Paul Sawers

Paul Sawers is a senior writer based in London, focused largely on the world of UK And European startups. However, he also writes about other subjects that he’s passionate about, such as the business of open source software.

Prior to TechCrunch, Paul gained more than a decade’s experience covering consumer and enterprise technologies for VentureBeat and The Next Web.

Pitches on: paul.sawers [at] techcrunch.com

The Latest from Paul Sawers

Google fires 28 employees after sit-in protest over controversial Project Nimbus contract with Israel

Google has terminated the employment of 28 staff following a prolonged sit-in protest at the company’s Sunnyvale and New York offices. The employees were protesting against Project Nimbus, a $1.

Meta to close Threads in Turkey to comply with injunction prohibiting data sharing with Instagram

Meta will "temporarily" shutter Threads in Turkey on April 29, in response to an injunction imposed by the country's competition authority.

OpenAI opens Tokyo hub, adds GPT-4 model optimized for Japanese

OpenAI is expanding to Japan, with the opening of a new Tokyo office and plans for a GPT-4 model optimized specifically for the Japanese language. The move is significant for a few reasons. It undersc

Reshape wants to help ‘decode nature’ by automating the ‘visual’ part of lab experiments

Reshape has developed a robotic imaging system replete with software and AI models to help scientists track visual changes from Petri dishes and similar plate formats.

Vista Equity to take revenue optimization platform Model N private in $1.25B deal

Model N, a platform used by companies such as Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and AMD to automate decisions related to pricing, incentives, and compliance, is going private in a $1.25 billion deal

Microsoft AI gets a new London hub fronted by former Inflection and DeepMind scientist Jordan Hoffmann

Microsoft has announced a new London hub for its recently unveiled consumer AI division. It will be fronted by Jordan Hoffmann, an AI scientist and engineer Microsoft recently picked up from high-pro

Open source foundations unite on common standards for EU’s Cyber Resilience Act

Seven open source foundations are coming together to create common specifications and standards for Europe’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), regulation adopted by the European Parliament last month.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis gets UK knighthood for ‘services to artificial intelligence’

Demis Hassabis, CEO and one of three founders of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) subsidiary DeepMind, has been awarded a knighthood in the U.K. for “services to artificial intelligen

LinkedIn targets users caught between TikTok and what used to be Twitter

Two weeks ago, TechCrunch broke the news that LinkedIn was getting into games, helping users “deepen relationships” through puzzle-based interactions. And on Wednesday, TechCrunch reported

Confetti, a team-building platform used by Apple, Google and Microsoft, raises $16M

Not many startups can claim Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta as paying customers, but Confetti can. And the list doesn’t stop at a quintet with a collective market value of $10 trillion

AI and data infrastructure drives demand for open source startups

A new report highlights the demand for startups building open source tools and technologies for the snowballing AI revolution, with the adjacent data infrastructure vertical also heating up. Runa Capi

How Ember is building an all-electric intercity bus network in the UK

A Scottish company building one of the U.K.’s first all-electric intercity bus networks has raised $14 million (£11 million) in a Series A round as it looks to expand across the entire country.

London regtech GSS raises $47M to help banks screen for global sanctions

Global Screening Services (GSS), a London-based regulatory compliance platform that helps financial institutions meet their global sanctions obligations, has raised $47 million in a round of funding.

UK confirms in-depth antitrust probe into Three and Vodafone’s planned $19B merger

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has confirmed that it’s launching a formal “phase 2” investigation into the planned merger between Vodafone and Three UK. The CMA

DOJ’s Apple antitrust case neatly aligns with EU on one key point: NFC and mobile payments

As Apple faces down the barrel of a U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust lawsuit, one might assume that references to the Cupertino company’s existing anti-competitive headwinds in

Want to see an NHS doctor? Prepare to cough up your data first.

To get a doctor’s appointment in the U.K. these days, you have to entrust more of your data to private companies — and there’s not a great deal you can do about it. In part due to gr

AI is keeping GitHub chief legal officer Shelley McKinley busy

GitHub’s chief legal officer, Shelley McKinley, has plenty on her plate, what with legal wrangles around its Copilot pair-progammer, as well as the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, which was v

After AWS and Google, Microsoft says it’s removing Azure ‘egress’ data transfer fees — but with caveats

Microsoft has revealed that it, too, will allow business customers to transfer data out of its Azure cloud infrastructure with no “egress fees” attached, following hot on the heels of simi

Proton Mail desktop app officially launches, but remains for premium subscribers only

Proton Mail, the end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) email service from Swiss company Proton, is now officially available via a dedicated desktop app some three months after debuting in beta. However, despite

Polar Signals wants to help companies cut cloud costs with more efficient code

A young startup is setting out to help enterprises cut their cloud costs by writing “more efficient” code — and it has secured $6.8 million in fresh funding from notable backers incl
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