Tech & Startups
European technology, startups, AI and innovation.
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Collecting robot training data is dirty, unglamorous work. Some AI labs are already paying XDOF to do it.
If physical AI is going to match the accomplishments of LLMs, there's a data problem that needs to be solved.
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a16z is betting $38M that you want an AI ‘teammate’, not another agent
The word “agent” is everywhere in enterprise software right now, which is exactly why Convey does not want to use it. The startup …
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SAP just funded a startup built to help its own customers escape SAP
There is an unglamorous deadline bearing down on corporate IT, and it has just produced one of London’s more interesting AI raises…
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Google’s first speaker in six years is really a $10-a-month Gemini subscription
Google has finally made a new smart speaker, its first in roughly six years. The more interesting thing it has made is a reason to…
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Pramaana Labs raises $27M seed round from Khosla Ventures to bring formal verification to AI
Pramaana will focus on highly sensitive verticals like law, drug discovery, and tax preparation — where errors can be costly and r…
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The US is paying an AI startup $500M to break China’s grip on chip materials
The US government has just become a shareholder in an AI startup, in exchange for a bet that artificial intelligence can break Chi…
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Estonia wants to give every AI agent its own ID number
When an AI agent does something on your behalf today, it usually has to become you. It logs in as you, with your access to everyth…
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Grok helped strike 2,000 targets at Iran. Now its pollution is ‘national security’.
The Pentagon says Grok helped strike 2,000 targets in 96 hours, and that the polluting power plant behind it is a matter of paramo…
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Neuralink finally has a real rival: Paradromics just put a brain chip in its first patient
Neuralink has dominated the brain-chip story for two years. It now has a serious challenger with a patient of its own. Paradromics…
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A startup that builds offensive cyber weapons just became a $1bn unicorn
Most cybersecurity startups sell shields. Twenty sells the sword, and investors just valued that at $1bn. The company, which descr…
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SpaceX alum nabs $22M to turn rocket engines into geothermal power plants
Critical Energy is turning rocket engines into geothermal power plants, and it wants to build 300 GW per year by 2045.
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Jeff Bezos is backing a two-year-old Cambridge AI lab at a $2.6bn valuation
Jeff Bezos appears to have settled on his AI thesis, and it is not chatbots. It is the physical world. CuspAI, a two-year-old Camb…
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Odyssey took Nvidia’s money. Now it’s raised $310M betting on Amazon and AMD
Odyssey, an AI lab building real-time ‘world models’, has raised $310mn at a $1.45bn valuation. The more telling number is whose n…
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3 ex-Palantir engineers raise $60m from Index, Iconiq, SAP for agentic operating system
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The tokenmaxxing era is over. Now companies are ‘tokenminimizing’
A year ago, the smart move inside a big company was to use as much AI as humanly possible. Some firms even ranked employees on lea…
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Microsoft might put China’s DeepSeek inside Copilot to tame its AI bills
Microsoft is considering putting a Chinese AI model inside its enterprise Copilot, and the reason is money. The company told Axios…
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Canadian pension giant joins race to fund India’s AI-fueled data center boom
The Canadian pension giant will acquire an 8.2% stake in CtrlS, a tech giant that operates more than 15 data centers across India.
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Amazon could face billions in fines as the FTC eyes its ad business
Amazon’s advertising business has become its quiet money machine. It may also be its next big regulatory headache. The US Federal …
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DeepL acquires Mixhalo for live-event audio streaming and translation
With this acquisition, DeepL is opening an office in San Francisco to expand its U.S. business.
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Helion just got the world’s first licences to run a fusion power plant
Helion has become the first company in the world licensed to operate a fusion power plant. On 16 June, the Washington-based firm s…
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Uber’s robotaxi service is heading to Houston to take another swing at Waymo
Uber is taking its robotaxi service to Houston. The company said on 17 June that it will launch a premium driverless service in th…
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Mistral spent two years warning the US could switch off its rivals. A fat-cat meme just made the point for it.
On Wednesday, Arthur Mensch took his seat at a G7 working lunch in Evian alongside Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, and Dario Amodei. D…
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Snap unveils $2,195 smart glasses after previous flops
The augmented reality glasses from Snapchat's parent company are expected to ship in autumn.
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Uber will bring its premium robotaxi service to Houston in 2027
This will be the second market to have an Uber robotaxi service outfitted with Lucid EVs equipped with a self-driving system from …