife with related efforts. There are 35 companies this year, just over double the amount in the 2021 winter batch and up from 18 in the summer program, according to the organization’s directory. What you’ll notice about this year’s cohort is the prevalence of companies from Nigeria, Indonesia and Argentina, all areas that have seen an abundance of venture capital funding into fintech in recent years, though nearly every country at this point is attracting investor interest. Indeed, according to CB Insights, global fintech funding reached a record $132 billion in 2021, more than two times the amount related companies raised in 2020 and accounting for a whopping 21% of all venture dollars. Herewith, the startups, with some of our quick thoughts about the broader problem each is trying to solve. Aigis...