The end of Anki

THE DAILY CRUNCH TUESDAY, APRIL 30 2019 By Anthony Ha Anki is shutting down, Google Q1 earnings disappoint and WeWork files to go public. Here's your Daily Crunch for April 30, 2019. 1. Cozmo maker Anki is shutting its doors No one ever said consumer robots were easy. But Anki's actually made a pretty strong go of it, all things considered. "We've shipped millions of units of product and left customers happy all over the world while building some of the most incredible technologies pointed toward a future with diverse AI and robotics driven applications," the company said. "But without significant funding to support a hardware and software business and bridge to our long-term product roadmap, it is simply not feasible at this time." 2. Alphabet misses on Q1 revenues of $36.3B; EPS of $9.50 weighed down by the $1.7B European fine Overall, it was a tough quarter for the company, indicating struggles with its growth. 3. Why did last night's 'Game of Thrones' look so bad? Here comes the science! For what it's worth, I didn't have any trouble watching Sunday's climactic battle episode of "Game of Thrones" — but it seems plenty of other viewers did. 4. Samsung sees Q1 profit plummet 60 percent Samsung said that sales of its new Galaxy S10 smartphone were "solid," but it admitted that its memory chip and display businesses — so often the most lucrative units for the company — didn't perform well. 5. Utah's Divvy raises $200M to eliminate expense reports Divvy only launched its platform, which allows customers to send and request funds, create virtual credit cards, manage team spending and more, in January 2018. Its valuation has grown 1,000 percent since then, across three rounds of equity funding. 6. Twitter announces new content deals with Univision, The Wall Street Journal and others The spotlight has moved on from Twitter's video strategy, but the company is still making deals. 7. What we want to know in the We Company (WeWork) S-1 With news that the We Company (formerly known as WeWork) has officially filed to go public, there's a big question on everyone's mind: Is this the next massive startup win or a house of cards waiting to be toppled by the glare of the public markets? (Extra Crunch membership required.) Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: Lead/Senior Backend Engineer at SocialSurvey (San Ramon, California, USA) Lead Designer at FanDragon Technologies (West Hollywood, CA, USA) PHP Application Developer at FHI 360 (Durham, NC, USA) Director of Operations & Finance / VP Operations & Finance / COO at The League (San Francisco, CA, USA) Partnership & Business Development Executive at CocuSocial (New York, NY, USA) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2019 Oath Tech Network. All rights reserved. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107

                                                           

Top Stories of the Day // April 29, 2019

Viacom is launching Pluto TV channels for Comedy Central, MTV and more | With Kata Containers and Zuul, OpenStack graduates its first infrastructure projects | Amazon Pay launches peer-to-peer payments in India | Beats' AirPods alternative start shipping May 10 | Samsung made a vertical TV for watching smartphone videos | Is this the vertical-folding Motorola Razr? | FutureLearn takes $65M from Seek Group for 50% stake in UK online degree platform |

THE DAILY CRUNCH MONDAY, APRIL 29 2019 TODAY'S TOP STORIES: TOP HEADLINE | Anthony Ha Viacom is launching Pluto TV channels for Comedy Central, MTV and more Just a few months after acquiring video streaming service Pluto TV, Viacom says it will be bringing its major networks to the ad-supported streaming service, with a whole lineup of... Read More… Frederic Lardinois With Kata Containers and Zuul, OpenStack graduates its first infrastructure projects Over the course of the last year and a half, the OpenStack Foundation made the switch from purely focusing on the core OpenStack project to opening itself up to other... Read More… Sarah Perez Amazon Pay launches peer-to-peer payments in India Continuing its investment in India, Amazon today announced the launch of person-to-person (P2P) payments via Amazon Pay for Android users in the country. Customers can now make instant bank-to-bank transactions... Read More… SPONSORED CONTENT Visa Visa and SBA innovate around small business disaster recovery Developers at the #SmallBusinessWeek Hackathon will use APIs from the Visa Developer Platform and Code.gov to create solutions that address pain points for small business disaster recovery, such as revenue restoration, repair financing, supplier access and payroll continuity. Learn More Brian Heater Beats' AirPods alternative start shipping May 10 Earlier this month, Beats unveiled its long-awaited answer to AirPods. The Powerbeats Pro feature far longer battery life, better sound and an improved fit. The Apple subsidiary promised a May... Read More… Brian Heater Samsung made a vertical TV for watching smartphone videos So it's come to this. After years of letter boxes and angry commenters, the electronics world is finally giving in and developing hardware designed to view vertical videos. Time to... Read More… Matt Burns Is this the vertical-folding Motorola Razr? This could be the upcoming Motorola Razr revival. The images purporting to be the upcoming smartphone appeared online on Weibo and show a foldable design. Unlike Galaxy Fold, though, Motorola's... Read More… Natasha Lomas FutureLearn takes $65M from Seek Group for 50% stake in UK online degree platform Edtech and recruitment continue to converge. London-based online degree platform, FutureLearn, is taking £50 million (~$64.6M) from Australian-based online job matching group, Seek, in exchange for a 50 per cent... Read More… Matt Burns 2019 Audi RS 5 review: A bruising high-tech cruiser The Audi RS 5 Sportback is an animal. Tamed, sure, but not domesticated. It's important to remember as one day, maybe next week or next year or both, the RS... Read More… Ingrid Lunden Spotify Q1 hits 100m paying users, 217M overall, beats on sales but loss widens to $47M As Amazon reportedly gears up to offer its own hi-fi music streaming service, Spotify has posted its Q1 figures. One significant milestone: the world's currently biggest music streaming service reported... Read More… Ron Miller Tray.io hauls in $37 million Series B to keep expanding enterprise automation tool Tray.io, the startup that wants to put automated workflows within reach of line of business users, announced a $37 million Series B investment today. Spark Capital led the round with... Read More… Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: Director of Operations & Finance / VP Operations & Finance / COO at The League (San Francisco, CA, USA) Partnership & Business Development Executive at CocuSocial (New York, NY, USA) Software Developer at Quorum (Washington, DC, USA) Sales Executive at Element Data (Bellevue, Washington, USA) Dev Ops Engineer at Element Data (Bellevue, Washington, USA) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2019 Oath Tech Network. All rights reserved. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107