Google DeepMind spinoff Isomorphic Labs expects testing on its first AI-designed drugs to begin this year, as tech startups race to turn algorithmic magic into actual treatments. “We’ll hopefully have some AI-designed drugs in clinical trials by the end of the year,” the firm’s Nobel Prize-winning CEO Demis Hassabis told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. “That’s the plan.”   The potential of AI-powered drug discovery is huge. Instead of spending years or even decades testing chemicals by hand, machine learning algorithms can sift through mountains of data to spot patterns and predict which molecules could…

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Stuttgart, Germany-based Sereact has secured €25mn to advance its embodied AI software that enables robots to carry out tasks they were never trained to do.  “With our technology, robots act situationally rather than following rigidly programmed sequences. They adapt to dynamic tasks in real-time, enabling an unprecedented level of autonomy,” said Ralf Gulde, CEO and co-founder of Sereact (short for “sense, reason, act”). Early Spotify and Klarna-backer Creandum led the Series A round. Existing investors Point Nine and Air Street Capital also chipped in as did several prominent angel investors. These include former Formula 1 World Champion Nico Rosberg, ex-DeepMind…

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A startup called Scenexus has unveiled plans to build digital twins of cities around the world. A spin-off from Dutch research organisation TNO, Scenexus launched this week with a new platform for urban planning. The software blends multiple datasets to clone entire cities and regions. Planners and engineers then use the replicas to precisely analyse the impacts of their ideas. According to Scenexus, the platform can accelerate their assessments from days to just minutes. They can then forecast the social, environmental, and economic impacts of developments. A host of factors can be reviewed, from traffic and safety to financial growth…

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Four billion years ago, Earth was a fiery, tumultuous world of molten rock, volcanic eruptions, and toxic skies, with searing heat and the constant threat of asteroid impacts. Thankfully, our planet has cooled off a bit since then. Nevertheless, the Earth still radiates vast amounts of geothermal energy. It’s a clean, limitless, always-on power source lying beneath our feet — we just have to dig for it. Or get robots to do the hard work for us.  Borobotics, a startup from Switzerland, has developed an autonomous drilling machine — dubbed the “world’s most powerful worm” — that promises to make…

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Yet another deal has been signed between a publisher and a GenAI leader. Paris startup Mistral and news outlet Agence France-Presse (AFP) announced today that they are combining their services to improve AI responses. The deal provides Mistral’s chatbot — imaginatively named Le Chat — with access to all of AFP’s text stories.  According to Mistral, the integration will bring “enhanced factuality” to the AI assistant. “Partnering with a globally trusted news agency like AFP allows Le Chat to offer reliable, factual, and up-to-date responses, verified by professional journalists,” said Arthur Mensch, the startup’s CEO and co-founder. Mistral also highlighted…

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