Business

Last summer LeEco announced it intended to purchase the U.S.-based TV maker Vizio for $2 billion. The deal fell through in March amid myriad problems surrounding LeEco, including a major cash crunch. Allegedly the deal included a $100 million buyer-termination fee and now Vizio has filed suit in a California court to …

It’s been pretty obvious for a few months now, but Google has finally admitted that it’s running its own investment fund targeting machine intelligence startups. The fund will go by the name Gradient Ventures and provide capital, resources and education to AI-first startups. Google isn’t disclosing the size of the …

Sales teams have Salesforce. Engineers have GitHub. But designers have always had slim pickings. Abstract, launching today, is a workflow platform and system of record built for designers to solve the debilitating frustrations of the design process. The company is targeting Sketch users out of the gates with a round …

The perfume and makeup subscription service Scentbird intends to launch into the home and personal care markets in the fall. The New York-based company is already profitable, with 140,000 subscribers buying either its fragrance subscription or its Deck of Scarlet makeup service that launched last fall, co-founder and chief executive …

Venture capital’s national association has come out swinging against the Trump administration’s decision to delay the International Entrepreneur Rule. A product of the final days of President Obama’s administration, the rule was designed to let talented immigrant entrepreneurs stay in the U.S. to build their companies. The two-and-a-half year period …

Payment enabler Stripe just announced two significant tie-ins that could help its pool of merchants make money from consumers in China. U.S. firm Stripe said today that it has agreed to global deals with Alipay and WeChat Pay, two digital services that dominate consumer spending in China. Alipay, which is …

Franky Bernstein loves startups. His latest company, Markett, is born out of that love, and his innate desire to share tips about those innovative new startup companies with the wider world. The 24-year-old serial entrepreneur first was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug while attending Loyola Marymount University, where, as a …

If you’ve been following the headlines in the world of AI, you might be fooled into thinking that corporations are doubling down, rather than withdrawing, from pure research. But on the ground, things are considerably more complicated — tech companies are spending more on the development part of RD while …

Societal health can be assessed by a handful of factors: economic mobility (is the current generation earning more than their parents did?), upward mobility (the rate of which an individual can improve their own socioeconomic status), productivity (how efficiently one can earn income) and lastly, whether they have sufficient access …

Dave McClure has resigned as general partner of 500 Startups, TechCrunch has learned. We have confirmed co-founder Christine Tsai asked for his resignation and he accepted, according to a letter sent to limited partners today. We reached out to 500 Startups for comment and they also confirmed the resignation. McClure …