As the capabilities of AI continue to evolve and reach impressive new milestones, it’s increasingly clear that technology can be a force for good. Reducing carbon emissions and helping society become more sustainable is an area in which tools like AI can be leveraged.  To give an example, among the many projects being explored by the Alan Turning Institute is one using advances in spatial data science and AI to process huge volumes of information to make land development in urban and rural areas more efficient and sustainable.  When it comes to business and commercial endeavors, rule ..read more

It is often dramatically and pathetically argued that it is better not to create technical debt. Yes, it is better without it, of course. But the consequences can still be eliminated. I refer to technical debt as all changes and improvements, infrastructural modifications and process changes, changes in team structures aimed at eliminating gaps (made consciously or not within the framework of launching products), and features that greatly interfere over time. And since such things cannot be fixed without a firm and confident teamplay of the production and operations departments, this story is ..read more

As with VC funding globally, investment activity across Europe remains quiet. The most recent data from Crunchbase shows that overall investment activity for Q3 2023 was up by a promising 28% since last quarter, however there has been no significant year-on-year increase as of yet. Of the $16.4 billion raised by European startups in 2023 so far, late-stage startups account for the majority of deal activity. In contrast, seed and early-stage startups are facing a worrying drought in capital and investor interest.  But without a foundation of innovative new startups Europe’s startup pipelin ..read more

Spain has seen an incredible surge in entrepreneurship over the past decade. Madrid and Barcelona are already home to thriving startup ecosystems and cities including Valencia, Malaga, and Bilbao are building their reputation as a viable choice for Spain’s startup founders. These years of progress and rapid growth have also helped to catch the eye of investors, with Spanish startups attracting a record-breaking €5.5 billion of investment in 2022 alone. While the founders behind Spain’s hotbed of innovation run the full gamut, young entrepreneurs in particular have played an instrumen ..read more

Generative AI is all but set to become the technological breakthrough of the year, with platforms like ChatGPT generating frenzied international interest and an ever-growing series of use cases. Even though the furore surrounding artificial intelligence continuing to build, is now the time for investors to buy into generative AI? Or as a bubble beginning to form around the industry?  Make no mistake, institutional investors are already falling head over heels for generative AI.  “Technology is an industry that is driven by innovation. We had the internet in the 1990s, cloud ..read more

Nobody can deny that the media industry has been struggling for quite some time. As a young journalism student at the beginning of the 2000s, I witnessed the changes that were taking place in the media space. By the time I was finishing college, several magazines had already shut down and the rest were trying to make the transition from print to digital, many of them without much success.  Now in the third decade of the new millennium, things are still shaking up in the media – but now there are more resources available to publishers. For Matthias Lehmann, COO of Aflorithmic, the world’s ..read more

Two years ago, on March 17, 2020, Moderna’s first vaccine trial was given to participants. What might have been lost in the media flurry at the time was how this first iteration of the vaccine was trialed a full two days before the first statewide lockdown in the country was announced in California.  In retrospect, this amazing achievement has not only fundamentally called into question the speed at which drugs are developed, tested, and deployed on a massive scale, but has forced drug developers to daringly apply new AI-powered technologies to supercharge their efforts since then.  ..read more

Málaga is booming. The southern city in the Andalusia region is always making headlines about big companies locating themselves in the area, despite the ongoing market correction. After the big announcement in February 2021 that Google is establishing a hub in Malaga, big companies like Vodafone, Citigroup, Banco Santander, GP Bullhound, and EY, are following Google‘s lead. Less than two years ago Forbes placed Málaga among the top twenty cities in the world where Americans can live, invest and work. Among the qualities of the city, they highlighted the variety of international schools, a good ..read more

In late June, it was New York. Now, it was Barcelona’s turn. For three days (July 6-8), the Catalan hub drew the attention of blockchain enthusiasts from all over the world. And thousands of them arrived to attend the long-expected ETHBarcelona, dubbed the “first Ethereum impact conference ever”. The event, or cultural experience, was themed solarpunk, a movement that envisions a world where technologies are deployed for the greater good of both people and the planet. In line with that, the venue was filled with plants, futuristic NFT art, a meditation room – and attendees were encouraged to b ..read more

The eternal rivalry between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona dates back to the beginning of the early 20th century. Both cities have been through history fierce competitors in sports, but also in terms of attracting business and innovation to their regions. Mind the Bridge, a global organization that provides innovation advisory services for corporates and government organizations, presented its latest “Tech Scaleup Spain” Report with the support of ACCIONA and Crunchbase, which highlights how Madrid is catching up with Barcelona, the main tech hotspot of the country, in what they a ..read more