Europe

If there’s one thing we found out during the pandemic, it is that private jets were one way for the rich and famous to avoid traveling with the potentially infectious plebian classes. This is perhaps why there is still a market for tech companies to enter into this rarefied industry. But more seriously, there are

Online payment methods can be expensive for merchants, who have to pay between 2% and 8% of every sale to debit and credit card, ewallet and BNPL facilitators. Much of this is often passed to consumers. Fast was a hugely well-funded startup that tried to address this by closed in spectacular fashion just recently. Other

Synthetically generated versions of real people that can be can be programmed to say anything sounds like a scenario from the latest episode of “Black Mirror.” But in fact, production-grade video-based characters based on real people — which can talk about any product or subject at all, in a hyperlifelike manner — are arguably going

In the small hours local time, European Union lawmakers secured a provisional deal on a landmark update to rules for digital services operating in the region — grabbing political agreement after a final late night/early morning of compromise talks on the detail of what is a major retooling of the bloc’s existing ecommerce rulebook. The

A new report has peeled back the curtain on big tech’s frenzied lobbying of European Union lawmakers as they finalize a major series of updates to the bloc’s digital rulebook. It reveals some of the arguments used by tech giants including Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta (Facebook) and Spotify to press their interests behind the scenes

Google has shared a screenshot of its new cookie consent popup. At first, the new popup will be available on YouTube in France. But the company says it plans to roll out the new design across Google services in Europe. This updated design comes a few months after the CNIL, France’s data watchdog, fined Google

French startup Greenly has raised a $23 million Series A round. The company has built a software-as-a-service platform that lets you calculate your company’s carbon emissions, store and track them in one place, generate a certified report of your carbon footprint and get some insights about ways to reduce your emissions. Energy Impact Partners (EIP)

From the department of Tit for Tat, on the heels of a cascade of sanctions against Russia, Russian organizations and Russian individuals over Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry now has issued a list of U.S. figures that are now prohibited from entering Russia — and will be indefinitely. The list includes

For years grocery retailers have been using data driven forecasting to help them predict demand to figure out which products to reorder to keep shelves stocked. That’s nothing new. But Berlin-based startup Freshflow is targeting a particular slice of this market: It’s built an AI-powered forecasting platform to help retailers optimize stock replenishment of fresh,

Immigrants to a new country can often be cash-rich. The problem is, is that they have no credit history in their new country. Plus, a consumer cannot take their credit file from one country to another. Furthermore, credit bureaus are rarely coordinated or joined up across countries. The upshot of this is that those that

The UK has announced a bundle of consumer protection and competition reforms which could see platforms that fail to tackle fake reviews fined up to 10% of their global annual turnover. Also incoming: Stronger powers for the national competition regulator to prevent tech giants from being able to buy up startups or smaller rivals with

The last couple of years have seen a boom in carbon calculation startups, and long may it reign. (We need all the help we can get to avoid the disaster of global warming and climate change). Included among those startups are those like https://plana.earth/ or https://www.planetly.org/ But many of these new companies, as welcome as

Platforms like Figma have changed the game when it comes to how creatives and other stakeholders in the production and product team conceive and iterate around two-dimensional designs. Now, a company called Gravity Sketch has taken that concept into 3D, leveraging tools like virtual reality headsets to let designers and others dive into and better

U.K. food delivery gig platform Deliveroo has lost a court challenge in France over the “freelancer” status of riders. Reuters reports that the company has been fined the maximum penalty of €375,000 by a Paris court. Two former execs have also been fined €30,000 and given one-year suspended jail sentences for abusing the country’s labor

Last year, SEON, which has an anti-fraud platform designed to fight accounts raised a $12 million Series A. It does this by looking at a customer’s ‘digital footprint’ – especially their social media – in order to weed out false accounts and thus prevent fraudulent transactions. Clients included Patreon, AirFrance, Rivalry and Ladbrokes. The London-based

Front-line workers and those paid in hourly wages rather than salaries have become a prime target in the world of business IT, with a wave of apps helping them find jobs, do their jobs, communicate with each other better. In the latest development, a UK startup building what it describes as a financial “super app”

