Startup News
MusicLife raises $5 million to distribute music with AI and blockchain tech
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 17:00
EXCLUSIVE: MusicLife, a joint collaboration between the Singapore-based nonprofit MusicLife Foundation and the Japan-based MusicLife Company, aims to solve the music distribution problem with a combination of blockchain ...
Amazon researchers share how AI helps Alexa answer follow-up questions
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 16:56
Tracking threads in a conversation isn't easy for virtual assistants and smart speakers, but researchers at Amazon have developed a novel way to Alexa context carryover with the help of artificial intelligence.
Toyota invests $500 million into Uber self-driving car program
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 22:32
Toyota will invest $500 million in Uber to jointly work on developing self-driving cars, a bid by both companies to catch up to rivals in the hotly competitive autonomous driving businesses.
Vodacom launches Africa's first commercial 5G service in Lesotho
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 21:18
Vodacom has announced the launch of Africa's first commercial 5G network, focusing first on the tiny kingdom of Lesotho, and specifically offering fixed 5G broadband services to two enterprise-class customers.
Google releases open source reinforcement learning framework for training AI models
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 21:01
Google's releasing a reinforcement learning framework that makes it easier to train AI models with cutting-edge techniques.
Watch Cyberpunk 2077's full 48-minute gameplay reveal
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 20:51
CD Projekt Red has finally revealed the gameplay of its upcoming sci-fi role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077. After months of showing a 48 minute demo behind closed doors at events like the Electronic Entertainment Expo trad...
Lost Ember's exploring animals discover Gamescom's indie award
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 19:30
Indie developer Mooneye Studios announced today that its upcoming game Lost Ember won the Gamescom Indie Award 2018. The honor was given out during last week’s Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany. Lost Ember has yo...
SyncThink uses VR analytics to examine sports athletes for possible concussions
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 18:00
SyncThink, which uses a virtual reality headset to perform neurotechnology and brain health analytics, announced today the release of expanded software capabilities to its platform. People can use these new features to i...
Oculus founder roasts Magic Leap One as 'HoloLens 1.1', bemoaning hype
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 17:58
After giving his personal Magic Leap One development kit to iFixit for a physical teardown last week, controversial Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has posted a blunt and detailed conceptual teardown of the Creator Edition ...
Streets of Rage 4 revives Sega's classic beat 'em up series
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 17:10
After a 24 year hiatus, Streets of Rage is back. Publisher Dotemu, which specializes in classic games, announced today that it is working with developers Lizard Cube and Guard Crush Games on Streets of Rage 4, a new entr...
Donut County review -- It's fun to swallow the world with a donut hole
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 16:00
REVIEW: Donut County is a crazy video game where you position a donut hole under objects and they fall into it. The more items you collect, the bigger the donut hole becomes until you can suck whole buildings into it. It...
Apple reportedly mulls iPhone Xs names, no 'Plus' for 2018 models
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 15:13
Apple faces a naming conundrum ahead of the release of its three 2018 iPhones, and is considering tweaking some key branding conventions, including removing the "Plus" name and skipping the "iPhone 9."
Panzura launches Vizion.ai, a multi-cloud data management service with AI smarts
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 15:00
San Francisco startup Panzura might have gotten its start in networked enterprise storage, but it's turning its attention to file services. It announced recently Vizion.ai, a SaaS platform comprising multi-cloud search, ...
Facebook bans Myanmar military officials as company struggles to address its role in deadly ethnic violence
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 11:51
Months after reports emerged about the role Facebook’s platform has played in inciting ethnic hatred in Myanmar, the company announced it has banned several Myanmar military officials in an effort to “prevent the spr...
Elon Musk may face bigger regulatory headache after killing plan to take Tesla private
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 11:27
WASHINGTON (By Michelle Price, Reuters) – Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk's decision to abruptly abandon a plan to take his electric carmaker private will not resolve his mounting regulatory and legal woes, and may eve...
6 games band together on Ready Player One -style gaming multiverse
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 08:35
Is the gaming multiverse world of Ready Player One at hand? That’s the big claim coming from the makers of Enjin Coin, a new kind of cryptocurrency. The developers of six blockchain games have banded together in a synd...
Animoca Brands acquires Sandbox game developer Pixowl for $4.875 million
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 06:01
Animoca Brands acquires Pixowl, developer of The Sandbox user-created world mobile game, for $4.875 million in cash and stock. The deal represents a nice outcome for Pixowl, which launched The Sandbox in 2012. The pixela...
Nostos is an open-world VR RPG that sure looks like Sword Art Online
Venture Beat - 27 Aug 2018 04:17
I'm a simple man. I love beautiful, cel-shaded worlds; role-playing games; and fighting monsters online with friends. Similar in many ways to Sword Art Online, Nostos is all of those and more, in virtual reality, and I'm...