Vertical Aerospace has been thrown a crucial lifeline, staving off potential bankruptcy at the cash-strapped air taxi startup. The UK-based company — which makes electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft — secured the fresh funds from its largest creditor, American debt investor Mudrick Capital. The agreement, announced Monday, includes a $50mn cash injection and a substantial debt-to-equity swap. Mudrick will invest $25mn upfront and guarantee another $25mn in future... Read more ›
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Zurich-based startup Poncho has officially launched its weather insurance platform — and bagged some fresh funding to boot. Founded in 2023, the company aims to transform how the travel and hospitality industries handle unpredictable weather. Poncho’s tech integrates with booking systems, allowing customers to opt for weather protection at checkout. If bad weather, such as heavy rain or wind, occurs during their scheduled event or trip, a refund is processed... Read more ›
37
London-based startup Lighthouse just raised a hefty $370mn from American investment giant KKR at a valuation of over $1bn, making it Europe’s latest unicorn tech company. The funding will supercharge the company’s ambitions to shake up the $15bn travel tech market. What’s on the to-do list? Refining its AI tools, expanding globally, and snapping up competitors through mergers and acquisitions (it has already made four). Lighthouse’s platform crunches over 400... Read more ›
0
Candela is flying high — and across the Atlantic. The Swedish startup has secured $14mn, marking the close of its Series C round at a cosy $40mn. This puts its total funding at just shy of $90mn. Candela has also sold its first P-12 ferry in the US, amid burgeoning demand for what is the world’s fastest and longest-range electric passenger vessel. FlyTahoe, the company that will operate the service,... Read more ›
0
Amsterdam-based startup Skytree is set to deploy its carbon-sucking machines on a newly announced carbon capture and storage project in Texas, US. Dubbed “Project Concho,” the $100mn Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant aims to initially vacuum up 30,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere annually, eventually scaling to 500,000 tonnes. This carbon will be permanently stored underground, on site. The facility is set to enter operation in 2028, a Skytree... Read more ›
0
UK startup Surf Security has launched a beta version of what it claims is the world’s first browser with a built-in feature designed to spot AI-generated deepfakes. The tool, available through Surf’s browser or as an extension, can detect with up to 98% accuracy whether the person you’re interacting with online is a real human or an AI imitation, the company said. The London-based cybersecurity upstart uses “military-grade” neural network... Read more ›
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British scaleup Tokamak Energy has secured $125mn as it looks to harness fusion — the same clean, virtually limitless energy source that powers the Sun and stars. Tokamak spun out from the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority in 2009. As its name suggests, the company is building a tokamak reactor, the most common kind of fusion design, first pioneered in the 1960s. Tokamaks use giant magnets to keep plasma moving in... Read more ›
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For the past few months, Meta has been sending recipes to a Dutch scaleup called VSParticle (VSP). These are not food recipes — they’re AI-generated instructions for how to make new nanoporous materials that could potentially supercharge the green transition. VSP has so far taken 525 of these recipes and synthesised them into nanomaterials called electrocatalysts. Meta’s algorithms predicted these electrocatalysts would be ideal for breaking down CO2 into useful... Read more ›
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Dawn Aerospace has flown its rocket-powered aircraft past the speed of sound, the latest milestone on its path to its first commercial flights. During the test, which took place on New Zealand’s South Island, the startup’s Mk-II Aurora aircraft reached Mach 1.1 and an altitude of 25 kilometres. Dawn said this marks the first time a civil aircraft has flown supersonic since Concorde. The feat comes after Aurora hit Mach... Read more ›
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London-based startup Gendo has secured €5.1mn amid booming demand for its generative AI software built for architects. British architectural designer George Proud and software engineer Will Jones founded Gendo in 2022. The platform transforms simple inputs like sketches, 2D drawings, or text descriptions into hypereal building designs. It works a bit like Midjourney or DALL-E, except it’s built by architects for architects. The tool allows you to precisely edit specific... Read more ›
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Zurich-based venture capital firm Founderful has raised $140mn in its second fund — $20mn more than its target and a strong sign of investor confidence in Switzerland’s flourishing tech ecosystem. First announced back in February, the fund has already invested in 15 early-stage startups. These include Chiral Nano, which develops nanomaterials for silicon chips, and 8inks, which is rejigging the lithium-ion battery. Founderful — formerly Wingman Ventures — was launched... Read more ›
