The Next Web TNW

Deep tech startup Mybridge has emerged from the shadows with an €8mn investment to fuel its objective — to revolutionise the way we take photos. Founded by Håkon Espeland and Anders Tomren in 2020, Muybridge has spent the last four years developing real-time computer vision technology that uses software to replace most of the moving parts found in traditional cameras. “Muybridge is one of those rare companies that has managed to combine enabling technologies in a way that opens a new paradigm,” said Filip Petersson, partner at Scandinavian VC Fairpoint Capital, the lead investor in the funding round.   Muybridge’s co-founder and product owner Anders Tomren (left), co-founder and CEO, Håkon Espeland and CCO Berk Cinar. Credit: Muybridge While cameras and smartphones already enhance images using software-based techniques like computational photography, the physical components involved in capturing the scene — like lenses or sensors — still greatly limit the end result. Calling all Scaleup founders! Join the Soonicorn Summit on November 28 in Amsterdam. Meet with the leaders of Picnic, Miro, Carbon Equity and more during this exclusive event dedicated to Scaleup Founders! Instead of relying on a fixed camera system, Muybridge uses multiple small sensors and software to create “virtual cameras” that can simulate different perspectives, angles, and movements without needing physical changes in the device. This gives Muybridge’s system much greater flexibility in capturing and processing images in real time.  “Think of the bullet time scene in The Matrix, where the actor was surrounded by multiple cameras,” Muybridge’s CEO and fo-founder, Håkon Espeland, told TNW. “Now, just imagine hundreds or thousands of them — each as small as a smartphone camera — lined up, feeding visuals into software. “Now imagine that setup within the walls of your video conferencing room around a sports stadium, or even within a tennis court net or between football goal posts, with multiple cameras and sensors pushing imagery from new and never seen before angles, while state of the art software combines those multiple feeds into one video feed ready for broadcast — that’s revolutionary.” Muybridge is now gearing up to break out from the lab and into industries like sports, broadcasting, surveillance, and enterprise communications. The company, which employs 30 people, also plans to scale its workforce.  Alongside Fairpoint Capital, the funding round was joined by existing investors RunwayFBU, Idekapita, Vikingstad Invest, and several angels. For Muybridge it marks a pivotal moment in its mission to transform the camera industry.    source

Microsoft has partnered with medical note taking software startup Autoscriber to further scale the latter’s software across the EMEA region. The company’s speech-based AI tool frees up large chunks of doctors’ time and allows them to stay focused on their patients during consults. Based out of the Netherlands and South Africa, Autoscriber offers an ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) product that automatically generates summaries from real-time doctor-patient conversations and fills out an Electronic Health Record (EHR). This reduces the time doctors need to spend on admin by 20% to 50%. In actual time, this equals approximately five minutes per consultation. In addition, easing administrative burdens can help reduce burnout among medical personnel. Autoscriber also says its ACI tool results in more complete notes for the healthcare system. The AI engine supports multiple languages including English, Dutch, German, Norwegian, French, Spanish, and Afrikaans. The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! “Our mission is to enable human-centric and data-driven healthcare, giving doctors time and attention for better quality patient care,” said co-founder and CEO, Jacqueline Kazmaier. “Autoscriber has been rolled out across multiple departments at major hospitals, as well as primary care and psychology practices, and we are already seeing these benefits take shape”. Microsoft has now chosen to support Autoscriber as the solution provider for ambient clinical intelligence in the EMEA region. The startup already has ongoing partnerships and integrations with established electronic health record providers but says that this strategic collaboration with Microsoft is of major importance in order to scale up efficiently within and across clients. The tech giant will be actively supplying Autoscriber with special partnership resources to further commercialise its product. It will also provide dedicated compute resources to help Autoscriber roll out the product at scale. “The models we run to process the audio of doctor-patient interactions and generate structured clinical encounter notes quickly become GPU-intensive,” said co-founder and CTO Koen Bonenkamp. “With the worldwide shortage of GPUs, the support of Microsoft to scale our architecture and reserve technical capacity is critical to our ability to offer our solution to hundreds of clinicians at the same time at a single healthcare provider.” Microsoft offers dedicated cloud services for healthcare providers. One of the four key outcomes mentioned as part of the services is the use of AI-enabled tools that enhance productivity to allow clinicians to focus on high-value work. “As Microsoft we aim to service our healthcare clients in the best way possible and to support our clients with the optimisation of their workflow and services,” said Ralph Haupter, President of Microsoft EMEA, adding that the administrative burden of health workers and the lack of structured and interoperable data are known problems. Jacqueline Kazmaier founded Autoscriber with Koen Bonenkamp in 2021 out of a prior collaboration with Leiden University Medical Centre. With the backing of one of the biggest forces in tech in the world, the company now intends to become the EMEA market leader in the field of ambient clinical intelligence in the next 12 months. source

 Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast — the show where we discuss the latest developments in the European technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most interesting people in the industry. In today’s special episode, we’re happy to present an interview with Phill Robinson, founder of Boardwave — a networking platform for founders and CEOs working in the European software industry. The conversation — recorded by our senior editor Linnea Ahlgren — focuses around Europe’s pathway to success. What are we doing right and wrong, compared to the other continents? What’s the future of the European software industry like? And what does AI have to do with it? Calling all Scaleup founders! Join the Soonicorn Summit on November 28 in Amsterdam. Meet with the leaders of Picnic, Miro, Carbon Equity and more during this exclusive event dedicated to Scaleup Founders! Here are the links for this episode: The white paper: “How the UK & Europe can lead the global software industry by 2034” Music and sound engineering for this podcast are by Sound Pulse. Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected]. source

Stop for a moment and pay attention to the things around you. The clothes you’re wearing, the device you’re using, what you’re sitting on, the building you’re in. What are they made of?  The simple answer is “stuff from nature” — woods, metals, rocks, oils, and plants refined into things like furniture, batteries, bricks, plastics, and clothes.  In 2017, humanity’s total material footprint — which refers to the total amount of raw materials we extract to fuel our economies — was 92 billion tonnes. The UN predicts this will more than double by 2060 without a change to the current patterns of consumption.  Our insatiable appetite for more stuff threatens to exceed Earth’s limits. True sustainability demands shifting to a circular economy that reuses resources, cuts waste, and restores nature. Slashing carbon is just one piece of the puzzle.  Overeating Calling all Scaleup founders! Join the Soonicorn Summit on November 28 in Amsterdam. Meet with the leaders of Picnic, Miro, Carbon Equity and more during this exclusive event dedicated to Scaleup Founders! For one second, imagine the global economy as a giant belching monster. The beast likes to dine on vast quantities of minerals, metals, biomass, and fossil fuels. It devours these materials to fuel its growth — to build things like roads, buildings, and cars. What the monster doesn’t use becomes waste. Some of this waste comes in the form of farts and burps — aka greenhouse gas emissions.  That metaphor was a bit of fun, but the problem of overconsumption is very serious. The material footprint of the average person stands at about 12 to 13 tonnes per year, almost triple what some scientists estimate to be the sustainable limit.   While we often talk about carbon footprint, the impact of our material consumption — resource depletion, habitat destruction, and pollution — is just as critical. And ironically, decarbonisation efforts could even be fuelling the problem. The race to net zero is driving demand for everything from EVs and solar panels to semiconductors and batteries. All of these climate technologies require heaps of materials, including vast amounts of rare earths like lithium, cobalt, and nickel. In the current economic system, this means more mining, exacerbating ecological degradation and inequality, particularly in many of the world’s poorest countries.   Cutting down In her groundbreaking book Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth presents a vision for a world where humanity operates within a “safe and just space for all.” The outer ring of the doughnut represents the planetary boundaries — the ecological limits we cannot exceed without damaging Earth’s life-support systems. The inner ring represents the social foundation, the minimum standards for human well-being. The goal is to live in the “doughnut’s sweet spot,” where everyone’s needs are met within planetary boundaries.  In our rush to green the global economy, we are running the risk of breaching Earth’s outer ring. Cutting carbon emissions is critical, but we must ensure that this transition doesn’t exacerbate existing environmental and social crises.     