Mission Everywhere

The internet and search engines like Google have made the world our oyster when it comes to sourcing information, but when it comes to business, there remains a persistent need for more targeted market intelligence, a way to get reliable data quickly to get on with your work. Today, one of the startups hoping to build a big business around that premise is announcing a round of funding to get there. Crunchbase — a directory and database of company-related information that originally got its start as a part of TechCrunch before being spun off into a separate business several years ago — has raised $30 million, a Series C that it plans to use to continue expanding its base of paid subscribers and expanding its product to include more predictive, personalised information for its users by way more machine learning and other AI-based technology. CEO Jager McConnell, who has long viewed Crunchbase as the “LinkedIn for company profiles,” said that of the 55 million people who visit the si...

French swimwear brand Vilebrequin said that it is "seriously considering" bringing back the design of its octopus print swimming trunks from 2014 after Jeff Bezos wore then on several occasions over the summer and created a frenzy online. According to a recent report from the fashion search site Lyst , shoppers searched for these trunks more than 4,000 times between July and August, and the brand saw a 105% rise in page views during that time. Because of this, the trunks were featured in Lyst's top 10 ranking of the hottest menswear items from the summer. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Anyone who has frantically searched for a pair of Jeff Bezos' octopus print swimming trunks this summer, only to find that they have long been out of stock, may finally be in luck.  A spokesperson for French brand Vilebrequin, the maker of these trunks, told Business Insider that it is "seriously considering" bringing this design back in futur...

An American giant may have figured out a way to simplify the tedious procedure of issuing driver’s licenses. And an early sneak peek of this solution is now live in parts of India. Hundreds of people who have taken the driver’s license test in Dehradun, the capital of Indian state Uttarakhand near the Himalayan foothills, in recent weeks haven’t had to sit next to an instructor . Instead, their cars were affixed with a smartphone that was running HAMS , an AI project developed by Microsoft Research team. HAMS uses a smartphone’s front and rear cameras and other sensors to monitor the driver (their gaze), and the road ahead of them. Microsoft Research team said for driver tests, they customized HAMS to enable precise tracking of a vehicle’s trajectory during test manoeuvres such as parallel parking or negotiating a roundabout. This AI technology can determine whether the driver performed any action — such as stopping in the middle of a test or course correcting by rolling forward or ...

Pavel Alpeyev / Bloomberg : Nintendo beats estimates in Q2 with sales of 4.8M Switch consoles, up 50% YoY, and operating income of ~$615M on revenue of ~$2.5B   —  - Switch sales climb 50% from a year ago to 4.8 million units  — Nintendo sticks with conservative full-year earnings outlook from Techmeme https://ift.tt/2PwipWu

Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has said that political ads are worth less than 1% of the social network's total revenue, as the furore around the firm's stance on political advertising grows. Sandberg told Bloomberg that the revenue Facebook makes from political ads is "not worth the controversy" that it generates, but justified the firm continuing to accept such ads on free speech grounds. Sandberg's remarks came hours after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey pointedly banned political ads from his network, saying that political reach needed to be earned rather than paid for. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories . Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg doubled down on the firm's stance on political advertising late on Wednesday, saying that the firm allows the ads on free speech grounds even though they don't bring in much revenue and cause huge hassle. In an interview with Bloomberg , Sandberg said that Facebo...

Sarah Emerson / OneZero : An investigation into the supply chain of AmazonBasics batteries shows how Amazon masks its private label operations through a discreet network of outsourcing   —  One of Amazon's smallest and most popular products has a surprisingly large footprint  —  heard the “pop!” from my living room … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/323tBN9

Google Cloud has joined forces with India-based IT services powerhouse HCL, which CEO Thomas Kurian says will make it a stronger player in the cloud where it is facing off with Amazon and Microsoft. HCL will set up a new business organization with more than 5,000 IT professionals who will focus mainly on serving the needs of Google Cloud and its customers. "At Google, we've been very clear that we're not a services company," Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian told Business Insider. "We never wanted to be a services company because frankly being a services company leads to conflict with the very partners like HCL that you want to use your platform." HCL is one of the major players in infrastructure managed services the world. Gartner names it among the leading data center outsourcing and hybrid management infrastructure services providers in North America, together with IBM and Accenture. Click here for more BI Prime stories. Google Cloud is joining force...