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Europe’s spacetech elite are making their final preparations for a groundbreaking meeting with an asteroid. A spacecraft called Hera — named after the Greek goddess of marriage — will make the rendezvous. The probe is slated for launch on October 7. If all goes well, Hera will then complete a detailed inspection of Dimorphos — a binary asteroid that’s also caught the eye of NASA. Back in 2022, the agency’s DART spacecraft deliberately smashed into Dimorphos. The collision contributed to a test of humanity’s planetary defences. 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! NASA wants to prove that we could divert a giant space rock hurtling towards Earth — and avoid the same fate as the dinosaurs. Hera will measure the impact of DART’s strike. The probe will analyse shifts in the asteroid’s momentum and changes to its composition. The European Space Agency (ESA) is leading the mission. But much of the tech onboard the probe has been built by startups. A public-private mission A stellar set of 28 startups and SMEs have worked on Hera. Among them is Finland’s Kuva Space, which applies a technique called hyperspectral imaging to analyse wavelengths of light. By capturing this data, the company can unravel new insights about scanned objects. For the Hera mission, Kuva has worked on the spacecraft’s life support interface board, which connects the probe and its two CubeSats. Hera will deploy the CubeSats to gather data on Dimorphos. Kuva has also contributed to the probe’s hyperspectral camera, which ESA will use to scan the asteroid. “They want to check whether they can detect the mineral composition of the asteroid without an impact crater on the asteroid,” says Tuomas Tikka, Kuva’s founder and CTO. The mission provides a chance to fine-tune Kuva’s hyperspectral business plan. By 2030, the company aims to deploy a constellation of 100 satellites. Jarkko Antila, the startup’s CEO, wants them to create “the Bloomberg of planetary insights.” Tikka also wants to explore another business idea: mining asteroids. The business case for asteroid mining Asteroids contain a diverse array of valuable materials. Hyperspectral imagery could help find and extract them. “It might be a bit in the future still,” Tikka says with a smile. “But when we make hundreds of millions with the Earth-based applications, then we’ll have the money for the asteroid mining.” ESA can play a key role in bringing dreams like this to reality. The agency’s programmes offer funding for spacetech firms and unique tests in the cosmos. “This ongoing support to startups working in new space is important, because not everything can be commercialised immediately,” Tikka says. Kuva will now head to Cape Canaveral, Florida for Hera’s launch. The probe is due to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket this Monday, but there are threats of a delay. Falcon 9 has been grounded since an upper-stage anomaly during a launch on September 28. But if the rocket flies as planned, humanity will move a step closer to deflecting asteroids — and, potentially, mining them. source

AI startup Poolside has raised a whopping $500mn — and it still hasn’t even launched a product. Despite the barren release schedule, the company has become an investors’ darling. The new Series B round brings Poolside’s total funding to $626mn. Its valuation now stands at a cool $3bn. The cash magnet is a AI-powered coding. Poolside has developed its own language model, which promises to accelerate software development. The company also boasts two eye-catching co-founders. CEO Jason Warner helped create GitHub Copilot, while CTO Eiso Kant is a serial founder of AI startups. 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! At Poolside, the pair are building three things: foundation models, an API, and a coding assistant. According to Warner and Kant, the tech is currently undergoing “pressure-testing” in “the toughest” office environments. “The enterprise is the proving ground,” they said in a blogpost. “But our goal is over time to make Poolside accessible to anyone in the world who wants to build software.” Poolside is not the the only company with this objective. The market for AI coding assistants has become fiercely competitive, with Copilot at the lead and a range of challengers chasing. The emerging rivals are attracting major capital. August alone saw a $320mn investment in Magic, a $150mn round for Codeium, and a $60mn raise Anysphere. Replit, Augment, Supermaven, Cognition have also recently received big cash injections. Poolside’s Series A adds another eye-watering sum to the sector. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, Bloomberg reports. Additional funds came from HSBC Ventures, DST Global, StepStone Group, and Citi Ventures. You can learn more about Poolside first-hand at VDS, one of Europe’s premiere tech events. Poolside’s VP of Operations, Margarida Garcia, is speaking at the show, which takes place in Valencia on October 23 and 24. TNW is a strategic partner at the event. Update (11:00PM CEST, October 3, 2024): A previous version of this article referred to Poolside as a “Paris startup.” This was based on reports that the company had relocated to Paris. Poolside has now confirmed that it remains headquartered in San Francisco. source

