Hopes of making the Netherlands a global chip powerhouse have been boosted by a new deal between tech giant ASML and the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). The pair today pledged to spend €180mn on semiconductor research over the next 10 years. Alongside the investment, the duo have committed to expand their joint research and train more PhD...

A space mission exploring the “dark universe” has released its first scientific data — and five new extraterrestrial snapshots. Captured by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid telescope, the observations paint a never-before-seen picture of the cosmos. They also offer new insights into the properties of celestial bodies. The images are at least...

After years of ravaging computer servers to swindle millions of dollars, the operators of the notorious Ebury botnet had slipped into the shadows by 2021. Suddenly, they reemerged with a bang. The new evidence surfaced during a police investigation in the Netherlands. A cryptocurrency theft had been reported to the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit...

Finnish scale-up Enifer is set to build a world-first fungal protein factory after securing full funding for the €33mn site. The futuristic plant will convert food industry sidestreams into an ingredient called Pekilo. Invented in the 1970s, Pekilo was the world’s first commercial mycoprotein — a food source derived from natural fungus.  With a low...

DeepL, the Cologne-based unicorn that has been rivalling machine translation giants such as Google Translate, today announced a new investment of $300mn (€277mn), reaching a $2bn valuation. Born from online dictionary Linguee, the startup was founded in 2017 by Jarek Kutylowski, who’s also serving as the company’s CEO. DeepL offers free and premium...

It’s been a busy week for AI policymakers. The EU has sealed the deal on its AI Act. Meanwhile, in Seoul, South Korea, 16 world-leading companies have signed the “Frontier AI Safety Commitments,” and a group of countries have promised to work together on mitigating risks associated with the technology.  To say that the past year was the one when the...