Reaching Raworth’s “sweet spot” means breaking with our linear take-make-waste consumption habits and making them circular. In a circular economy, products are designed to be reused. When they are no longer useful, instead of becoming waste, they then become a resource for something new, just like in nature. Afterall, “waste” is just a resource in the wrong place. Doing more with less The first step toward a circular economy is ramping up recycling. Currently, the bulk of the critical materials used in clean technologies, as well as the products themselves, aren’t recycled. However, rising costs and skyrocketing demand for everything from lithium to steel is opening up a burgeoning new market for recycled materials. One company cashing in on this boom is German startup Cylib, which recently broke ground on its first industrial-scale battery recycling plant. The factory is expected to process 60,000 EV batteries a year once operational, scheduled for 2026. This would make it the largest such facility in Europe.  However, recycling should only be a final resort. We need to prioritise sharing, maintaining, reusing, redistributing, refurbishing, and remanufacturing. Keeping stuff in circulation for as long as possible will dramatically reduce the need to mine new resources.  Take the example of BikeFlip, recently founded by five students from Utrecht University. The startup refurbishes abandoned and neglected kids’ bikes in the Netherlands and then offers them on a subscription model for a fixed monthly fee, including the maintenance and repair of bikes. When the child outgrows the bicycle, the customer chooses a new one and returns the old one, so BikeFlip can deliver it to another customer. Transforming waste into new, better products is called upcycling, and it’s a pillar of circularity that companies like Papershell are turning into profits. The Swedish startup sources craft paper made from waste lignin and cellulose from the timber industry and turns it into “wood metal” — an ultra-strong, fire-resistant material that can replace aluminium, fibreglass, and plastics. Papershell is even experimenting with using mycelium to break down the high-tech wood once it reaches the end of its life — returning it to the soil and fostering biodiversity.   Other ventures are working on reusing entire buildings. Buildings consume about 30% of all the natural resources we extract from the environment, so there’s a big push to make them more circular.  Berlin-based startup Concular has developed software that captures and stores information about the components of a building — from bricks and beams to tiny screws. In this way, when a building reaches its end-of-life, its pieces can be broken up, advertised on a marketplace, and sold for use in the construction of new structures.  Last year, Dutch architecture firm MVRDV completed Matrix One — a six-storey, energy-efficient, office and laboratory block constructed using over 120,000 reusable components. Almost everything, from the doors and windows to ceilings and furniture, is fully detachable and reusable. Even the floors are made from prefabricated concrete slabs with no fixed connections — they can simply be unscrewed and removed.  To return

Dutch-Nordic carbon capture startup Paebbl has raised $25mn as it looks to turn the sector that uses the bulk of the world’s mined materials — the built environment — into a permanent sink for the world’s most potent greenhouse gas — CO2.  Berlin-based VC Capnamic led the round, with participation from the likes of Amazon and German cement industry giants Holcim and Goldbeck. Paebbl will use the fresh funds to expand its offices in Helsinki, Stockholm, and Rotterdam, where its pilot plant is located.   In June, we visited the facility, discreetly hidden amid the sprawling docks, warehouses, and factories of Europe’s largest port. It’s also conveniently positioned a stone’s throw from some of the world’s biggest carbon emitters — Shell, BP, and ExxonMobil.  When I arrived at the facility, I was greeted by co-CEO Marta Sjögren, a former Northzone partner who co-founded Paebbl in 2021 alongside early Klarna investor Jane Walerud, former Slush CEO Andreas Saari, and Dutch scientist Pol Knops. Marta Sjogren, Co-CEO and Co-Founder at Paebbl. Credit: Paebbl Paebbl is one of an emerging cohort of carbon removal startups looking to capture CO2 and use it as a resource to make new, cleaner products. Known as carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS), this differs from the more established carbon capture and storage (CCS) championed by the oil and gas industry, where carbon is captured at source and buried underground.  “CCUS will be a core lever for decarbonisation,” Sjögren, originally from Sweden, told TNW. “And luckily, world governments and hard-decarbonise industries like cement and steel are starting to realise that.”   Supercharging carbon mineralisation On that rainy day in June, Paebbl was celebrating its first ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) captured. While just a tiny fraction of the billions of tons we need to remove from the air to meet climate goals, for the startup, it was a crucial milestone.  Paebbl’s technology — which, to the untrained eye, looks like a tangled mesh of metals pipes, valves, and vats — artificially accelerates the slow, natural process of carbon mineralisation.  In nature, carbon mineralisation naturally occurs over hundreds or thousands of years when certain minerals inside rocks react with atmospheric CO2 to create carbonates like limestone. Paebbl’s reactor supercharges this process — mineralising a lot more CO2 in a lot less time.   