Amazon

Disney and Amazon partner on a custom voice assistant, ‘Hey, Disney!’ and Echo rollout to Walt Disney World Resort hotels

Amazon, for the first time, is making another voice assistant available on Echo devices. The company at its fall event today announced a new voice assistant, “Hey, Disney,” developed by Disney and built on top of Alexa technology. The assistant will have its own unique voice and over 1,000 custom interactions for fans to explore, […]

Amazon’s newest Echo Show is a 15-inch, wall-mounted digital picture frame

Posted inAmazonAmazon Fall 2021 Hardware EventechoEcho ShowHardware
Posted byBrian Heater
09/29/2021

Amazon just took the wraps off the latest — and largest — addition to the Echo Show family. The Echo Show 15 takes the company’s smart screen technology to the wall in the form of a 15.6-inch 1080p display that doubles as a massive digital picture frame. The $250 device is certainly a novel approach […]

Amazon launches a $60 smart thermostat

Amazon kicked off its big hardware event today by announce a new smart. The company worked with Honeywell to create the device, but is keeping its own branding on the product (rather than, say, Ring, Blink or any of the other smart home companies it owns). The device runs $60, though the company notes that […]

Amazon launches computer science education program Future Engineer in India

Posted inAmazonAmazon IndiaAsiaEducationIndia
Posted byManish Singh
09/28/2021

Amazon said on Tuesday it is extending its computer science program Future Engineer to India. Through the program, for which Amazon partners with players such as Code.org, Amazon aims to bring CS education to underserved and underrepresented children and young adults. The company said it will offer several educational resources, scholarships, internships, and mentors to […]

Amazon-backed buy now, pay later platform Capital Float raises $50 million

Posted inAmazonAsiaCapital FloatFundingIndia
Posted byManish Singh
09/28/2021

Capital Float, an Amazon-backed startup that offers its buy now, pay later service on many popular online platforms in India including that of the e-commerce firm, said on Tuesday it has raised $50 million in a new financing round following a strong growth in recent quarters. Lightrock India led the Bangalore-based startup’s Series D financing […]

Will rising interest rates scupper the startup surge?

Posted inAmazonFundings & ExitsPrivate EquitySalesforceStartup companyStartupstech valuationsVenture Capital
Posted byAlex Wilhelm
09/28/2021

Investor and entrepreneur Anshu Sharma — formerly a partner at Storm Ventures, now CEO of privacy-focused SkyFlow — asked on Twitter today about the connection between interest rates and technology valuations: Ignore the compliments; Sharma was merely trying to bait Jeff and me into engaging with his question. Which worked, as you can tell. Sharma […]