Brex raises new funding, U.S. Customs and Border Protection admits to a data breach and scientists may have located a historic lunar module. Here's your Daily Crunch for June 11, 2019. 1. Brex valued at $2.6B with new cash from Kleiner Perkins The San Francisco-based company is confirming it’s closed on $100 million in new funding at a valuation of $2.6 billion. Brex provides corporate cards tailored for startups, and it's also announcing the launch of its third product: a card made specifically for life sciences companies, where Brex has customized its underwriting model for the sector and crafted targeted rewards, including cash back on lab supplies and conference fees. 2. CBP says traveler photos and license plate images stolen in data breach A spokesperson for the agency said the security incident affected “fewer than 100,000 people” through a “few specific lanes at a single land border” over a period of a month and a half. 3. NASA ‘Snoopy’ lunar module likely found 50 years after being jettisoned into space A quick history lesson: Astronauts Thomas Stafford and Eugene Cernan flew a lunar module, nicknamed “Snoopy” by the agency, nearly all the way to the Moon during Apollo 10, and then shot the module off into space once they’d completed their task. 4. Amazon Restaurants in US is shutting down Following November’s closure of Amazon’s restaurant delivery business in London, the company is now shutting down operations in the U.S. as well. 5. Facebook says it’s shipping new Portal hardware in the fall Facebook’s VP of AR/VR, Andrew Bosworth, said onstage that sales of the existing hardware were “really good,” while also revealing there would be new form factors of Portal hardware coming to market in the fall of this year. 6. To detect fake news, this AI first learned to write it Grover is a new system created by the University of Washington and Allen Institute for AI computer scientists that is extremely adept at writing convincing fake news on myriad topics — and as a direct consequence is also no slouch at spotting it. 7. What top VCs look for in women’s fertility startups To shine a better light on tech’s role in spurring more innovation for women’s fertility, we asked five VCs passionate about the space for their investment strategies. (Extra Crunch membership required.) |