Paebbl feeds CO2 captured from industry — and in the future, from its own direct carbon capture (DAC) machines — and crushed olivine rock into its machine, where it undergoes enhanced mineralisation. The CO2 turns into CO3 (carbon trioxide) and binds to the olivine. For every ton of CO2 captured it produces about three tons of powder, the scientific name for which is “silicon-rich” magnesium carbonate.  This powder feels like a soft, fine dust and is gray with a tinge of green from the olivine it’s made from. Around half of the emissions from cement are produced when limestone is heated to produce lime. Paebbl’s powder can replace lime and other additives in things like wall filler, turning buildings into carbon sinks.  Scaling up In June, Paebbl was hurriedly putting together the pieces of its first demonstration plant, scheduled to open early next year. With the new facilities, the startup will ramp up its production capacity tenfold to 3 tons of rock powder per day, for use in trials by pioneering industry partners — presumably, the likes of Holcim and Goldbeck. The next step is a commercial-scale plant, scheduled for 2027. While the company hasn’t yet disclosed the location of this facility, Marta says that they will focus on setting up factories in areas with “high demand for end products (building material), nearby feedstock supply (CO2 and olivine rock)”, and access to renewable energy. In Europe, the Nordics, Spain, and Portugal stand out in this respect.   Paebbl aims to bring 1 million tons of its product to the market by 2030. The startup will make money from selling the rock powder itself and through providing carbon removal credits to companies looking to offset their emissions. source

London-based scaleup Huma announced today the expansion of its digital healthcare solutions with the acquisition of eConsult. This is one of the UK’s largest digital triage and consultation platforms across primary and emergency care. Founded in 2011, Huma works with healthcare providers and big pharma to improve clinical outcomes with digital solutions. Since its founding, the company has been strategically expanding its portfolio of services, aiming to accelerate the digitalisation of healthcare. “The acquisition [of eConsult] brings us one step closer to becoming the end-to-end technology platform for the industry to deliver digital-first care at scale seamlessly,” said Dan Vahdat, Huma’s founder and CEO. The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! According to Huma, over two-thirds of primary and secondary care providers in the UK already use its solutions. The acquisition of eConsult adds another platform to the company’s NHS services. “The NHS knows it needs to do much more with technology to help both patients and clinicians,” said Murray Ellender, CEO at eConsult. Launching Huma Workspace Today, the company also launched Huma Workspace, a platform that offers automation solutions tailored to GPs, community hospitals, and secondary care facilities. It provides a series of services spanning from appointment bookings and automated prescriptions to screening tools, remote monitoring, and virtual wards. It also features eConsult’s digital triage and consultation tools. Huma Workspace is integrated with major hospital systems and primary care providers of electronic medical records (EMR), such as Epic and SystemOne. The scaleup says that it’s the first platform of its kind to be embedded into the NHS app. The rollout follows the launch of the Huma Cloud Platform in July, a “Shopify-like” tool for the healthcare ecosystem to develop and build digital health services. source

The artificial intelligence boom has already changed how we understand technology and the world. But developing and updating AI programs requires a lot of computing power. This relies heavily on servers in data centres, at a great cost in terms of carbon emissions and resource use. One particularly energy intensive task is “training”, where generative AI systems are exposed to vast amounts of data so that they improve at what they do. The development of AI-based systems has been blamed for a 48% increase in Google’s greenhouse gas emissions over five years. This will make it harder for the tech giant to achieve its goal of reaching net zero by 2030. Some in the industry justify the extra energy expenditure from AI by pointing to benefits the technology could have for environmental sustainability and climate action. Improving the efficiency of solar and wind power through predicting weather patterns, “smart” agriculture and more efficient, electric autonomous vehicles are among the purported benefits of AI for the Earth. It’s against this background that tech companies have been looking to renewables and nuclear fission to supply electricity to their data centres. Nuclear fission is the type of nuclear power that’s been in use around the world for decades. It releases energy by splitting a heavy chemical element to form lighter ones. Fission is one thing, but some in Silicon Valley feel a different technology will be needed to plug the gap: nuclear fusion. Unlike fission, nuclear fusion produces energy by combining two light elements to make a heavier one. But fusion energy is an unproven solution to the sustainability challenge of AI. And