Do you remember your first phone? The thought of mine brings a tear to my eye. It was a beautiful blue Nokia 3310 — and it was borderline indestructible. Best of all, the handset had the greatest mobile feature of all time: Snake. It also offered calls and SMS, but I had little use for those extravagances. I had a pay-as-you-go contract, and money was tight back then. I also had a home phone —...
British tech mogul Mel Morris has announced the general release of AI research engine Corpora.ai. The system provides a new approach to research. Built to generate comprehensive reports from single prompts, Corpora promises in-depth analysis and accurate outputs. Speed is another big selling point. According to Corpora, the engine can process 2 million documents per second. After receiving a...
The US continues to hog the global herd of unicorns, dwarfing the EU in both the number and total valuation of billion-dollar startups. However, the Netherlands provides a minor bright spot, according to a new report by PwC. More than 3,000 companies worldwide have reached unicorn status since 2013, collectively reaching a staggering valuation of $27 trillion, according to the study. The US...
Sustainability tech has been all the buzz in the last few years. Investors are hunting promising ESG businesses, governments are pushing ambitious legislation, and companies are getting on board to adopt new solutions. Sustainability funding is projected to reach unprecedented levels, with BCG Henderson Institute estimating accumulated global investment to achieve net zero to hit $75 trillion by...
“For the third time, stop tapping!” my primary school teacher screams at me from across the room. I must not have heard her the first two times. I’d been drumming on the desk again, using my fingers for sticks and the floor beneath for a kick drum. While my body was in maths class, my mind was elsewhere. It was 1970. I was John Bonham, drummer of legendary rock band Led Zeppelin, on stage at...
Europe is home to twice as many climate tech startups as the US (30,000 vs. 14,300). However, limited access to VC funding is forcing these early-stage companies to seek capital from outside the continent, according to a new report released at the Munich Security Conference today. Venture financing in Europe averaged just 0.2% of GDP between 2013 and 2023, a fraction of the US average of 0.7%....
Mistral CEO and co-founder Arthur Mensch has urged Europe to invest more in AI infrastructure amid fears that the continent is falling behind the US and China in tech development. “It’s important to have European players coming to the game,” Mensch said at the Visionaries Unplugged conference in Paris yesterday. “Europe needs to invest in owning and operating the infrastructure so that the money...
AI took another step into Hollywood today with the launch of a new filmmaking tool from showbiz startup Flawless. The product — named DeepEditor — promises cinematic wizardry for the digital age. For movie makers, the tool offers photorealistic edits without a costly return to set. Flawless has showcased several use cases. One transfers an actor’s performance from one shot to another. Another...
Stalling growth in the Dutch tech sector has sparked urgent calls for fresh funding streams. New data released today reveals the number of new startups in the Netherlands is declining. The country is also suffering from a severe lack of local investors. The findings emerged in the State of Dutch Tech report by Techleap, a non-profit that supports startups and scaleups in the Netherlands. The...
Deepfakes have become alarmingly difficult to detect. So difficult, that only 0.1% of people today can identify them. That’s according to iProov, a British biometric authentication firm. The company tested the public’s AI detective skills by showing 2,000 UK and US consumers a collection of both genuine and synthetic content. Sadly, the budding sleuths overwhelmingly failed in their...