Europe

The UK isn’t going to be setting hard rules for AI any time soon. Today, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) published a white paper setting out the government’s preference for a light-touch approach to regulating artificial intelligence. It’s kicking off a public consultation process — seeking feedback on its plans up to

AI is riding high on a curve of hype, which means some of the practical questions that might grow louder over time — the many costs (financial and social), the business models — may not be the most front of mind right now. Today a startup called Fetch.ai is announcing $40 million in funding in

Digital content and how we consume it continue to endlessly evolve, and with that, so too does the tech that helps manage all of it behind the scenes. In the latest development, Hygraph, a startup out of Berlin that has built a platform around a new, “federated” approach to content management — think: many sources

It’s 2023, and we’re years past the peak of monster fundraising for on-demand transportation and delivery startups locked in highly competitive races with each other to dominate urban consumer mobility. But with many of the biggest and most tenacious players still in the market, those rounds have not disappeared altogether. Today, Cabify — the Madrid-based platform

Microsoft is the latest tech giant to be caught in the cross-hairs of Germany’s antitrust authority. The Federal Cartel Office (FCO), aka the Bundeskartellamt, has announced it’s opened a proceeding to determine whether special abuse measures can be applied to the company’s business in Germany — citing Microsoft’s extensive digital ecosystem which it noted cuts across

Concrete. Ubiquitous. A mainstay of the construction industry — over 10 billion cubic meters of concrete are used every year. And also responsible for up to 8% of CO2 emissions — one ton of ordinary Portland cement creates somewhere between 800 and 900 kilograms of CO2 emissions. Finnish startup Carbonaide has just raised €1.8 million (~$1.9

France is the latest country that is taking steps to ban TikTok from government-managed devices. Stanislas Guerini, the Minister of Public Transformation and Service, and his services issued a succinct statement announcing the move and the reasoning behind this change. But there’s a twist. Instead of simply banning the social media app, the French government

The UK’s antitrust watchdog has narrowed its probe of Microsoft’s $68.7 billion bid for video game giant, Activision Blizzard, the regulator said today. In February, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally concluded the merger “could harm U.K. gamers” through higher prices, fewer choices or less innovation. Today it updated its position, saying new evidence

Some say the European tech startup ecosystem lacks investors who have been “operators,” as in former entrepreneurs. And indeed, that has been the case for many years. However, it’s good to see that this has been changing, even if the pace has been slow. One of the newest VC funds to wear it’s “former operators”

Fifteen might not be a familiar name, but you may already know some of Fifteen’s bikes. Fifteen is the new name of the companies formerly known as Smoove and Zoov — these two companies with weird names merged a couple of years ago. Smoove is one of the companies behind the Vélib’ bike-sharing service in

Meta, the self-styled “metaverse company” formerly known as Facebook, has taken on a novel role de-hyping the virtual world technology its founder bet the farm on just a few short years ago. No, it hasn’t announced another pivot — rather it’s been forced to dial down the multicolored metaverse hype as it lobbies against a

Lun, a climate tech startup out of Denmark, is on a mission to help homes decarbonize fast — starting with heating systems and swapping out boilers for electric heat pumps. What are heat pumps? The technology is a low carbon form of heating which is based on the principle of refrigeration that offers an alternative

If you plan to launch a new startup in France, Denmark or Sweden, there is a new seed fund looking for your pitch. Emblem is announcing today that it has raised nearly $54 million (€50 million) for a new European seed fund. And this is only the first close — the firm expects to raise

Shadow is introducing some new use cases for its cloud computing service at the Game Developers Conference. In particular, the company wants to partner with game publishers so that they can create virtual booths to showcase game demos. While Shadow now offers several services, the company is better known for its cloud computing service for

Fintech startup Checkout.com is better known for its payment processing product. But the company is launching a new product today as Checkout.com customers can now create payment cards for their own customers. The company has been testing Checkout.com Issuing for a while as there are already millions of cards that have been created with the

