Budapest-based robotics company Allonic has raised $7.2 million in a pre-seed round, marking what investors are calling the largest pre-seed funding round in Hungarian startup history. The raise was led by Visionaries Club with participation from Day One Capital, Prototype, SDAC Ventures, TinyVC, and more than a dozen angels from organisations including OpenAI and Hugging Face. Allonic’s $7.2m pre-seed matters because it breaks a quiet rule in Europe: that truly hard hardware problems are supposed to wait until later rounds, or later continents. This is early money going into the physical layer of robotics, not the AI wrapper around it,…

This story continues at The Next Web

London-based energy software company Tem has closed a $75 million Series B round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with additional funding from AlbionVC, Atomico, Hitachi Ventures, Schroders Capital, Voyager Ventures, Allianz, and others. The round reportedly values the company at more than $300 million and will fund its expansion into the United States and Australia. Tem builds an AI-native energy platform designed to automate the pricing, matching, and execution of electricity transactions, a market that has long relied on manual processes and legacy infrastructure. Its core system uses machine learning to forecast supply and demand, match buyers with suppliers, and…

This story continues at The Next Web

Earned media has always been hailed as the holy grail of PR due to its unparalleled ability to build trust. Most recent surveys state that 40%–60% of the population still trusts organic content the most, depending on the country. However, I see significant business risks in relying on organic PR only, especially now that various AI systems are on the rise. Robots don’t distinguish between earned and paid content when using it to generate answers. And that’s a wake-up call for us all to revise our PR strategies. The potential dangers of earned-only PR strategies The primary advantage of earned media,…

This story continues at The Next Web

The European Union has formally inaugurated NanoIC, a semiconductor pilot line backed by a €700 million investment under the European Chips Act. The facility aims to accelerate the development of advanced chip technologies and strengthen Europe’s position in the global semiconductor landscape. Situated at the research hub imec in Leuven, NanoIC is designed as an open pilot line where companies, research institutes, and startups can prototype and test cutting-edge components before commercial deployment. Unlike traditional closed fabs, the facility offers access to beyond-2-nanometre system-on-chip (SoC) technologies, early-stage process design kits, and advanced toolsets that bridge the gap between laboratory research…

This story continues at The Next Web

Everyone knows Super Bowl commercials are expensive, bombastic, and designed to be talked about. What we didn’texpect was an AI startup using the biggest ad stage of the year to throw shade at a rival’s advertising strategy. That’s exactly what Anthropic has done. The company bought Super Bowl airtime to broadcast a simple message: “Ads are coming to AI, but not to Claude.” Its ads depict a chatbot spitting product pitches mid-conversation, ending with a clear contrast to its own ad-free promise. Even ads these days aren’t what they used to be. Video: Can I get a six pack quickly?, uploaded…

This story continues at The Next Web