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The dream of Polish tech entrepreneurship is almost over
Poland has worked diligently over the past decade to become an entrepreneurial powerhouse. Once home to businesses focused primarily on app design and outsourcing, social, societal, and economic pressures forced the country’s brightest to start building for themselves. And they did. I’ve covered Polish startups for almost a decade, first on TechCrunch and then on a new blog I… Read More
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Drone registration coming to the UK
The UK government has announced a plan to require drone owners to register their devices. It says the incoming rules are aimed at ensuring safer use of the technology. Read More
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Graphcore’s AI chips now backed by Atomico, DeepMind’s Hassabis
Is AI chipmaker Graphcore out to eat Nvidia’s lunch? Co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon laughs at that interview opener — perhaps because he sold his previous company to the chipmaker back in 2011. Read More
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Fintech startup Klarna taps Permira for around $250M at $2.5B valuation
Klarna, the Swedish startup that works with e-commerce businesses and retailers to provide financing and other payment services, today announced that it has picked up yet another large investment, its third inside of two months. Permira, the private equity firm and prolific late-stage tech investor, has taken a minimum 10 percent stake in the fintech business. Klarna and Permira are not… Read More
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Wire launches e2e encrypted team messaging in beta
End-to-end encrypted messaging platform Wire is targeting Slack’s territory with a new messaging for teams product, called Teams. Read More
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Viber acquires Chatter Commerce, the startup behind its shopping keyboard
Messaging app Viber earlier this year made its first foray into shopping services with Instant Shopping, a feature that lets you search for items for sale via a keyboard when you have the messaging app open. Today, the company is announcing some more e-commerce related news: it’s buying the startup that helped build that feature. Viber has acquired Chatter Commerce, maker of a… Read More
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Amid a tough field, Vyking.io wins the TechCrunch London Pitch-Off
Well the TechCrunch London Meetup + Pitch-Off in London is over for another year, and this one was arguably the best vintage ever in terms of quality of startups and the sheer enthusiasm from the attendees! Hundreds of startups entered the competition, creating a very competitive field. We packed out the Old Truman Brewery in East London with over 500 people, to hear the pitches of the… Read More
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US lifts laptop ban for all remaining airlines and airports
The U.S. has now lifted entirely a controversial ban on laptops in hand luggage for passengers flying to the country from the Middle East or via certain Middle Eastern airlines, with the Department of Homeland Security professing itself satisfied with “enhanced security measures in place”. Read More
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Leading VC Tim Draper invests in Gravity’s ‘Iron Man’ flight suit, on a $100 bill
You’re a bored former finance guy who decides one day to strap on some micro-jet engines and see if you can become Iron Man. Hey it happens all the time. Or maybe not. But that’s what British entrepreneur Richard Browning decided to do and just this year found himself demoing his ‘flight suit’ to venture capitalist Tim Draper in the parking lot of Boost VC. Moments… Read More
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Google’s right to be forgotten appeal heading to Europe’s top court
Europe’s ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling, which allows private citizens in the region to make requests that search engines delist incorrect, irrelevant or out of date information returned by an online search for their full name, is set to return to the region’s top court to settle an ongoing dispute between Google and the French data protection agency, CNIL. Read More
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Zego raises £1M to give gig-economy drivers a pay-as-you-go insurance platform
The gig economy, as we know, is big and just getting bigger. But companies like Uber and Deliveroo have a huge problem and it’s called insurance. How do you insure all these workers and how do the workers cover themselves in the gig economy? Step in Zego. This London startup has just raised just over £1 million in seed funding from investors, including LocalGlobe, with FTSE 100… Read More
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AI data-monopoly risks to be probed by UK parliamentarians
The UK’s upper house of parliament is asking for contributions to an enquiry into the socioeconomic and ethical impacts of artificial intelligence technology. Among the questions the House of Lords committee will consider are how can the data-based monopolies of some large corporations, and the ‘winner-takes-all’ economics associated with them, be addressed? Read More
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Mangrove raises $170M for its new fund to invest in Europe and Israeli startups
Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners, one of Europe’s leading early-stage venture capital firms, has raised $170 million for its latest fund. Mangrove V will be used to invest across Europe and Israel. The amount matches that of its previous funds, and was completed inside two months with 90 percent coming from returning investors, said the firm. Read More
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Report confirms Brexit’s boomerang logic on data protection
A U.K. parliamentary committee report backs the view that Brexit cannot constitute a “clean break” in data protection law terms with the European Union. Au contraire. The U.K. will likely have to continue mirroring EU data protection rules encore et encore… Read More
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N26 and Lydia announce Apple Pay support in France, but major banks are still missing
Apple Pay hasn’t really been a major success in France so far. France’s biggest banks still don’t plan to support Apple’s payment service. But two companies announced today that they were going to add Apple Pay support before the end of the year — Lydia and N26. Crédit Mutuel Arkea’s banks also recently announced that they were working on that feature… Read More
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Stox to launch token sale for its new prediction market
Stox.com is Invest.com’s prediction market product and it’s getting a little boost through a newly-opened token sale using Bancor’s smart token protocol. This announcement, while full of jargon, means that Stox will be able to raise money to develop infrastructure and increase its marketing and sales groups. Stox is a spin-off of Invest.com, an established player in the… Read More
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Taavet Hinrikus hands over CEO reins at TransferWise to cofounder Kristo Kaarmann
A changing of the guard at TransferWise, the unicorn startup based out of London that specialises in providing money-transfer services, typically with better rates than banks and other incumbent providers. The company’s CEO and co-founder Taavet Hinrikus announced that he is stepping down and staying on in a part-time role as chairman and board member. He will be replaced by his… Read More
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Yandex open sources CatBoost, a gradient boosting machine learning library
Artificial intelligence is now powering a growing number of computing functions, and today the developer community today is getting another AI boost, courtesy of Yandex. Today, the Russian search giant — which, like its US counterpart Google, has extended into a myriad of other business lines, from mobile to maps and more — announced the launch of CatBoost, an open source… Read More
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Privitar raises $16M to help ensure privacy in big data analytics
As data protection — a set of laws and practices created across different markets to ensure that our sensitive information does not get leaked or shared without our permission — continues to gain priority in our rapidly expanding digital world, a UK startup called Privitar that is building tools to help organizations keep that data private has picked up $16 million in funding… Read More
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