Kakao Mobility, the ride-hailing subsidiary of South Korean messaging and internet giant Kakao, has made its first acquisition as it looks to raise its international profile. It has acquired Splyt, a startup out of London that works with apps in areas like travel, ride-hailing and finance to help them build out “super app” strategies by

TikTok has another problem to add to its growing pile: Italy’s consumer watchdog has opened an investigation over user safety concerns — stepping in after a so-called “French scar” challenge went viral on the video sharing platform in which users have been seen apparently pinching their faces in order to create and show off red

Wingtra’s drones are used to perform surveying missions by organizations around the world, including NASA and the Army Corps of Engineers. Now the startup is mapping out a new expansion strategy after landing $22 million in Series B funding, which it will use to improve its current tech and add new features. “Our product roadmap

With turbulent economies, companies are looking for more revenue streams to survive, and one obvious way to increase revenues is to streamline costs. Given companies can often use both manual processing and sometimes even more than one external tool to manage B2B payments, this is an obvious area in which to improve efficiency. A good

The U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt’s spring budget — delivered on the same day that teachers, transportation workers, civil servants and others were on strike across the country — sought to strike a note of its own: optimism in the face of many signals to the contrary. With the U.K. narrowly predicted to

In the latest blow to Meta’s consentless behavioral ad-targeting business in Europe, a Dutch court has found the social media giant’s Irish subsidiary did not have a lawful basis to process local users’ data for ad targeting. Dutch privacy advocacy group, the Data Privacy Foundation (DPS), along with a local consumer protection not-for-profit, Consumentenbond, filed

Deeploi, a Germany-based startup that is building an IT-as-a-service platform, today announced that it has raised a €3 million seed funding round led by Berlin’s Cherry Ventures, with participation from a group of angels that includes the founders of Taktile, Moss, Vay and sennder. The company was founded by Julian Luebke and Philipp Hoffmann. Luebke

Austria’s data protection authority has found that use of Meta’s tracking technologies violated EU data protection law as personal data was transferred to the US where the information was at risk from government surveillance. The finding flows from a swathe of complaints filed by European privacy rights group noyb, back in August 2020, which also

Last month, when transportation startup Via raised $110 million at a $3.5 billion valuation, CEO Daniel Ramot said it planned to make acquisitions to grow its transportation technology stack. Now, a piece of that strategy is falling into place: today the company is announcing its acquisition of Citymapper, the London startup that produces a popular

The U.K. has become the latest jurisdiction to ban social video app TikTok from government devices, confirming reports that surfaced earlier this week. The ban follows a security review ordered by U.K. ministers looking to establish whether government data could be compromised from social networks installed on work devices. Indeed, the review did include other

The rise of ChatGPT has fuelled growth in the public awareness of AI, as well as the growing discourse around AI ethics. How should AI be used? What are its implications for society, not just business? The inherent bias within AI applications — remember, it’s not just how the algorithm is built and by whom, it’s

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt went a small way toward addressing concerns over proposed research and development (R&D) tax credit cuts for small-and-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). But he stopped short of the u-turn some had hoped for following the government’s Autumn Statement last November. Today’s announcement came as part of the U.K.’s Spring

BlaBlaCar has announced that it plans to acquire Klaxit, a smaller French startup. Klaxit is a carpooling service so that you don’t have to drive your car to work every day. BlaBlaCar has its own commuting service called BlaBlaCar Daily. Klaxit will complement this service after the acquisition closes. BlaBlaCar is better known for its

Medwing, a European startup building a recruitment marketplace for healthcare workers, has raised €44 million ($47 million) in a Series C round of funding. Founded out of Berlin in 2017, Medwing targets the healthcare industry in Germany and the U.K. with a platform designed to match hospitals and clinics with nurses and elderly caregivers, though

The U.K. government has asked the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to review TikTok in a move that could prefigure a ban on the app on government devices. Speaking to Sky News, security minister Tom Tugendhat said the government has asked the NCSC to look into the popular video sharing app — telling the broadcaster