French car battery startup secures €2bn as EU looks to wean itself off Chinese tech

Sep19
by on September 19, 2023 at 3:18 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized


French car battery startup Verkor has secured €2bn to build its first manufacturing plant in France, at a time when Chinese competitors are rapidly gaining market share in Europe.   The funding round includes €650mn in French subsidies, a sizeable level of state support indicative of the government’s commitment to boosting local production of lithium-ion batteries — the beating hearts of electric cars.   Construction of the mega-factory will kick off next month and is expected to create 1,200 jobs in the region. Verkor predicts the plant will be able to equip 200,000-300,000 electric cars a year once it enters operations, scheduled…

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Hydrogen aviation startup ZeroAvia lands largest funding round to date

Sep18
by on September 18, 2023 at 12:34 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized


ZeroAvia, one of the leading zero-emission aviation companies in the world, just announced its largest financing round to date. The funding round was co-led by Airbus, Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital, and NEOM. Other participants included Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Alaska Airlines, and the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund. No exact funding amount has been disclosed due to legal reasons, but a spokesperson for the startup confirmed to TNW that it is ZeroAvia’s largest to date, following a Series B of $72mn and a Series A of $56mn.  Based out of Kemble, UK, and Hollister, California, ZeroAvia develops hydrogen-electric fuel cell…

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Only 5% of $22B in VC funding for generative AI went to Europe

Sep15
by on September 15, 2023 at 4:38 pm
Posted In: Insider


European startups got just $1bn of the €22bn that VCs have invested in generative AI since 2019, according to data from Dealroom. Unsurprisingly, American companies attracted the bulk of the money. A whopping $20bn — 89% of the global total — went to US startups. Their Asian counterparts raised only $790mn, while the rest of the world combined bagged just $454mn. Dealroom’s data collection ended on July 10, 2023. US startups have raised 89% of globally GenAI investment 😳 In the last decade, venture capital has gone global. More than half of VC investment is now raised outside the US.…

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NASA and the ESA edge closer to explaining the Sun’s mysterious heat

Sep15
by on September 15, 2023 at 12:55 pm
Posted In: Insider


Two spacecraft have taken a giant leap towards explaining the Sun’s engimatic heat. The collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) explored an enduring mystery. In theory, the sun’s atmosphere — the corona — should be cooler than its surface. This is because the Sun’s energy comes from the nuclear furnace in its core. As the corona is further away from this heat source, logic should dictate that it’s cooler. In reality, that’s not the case. The sun’s surface is “only” around 6,000 degrees Celcius. The corona, meanwhile, is a whopping 1 million degrees — over 150 times hotter.  To…

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Improving driver monitoring systems: The case for synthetic data

Sep15
by on September 15, 2023 at 11:45 am
Posted In: Uncategorized


Driver monitoring systems (DMS) that assess alertness behind the wheel are rapidly becoming the leading automotive safety feature across the globe. In the EU for example, vehicle safety regulator EuroNCAP is requiring all new cars to incorporate a DMS in order to comply with its safety rating. Amidst this push, startups are benefiting from business opportunities in the DMS space, offering solutions that range from heartmetrics to onset sleep detection. Among them, Swedish Devant is tapping the potential of synthetic data. Launched in 2021, the startup generates synthetic data of lifelike digital humans to support the training, validation, and testing…

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