Latest from Paul Sawers
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has confirmed that it’s carrying out a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon’s ties with Anthropic, after Amazon recently completed a $4 billion investment into the AI startup.…
The satellite is designed to complement data provided by existing astronomical efforts such as that of the famed Hubble Telescope.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) planned $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks is one step closer to completion — the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has confirmed that the deal…
Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, has launched a new AI tool designed to help bloggers write more clearly and succinctly.
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Meet the founder who built and sold a $600M enterprise software startup from Sri Lanka
Sanjiva Weerawarana co-founded WSO2 in 2005, recently selling it for more than $600M. He sometimes drives for Uber, too.
The company also said it has received regulatory clearance to start Phase 2 clinical trials for a new drug in the U.S. later this year.
The European Commission (EC) has given the go-ahead to HPE’s planned megabucks acquisition of Juniper Networks.
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has revealed an early-stage probe into Google’s ties with Anthropic, after the Alphabet subsidiary invested in its U.S. AI rival over several rounds. While it’s not…
Lakera, a Swiss startup that’s building technology to protect generative AI applications from malicious prompts and other threats, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by European…
Enterprise
Backed by Microsoft, AWS and Meta, the Overture Maps Foundation launches its first open map datasets
The Overture Maps Foundation is today releasing data sets for 2.3B building “footprints” globally, 54M notable places of interest, a visual overlay of “boundaries,” and land and water features such…
An English school has been reprimanded by U.K. regulators after it used facial recognition technology without getting opt-in consent from students.
Nine months on, and Jigsaw is now formally handing Altitude over to Tech Against Terrorism, which will continue its development and maintenance.
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From Yandex’s ashes comes Nebius, a ‘startup’ with plans to be a European AI compute leader
Subject to shareholder approval, Yandex N.V. is adopting the name of one of its few remaining assets, an AI cloud platform called Nebius AI which it birthed last year.
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Strava’s next chapter: New CEO talks AI, inclusivity, and why ‘dark mode’ took so long
TechCrunch sat down with Strava’s new CEO in London for a wide-ranging interview, delving into what the company is prioritizing, and what we can expect in the future as the company embarks on its “next chapter.”
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Proton launches ‘privacy-first’ AI writing assistant for email that runs on-device
Proton has launched a new AI-enabled writing assistant that helps users compose emails based on simple prompts.
Government & Policy
Microsoft faces UK antitrust probe after hiring Inflection AI founders and employees
U.K. authorities have until early September to decide whether the hiring is tantamount to a merger.
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Toddle wants to ‘change how we build software’ with a collaborative visual web app builder
Danish startup Toddle has launched a no-code web app builder that’s designed as a full-featured alternative to Javascript frameworks.
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SoftBank acquires UK AI chipmaker Graphcore
While the figure of $500 million has been bandied around in various reports for months, in a press briefing early Thursday morning, Graphcore co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon remained coy on the details.
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Intel Capital backs AI construction startup that could boost Intel’s own manufacturing prospects
Intel could be giving its burgeoning foundry ambitions a much-needed shot in the arm, as the chip giant’s venture capital arm today revealed that it’s making a “strategic” investment in an Israel- and U.K.-based AI construction startup. Intel Capital is leading a $15 million investment into Buildots, a company that…
The core issue relates to a 2019 licensing change whereby Microsoft made it more expensive to run Microsoft’s enterprise software on rival cloud services.
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SAP, and Oracle, and IBM, oh my! ‘Cloud and AI’ drive legacy software firms to record valuations
There’s something of a trend around legacy software firms and their soaring valuations: Companies founded in dinosaur times are on a tear, evidenced this week with SAP‘s shares topping $200 for the first time. Founded in 1972, SAP’s valuation currently sits at an all-time high of $234 billion. The Germany-based…
You can barely go an hour these days without reading about generative AI. While we are still in the embryonic phase of what some have dubbed the “steam engine” of…
Activity tracking platform and community Strava is shutting down Fatmap, the Europe-based 3D mapping platform it had acquired last January.
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What does ‘open source AI’ mean, anyway?
The Open Source Initiative is trying to address the debate stirring around the notion of “open-source AI.”
Website building platform Squarespace is selling Tock, its restaurant reservation service, to American Express in a deal worth $400 million — the exact figure that Squarespace paid for the service…
Amazon is bringing its generative AI listing smarts to more sellers, revealing today that those in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. can now access tools designed to improve…
Wordsmith, a fledgling Scottish legal tech startup, has somehow managed to attract the backing of two well-known venture capital firms. The startup targets in-house legal teams and law firms with…
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has initiated a formal “phase 1” investigation into Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) planned acquisition of Juniper Networks. The CMA said it’s in the…
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Privacy app maker Proton transitions to nonprofit foundation structure
The newly setup Proton Foundation will serve as the main shareholder to the existing corporate entity that is Proton AG, which will continue as a for-profit company under the auspices of the Foundation.
Meta has confirmed that it will pause plans to start training its AI systems using data from its users in the European Union and U.K. The move follows pushback from…
