Monthly Archives: January 2025

Venture funding remains stable in France thanks to AI startups

Alex Dewez, a partner at 20VC, just released its highly anticipated State of the French tech ecosystem report. This is a nice followup to Atomico’s State of European Tech report, with a more granular view on French startups in particular. … Continue reading

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A Spymaster Sheikh Controls a $1.5 Trillion Fortune. He Wants to Use It to Dominate AI

Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan—the UAE’s chess-obsessed, jiujitsu-loving intelligence chief—controls vast sums of sovereign wealth. America’s AI giants are scrambling for a piece of it.

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Google faces UK investigation over search dominance

The tech giant accounts for 90% of web searches in the UK – the regulator will probe whether that harms consumers and rivals.

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UK’s CMA slaps Google Search and its 90%+ market share with an antitrust investigation

The Competition and Markets Authority — the U.K.’s antitrust watchdog — is wasting no time in lodging its first official investigation of 2025 under its new rules that came into effect this month. It’s looking into the market dominance of … Continue reading

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Google faces first major probe under UK’s tough new antitrust rules

Britain’s competition watchdog said Tuesday that it’s opening a formal antitrust investigation into Google’s search and search advertising business.

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Bioptimus raises $41M to develop a ‘GPT for biology’

A fledgling French AI startup has raised $41 million to develop a foundational AI model for biology. Just as OpenAI’s ChatGPT has taken the world by storm for a super-smart generative AI tool capable of natural language conversation in text … Continue reading

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The ‘Largest Illicit Online Marketplace’ Ever Is Growing at an Alarming Rate, Report Says

Huione Guarantee, a gray market researchers believe is central to the online scam ecosystem, now includes a messaging app, stablecoin, and crypto exchange—while facilitating $24 billion in transactions.

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LemFi moves remittances further into Asia and Europe with $53M in new funding

For many emerging market economies, remittances have become a lifeline. Inflows surpassed $669 billion in 2023, according to World Bank research, and they now represent significant portions of GDP in these countries, often outpacing foreign direct investment as the primary … Continue reading

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How Barcelona became an unlikely hub for spyware startups

Barcelona’s mix of affordable cost of living and quality of life has helped create a vibrant startup community — and become a hotbed for the creation of surveillance technologies. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

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The UK wants to do its ‘own thing’ on AI regulation, suggesting a divergence from U.S. and EU

A U.K. government minister told CNBC it’s important for the U.K. to “do our own thing” when it comes to regulating powerful artificial intelligence models.

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