Connections between the Obama administration and Silicon Valley abound, but particularly for Josh Kushner. The latest? Kushner’s venture firm Thrive Capital just hired Josh Miller, a member of the White House Office of Digital Strategy under President Barack Obama. Miller, just 24 when he left Facebook to serve as the White …
Read More »Microsoft asks for exemptions to Trump’s immigration order for visa holders
Microsoft isn’t ending its general opposition to Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration from last week, but it is more formally requesting the granting of immediate exceptions that would help its own employees, as well as the employees of other tech companies who are lawful visa holders but still affected by …
Read More »Disrupt NY Startup Battlefield applications are due in two weeks
Applications for Startup Battlefield at Disrupt NY are now open and due on February 18. That’s just over two weeks away. We’re searching for new, up-and-coming startups to launch and compete on the TechCrunch Disrupt NY stage. Why Apply? Your team will get to pitch for six minutes and then face …
Read More »Elemeno Health is a personal assistant for hospital staff
Elemeno Health started building something akin to a personal assistant for hospital staff while in Y Combinator last summer. It helps hospitals gather best practices, checklists and videos doctors and nurses need to reference in a snap, all in one place. Often these materials are locked in binders and papers that staff …
Read More »ClearMotion lands $100M to swap software for car shocks and boost self-driving UX
ClearMotion, a company that’s building an alternative chassis for vehicle makers that replaces traditional physical shock absorbers with digital, software-driven adaptive actuators, has readied $100 million in a Series C round, led by a group of clients advised by J.P. Morgan’s asset management wing and with participation from NEA, Qualcomm …
Read More »Elaine Chao is officially the new U.S. Secretary of Transportation
Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao received the confirmation of the full Senate on Tuesday. That’s the last hurdle for Chao, who now becomes the head of the Department of Transportation, replacing the outgoing Secretary Anthony Foxx, who was nominated by Barack Obama in 2013 and served …
Read More »Sheryl Sandberg joins the immigration ban statement canoe
Several tech leaders spoke out against President Trump’s executive order to ban immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries over the weekend. Sheryl Sandberg has now leaned into that now rather large group with a post on her Facebook wall. In it, Sandberg talked about her great-great-grandmother arriving at Ellis Island in the late …
Read More »Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addresses Trump immigration order in employee Q&A
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has already weighed in on Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order on refugees in a LinkedIn post, but now the company has made public additional thoughts on the subject from its top executive. On its official corporate blog, Microsoft shared an answer provided by Nadella during …
Read More »Daimler to operate self-driving cars on Uber’s network
Daimler and Uber have announced a partnership that will see the automaker introduce its own self-driving cars for use on Uber’s ride sharing service. The team-up is the second alliance Uber has struck with a car maker in pursuit of its goal of delivering self-driving service to users, the first …
Read More »Amazon, Expedia and Microsoft to support Washington state lawsuit on Trump immigration order
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced Monday that he’s filing suit in federal court against Trump, the Department of Homeland Security and select senior Trump administration officials, seeking a declaration that key portions of Trump’s Executive Order on immigration be declared unconstitutional. Alongside the lawsuit, Washington-based tech companies Amazon and …
Read More »