The European Investment Bank (EIB) is considering new measures to help close the funding gap for European startups and prevent them from relocating across the Atlantic. During a meeting with EU finance ministers yesterday in Luxembourg, the EIB proposed its “Action Plan” that aims to boost Europe’s capital markets, investments, and competitiveness. A key pillar of the plan is to increase support for the EU’s venture capital and private equity markets to enable the scaling up of innovative startups and unicorns. This includes three different measures, starting with the extension of the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI). Launched in 2023,…

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Stop for a moment and pay attention to the things around you. The clothes you’re wearing, the device you’re using, what you’re sitting on, the building you’re in. What are they made of?  The simple answer is “stuff from nature” — woods, metals, rocks, oils, and plants refined into things like furniture, batteries, bricks, plastics, and clothes.  In 2017, humanity’s total material footprint — which refers to the total amount of raw materials we extract to fuel our economies — was 92 billion tonnes. The UN predicts this will more than double by 2060 without a change to the current…

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“Welcome on board. I have been tasked with taking you to Mäntsälä — in the middle of nowhere,” the minivan driver greets us in the characteristic clear and unhurried intonations of a Finnish native speaker. Mäntsälä is, indeed, in the middle of nowhere. But this kind of location is often where you find collections of some of the most powerful machines of today, humming away behind doors along unpretentious corridors. This includes Nebius’ AI data centre, taking shape in the small community an hour’s drive or so north of Helsinki. Amsterdam-based Nebius is labelling itself an AI cloud infrastructure company.…

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Stockholm-based Lovable has raised $7.5mn in pre-seed funding for its newly-launched AI coding assistant that promises to make everyone a dev. Dubbed GPT Engineer, the AI coding tool generates production-ready code in real-time, without requiring developer experience. According to the startup, users need only chat with the assistant to build websites and web apps. “We want to expand the world’s coding capabilities beyond the current 1% of the population who can program, and make software more accessible as a result,” Anton Osika, co-founder of Lovable, said in a statement. The GPT Engineer GPT Engineer is powered by customised Lange Language Models…

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It doesn’t simply take a village to raise a startup. It takes a whole ecosystem, driven by the collaboration between governments, corporates, ecosystem builders — and of course, visionary founders. Startup ecosystems have naturally emerged as the foundation of technological innovation and as key drivers for business growth and regional development. But there isn’t a single recipe for success. What’s the best way to build a startup hub? What are the essential support mechanisms for young businesses, from accelerators and incubation programmes to startup visas? How to efficiently attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and talent? The list of questions is…

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