The race to build an AI “foundation model of the cell” has a fuel problem. The biological data needed to train one is scarce, messy and inconsistent. Relation Therapeutics thinks the answer is to manufacture that data itself, and GSK is paying up to $1…
Highland Europe has closed a €1.1 billion fund, its sixth, giving the growth-stage investor fresh capital to keep backing European technology companies as they scale. The firm announced Fund VI on 30 July, alongside the promotion of two investors to pa…
BMW had two messages for staff this week. It is cutting about 8,000 jobs. And it is handing the brains of its future cars to Qualcomm for the next decade. The German carmaker will shed the roles in Germany by the end of 2027 through a voluntary redunda…
Most AI imaging startups build one model per disease. A Cambridge company has raised $20m to build a single model for the whole chest. Then it can spin the rest out of that. Qureight makes AI imaging tools for lung and heart clinical trials. It closed …
Audi spent years betting its future on electric cars. Its new flagship for America runs on a V8, with big cupholders and a ChatGPT assistant. The German brand unveiled the Q9 this week. It is a full-size three-row luxury SUV built, in Audi’s own words,…
Europe is close to banning apps that digitally undress people. A new report argues the ban will miss the point. The tools that do the undressing do not need to be apps at all. They are sitting on Hugging Face. The European nonprofit AI Forensics tested…
The European Commission gains sweeping new powers on Sunday to police how the world’s most advanced AI labs handle systemic risk, as the AI Act reaches its second anniversary. The EU’s AI Office will be able to demand documentation, conduct evaluations…
ICON plc has agreed a multi-year collaboration with Anthropic to put Claude across the clinical trial process. The Dublin company is a contract research organisation, which means pharmaceutical firms pay it to run their trials. It employed roughly 40,2…
Bending Spoons has agreed a €500m loan facility guaranteed by the Italian state. The guarantee comes from SACE, Italy’s export credit agency, which is wholly owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. HSBC Continental Europe, Intesa Sanpaolo and BPE…
Cover Genius has acquired Friendsurance, the Berlin company that invented peer-to-peer insurance. The deal took effect immediately, and neither side disclosed a price. Friendsurance built its name on a simple idea. Small groups of policyholders pool to…