SAP, the German enterprise software giant, announced it acquired CallidusCloud last night for $2.4 billion or $36 per share. Callidus provides configure price quote (CPQ) and sales performance management tools delivered as a cloud service. The share price is a nice bump for shareholders, representing a 21 percent premium over the 30-day volume weighted average
American Express announced today that it has acquired Mezi, the AI-based virtual travel assistant, for an undisclosed amount. After the deal closes, Mezi will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Express. Its technology is already powering AskAmex, a personal concierge app for cardholders that launched its pilot program last year. Mezi users send requests for flights,
When you reach BlaBlaCar’s scale, you need to find customers who are hard to reach — literally. The French company announced an effort to optimize its ride-sharing for long-distance rides for people who don’t live in major hubs. BlaBlaCar now has 60 million users. When you list a ride on BlaBlaCar, you tell the service
France’s Secretary of State for Digital Affairs Mounir Mahjoubi came to CES in Las Vegas to support hundreds of French startups. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit down and interview him about fake news, the French digital council, Axelle Lemaire’s law and how he plans to transform the state into a
French startup Spendesk just raised $9.9 million (€8 million) from Index Ventures with Michael Benabou, Laurent Asscher and Showpad cofounders Louis Jonckheere and Pieterjan Bouten also participating. Spendesk is a service that combines prepaid cards with an expense report solution. After signing up, each employee receives a personal card. Companies can top up their global
Google has announced the completion of its $1.1 billion deal to buy a large slice of HTC’s hardware business. The acquisition was announced back in September 2017 but now it has passed the requisite approvals and is finalized. Beyond the transfer of over 2,000 engineers from HTC — that’s around one-fifth of HTC’s engineering team
Instagram copied the ‘Snap’ and now it might be going after the ‘chat’. A video calling feature was spotted in a non-public version of Instagram by WhatsApp industry blog WABetaInfo. It would let users who’ve begun an Instagram Direct message thread to video chat with each other. That could let people spend even more time
A report this weekend by Axios cited documents from within the National Security Council describing the possibility — nay, inevitability — of a 5G network built and operated by the U.S. government. Officials have since poured cold water on this idea, and really, it was never feasible. In brief, the report cited by Axios suggested
As more and more startups aim to 3D-scan the world, the question of what consumers will actually care about enough to bring into the digital world is a tough one to answer. For most people, a home will be the biggest investment they make in their lives, so SF-based Hover is theorizing that’s the place
The Mavic Air is a minor engineering marvel. The first time you set up DJI’s new drone it’s like trying to solve a puzzle box. You flip, you twist, you unfold. The metal joysticks are safely nestled inside the flip-out arms of the controller, the landing gear safely nestled in the propeller arms. Not a
Facebook’s latest step in its on-going effort to fix its embattled news delivery offering involves prioritizing local sources. The social media giant announced today in a blog post that, along with efforts to elevate content from friends and outlets designated as “high quality,” the site will be working to push local news offerings to the
A new report claims Apple will make 20 million iPhone Xs in the first quarter of 2018, rather than 40 million. Apple reportedly halves iPhone X early 2018 production target – https://www.cnet.com/…
In the latest chapter of GAFAM’s continuing bid to conquer online gaming, Microsoft has acquired PlayFab, which helps game developers launch their titles online more quickly with simplified back-end services. The startup will be integrated into Microsoft’s Azure gaming group. The Seattle-based startup had raised around $13 million in funding from investors. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The address book is the last, worst default app you rely on. It’s time it got as smart as the rest of our phones. That’s the idea behind SuperPhone. Email isn’t how you build relationships anymore. Yet most business software sanctifies the spammy inbox when it’s the immediacy of text messaging that keeps people in touch
This $200 indoor camera is stylish enough for your bookshelf. And it’s pretty smart, too. Hive View Camera review – http://cnet.co/2Ej1T4x Subscribe to CNET: http://cnet.co/2heRhep Check out…