IBM’s first quantum data centre in Europe may have been planned during his predecessor’s tenure, but it was Olaf Scholz with entourage who descended on the small German town of Ehningen on Tuesday. The reason was to welcome the first IBM Heron processor to be installed outside of the US.  When the Chancellor of Germany shows up to spend nearly half a day at an event, you know it is a pretty big deal. Indeed, attracting projects like IBM’s new quantum data centre might be what makes or breaks German — and European — aspirations on “technological sovereignty” in the emerging area of quantum tech.  The tech giant’s most powerful quantum processor to date, Heron has 156 superconducting physical qubits. While IBM has achieved over 1,000 qubits on the Condor chip unveiled last December, when it comes to qubits, bigger is not always better. “We did larger qubits to prove principles of scaling,” Jay Gambetta, VP of IBM Quantum, told TNW. “The key for the Heron is that now we are focusing on the quality of the gates.”  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! Quantum gates are basic building blocks of quantum circuits, used to manipulate and control the quantum states of the qubits. Their accuracy directly impacts the overall error rate of a quantum system. Along with solving the problem of reducing error rates, there is also the matter of how fast the circuits can run. “Our R&D team here is 25 times faster at running circuits because we’ve improved the whole software stack,” Gambetta added. And software, he says, is where the key to pushing even “noisy” quantum machines into the era of utility — and business value — lies. “There is this great surfacing of new codes in error correction. Using the old codes, people would say you’d need millions of qubits to do anything. But last year, we put out a paper that showed a new code that is 90% more efficient in numbers of qubits.”  Quantum computing, Gambetta said, will begin to have real impact when we discover the right algorithms. “And that means enabling startups, students, companies to do that type of work that’s only just starting now.”  Enabling quantum startup and ecosystem collaboration In its algorithmic quest, IBM collaborates not only with universities but also with a number of startups. One of them is Finland’s Algorithmiq, which develops algorithms to integrate quantum computing with classical computing to advance chemistry and life sciences, in particular drug discovery.  To accomplish this, it needs algorithms — and scale, says the company’s founder Sabrina Maniscalco, which is why it has partnered with IBM. The startup’s error mitigation algorithm, TEM, is available through the Qiskit (IBM’s open-source software development tool) Functions Catalog.  “Now, with more IBM quantum systems available in Europe, we’re excited to further strengthen our ties in Europe and partner with an even larger ecosystem of industries, organisations, developers, and scientists to demonstrate TEM’s utility — and progress toward quantum advantage,” Maniscalco said.  Other startups currently partnering with IBM are quantum infrastructure software company Q-CTRL from Australia, and quantum operating system developers QEDMA from Israel.  While there may be a universal fault-tolerant system in the future, Gambetta is certain that the utility and business cases for quantum lie in hybrid systems, where quantum computations will run as a very important subroutine. Next year, IBM is installing a quantum computer right next to the Japanese supercomputer Fugaku.  ‘Building a new industry’ and contributing to European quantum capabilities That it was Germany and Ehningen that became the chosen location for IBM’s first Heron outside the US is hardly a coincidence. The company has deep connections to the small town in Baden-Württemberg, and the support from both local and federal governments has been instrumental in deepening the tech giant’s commitment to the region.  In addition, IBM is looking to position itself as a key player in the growing European quantum ecosystem.  “We are building a new industry,” said Dario Gil, IBM senior vice president and director of research. “Bringing the highest-performing quantum processor that we’ve ever built here is a commitment to bring the state of the art of the technology to Germany and to Europe.”  “The European Commission has defined quantum as one of the four key technologies for Europe to have capabilities on,” said Ana Paula Assis, chairman and general manager of IBM Europe, Middle East, and Africa. “And what we are doing here, bringing this first [quantum] data center outside of the US to the region, is a testament of our belief that we can contribute significantly to that progress.”  It also helps that plenty of the company’s prospective quantum solutions clients, for whom the technology can solve complex optimisation problems, are located nearby, such as SAP, E.ON, T-Systems, Bosch, and VW. IBM also has close ties with local research institutions, including Fraunhofer. source