Startups which create platforms making it easier to buy “buy to let” properties are proliferating. In the US there is Roofstock, Mynd, Awning and Doorvest, among others. In Europe, there is, for example, GetGround or Bricklane. Beanstock.fr, a French buy-to-let investment marketplace that allows individuals to buy and manage properties online, has made hay as Spanish, English,

Nelia Holovina Contributor Nelia Holovina is senior content writer at 42Flows.Tech, a Ukrainian IT company that develops custom technical solutions and streamlined banking integration. Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine has been going on for almost two months, and during this time, all sectors of the economy, including IT, have had to stand by the military.

From mega-rounds to early-stage deals, Europe had a strong start to the year Anna Heim 7 hours VC funding into Europe (including the U.K.) was up in the first quarter of 2022, CB Insights and Crunchbase data show. In other words, the region escaped the global quarter-on-quarter slowdown in startup investment. But Europe isn’t the

Immigrants, international students, and the migrant population in general all require international payments, or foreign exchange. Revolut and Wise are among those platforms to have taken advantage of this international audience. Now, Fintech startup Leatherback, UK-based cross-border payments platform, has raised what it describes as a $10 million pre-seed round led by ZedCrest Capital, a pan-African investment firm.

Jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny has called on tech giants Google and Meta/Facebook to help circumvent Putin’s grip on the media and get information out to ordinary Russians about what’s actually going on in the war in Ukraine by allowing their ad targeting tools and platforms to be selective repurposed to run a nationwide ad

As we found during the pandemic, food and beverage distribution is critical, but most food wholesalers’ sales remain manually operated. Post-covid, food wholesalers are fast digitizing their operations, but many still rely on legacy backend systems. Addressing this, Cerve, a Sweden-based food-tech startup, has raised a $2 million seed round for its infrastructure platform that

Germany’s government created quite a buzz when it announced that recreational cannabis would be legalized during the current term. Does this mean that we’ll see recreational use of cannabis for adults becoming a common policy in Europe? It’s too soon to say. After interviewing several active investors in cannabis-related startups, we learned that the regulatory

When the European Commission presented its Digital Services Act (DSA) proposal in December 2020, it listed beefed up consumer protections as a headline goal for the flagship update to the bloc’s rules for digital services. But now, as negotiations over the draft law are in the final stretch, where EU co-legislators hash out the detail

With Facebook, Twitter and Instagram banned by the Kremlin, TikTok is the last global social media platform still operating in Russia. In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it announced it had banned new uploads on March 6 to protect users from Russian “fake news” law. But a new report has found that the

The European Commission continues to eschew pronouncing a firm timeline for finalizing a new EU-U.S. data transfers deal after the two sides reached a political agreement on a way forward last month. But today justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, put out a slightly strengthened suggestion that a replacement for the defunct Privacy Shield could be adopted

Apple CEO Tim Cook has used a speech at the IAPP conference in Washington, D.C. today to frame looming competition reforms which could force the iPhone maker to allow sideloading of apps as a threat to privacy and security. His remarks avoided mentioning any specific pieces of legislation but moves are afoot on both sides

With individuals and teams transitioning to a fully remote or hybrid model working models, post-pandemic, there’s a theory that employees still desire the structure and accountability that working in an office used to provide. Not everyone likes working remotely full time, right? There’s a lack of ‘community’. Plus, sometimes it’s hard to get into state

Privacy watchdogs in Europe are considering a complaint against Apple made by a former employee, Ashley Gjøvik, who alleges the company fired her after she raised a number of concerns, internally and publicly, including over the safety of the workplace. Gjøvik, a former senior engineering program manager at Apple, was fired from the company last

Globalization has been one of the biggest trends in e-commerce in the last decade: internet rails facilitate a much wider marketplace of would-be consumers and a selection of items for them to buy; and to meet that demand manufacturing and logistics have also made great geographical leaps. Now, a startup that’s built a platform to