Business

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg might not be able to agree about much when it comes to AI these days, but the pair do seem to see the same potential in Vicarious, a startup applying unsupervised learning techniques to robots. Musk and Zuckerberg were two of the early backers of Vicarious. The startup announced …

Elon Musk’s Boring Company is getting closer to becoming a reality. The businessman conceived the idea in December in response to the pain of clogged up roads and traffic jams, and it has begun to take shape thanks to work carried out this summer. The basic idea is that underground …

Less than a day after it agreed to put $2 billion into Southeast Asia’s Grab alongside Didi, SoftBank is being linked with an investment in Uber, the U.S. firm that rivals those two aforementioned ride-sharing companies. A Wall Street Journal report claims SoftBank has been in touch with Uber with the …

Grab, the ride-hailing company competing with Uber in Southeast Asia, has pulled in $2 billion of new financing from existing investors Didi Chuxing, the company that defeated Uber in China, and SoftBank. Didi said the round could expand to $500 million with input from other existing backers and new investors, …

Two global tech forces are putting their mark — and money — into Southeast Asia’s nascent startup ecosystem, but they may not be the Western names that you expect. Rather than Google, Facebook or Microsoft, increasingly Chinese duo Alibaba and Tencent are the driving forces behind the importing of large sums …

Toyota is known for its manufacturing efficiency. We’ve probably all heard that if a worker on the Camry line sees a problem, they have the authority to stop the line and address it. At the end of the day, teams meet to discuss what went wrong and what fixes actually …

SoftBank Vision Fund, the huge tech-investment vehicle helmed by Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, has led a $200 million investment into indoor farming startup Plenty. Joining Son on his trip out to back the (indoor) farm movement are notable tech billionaires Eric Schmidt and Jeff Bezos through their investment firms Innovation Endeavors …

Clara Labs, creator of the Clara AI assistant, is announcing a $7 million Series A this morning led by Basis Set Ventures. Slack Fund also joined in the round, alongside existing investors Sequoia and First Round. The startup will be looking to further differentiate within the crowded field of email-centric personal …

Apple has appointed Isabel Ge Mahe as its first vice president and managing director of its business in Greater China. China-born Ge Mahe is tasked with managing Apple’s China business, and she will report into CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams when she takes up the role, which is based out of Shanghai, …

Hours after WeWork announced plans to move into Japan, one of the U.S. co-working giant’s chief rivals made a move to increase the competition in Asia. Naked Hub, which was born out of China-based luxury resort company Naked Group, today announced a merger deal with JustCo, a fast-expanding co-working firm …