It’s now almost two years since Elon Musk concluded his takeover of Twitter (now called X) on 27 October 2022. Since then, the platform has become an increasingly polarised and divisive space. Musk promised to deal with some of the issues which had already frustrated users, particularly bots, abuse and misinformation. In 2023, he said there was less misinformation on the platform because of his efforts to tackle the bots. But others disagree, claiming that misinformation is still rife there. A potential reaction to this may be apparent in recent data highlighted by the Financial Times, which showed the number of UK users of the platform had fallen by one-third, while US users had dropped by one-fifth. The data used to reach these conclusions may be open to question, as it is hard to find out user numbers directly from X. The figures also come out against the background of a disagreement over whether X’s traffic is waning or not. But there has been a notable trend in academia for individuals and some organisations to leave for alternative platforms such as Bluesky and Threads, or to quit social media altogether. Elon Musk has claimed that X is hitting record highs in user-seconds, a measure of how long users are spending on the site. But advertising revenue is reported to have dropped sharply amid Musk’s controversial changes, such as his “free speech” approach on the platform. If so, it will be reflected in the platform’s financial performance which has been dire. The platform currently has no clear pathway to profitability. X’s loss has naturally been a gain for its competitors. Despite a rather slow start due to its “invite only” model, Bluesky recently announced that it had topped 10 million users. This is still quite small compared to X’s 550 million users and Threads’ 200 million users. But there are questions with all platforms over how active users are and the proportion of bots versus human users. Threads also benefits by being connected to Instagram. The world’s richest man can afford to let X devalue from his purchase price of US$44 billion (£33.7 billion). Likewise, Meta can probably afford to prop up Threads. But Bluesky will have to find inventive ways to remain viable as a platform. So is it the right time for users to try something completely different on social media? Alternatives to X have to be mindful of striking the right balance between being a viable social media platform and not developing the same issues that have turned X toxic for many users. Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022. Frederic Legrand – Comeo / Shutterstock The approach taken by Bluesky and Mastodon is to engage with their community more to deal with issues such as abuse and fake information. Moderating content is tricky, as it requires a lot of resources and support for those using the platform. But the contrast with Elon Musk’s approach to ownership is stark. The problem for Bluesky, and to a lesser extent Mastodon, is that once a platform gains traction it also attracts those with bad intent. Think of it as the one nice, cool bar in town that suddenly becomes popular. Once everyone hears about the bar, the troublemakers start to arrive. When that happens, the good people have to find a bar elsewhere. Once an alternative platform becomes a means to reach many millions, the people that drove users away from X may head there like moths to a light. Alternative approaches One possible solution is a subscription model for social media alongside paid advertisements. For growing platforms, such as Bluesky, sponsored posts and adverts will come as the user base grows in numbers. But as was evident with X, that is unlikely to be enough. X’s annual revenue peaked at US$5 billion (£3.8 billion) in 2021 and has been in decline ever since. This also takes into account how the platform has culled thousands of jobs in the past two years. The subscription model is not new to social media. X has its own paid-for blue checkmark and LinkedIn has a premium subscription. This alone still does not guarantee a profitable or functioning social media platform. Having a subscription-based social media platform is not exactly equitable either, as not everyone can afford to pay. The question is how much people would be willing to pay for a social media subscription that guarantees no adverts and bots, as well as proper moderation to remove abusive and fake information accounts. The trade off is that free users would have to deal with the inconvenience of adverts on their timelines. There could be other models floated where non-profit and student accounts are cheaper, but this again excludes other users. It also may not sit well with shareholders focused on profitability. As it stands, if all 10 million Bluesky users paid £5 a month to the platform, it would generate £60 million a year. That is not even close to X’s revenue of US$300 million (£230 million) back in 2012. Real change People moving to a new social media platform will want assurances that it won’t turn into another X. Organisations and individuals with large followings may also be reluctant to invest time in new platforms when they still get something out of the old. There are big, mainstream alternatives of course: Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, but Twitter offered something different. Real change could happen when the organisations leaving X due to how it has been run reaches a critical mass, though what that threshold represents is open to question. Those in the world of academia are cautious and at best hedging their bets, as I have found with my own search. Just as X increasingly fails to deal with misinformation, it is leaning further into the same headwind as right-wing platforms such as Truth Social. The newer platforms might find themselves a safer haven for now, but that is likely to change if lessons around ownership, funding and moderation are not learned.

