When Microsoft announced it was acquiring Nuance Communications this morning for $19.7 billion, you could be excused for doing a Monday morning double take at the hefty price tag. That’s surely a lot of money for a company on a $1.4 billion run rate, but Microsoft, which has already partnered with the speech-to-text market leader…
Read more
Don’t sleep on Detroit. The city that put America in motion is quickly growing into a startup hub with a wide variety of successes. From sneakers to mortgages to houseplants, companies are finding success in Southeast Michigan thanks to welcoming investors, access to amazing engineering talent, and a deep history of creating lasting businesses. Throughout…
Read more
IonQ, the trapped ion quantum computing company that recently went public via a SPAC, today announced that it is integrating its quantum computing platform with the open-source Qiskit software development kit. This means Qiskit users can now bring their programs to IonQ’s platform without any major modifications to their code. At first glance, that seems…
Read more
Microsoft agreed today to acquire Nuance Communications, a leader in speech to text software, for $19.7 billion. Bloomberg broke the story over the weekend that the two companies were in talks. In a post announcing the deal, the company said this was about increasing its presence in the healthcare vertical, a place where Nuance has…
Read more
Ethical investing remains something of a confusing maze, with a great deal of ‘greenwashing’ going on. A new UK startup is hoping to fix that with the launch of its new app and platform for retail investors. Clim8 Investhas raised $8 million from 7pc Ventures (early backers of Oculus, acquired by Facebook), British Business Bank…
Read more
The details for Ant’s restructuring plan after its IPO was called off have arrived. Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba controlled by Jack Ma, will be restructuring as a financial holding company, China’s central bank said on Monday. Ant, which provides online infrastructure for payments and other financial services, needs to “correct its anti-competitive…
Read more
Apple is reportedly working on a couple of new options for a renewed entry into the smart home, including a mash-up of the Apple TV with a HomePod speaker, and an integrated camera for video chat, according to Bloomberg. It’s also said to be working on a smart speaker that basically combines a HomePod with…
Read more
EcoCart, a company pitching consumers on ways to offset their carbon emissions for free at select merchants (with a browser extension!) has raised $3 million in financing from Base10 Partners. Brands pay the company a commission to drive traffic to their websites under a standard affiliate marketing model and EcoCart uses a portion of the…
Read more
Starting this week, some Domino’s customers in Houston can have a pizza delivered without ever interacting with a human. The pizza delivery giant said Monday it has partnered with autonomous delivery vehicle startup Nuro to allow select customers to have their pizzas dropped at their door via Nuro’s R2 robot. “There is still so much…
Read more
The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hi there, new and returning readers. This is The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and packages move (today and in the future) from…
Read more