the enthusiasm of tech CEOs for this technology as an AI energy supply risks sidelining the potential benefits for the planet. Beyond the conventional Google recently announced that it had signed a deal to buy energy from small nuclear reactors. This is a technology, based on nuclear fission, that allows useful amounts of power to be produced from much smaller devices than the huge reactors in big nuclear power plants. Google plans to use these small reactors to generate the power needed for the rise in use of AI. This year, Microsoft announced an agreement with the company Constellation Energy, which could pave the way to restart a reactor at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power station, the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history. However, nuclear power produces long-lived radioactive waste, which needs to be stored securely. Nuclear fuels, such as the element uranium (which needs to be mined), are finite, so the technology is not considered renewable. Renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power suffer from “intermittency”, meaning they do not consistently produce energy at all hours of the day. Sam Altman says fusion could be an answer to the issue of AI’s power demands. jamesonwu1972 / Shutterstock These limitations have driven some to look to look to nuclear fusion as a solution. Most notably, Sam Altman of OpenAI has shown particular interest in Helion Energy, a fusion startup working on a relatively novel technological design. In theory, nuclear fusion offers a “holy grail” energy source by generating a large output of energy from small quantities of fuel, with no greenhouse gas emissions from the process and comparatively little radioactive waste. Some forms of fusion rely on a fuel called deuterium, a form of hydrogen, which can be extracted from an abundant source: seawater. In the eyes of its advocates, like Altman, these qualities make nuclear fusion well suited to meet the challenges of growing energy demand in the face of the climate crisis –- and to meet the vast demands of AI development. However, dig beneath the surface and the picture isn’t so rosy. Despite the hopes of its proponents, fusion technologies have yet to produce sustained net energy output (more energy than is put in to run the reactor), let alone produce energy at the scale required to meet the growing demands of AI. Fusion will require many more technological developments before it can fulfil its promise of delivering power to the grid. Wealthy and powerful people, such as the CEOs of giant technology companies, can strongly influence how new technology is developed. For example, there are many different technological ways to perform nuclear fusion. But the particular route to fusion that is useful for meeting the energy demands of AI might not be the one that’s ideal for meeting people’s general energy needs. AI is reliant on data centres which consume lots of energy. Dil_Ranathunga / Shutterstock The overvaluation of innovation Innovators often take for granted that their work will produce ideal social outcomes. If fusion can be made to work at scale, it could make a valuable contribution to decarbonising our energy supplies as the world seeks to tackle the climate crisis. However, the humanitarian promises of both fusion and AI often seem to be sidelined in favour of scientific innovation and progress. Indeed, when looking at those invested in these technologies, it is worth asking who actually benefits from them. Will investment in fusion for AI purposes enable its wider take-up as a clean technology to replace polluting fossil fuels? Or will a vision for the technology propagated by powerful tech companies restrict its use for other purposes? It can sometimes feel as if innovation is itself the goal, with much less consideration of the wider impact. This vision has echoes of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s motto of “move fast and break things”, where short-term losses are accepted in pursuit of a future vision that will later justify the means. source

Amsterdam-based Lapsi Health is looking to firmly position itself in the rapidly-evolving market of smart medical devices. The startup announced yesterday the US launch of its first clinical support tool, a digital stethoscope, after receiving clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — the US regulator for medical devices. Dubbed Keikku, the digital stethoscope is a portable wireless device that uses sensing technology and AI to listen to body sounds, such as breathing, and turn them into data-based insights. Keikku also comes with features such as the option to share and stream sound clips or to crop and annotate them. These functionalities are available on the stethoscope’s app and web-based platform. The Keikku stethoscope. Source: Lapsi Health The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! Lapsi Health says that Keikku can improve patient screening and monitoring and is initially able to boost diagnostics for a range of conditions, such as respiratory, cardiac, and gastrointestinal problems. The startup is currently targeting general healthcare professionals. But in the future, the company’s aim is to support individual use by patients, which will enable remote monitoring and treatment. “We are making auscultation available for in-home monitoring with clear results for you to be able to know when to contact your healthcare provider, just as the thermometer,” Diana van Stijn, chief medical officer at Lapsi Health, told TNW.  