Dutch startup Skytree has opened a new HQ in Toronto, Canada and a new office in Nashville, Tennessee, as it looks to cash-in on attractive government incentives for direct carbon capture (DAC) technologies.  Engineer-turned-entrepreneur Max Beaumont founded Skytree in 2014, following his work on DAC for the European Space Agency. Skytree’s technology is based on the carbon scrubbers used aboard the International Space Station, which remove the excess CO2 produced from the breath of astronauts.    Direct air capture DAC machines suck CO2 from the air like a giant vacuum. The CO2 they capture can be buried underground or mineralised into rock for construction. It can also be used to make anything from cleaner chemicals to sustainable aviation fuel for aircraft.  “Skytree is among only a few companies in the world with DAC units already operating successfully in the field,” said CEO Rob van Straten. “We are eager to offer industry partners a viable, economical pathway to turn atmospheric CO2 into valuable inputs — or to store it safely and indefinitely underground.” 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! Skytree has built two carbon-sucking devices. One, Skytree Cumulus, produces 20kg of CO2 daily. It is targetted at small-scale applications such as vertical farming and cannabis cultivation. Farmers use the gas to boost plant growth.  The other unit, Stratus, is much bigger. It captures up to 1000kg of CO2 per day. Skytree designed Stratus for industrial-scale applications, such as for large greenhouses and green cement plants or for burial underground.    The Stratus units are modular, so they can be stacked together to make one, much larger machine which Skytree calls the “Stratus Hub.” The startup is planning to build one of these hubs at its base in Amsterdam. Once up and running, the company expects the machine to suck up 50,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.  Developed over more than a decade, Skytree said it has achieved level 9 on the technology readiness scale, the highest possible. This means Skytree is poised for full-scale commercial deployment, a rare thing in the budding carbon capture industry. Skytree’s first customers have largely been greenhouses. The company also recently announced plans to install a Stratus unit at the offices of Deep Sky, a fellow DAC company from Canada. Now it’s looking to scale up and into new industries including food and beverage.  Cashing in on climate tech funding    “The US continues to demonstrate growing demand for proven, cost-effective, scalable DAC technology driven by the needs of industry and with the backing by government,” said van Straten.   Skytree said it chose Nashville for its office partly due to its close proximity to its manufacturing partner Scanfil. The Swedish firm will make the Stratus and Cumulus machines at its factory in the nearby city of Atlanta.   Skytree said it chose Toronto for its North American HQ due to the city’s strong climate tech ecosystem and access to talent. In addition to Deep Sky, Skytree already has a partnership with Canadian vertical farming company Fieldless Farms, which uses the captured CO2 to improve the yields from its strawberry plants.   “As part of Toronto’s passionate climate-focused tech community, I am confident that Skytree will make a meaningful impact not only here but across the globe,” said Olivia Chow, Toronto’s mayor. Skytree expects to employ 80 people at its new HQ over the next three years. The company is also planning to set up its own manufacturing facility at an undisclosed site in Canada. source

Google DeepMind scientists Demis Hassabis and John Jumper today won this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The duo will share the prestigious prize — seen as the pinnacle of scientific achievement — with University of Washington professor David Bakker for his work on computational protein design. “This prize represents the promise of computational biology,” Jumper said during a press conference on Wednesday. Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2014. Jumper was appointed director last year. The duo won their Nobel Prize for developed an AI model that solved a 50-year-old challenge in biology: predicting the structure of proteins. 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! Dubbed AlphaFold2, the tool can predict over 200 million of protein structures — nearly all known to science — from their amino acid sequences. This enables researchers to understand how proteins work and interact with other molecules in the body, offering unprecedented insights into disease development and drug discovery. AlphaFold2’s impact Since its launch, AlphaFold2 — which is freely available — has been used by more than 2 million scientists across 190 countries. It has supported multiple areas of research, from projects on malaria vaccines and Parkinson’s treatments to drug-resistant bacteria. AlphaFold2’s immediate impact is accelerated research, Jumper said during the press conference. “What I think will come soon through our work is that we’re going to get better and better at