Artificial intelligence and other tech for automating some of the more repetitive aspects of human jobs continues to be a growing category of software, and today a company that builds tools to address this need for salespeople has raised a tidy sum to grow its business. SalesLoft, an Atlanta-based startup that has built a platform for salespeople to help them engage with their clients — providing communications tools, supporting data, and finally analytics to ‘coach’ salespeople to improve their processes — has raised $70 million in a Series D round of funding led by … [Read more...]

Two years after highly classified exploits built by the National Security Agency were stolen and published, hackers are still using the tools for nefarious reasons. Security researchers at Symantec say they’ve seen a recent spike in a new malware, dubbed Beapy, which uses the leaked hacking tools to spread like wildfire across corporate networks to enslave computers into running mining code to generate cryptocurrency. Beapy was first spotted in January but rocketed to more than 12,000 unique infection across 732 organizations since March, said Alan Neville, … [Read more...]

The recent global campaign showing Malaria survivors speaking through David Beckham to help raise awareness around the Malaria Must Die initiative spooked a lot of people: The campaign has already exceeded 400 million impressions globally. But a behind-the-scenes video explains how the video was made: The campaign was a joint collaboration between RG/A, Ridley Scott Associates and the clever video startup Synthesia, for Malaria No More. And it turns out there’s a huge commercial imperative over this cool technology. Video production today is highly unscaleable. … [Read more...]

Labster, the Denmark headquartered startup building virtual laboratory simulations for STEM students, has raised $21 million in Series B funding. Leading the round is Owl Ventures, with participation from Balderton Capital, Northzone and Swisscom Ventures. Previous backers Nordic Makers, David Helgason, EduCapital and Entangled Group also followed on, bringing the total raised by the company to date to $35 million. Launched back in 2013, Labster provides interactive laboratory simulations powered by VR for students that wish to explore lab experiments in biology, … [Read more...]

Two futuristic projects are coming together to help increase global internet access after Loon, the Google spinout that uses a collection of floating balloons to bring connectivity to remote areas, announced it has raised money from a SoftBank initiative. HAPSMobile, a SoftBank project that is also focused on increasing global connectivity, is investing $125 million into Loon, according to an announcement from SoftBank made this morning. The agreement includes an option for Loon to make a reciprocal $125 million investment in HAPSMobile and it includes co-operation … [Read more...]

Zack Burt Contributor Zack Burt is an American computer programmer. He founded Code For Cash, the tech recruiting firm. The competition is intense for great tech talent, and it’s even harder to find the most qualified people who are also the right fit for your company This article shares some practical processes that you can add to your human resources function in order to accelerate the programmer pipeline, based on the years I have spent as a hiring focused software engineer at growing startups and now running my own recruiting firm. Our recruiting strategy is … [Read more...]

Elon Musk would prefer if Tesla, which is known for its volatile share price and is among the most heavily shorted stock, were a private company, but acknowledged during an earnings call Wednesday that it wasn’t likely. Musk can dream, can’t he? “Unfortunately that ship had sailed,” Musk said flatly, in response to a question from Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas. Musk said Tesla as a public company was a distraction at times and then added “I’m not sure what to do about it.” The question came up as an increasing number investors, known as shorts, bet that … [Read more...]

Tesla is developing an insurance product, which could be launched in about a month, CEO Elon Musk said during a call with analysts Wednesday following its first-quarter earnings report. “It will be much more compelling than anything else out there,” he said. Musk didn’t provide further details on what the insurance product might look like, but it will most certainly place value on its Autopilot system, an advanced driver assistance system that is considered one of the most robust and at times, most controversial, in the industry. Musk later added that Tesla … [Read more...]

In a feat that could eventually unlock the possibility of speech for people with severe medical conditions, scientists have successfully recreated the speech of healthy subjects by tapping directly into their brains. The technology is a long, long way from practical application but the science is real and the promise is there. Edward Chang, neurosurgeon at UC San Francisco and co-author of the paper published today in Nature, explained the impact of the team’s work in a press release: “For the first time, this study demonstrates that we can generate entire … [Read more...]

Great news for all you coders, hackers, developers and creative tech makers — our onsite Hackathon returns to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on October 2-4. Applications to hack are open now and if you’re selected, you get to flex your mighty coding skills and go head-to-head against some of the world’s best developers to build something amazing. Even better, participating in the Hackathon doesn’t cost a thing, so hop to it and apply right here. The Hackathon is a grueling, exhilarating, sleep-deprived experience — and a ton of fun. It puts your skills to the test, tries … [Read more...]