~the-next-web | Bookmarks (331)

No-code startup Innoloft has raised €2mn in a new funding round led by Dutch VC firm Capital Mills. This marks the firm’s first investment into a German company. Innoloft’s no-code platform enables businesses to build web applications without any programming knowledge. Founded in 2019, the startup now counts over 70,000 end-users and includes customers such as Deutsche Telekom, Aachen University, and German state governments....

Cybercrime hunters have unmasked the alleged leader of LockBit, a hacker network dubbed the “most active ransomware group ever.” LockBit gained global notoriety for holding victims’ data to ransom and ransomware-as-a-service, whereby it licenses malware to other hackers. According to Europol, the gang was behind the world’s most deployed ransomware in 2022 — causing billions of euros worth of damage. Among the high-profile victims are US...

A team of researchers have built a vision implant with tiny electrodes the size of a neuron, seeking to help blind people see again. The development of vision implants first emerged in the 1990s. The technology targets patients suffering from damage to the eye, but whose visual cortex— the brain’s visual centre — is active and able to receive signals. But despite the solution’s potential,...

Terra Quantum has today revealed its TQ42 Cryptography library — an open-source suite of quantum-resistant algorithms designed to help developers and businesses protect data from current and future cybersecurity threats. The new cryptography library provides developers with post-quantum algorithms and security and key management functions. They can be used across a range of applications, including mobile, web, IoT, and cloud. The library is now...

France’s budding AI scene has received another boost from a big investment in the startup Holistic. Amid the celebrations, however, the sale of medtech firm Sonio has added a warning about the dangers of success. The Holistic funding was revealed by Bloomberg on Tuesday. The Paris-based firm has reportedly raised $200mn (€186mn) in a round that values the company at $370mn (€344mn). Holistic has big...

An AI scanning your bank transaction data entails a level of invasiveness that I find difficult to accept — let alone embrace for my own transaction information. But the technology could bring merits, at least in the lending world. Enter Abound. The London-based startup has just raised £800mn for its lending platform that uses AI to determine loan amounts. Dubbed Render, Abound’s AI analyses...

Reuse Brew is a classic German lager with a twist — it’s made from recycled wastewater.  The beer is the result of a tie-up between the south German city of Weissenburg, American water tech company Xylem, and the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Specifically, TUM’s Brewery and Beverage Technology department (why didn’t I study there?!).  While the idea of a sewage brew might be...

Infineon, one of the biggest chip makers in Europe, has lowered its revenue outlook for the year, citing “weak” demand from its major target markets. The German company is now expecting a revenue of €15.1bn, plus or minus €400mn. That’s down from the previous forecast of €16bn, plus or minus €500mn. In the second quarter of 2024, Infineon saw a 2% drop in revenue...

Wayve, a London-based startup working on AI systems for autonomous vehicles, has raised $1bn. The colossal funding round marks the largest single investment in a European AI startup. Japanese conglomerate SoftBank led the funding round alongside tech giants Nvidia and Microsoft. Wayve did not disclose its valuation following the investment.  Founded in Cambridge in 2017, Wayve is developing so-called embodied AI systems for self-driving...

The power of generative AI has further ignited the race for advanced humanoid robots, promising more capable machines that can learn and deal with unknown environments and challenges. Amid increasing competition across the globe, Switzerland-based mimic is also throwing its hat in the ring. The startup has raised a pre-seed round of $2.5mn (€2.3mn) to bring the first GenAI-powered collaborative robot to market. A spinoff...

Tilburg-based Mr. Winston has raised €600,000 to further develop its hospitality POS system and expand into more markets. Founded in 2015, the startup provides a cloud-based POS solution that can work on all devices and operating systems such as iOS and Android. The POS also features additional modules, including reservations, QR ordering, and kitchen screens. “This flexibility towards the user is lacking in our competition,”...

The EU has granted €3.3mn to a consortium led by Swedish startup Epishine. The group’s mission is to boost the development of organic solar panels.    In this case, organic refers to solar panels that are carbon-based. Instead of using silicon to conduct electricity, these solar panels utilise organic molecules. Organic solar cells are very lightweight, cheap, semi-transparent, printable, and flexible. They can also convert...

