UK’s biggest chip plant sold by Chinese-owned firm after government order

Nov08
by on November 8, 2023 at 4:38 pm
Posted In: Insider


Britain’s biggest chip plant has been bought by US semiconductor firm Vishay for $177mn. The Newport Wafer Fab in Wales was previously owned by Nexperia, which acquired the business in 2021. Nexperia is headquartered in the Netherlands, but the company is a subsidiary of China’s Wingtech. This ownership structure attracted intervention from UK lawmakers. Last year, the British government ordered Nexperia to sell the majority of its stake in Newport Wafer Fab. The move was explained as an attempt to “mitigate the risk to national security.” The end result is a new owner for the factory, which makes semiconductors for millions of…

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How Europe is racing to resolve its AI sovereignty woes

Nov07
by on November 7, 2023 at 2:01 pm
Posted In: artificial intelligence


While not yet as illustrious as its North American counterparts OpenAI, Anthropic, or Cohere, Europe’s own cohort of generative AI startups is beginning to crystallise. Just yesterday, news broke that Germany’s Aleph Alpha had raised €460mn, in one of the largest funding rounds ever for a European AI company.  The European tech community received news of the investment with some enthusiasm. While much focus has been on how the EU will regulate the tech (and how the UK will or will not), there hasn’t been a whole heap of attention on how the bloc will support artificial intelligence innovation and…

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How the UK is looking to lead the world in generative AI for lawtech

Nov06
by on November 6, 2023 at 3:05 pm
Posted In: Insider


In times gone by, lawyers would spend hours poring over documents and huge amounts of time and energy on research. But for many of today’s law firms, those days are coming to an end. The landscape is being revolutionised, thanks to exciting new technology and automation. Artificial intelligence tools can now help shoulder the burden of the kind of work that drains lawyers’ time — from reviewing documents and due diligence checks, to drafting legal documents and carrying out legal research. In 2021, Oxford University estimated that around half of all solicitors in England and Wales were using at least…

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Why the future of food is ‘invisible innovation’

Nov04
by on November 4, 2023 at 7:00 am
Posted In: Uncategorized


When you hear “the future of food,” what comes to mind? Star Trek-like food synthesisers, pills to replace your lunch, lab-grown meat, and insects for protein? Yes, the future of food might contain those things. However, it will also be a lot less… strange.  That is according to Beatriz Jacoste Lozano, the director of the KM ZERO Food Innovation Hub. TNW caught up with her during last week’s Valencia Digital Summit, to learn more about the crucial work of transforming the way we source our food, while still catering to the emotional connection we have to what we eat.  “If…

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How Berlin’s underground car parks could heat thousands of homes

Nov03
by on November 3, 2023 at 3:21 pm
Posted In: Insider


Berlin’s underground car parks are producing so much heat they could power thousands of homes with clean geothermal electricity, according to a new study. The heat given off by car engines makes the city’s car parks hotter than the surrounding earth, which in turn raises the temperature of the groundwater. This could pose a threat to water quality but also presents an opportunity — using heat pumps to extract the energy and use it to heat homes. In Berlin alone, enough energy is transferred to the groundwater to supply 14,660 households with heat, based on modelling from over 5,000 underground…

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