What Keikku’s app looks like. Source: Lapsi Health Plans for a wide range of medical devices Keikku’s launch marks the first step in the company’s commercialisation journey. Lapsi Health is also developing Ilo, a wearable for fetal health tracking, designed for pregnant women. Another upcoming product, called Air, is a wearable designed for lung tracking. The tools are currently at the validation and prototype stage, respectively. The startup was founded in 2022 by Jhonatan Bringas Dimitriades (CEO), Diana van Stijn (chief medical officer), Rodrigo Alvez (CTO), and Seamus Holohan (COO). To date, the company has raised $5.8mn from pre-seed and seed rounds as well as scientific grants. Update (1o:00AM CEST, October 4, 2024): The article has been updated to include the comment from Diana van Stijn.  source

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is considering new measures to help close the funding gap for European startups and prevent them from relocating across the Atlantic. During a meeting with EU finance ministers yesterday in Luxembourg, the EIB proposed its “Action Plan” that aims to boost Europe’s capital markets, investments, and competitiveness. A key pillar of the plan is to increase support for the EU’s venture capital and private equity markets to enable the scaling up of innovative startups and unicorns. This includes three different measures, starting with the extension of the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI). Launched in 2023, the ETCI is a fund of funds that provides late-stage capital to European companies. By February 2024, it had closed €1bn of investments. Calling all Scaleup founders! Join the Soonicorn Summit on November 28 in Amsterdam. Meet with the leaders of Picnic, Miro, Carbon Equity and more during this exclusive event dedicated to Scaleup Founders! The EIB also plans to boost equity and venture debt investments for scaleups and it will work towards the creation of a new exit platform to facilitate acquisitions and public listings for tech startups. “The Action Plan discussed with ministers will help European innovators scale up their business and contribute to channel savings into productive investments,” EIB Group President Nadia Calviño said in a statement. Calviño added that the measures will foster innovation and job creation, ultimately “ensuring that European companies born in Europe, stay in Europe.” Europe’s innovation gap EIB’s proposed plan comes a month after Mario Draghi sounded the alarm about the EU’s inability to commercialise innovations. In a report commissioned by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, Draghi warned that the bloc is significantly falling behind competitors such as the US. “The problem is not that Europe lacks ideas or ambition,” the Italian former premier said. “But innovation is blocked at the next stage: we are failing to translate innovation into commercialisation.” According to the report, only four European companies rank among the world’s top 50 tech giants. Furthermore, no EU-based tech company has achieved a market capitalisation exceeding €100 billion in the past half-century. This starkly contrasts with the US, which boasts six such companies valued at over €1 trillion. To further illustrate the EU’s challenges, the report also showed that, between 2008 and 2021, nearly one third of European unicorns relocated abroad, with the majority moving to the US. source

OpenAI is opening new offices in Paris and Brussels as the ChatGPT maker accelerates its global expansion plans. The new sites increase the company’s European presence to four offices. They join London, which began OpenAI’s international expansion in 2023, and Dublin, which became the firm’s first EU base a few months later. Alongside the European hubs, OpenAI is also launching new offices in New York City, Seattle, Paris, Brussels, and Singapore. Job openings at all the sites will be listed here. For OpenAI, the European locations offer diverse attractions. Calling all Scaleup founders! Join the Soonicorn Summit on November 28 in Amsterdam. Meet with the leaders of Picnic, Miro, Carbon Equity and more during this exclusive event dedicated to Scaleup Founders! The company has praised London for its “vibrant technology ecosystem” and “exceptional talent.” Announcing the Dublin office, the AI giant pointed to Ireland’s regulatory and business development landscape, but denied that its famous tax regime had motivated the move. For the new European additions, OpenAI is yet to explain their lures, but we can hazard a few guesses. In the case of Paris, the city is emerging as a hotbed for artificial intelligence. The French capital’s blend of  tech talent, government support, and new investment streams has created fertile ground for startups in the field. Brussels, meanwhile, is the de facto capital of the EU — a global leader in AI regulation. OpenAI could benefit from close proximity to the corridors of power. AI will take centre stage at next year’s TNW Conference. Early birds can now buy 2-for-1 tickets for the June event.  source