As I write this, two contrasting regulations on the development of artificial intelligence — namely generative AI — are making their way through the European and British parliaments. The British approach is very simple — looking to ensure AI companies fit into existing laws governing technology companies.  In contrast, the EU approach, as White & Case analysis describes, is an entirely new piece of...

A British startup has devised a way to speed-up enhanced rock weathering using protein powder in a potential step forward for the budding carbon capture industry.  Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) involves spreading silicate rock dust on fields to capture carbon. When it rains, the dust reacts with the CO2 in the droplets, permanently storing it in the rocks as carbonate (think chalk or baking...

Friday is here and so is TNW’s weekly round-up of tech news from our glorious home country. This week saw advances in medtech, quantum breakthroughs, and calls to further boost the Dutch chip industry. Our highlights have you covered, but we’d also love to hear your thoughts on the local ecosystem. Drop us a line if you want to showcase your startup, share a...

Estonian mobility startup Bolt has secured a €220mn credit facility as it plans to go public next year.   This type of financing is a more flexible loan option, which allows a business to withdraw and repay funds as needed, on an ongoing basis. Kind of like a credit card for companies.  The credit facility provides Bolt “with additional flexibility as we work towards...

Flemish venture capital firm Imec.xpand has raised €300mn to invest in deeptech startups.    The VC is a spinoff from Leuven-based Imec, one of the world’s largest microelectronics research institutions.  The new fund targets  AI, semiconductors, nanotechnology, photonics, and quantum computing. It will also invest in startups working on new ways to diagnose and treat medical conditions.    To date, Imec.xpand has invested in 23 companies...

Today’s NHS faces severe time constraints, with the risk of short consultations and concerns about the risk of misdiagnosis or delayed care. These challenges are compounded by limited resources and overstretched staff that results in protracted patient wait times and generic treatment strategies. Staff can operate with a surface level view of patient data, relying on basic medical histories and recent test results. This...

When the EU approved the European Green Deal in 2020, the bloc unveiled a plan to lead the clean energy transition. Yet it has since faced growing competition from both China — which has quickly and quietly buried Europe’s solar panel industry and is now taking aim at its EV market — and the US, which under the Biden administration took an about-face on...

Lithuanian climate investment firm HeavyFinance has added over 700,000 football pitches-worth of farmland in Ukraine to its soil carbon credit programme. Modern agriculture has taken its toll on soils. Centuries of plowing, cutting, and overgrazing has made land less fertile. This has also released billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.   HeavyFinance pays farmers to put some of this carbon back into the...

In June, Kubernetes celebrates its tenth birthday. The system is now so widely used by hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide to scale their applications to meet demand it’s hard even to remember a time before it existed. But there was a time when other options were available, and I even remember using some of them.  Despite this relative vintage, many large developers teams...

Another Dutch tech firm has been caught in the simmering tensions between the West and China. Amid growing calls to curb Chinese access to chipmaking equipment from ASML, a Dutch minister has raised a separate alarm about the sale of Philips spinoff Anteryon. Although the digital-optics developer remains based in Eindhoven, the business was bought in 2019 by China’s Jingfang Optotelectronics. The Suzhou-based firm...

Utrecht-based Vitestro has raised €20mn to bring its robotic blood drawing device to market. Founded in 2017, Vitestro aims to improve the blood draw experience for patients and address personnel shortages in healthcare — where the demand for skilled laboratory professionals is growing at a higher rate than any other occupation. The startup’s device relies on infrared to locate the vein and ultrasound to...

Blockchain is often criticised as a solution in search of a problem. But one group of people has already found immense value in the tech: money launderers. Their crimes cause painful headaches for financial institutions, crypto businesses, legitimate law enforcement agencies, and cryptocurrency regulators. All of them need to tackle illicit activity on blockchains. Enter Elliptic, a British firm that specialises in cryptocurrency forensics. The...