Robots are already farming crops inside this Silicon Valley warehouse

Accenture Retrains Its Workers as Technology Upends Their Jobs

Five months after Dorian Twiggs packed up her life in Detroit and moved to Charlotte, N.C., to work as a mortgage underwriter for Accenture ACN -0.51% PLC, a manager pulled her and some colleagues into an office and told them their jobs were disappearing. Instead of getting laid off, they would be retrained for software roles….

CoStar Acquires Online Student Housing Marketplace

Commercial real estate data giant CoStar Group is expanding its network of multifamily listing websites with a new acquisition. The D.C.-based company announced Thursday it acquired Off Campus Partners, an online marketplace for student housing. It did not disclose the acquisition price. Off Campus Partners, founded by a University of Virginia student in 2000, provides an online listing service for students, faculty and staff to find off-campus housing. It has contracts with 132 universiti…

Uber Elevate’s Flying Car Program Could Make Roofs The Next Ground Floor

Commercial building rooftops face revolutionary design changes if Uber Air’s plan to launch flying ride-sharing vessels by 2023 takes off. With passengers landing on rooftop Skyports, the roof would be the new front door, and from green spaces and parks on urban rooftops to observational decks and complementary retail outlets and restaurants, Uber Air could turn the “party on the roof” concept into a major CRE moneymaker.

Airbnb may follow Slack’s direct listing route

Following the buzz around Slack’s unconventional route to a Wall Street debut this week, Airbnb is considering a similar strategy. The home-sharing platform is one of more than a dozen firms that are in talks with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — who, along with Allen & Co., dominate in the field of Silicon Valley direct listings — about the option, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

While people puzzle over WeWork, niche co-working spaces continue gaining traction

This week, a young, New York-based startup called Alma raised $8 million in funding to expand its “co-practicing community of therapists, coaches, and wellness professionals,” which it first launched from a space on Madison Avenue last fall. As CNN was first to report, the company is charging psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers and acupuncturists $165 per month to become Alma members, which comes with services like billing and scheduling and even a matchmaking service that pur…

The Collective Dreams Big As Co-Living Hits Its Stride

From the outside at least, all was quiet at co-living firm The Collective, and then suddenly, bang, everything was happening at once. The company’s original 546-bed scheme at Old Oak Common in London spent more than a year on the market but didn’t sell. Then in October it was refinanced by Deutsche Bank at a value above the original asking price.

Uber Elevate’s Flying Car Program Could Make Roofs The Next Ground Floor

Commercial building rooftops face revolutionary design changes if Uber Air’s plan to launch flying ride-sharing vessels by 2023 takes off. With passengers landing on rooftop Skyports, the roof would be the new front door, and from green spaces and parks on urban rooftops to observational decks and complementary retail outlets and restaurants, Uber Air could turn the “party on the roof” concept into a major CRE moneymaker.

Meet your new chief of staff: An AI chatbot

Years ago, a mobile app for email launched to immediate fanfare. Simply called Mailbox, its life was woefully cut short — we’ll get to that. Today, its founders are back with their second act: An AI-enabled assistant called Navigator meant to help teams work and communicate more efficiently. With the support of $12 million in Series A funding from CRV, #Angels, Designer Fund, SV Angel, Dropbox’s Drew Houston and other angel investors, Aspen, the San Francisco and Seattle-based startup behind …

Driverless Cars May Be Coming, but Let’s Not Get Carried Away

“Sometime next year,” Elon Musk says, “you’ll be able to have the car be autonomous without supervision.”

“None of us have any idea when full self-driving will happen,” counters Gill Pratt, an expert in robotics and the director of the Toyota Research Institute.