Feed Items
As Elon Musk was saluting Donald Trump in the US Congress yesterday, the South African’s divisive politics were opening new doors to his business rivals in Europe. Musk’s role in the White House had already been linked to Tesla sales and stock tanking. Now, the repercussions appear to have spread to SpaceX. The fallout centres on the company’s Starlink satellite internet service. The network has...
Hospitality scaleup Mews, based at TNW City in Amsterdam, has secured $75mn in its third major cash injection of the last year. The round follows a raise of $100M in credit financing in September and a $110mn equity round in March 2024 — when the startup became a unicorn. In total, Mews has bagged over $500mn to date, making it one of the Netherlands’ most cash-flooded scaleups. Mews was founded...
Fintech startup Cino, a TNW community member, has secured €3.5mn for its shared payments app that lets friends and family pay together. Cino is designed for tech-savvy Gen Z’ers, who expect to split bills instantly and effortlessly together without “financial awkwardness,” the company said. Unlike payment request apps like Tikkie — ubiquitous in the Netherlands — Cino splits bills in real-time,...
The obscure world of quantum computing is emerging from the lab and into the public domain — fuelled by Big Tech’s recent progress in quantum processors. In the past few months alone, Google launched a chip called Willow, Microsoft unveiled Majorana, and this week, Amazon revealed Ocelot. While tech giants are making great strides, these companies are still working in dozens of qubits — far from...
It’s no secret that European tech has a gender equity problem. Men dominate the leadership of most companies in the sector. Women founders struggle to raise VC money, and there’s a stark pay gap between male and female workers. This gender imbalance is especially glaring in the STEM-dominated world of deep tech. Women lead just 22% of European deep tech companies, according to a new report from...
Opera has previewed a new AI agent feature that promises to complete online tasks on your behalf, based on simple, written prompts. Want to book a flight but don’t want to spend ages comparing prices? Tell the bot your preferred flight times, seats, and budget and it’ll get to work in the background, letting you carry on with whatever it was you were doing. Once it’s done, it’ll add the item to...
British autonomous driving startup Wayve is set to establish a testing and development hub in Germany as it prepares to deploy self-driving vehicles in Europe’s largest automotive market. Wayve’s new hub will be built near Stuttgart, home to big name car brands including Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and Audi. Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, called it the “perfect place” for the company to...
Germany’s armed forces have commissioned Bremen-based startup Polaris to develop a two-stage, fully reusable hypersonic space plane — and given the team just three years to build it. Dubbed Aurora, the 28-metre-long aircraft will be part rocket, part plane — designed to take off and land on a runway but also blast through the atmosphere and place payloads up to 1-ton in low-Earth orbit. Under...
For decades, European tech insiders have looked across the Atlantic with a mix of admiration and frustration. Casting envious eyes on the deep-pocketed VCs, an enormous consumer market, and a pipeline of elite talent, they often view the US as a promised land for business growth. The sentiment fuels calls for Europe to replicate Silicon Valley’s model. But Vidya Peters, CEO of Dutch unicorn...
Gene-edited pig livers, synthetic embryos, and 3D-printed tissue implants… the world of organ transplantation is becoming increasingly bizarre as scientists explore high-tech ways to keep people alive. These experiments are birthing new business opportunities. One company cashing in is University of Oxford spinout OrganOx, which this week secured $142mn in funding to fuel its expansion in the US...