harnessing biology and our understanding of biology to make medicines,” he added. “I hope this means that, ultimately, we will be more responsive to, for example, pandemics.” Hassabis said he’s dedicated his life to AI because it could “improve the lives of billions of people.” However, he cautioned that artificial intelligence can do both good and bad. “We have to really think very hard as these systems and techniques get more powerful about how to enable and empower all of the benefits and good use cases, whilst mitigating the risks.” As artificial intelligence is changing the face of fundamental sciences, the Nobel Prize in Physics was also awarded to two AI researchers: John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their work in training neural networks using physics. source

Amsterdam-based scaleup Lumicks has secured €20mn from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to accelerate the discovery of immunotherapy drugs for cancer.  The venture debt funding will help Lumicks further develop and market its cell avidity analyser, a machine with the potential to transform the way researchers study and develop treatments for Europe’s second most deadly disease.  Lumicks’ tech allows scientists to gather real-time data on the bonds between immune cells and cancer cells. Unlike traditional methods, which rely on indirect biomarkers, the analyser precisely measures the actual strength and duration of those interactions directly and in real time. This is critical to figuring out how well these immune cells can target and destroy tumors, leading to more effective cancer treatments.   The z-Movi Cell Avidity Analyser is small, but could have a big impact on cancer research. Credit: Lumicks “By providing deeper insights into cellular interactions, our instruments empower researchers to make faster, better-informed decisions, with the goal of improving success rates in clinical trials and accelerating the development of effective therapies,” said the company’s CEO Hugo de Wit. Lumicks spun-out from a research group at VU University Amsterdam in 2014. It now employs 180 people from its offices in the Dutch capital.  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! Back in 2021, the company raised a sizeable $93mn (€85mn) in VC funding from the likes of Softbank and Californian hedge fund Farallon Capital.   This latest round of funding will help Lumicks bring more of its analysers to market. The company’s machines are already hard at work at several academic and commercial institutions including Harvard University, Oxford University, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the labs of US biotech firm INmune Bio. More and more companies are leveraging advanced technologies like AI, genomics, and machine learning to improve cancer detection and treatment. For instance, Dell and the University of Limerick (UL) in Ireland teamed up last year to advance cancer research using AI. Meanwhile Swedish startup Neko Health has developed a modular body scanner that uses algorithms to assess the risks of diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. source

2025 marks Amsterdam’s 750th birthday. It also marks the 19th TNW Conference, which will take place on June 19 and 20 at — and you’re all invited. The show returns to NDSM next year, right at the heart of the city. As usual, we’re bringing together the entire ecosystem, from startups and investors to C-level executives, industry leaders, and policy makers. With a mission of building links between Dutch tech and the world, we’re crafting two days full of inspirational talks, networking opportunities, and our famous festival vibes. 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! Who says you can’t do business while enjoying every minute of it? To help you explore what matters to you most and stay ahead of the curve, this year we’re focusing on six overarching themes: 1. Growth & Venture Founding a business is one thing, but growing and scaling it presents another set of challenges for startups and investors alike. But we have you covered. Within this theme, you can explore the best ways to grow and expand a new company, learn from real-life case studies, and understand the trends that will impact your work. To help you explore the right track for you, Growth & Venture features four different pillars: Not Your Father’s Venture: Discover the trends that are changing European VCs, CVCs, and LPs, such as the impacts of emerging technologies Financing Your Runaway: Explore the scaling strategies that can help you achieve growth and reduce cash burn GTM Blueprint: Find out how you can build your brand, map your customer base, and internationalise your products F*ck Up Fridays: Learn from others’ mistakes and avoid potential pitfalls 2. AI & Deeptech Within this theme, you can delve into the latest trends in AI and deeptech to understand (beyond the hype) what’s next in tech. Join leading experts as they dissect and demo the latest breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum, and robotics. Here are the pillars you can explore: AI Revolution: Explore