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American wearables firm Realwear has acquired Swiss augmented reality (AR) startup Almer Technologies. Almer’s AR headset — the Arc-2 — overlays digital information onto the wearer’s field of view, allowing them to access real-time data, instructions, or assistance from an engineer seated anywhere in the world. The glasses are targeted specifically at industrial companies looking to help their staff maintain and repair equipment and machinery remotely. “Almer’s innovative approach for... Read more ›
13
German tech darling DeepL has (finally) launched a voice-to-text service. It’s called DeepL Voice, and it turns audio from live or video conversations into translated text. DeepL users can now listen to people speaking a language they don’t understand and automatically translate it to one they do — in real-time. The new feature currently supports English, German, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Dutch, French, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Italian. What... Read more ›
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Amsterdam-based startup Sympower has secured €21mn as it looks to scale its grid-balancing technology. Sympower partners with businesses that use a large amount of electricity. It gains access to some of their energy assets and can turn them on and off when the grid requires balancing — a process called demand response. Sympower’s software platform uses AI to analyse data and optimise when and how much power businesses can sell... Read more ›
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In 1991, Sony brought the first rechargeable lithium-ion battery to market. The unique chemistry proved a game-changer in energy storage. Today everything from EVs to smartphones depends on it, with demand skyrocketing. But lithium is rare, most of it comes from unstable markets outside Europe, and its extraction can cause extensive pollution. We need more lithium to enable the green transition and yet, currently, its use is unsustainable — both... Read more ›
0
New data from LinkedIn on the most in-demand jobs on the platform in the third quarter of this year reveals that software engineering is in second place. Just pipped to the post by sales roles, it is clear that software engineering and development pros are in high demand. Additionally, full stack engineers and application developers feature in the top ten in-demand roles at places eight and ten respectively. Software roles... Read more ›
0
In the ambitious pursuit to tackle the harms from false content on social media and news websites, data scientists are getting creative. While still in their training wheels, the large language models (LLMs) used to create chatbots like ChatGPT are being recruited to spot fake news. With better detection, AI fake news checking systems may be able to warn of, and ultimately counteract, serious harms from deepfakes, propaganda, conspiracy theories... Read more ›
4
Ruby’s creator, Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matz), released the first public version of the programming language in December 1995, making Ruby just shy of its 30th birthday. It spread across Japanese-language Usenet newsgroups, a popular way of exchanging conversation and media before the World Wide Web, and then reached broader communities throughout the late 1990s. This was thanks to Ruby’s friendly community and, in no small part, thanks to Matz. (The community... Read more ›
0
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is often held as a model for driving technology advances. For decades, it has contributed to military and economic dominance by bridging the gap between military and civilian applications. European policymakers frequently reference DARPA in discussions, as outlined in the 2024 Draghi Report, but an EU equivalent has yet to materialise. To create such an agency, the governance and management of European... Read more ›
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About one in every 10 European startups that have raised VC investment are also backed by an EU grant of equity financing, according to a research project conducted by Dealroom and Dealflow.eu. While the full report is expected to be published later this year, the authors presented a few preliminary numbers in Warsaw last week. In financial terms, the 10% share translates into EU-backed startups having raised €70bn in VC... Read more ›
0
If you’ve ever seen yourself through a thermal imaging camera, you’ll know that your body produces lots of heat. This is in fact a waste product of our metabolism. Every square foot of the human body gives off heat equivalent to about 19 matches per hour. Unfortunately, much of this heat simply escapes into the atmosphere. Wouldn’t it be great if we could harness it to produce energy? My research... Read more ›
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Most popular sources
Business Insider
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31% 4 |
Wired
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10% 7 |
Tech Wire Asia
|
7% 5 |
The Verge
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6% 1 |
Gizmodo
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6% 0 |
| View sources » | |
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27.11.2024 01:26
Last update: 01:21 EDT.
News rating updated: 08:21.
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