Europe

When Florida-based Chetu hired a telemarketer in the Netherlands, the company demanded the employee turn on his webcam. The employee wasn’t happy with being monitored “for 9 hours per day,” in a program that included screen-sharing and streaming his webcam. When he refused, he was fired, according to public court documents (in Dutch), for what

When Russia invaded her home country of Ukraine, U.K.-based tech entrepreneur Irra Ariella Khi, co-founder of Zamna, set up a fundraising page to directly support people inside Ukraine. Khi’s father (aged 70) and godmother (aged 82) are both in Ukraine, as are her stepsister and her children. Khi then temporarily stepped back from her day

U.S. president Joe Biden has signed an executive order attached to reupping a flagship data transfer agreement with the European Union — with the goal of making life easier for businesses that need to export EU user-data to the U.S. for processing. The White House announced the development in a statement today — saying that

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that the proposed merger between London-based satellite communications company Inmarsat and its U.S. rival Viasat raises potential competition concerns, and plans to launch a full-scale investigation into the deal. The $7.3 billion transaction, comprising a mix of cash, equity and debt, was first announced last November,

Techstars, a network of startup accelerators and an investment company, is launching a new accelerator in Paris called Techstars Sustainability Paris. This isn’t the first time that Techstars is running an accelerator in France, as the company originally launched Techstars Paris in 2017. With this sustainability-focused accelerator, Techstars is hitting the reboot button. Going forward,

German electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) startup Volocopter conducted its first crewed public test flight in Italy Thursday morning. The flight launched from a vertiport built at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, Italy’s first advanced air mobility (AAM) testing vertiport, during a two-day event meant to demonstrate what a service between the airport and the city

Lightdash, an open source business intelligence (BI) platform that’s setting out to challenge proprietary incumbents such as Looker, is officially launching its core commercial product to the public today backed by $8.4 million in funding. The seed round was led by Accel, with participation from Moonfire, Y Combinator (YC), Snyk founder Guy Podjarny, and Gitlab

Hardware hobbyists wanting to get their hands on some juicy single-board Raspberry Pi kit to power low-cost electronics projects have been having a frustrating time for more than a year now, as pandemic-triggered global supply chain disruption continues squeezing reseller inventory. Go try and buy Pi and you can’t miss how official reseller websites everywhere

As protesters flooded the streets of Iran in September after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini — a 22-year-old woman who was arrested for not wearing her hijab in accordance with the country’s strict dress code for women — videos and images of the protests spread online inside the country. Previously unheard-of acts, such

From Edward Snowden’s government surveillance revelations through the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal and Twitter’s recent security pitfalls, whistleblowers have been the driving force behind some of the biggest news stories of recent years. But whistleblowing isn’t always about insiders shining a light on shady practices in governments or billion-dollar tech companies. Oftentimes,

Embedded banking has been on a growth tear in the last several years as companies turned to APIs to embed financial services like credit, payments and deposits to grow their revenues. Now, with the tech funding landscape in significant turmoil, a company in the embedded finance market has raised a growth round that underscores the pressure

Demo shows promise as EU revives talk of space-based solar power Tim De Chant 9 hours In our wireless world, wires are still the best way to move electricity from A to B. Wires are almost always cheaper and easier, at least from a technical perspective, but there are instances where wires may not be

The UK government has confirmed another pause to draft digital legislation under new prime minister Liz Truss’ reshuffled cabinet — saying the data reform bill it had introduced in recent months is on hold while ministers take another look. The paused bill contained a package of amendments to the UK’s data protection regime, which remains based

In the latest quick commerce headspinner, Deliveroo is experimenting with expanding its rapid grocery business by opening a new type of ‘dark store’ in Central London. As well as functioning as a mini warehouse where Deliveroo staff pick orders for couriers operating on its platform to collect and deliver locally to app users, the new

New York-based insurance giant Lemonade is officially launching in the U.K., its fourth market in Europe and fifth overall, with a little help from one of the oldest and largest insurance providers in the U.K. Lemonade, for the uninitiated, emerged into the trillion-dollar insurance space back in 2015, with a new take on how consumers