how AI is transforming different industries Leaping into Quantum: Discover how businesses can tap the power of quantum and why investors should pay close attention Rise of the Machines: Find out which cutting-edge robotics trends you should keep on your radar The Cyber Arms Race: What are the latest cybersecurity technologies you should know about? And what are the ethical dilemmas when it comes to securing your business’ systems against threats? Sustainable Societies This theme is all about sustainability. Focusing on the climate, energy, health, and agrifood industries, we’ll explore innovations like personalised medicine, precision agriculture, and nuclear fusion. Here are the four pillars underpinning the theme: Turning the Tide: Learn from the Netherlands’ experience in water tech innovation Farm to Table: Delve into the agri-tech trends that are changing how we grow, harvest, and consume food Hacking the Human: Explore how biotech and healthtech innovations are transforming treatment options and the future of healthcare Waste Not, Watt Not: Discover the latest advancements in climate tech and how environmental issues can be turned into business opportunities Enterprise Innovation Are you a corporate innovator or a leader of large scaleup looking to innovate at scale? Then this theme is for you. Learn how to navigate the complex challenges of today’s market and capitalise on the opportunities unleashed by the latest disruptions. These are the theme’s four pillars: Future-proofing Enterprise: How can enterprises leverage data, AI, and other advanced technologies to achieve growth? Disrupt or be Disrupted: Learn how to manage disruption and lead your company through change with resilience Navigating Regulation: Explore how to balance innovation with compliance ABCs of ESGs: ESGs are no longer an option. Find out how to align corporate reputation with stakeholder value Ecosystems It doesn’t take a village to raise a startup. It needs a whole ecosystem. This theme explores how public-private partnerships, infrastructure, and policy frameworks can nurture startups, accelerate regional development, and create sustainable innovation hubs. If you’re a policy maker interested in different practices or an executive who wants to discover the best ecosystems, this theme is for you. These are the pillars you can explore: Regulating Tomorrow: Learn how to balance regulation requirements with driving innovation Innovation Nation: Find out how government-funded programs, university partnerships, and accelerators can help startups to grow Building Utopias: Discover how public investments in technologies for urban transformation are unlocking new business opportunities and fueling regional ecosystems Circular, Inclusive Growth: How do ESG initiatives that blend environmental sustainability with business innovation help companies expand while making a positive impact? Next-Gen Talent A company’s biggest asset is its people. Within this theme, you can explore how HR tech and edtech are changing the future of work. Discover how these technologies are enabling teams to tackle challenges, keep on learning, drive success, and contribute to long-term growth. This theme is designed for startup and scaleup execs who are growing their businesses and teams, corporate innovators aiming for an agile company culture, and tech talent exploring the next steps in their careers. Here are the pillars reinforcing the theme: The Inside Edge: Learn how to cultivate a company culture of productivity, collaboration, and innovation Unlocking Potential: Find out how edtech solutions and professional development can help your team’s continuous learning Talent Wars: Explore ways to boost your recruitment process, from AI-driven talent matching to data-informed hiring practices Levelling the Field: Discover how DEI practices can improve productive, customer understanding, and company growth Looking forward to TNW Conference 2025 already? Then see you in Amsterdam on June 19 and 20! Use the code TNWXMEDIA2025 to get 30% off your pass. source

As is their tradition at this time of year, Apple announced a new line of iPhones last week. The promised centrepiece that would make us want to buy these new devices was AI – or Apple Intelligence, as they branded it. Yet the reaction from the collective world of consumer technology has been muted. The lack of enthusiasm from consumers was so evident it immediately wiped over a hundred billion dollars off Apple’s share price. Even the Wired Gadget Lab podcast, enthusiasts of all new things tech, found nothing in the new capabilities that would make them want to upgrade to the iPhone 16. The only thing that did seem to generate some excitement was not the AI features, but the addition of a new camera shutter button on the side of the phone. If a button is a better selling point than the most hyped technology of the past couple of years, something is clearly amiss. The reason is that AI has now passed what tech blog The Media Copilot called its “wonderment phase”. Two years ago, we were amazed that ChatGPT, DALL-E and other generative AI systems