Having spent many years as second fiddle to Barcelona, Madrid surpassed its Catalan cousin in 2023 with startups securing €605 million ($672 million) investment above Barcelona’s €457 million ($507 million). “Lots of Latin American talent is arriving thanks to the recent entrepreneur visa and talent programs run by Telefonica to …
Read More »The Hottest Startups in London in 2024
In the “Start-Up, Scale-Up” review report published last year, chancellor Rachel Reeves promised to make Britain the “high-growth startup hub of the world.” Now, almost six months into the new government, entrepreneurs remain encouraged by the promises made in the Labour manifesto. “The ambition embodied in Great British Energy and …
Read More »The Hottest Startups in Dublin in 2024
Thanks to low corporation tax and government incentives, Dublin has hosted the European headquarters of many large US technology companies—Google, Meta, LinkedIn and Microsoft all have offices in the city’s Silicon Docks. “The big US companies operated independently of the startup world for many years,” explains Will Prendergast, partner at …
Read More »The Hottest Startups in Helsinki in 2024
Helsinki’s startup scene evolved around behemoths such as Nokia, games giant Supercell, and food delivery platform Wolt. It’s reaping the rewards with experienced entrepreneurs, investors, and engineers powering a lively scene based around the Aalto University campus and the startup festival Slush, one of the world’s largest gatherings of investors …
Read More »Amid Air Strikes and Rockets, an SMS From the Enemy
At the start of September, Nour was having an ordinary evening at home in Beirut—eating pumpkin seeds and watching Netflix—when the SMS hit her device like the smartphone version of a brick through her window. The sender name appeared as eight question marks, “????? ???”, and in the message preview …
Read More »Pilots Are Dying of Tiredness. Tech Can’t Save Them
India’s $13.9 billion aviation industry—projected to cater to over 300 million domestically by 2030—is a ticking time bomb. This July, in the sweltering heat at the Delhi High Court, additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati announced that new rules on pilot duty and rest periods would not be implemented this year …
Read More »Meta Missed Out on Smartphones. Can Smart Glasses Make Up for It?
Meta has dominated online social connections for the past 20 years, but it missed out on making the smartphones that primarily delivered those connections. Now, in a multiyear, multibillion-dollar effort to position itself at the forefront of connected hardware, Meta is going all in on computers for your face. At …
Read More »The Most Capable Open Source AI Model Yet Could Supercharge AI Agents
The most capable open source AI model with visual abilities yet could see more developers, researchers, and startups develop AI agents that can carry out useful chores on your computers for you. Released today by the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2), the Multimodal Open Language Model, or Molmo, can interpret …
Read More »X’s First Transparency Report Since Elon Musk’s Takeover Is Finally Here
Today, X released the company’s first transparency report since Elon Musk bought the company, formerly Twitter, in 2022. Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter would release transparency reports every six months.These largely covered the same ground as the new X report, giving specific numbers for takedowns, government requests for information, and content …
Read More »Meta Releases Llama 3.2—and Gives Its AI a Voice
Mark Zuckerberg announced today that Meta, his social-media-turned-metaverse-turned-artificial intelligence conglomerate, will upgrade its AI assistants to give them a range of celebrity voices, including those of Dame Judi Dench and John Cena. The more important upgrade for Meta’s long-term ambitions, though, is the new ability of its models to see …
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