Cashierless Amazon Go stores are planning to accept cash

Amazon Go convenience stores will begin to accept cash, according to a report this morning from CNBC, which Amazon confirmed. The retailer didn’t say when cash would be added to existing stores as a payment option, however, only that it was planned. The issue with the cashierless, automated Amazon Go stores is that they require […]

Here’s the first image of a black hole

Say hello to the black hole deep inside the Messier 87, a galaxy located in the Virgo cluster some 55 million light years away. It may seem underwhelming at first, but it’s one of four images of the supermassive spacetime deforming structure — marking the first time such an object has been photographed. The shots […]

For true transparency around political advertising, U.S. tech companies must collaborate

In October 2017 online giants Twitter, Facebook, and Google announced plans to voluntarily increase transparency for political advertising on their platforms. The three plans to tackle disinformation had roughly the same structure: funder disclaimers on political ads, stricter verification measures to prevent foreign entities from posting such ads, and varying formats of ad archives. All […]

Restaurant website builder BentoBox raises $16.4M

BentoBox, which helps restaurant owners build mobile-friendly websites, has raised $16.4 million in Series B funding. This might not seem like the biggest opportunity, particularly since consumers are connecting with restaurants in so many other places online — reading reviews on Yelp, making reservations on OpenTable, ordering delivery on GrubHub and so on. But founder […]

Esports org OverActive Media gets investment from The Weeknd

OverActive Media, the company that owns Splyce esports org and the Overwatch League’s Toronto Defiant team, have announced that The Weeknd (real name: Abel Tesfaye) has invested in the company. In the world of esports, OAM is a big organization — the Toronto-based company, which launched in 2017, has teams in the League of Legends […]

Defy Partners raises $262M to close the Series A gap

Defy Partners, a Silicon Valley investment firm launched in 2017 by a pair of seasoned venture capitalists, has secured $262 million for its sophomore fund. The firm leads investments in Series A startups, providing between $3 million and $10 million depending on the status of the business. To provide its portfolio companies additional follow-on capital, […]

YieldStreet acquires Athena for $170M to add art financing to its alternative investment platform

YieldStreet — which raised $62 million in February to further open up alternative investments in areas like shipping, real estate, legal finance and commercial loans to a wider base of investors — is today announcing its first acquisition to expand into a new asset class. It is paying $170 million to acquire Athena Art Finance, which provides loans to […]

Movo grabs $22.5M to get more cities in LatAm scooting

Madrid-based micromobility startup Movo has closed a €20 million (~$22.5M) Series A funding round to accelerate international expansion. The 2017 founded Spanish startup targets cities in its home market and in markets across LatAm, offering last mile mobility via rentable electric scooters (e-mopeds and e-scooters) plotted on an app map. It’s a subsidiary of local […]

Watch day 2 of Google Cloud Next live right here

Yesterday, the opening keynote for Google’s Cloud Next conference was packed with news, from Google’s hybrid cloud platform Anthos to Google’s new product to turn a container into a URL. At 9 AM PT, 12 PM ET, 5 PM GMT, Google is opening day 2 of its conference with the product innovation keynote. Later at […]