So-called “stakeholder capitalism” has not had the most illustrious of histories. Yes, there have been “Walmart Associates” who were able to own stock in the company, or “John Lewis Associates” (in the U.K.), but it’s hardly made the average person well off. At least they got something? In tech startups, however, tech founders are helped

Aiven, which provides fully managed and hosted services for major open source projects including Kafka, Cassandra and Grafana, has announced its first-ever acquisition — the Finnish company has snapped up Kafkawize, a self-service open source data governance tool for Apache Kafka. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition comes amid a renewed focus

Meet Reflect, a new analytics tool that has been specifically designed for HR teams. While many teams now rely on sophisticated data visualization and business planning tools, HR teams can’t easily measure different metrics and see how they evolve over time. And yet, human resources have become a key component for tech startups and innovative

HSBC Asset Management, the investment arm of Britain’s HSBC Group, has led a seed round of $4 million in Singapore’s customer intelligence and risk assessment startup Bizbaz, the two said Friday. Founded in June 2019, Bizbaz offers its proprietary customer intelligence and risk management solutions to banks, insurance companies and fintech startups. The startup has

The inquest into the death of British schoolgirl, Molly Russell, has concluded that social media was a factor in her demise, the BBC reports. The 14-year-old had viewed thousands of pieces of content about self-harm and suicide on online platforms, including Instagram and Pinterest, prior to her death in November 2017. Reaching a conclusion on

The Vision Fund, a venture capital arm of SoftBank, has launched a sweeping layoff process, cutting at least 30% of its workforce globally, or approximately 150 of the 500 employees, according to a report by Bloomberg. The news comes nearly two months after SoftBank chief executive officer and founder Masayoshi Son said the company would

Since E-bike manufacturer Ride1Up closed a $6.5 million Series A led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund, the San Diego-based company has seen steady sales growth since its launch in 2018, especially as consumers switched to ebikes during the pandemic over public transit. Indeeed, last year ebikes reportedly outsold EV and plug-in hybrid automobiles. So it was

Financial institutions have struggled to develop their own technologies, hence the rise of neo-banks which used Open Banking regulations to build their own Fintech stacks. That has led to a wave of innovation, and startups have hungrily devoured the opportunities to ‘platformise’ the financial work. The latest is fintech SaaS provider Toqio which has now

Meet Solvo, a new mobile app that wants to make it easier to invest in cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency-related financial products. The two founders Ayelen Denovitzer and Shailendra Sason met while they were working for Revolut, in the crypto team more specifically. Earlier this year, Solvo raised a $3.5 million seed round from Index Ventures with

More signs that the economy is slowing down in Europe, and that costs are going up, are driving merchants and consumers to look for less expensive ways to carry out their everyday business. Today, a startup out of Italy called Satispay — which operates an independent payment network that bypasses big banks and credit companies

The European Union is to update product liability laws to tackle the risk of damage caused by artificial intelligence systems and address other liability issues arising from digital devices — such as drones and smart devices. Presenting a proposal for revisions to long-standing EU products rules — which includes a dedicated AI Liability Directive —

French startup Stockly is raising a $12 million Series A round (€12 million) from Eurazeo, Daphni and several business angels. The company pools together the inventory of several e-commerce websites. When a retailer is out-of-stock on a popular item, they can still accept the order and process the order through a different retailer’s inventory. This

Some of the most prominent women in venture capital descended upon Paris this week for the first-ever Women in VC Summit, European edition. The event, organized by investors Sophie Winwood, Ruth Foxe Blader and Clarisse Lam, brought together top minds to discuss creating a more inclusive and equitable venture landscape. The conference was open only to

Internal combustion engines still rule the roost when it comes to powering automobiles, but there are signs that they’re trundling into oblivion, at least in some markets. The likes of Sweden, Denmark, and the U.K. are planning to ban sales of diesel and petrol cars by the end of the decade, while markets such as

French startup Regate has raised a $20 million Series A funding round (€20 million) led by Valar Ventures. The company has built a modern software-as-a-service product that integrates directly with your existing accounting stack and connects with your corporate bank account. This way, you can automate and simplify some of your financial and accounting tasks