Amazon extends generative AI-powered product listings to Europe

June 20, 2024

Amazon is bringing its generative AI listing smarts to more sellers, revealing today that those in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. can now access tools designed to improve product listings by generating product descriptions, titles, and associated details. Additionally, sellers can also “enrich” existing product listings by automatically adding missing information. The announcement […]

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Kenya closes its probe of Worldcoin, opening the door to a relaunch of its orbs after a year-long suspension

June 20, 2024

Worldcoin — the crypto startup co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman — has been given the green light to resume iris-scanning and other operations in Kenya after a year-long government probe over privacy concerns was dropped. Kenya was one of the Worldcoin’s launch countries for its iris-scanning scheme — which the startup was building out as […]

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How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play

June 20, 2024
First, a confession. I only got into playing video games a little over a year ago (I know, I know). A Christmas gift of an Xbox Series S “for the kids” dragged me—pretty easily, it turns out—into the world of late-night gaming sessions. I was immediately attracted to open-world games, in which you’re free to…

Paris-based VC Breega hits first close of $75M Africa fund to back pre-seed and seed startups

June 20, 2024

Paris-based VC firm Breega is launching a $75 million fund to invest in early-stage startups in Africa, with 70% of the capital already committed at the first close, the firm revealed to TechCrunch. Since entering the VC scene in 2015, Breega has fully raised four funds: a first seed fund (€45 million), a second seed […]

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PQShield secures $37M more for ‘quantum resistant’ cryptography

June 20, 2024

Malicious hacking is getting increasingly sophisticated, and that’s leading to a very clear trend in security technology. To keep people and organizations safe, security also has  to continue advancing its own complexity.  Security startup PQShield has gotten an early start on that concept with a focus on “post-quantum” cryptography: software and hardware solutions that, in […]

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Hero wants to save the day for companies facing a working capital crunch

June 20, 2024

Hero, a new fintech startup based in Paris, is announcing an €11.3 million all-equity funding round led by Valar Ventures ($12.2 million at today’s exchange rate). For the past couple of years, the company has been quietly building an ambitious banking product for small companies that can essentially replace everything you’d expect from a traditional […]

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‘Lawyer-in-the-loop’ startup Wordsmith wants to bring AI paralegals to all employees

June 20, 2024

Wordsmith, a fledgling Scottish legal tech startup, has somehow managed to attract the backing of two well-known venture capital firms. The startup targets in-house legal teams and law firms with an AI platform that they can configure to help other workers in the company. This way, anyone in the company can solicit help with legal […]

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General Catalyst makes India push with Venture Highway merger

June 20, 2024

General Catalyst, a Silicon Valley venture capital group, is expanding its presence in India by joining forces with a local venture firm and earmarking more than $500 million for investments in the world’s most populous nation. The U.S. venture capital group is merging with Venture Highway, an India-based firm whose investments include social commerce startup […]

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France leads the pack for Generative AI funding in Europe, London has 3X the number of GenAI startups

June 19, 2024

Like it or hate it, artificial intelligence – especially generative AI – is the technology story of 2024. OpenAI, with its rollouts of viral services like ChatGPT and billions in funding, may have gobbled up the lion’s share of attention and money so far. But according to a new report out from top VC Accel […]

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C12, the French quantum computing startup founded by two twin brothers, raises $19.4 million

June 19, 2024

C12 is announcing that it recently raised an €18 million funding round ($19.4 million at today’s exchange rate). Originally founded in 2020 as a spin-off from the Physics Laboratory of the École Normale Supérieure, the company has been working on a unique process to create quantum computers based on carbon nanotubes. While the concept of […]

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