were able to create coherent writing and realistic images from just a few words in a text prompt. But now, AI needs to show that it can actually be productive. Since their introduction, the models driving these experiences have become much more powerful – and exponentially more expensive. Nevertheless, Google, NVidia, Microsoft and OpenAI recently met at the White House to discuss AI infrastructure, suggesting these companies are doubling down on the technology. According to Forbes, the industry is US$500 billion (£375 billion) short of making back the massive investments in AI hardware and software, and the US$100 billion in AI revenue projected to be made in 2024 is not even close to this figure. But Apple still has to enthusiastically push AI features into their products for the same reason that Google, Samsung and Microsoft are doing it – to give consumers a reason to buy a new device. Tough sell? Before AI, the industry was trying to create hype around virtual reality and the Metaverse, an effort that probably peaked with the introduction of the Apple Vision Pro headset in 2023 (a product that incidentally was barely even mentioned in last week’s announcement). After the Metaverse failed to take off, tech companies needed something else to drive sales, and AI has become the new shiny thing. But it remains to be seen whether consumers will take to the AI-based features included in phones such as photo-editing and writing assistants. This is not to say that current AI is not useful. AI technologies are used in billion-dollar industry applications, in everything from online advertisement to healthcare and energy optimisation. Apple’s Visual Intelligence allows the phone camera to be aimed at something, like a restaurant, to obtain information without doing a search.Heiko Kueverling Generative AI has also become a useful tool for professionals in many fields. According to a survey, 97% of software developers have used AI tools to support their work. Many journalists, visual artists, musicians and filmmakers have adopted AI tools to create content more quickly and more efficiently. Yet most of us are not actually prepared to pay for a service that draws funny cartoon cats or summarises text –- especially since attempts at AI-supported search have shown to be prone to errors. Apple’s approach to deploying artificial intelligence seems to mostly be a mishmash of existing functions, many of which are already built into popular third-party apps. Apple’s AI can help you create a custom emoji, transcribe a phone call, edit a photo, or write an email –- neat, but no longer groundbreaking stuff. There is also something called Reduce mode that is supposed to disturb you less and only let through important notifications, but it’s anyone’s guess how well that will work in reality. The one forward-looking feature is called Visual Intelligence. It allows you to aim the camera at something in the surroundings and get information without explicitly doing a search. For instance, you might photograph a restaurant sign, and the phone will tell you the menu, show you reviews – and perhaps even help you book a table. Although this is very reminiscent of the Lens in Google’s Pixel phones (or ChatGPT’s multimodal capabilities) it does point towards a future use of AI that is more real-time, interactive, and situated in real-world environments. In the extension, Apple Intelligence and the Reduce mode could evolve into so-called “context-aware computing”, which has been envisioned and demonstrated in research projects since the 1990s, but for the most part has not yet become robust enough to be a real product category. The kicker to all this is that Apple Intelligence is not yet really available for anyone to try, as the new iPhones do not yet include them. Perhaps it will turn out they are more valuable than the limited information seems to indicate. But Apple used to be known for only releasing a product when it was well and truly ready, meaning that the use-case was crystal clear and the user experience had been honed to perfection. This is what made the iPod and iPhone so much more attractive than all the MP3 players and smartphones released before them. It is anyone’s guess if Apple’s approach to AI will be able to claw back some of the lost stock price, not to mention the hundreds of billions invested by them and the rest of the tech industry. After all, AI still has amazing potential, but it may be time to slowdown a bit, and take a moment to consider where it will actually be the most useful. Lars Erik Holmquist, Professor of Design and Innovation, Nottingham Trent University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 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 featuring a conversation between the TNW Podcast co-host Andrii Degeler and our old friend, former colleague, and current freelance contributor, Callum Booth, about the future of publishing — particularly in the space of tech journalism, but also in general. This fireside chat was recorded with live audience at Rome Startup Week. 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