By now you’ve probably heard that the Dell board is supposed to be convening later this month to figure out how it might reorganize itself to deal with the mountain of debt it took on when it bought EMC in 2015 for $67 billion. The rumors began on Friday and involved a couple of possible
Boeing’s HorizonX is the aerospace company’s vehicle for making investments in promising next-generation startups and technology, and it just placed its latest bet: funding in Cuberg, a Berkeley-based battery tech startup that has a founding team including Stanford University researchers. Battery tech is still one of the most frustrating roadblocks any company encounters when trying
According to a Bloomberg article, Apple could be working on three new Mac models for this year. All three of them could feature an ARM coprocessor to improve security. Apple isn’t switching to ARM chipsets altogether. There will still be an Intel CPU in every Mac, but with a second ARM processor. Currently, the MacBook
Another startup in the area of cyber security has been snapped up as platform businesses serving enterprises look for more ways of securing their own networks and working with customers to secure theirs. Today, the RELX Group (formerly known as Reed Elsevier) announced that it would acquire ThreatMetrix for £580 million (about $817 million) in
As companies gear up to make themselves complaint with upcoming data protection regulations in Europe around GDPR, those doing business in Member States will also be facing another wave of requirements around cyber security, as part of the NIS Directive covering network and information security that must be put into place across Member States by
ContentSquare, which offers cloud-based software that helps businesses understand how and why users are interacting with their app, mobile and web sites, has picked up $42 million in Series B funding. The round is led Canaan, the U.S. VC firm that has previously invested in LendingClub, Ebates, and Match.com, with participation from previous backer Highland
As the May 25 deadline for compliance with the EU’s updated privacy framework fast approaches Facebook is continuing to PR the changes it’s making to try to meet the new data protection standard — and steer away from the specter of fines that can scale as high as 4% of a company’s global turnover. Today it’s
As data privacy becomes an increasingly important notion, especially with the EU’s GDPR privacy laws coming online in May, companies need to find ways to understand their customer’s private data. BigID thinks it has a solution and it landed a $14 million Series A investment today to help grow the idea. Comcast Ventures, SAP (via SAP.io),
We called in our resident destroyer, Vanessa Hand Orellana, to help us rank which phones can’t handle a tumble. Subscribe to CNET: http://cnet.co/2heRhep Check out our playlists: http://cnet.co/2g…
Goxip, a Hong Kong-based social shopping service, has raised $5 million to branch out into influencer marketing. The investment was led by Meitu, the $6 billion Hong Kong-listed company that develops selfie apps and selfie-optimized phones, with participation from Hong Kong conglomerate Nan Fung Group via its inaugural Mills Fabrica Fund. Others who took part
Google has confirmed its investment in Go-Jek, the hail-railing service that rivals Uber and Grab in Indonesia. TechCrunch reported the investment last week, which was made alongside China’s Meituan-Dianping and Singaporean sovereign fund Temasek. The trio were part of a final tranche of a $1.2 billion round that Go-Jek began negotiating on last April, with
The battery life of wearables, IoT devices, and smartphones remains one of the tech industry’s biggest challenges and often a significant barrier to mainstream adoption. (I, for one, can’t think of anything more tedious than having to charge a watch every night). There are various ways to tackle this problem, from better power management software
Intel is not having that great of year thus far in the face of a slew of information about security flaws in it hardware coming out — and you can add another new report from The Wall Street Journal today, which suggests that Intel didn’t immediately notify the U.S. government of the issues, to that
One of the great entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, passed away today. As Reuters pointed out in its short biography, Kamprad created a store — as a teenager mind you — that today has more than 400 locations, revenues of $62 billion, and a cultural ubiquity that very few
So that flamethrower that Elon Musk teased The Boring Company would start selling after it ran out of its 50,000 hats? Yeah, it’s real – and you can pre-order one now if you want need a ridiculous way to spend $500. Musk revealed the flamethrower on Saturday, after some digging tipped its existence late last