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Why don’t we leave the internet platforms we dislike?

Corporates and innovation, Data and security, Next Featured / /

The internet is filled with sites and services we loathe yet it seems, to paraphrase Brokeback Mountain, we just don’t know how to quit them.

Consider the evidence: Facebook was widely reviled after its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, yet it still has over 3 billion monthly active users. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter there has been huge public outcry about his actions and decisions, but the platform remains relevant. And, most recently, Bandcamp was bought by Songtradr which swiftly laid off 50% of its staff. But guess what? It’s still by far-and-away the leader in its category.

This points to an environment where big platforms can act in ways swathes of people find distasteful, yet still remain in dominant positions. The more things change, the more they stay the same. For companies trying to upend this hegemony and Silicon Valley’s grip on the tech world, it could feel disheartening.  

But here at TNW we had some questions: is all this necessarily true? Are certain sites really too big to fail? And could smaller companies use burgeoning tech like decentralisation to fight back against the might of Silicon Valley?

Well, we’re going to find out. Let’s begin by looking at a specific example: Bandcamp.

The battle for our ears: Bandcamp and Artcore

If you aren’t familiar with it, Bandcamp is a music retail platform. Think of it like an online record store where artists can sell their music and merchandise.

Widely beloved by fans and musicians alike, Bandcamp has a reputation for being artist-friendly. It offers good cuts on sales and runs schemes like Bandcamp Friday, where it waives commission fees. Long story short, Bandcamp is one of the few places in this current music environment where artists can actually make some money.

Yet like all good things on the internet, it couldn’t last. The platform was purchased by Epic Games in 2022 before being bought up by Songtradr this year. After getting rid of a gamut of staff, it became clear to many users that the days of Bandcamp as an artist-first haven are coming to a close. 

In many ways, the platform is ripe for a competitor. Its audience consists of people who value independence as a concept and it has a user base in the tens of millions rather than billions. Yet that hasn’t happened.

To dig into the reasons, I got in touch with one of these competitor platforms, the just launched London-based Artcore. In many ways, it offers a broadly comparable service to Bandcamp: a place to sell music with relatively manageable commissions fees (20% in this case).

I spoke with Tom Burnell, Artcore’s founder, about the challenges of trying to take on a much bigger platform. He tells me that “building any startup is a challenge,” but he wouldn’t be go into further detail about their battle with Bandcamp.

Despite a request, Burnell didn’t share users numbers or sales figures, but a quick check on Similarweb (which is only a rough estimate), put Artcore’s visitors to its website at around 30,000 in October of this year. While the site is growing, it’s not going to be challenging Bandcamp any time soon.

The question then is why? What would need to happen for Artcore and other such challenger platforms to usurp the current status quo?

David vs. Goliath: A tech tale

“Smaller companies and startups have to first cut through the noise to raise awareness of their offering, which takes time, effort, and considerable resources,” Matt Iliffe, CEO of Beyond tells me. Beyond has worked with businesses including Google, Snap, and YouTube in order to optimise product experiences.

Alongside this, Iliffe believes many smaller companies fail to compete is down to public perception. There’s “safety in established platforms,” he tells me. 

Effectively, better the devil you know than the one you don’t.

This explains why competitors to the likes of Twitter/X, Facebook, and Bandcamp struggle to gain traction: they need to spend huge amounts of money to capture an audience that’d rather keep using a product they’re familiar with.

The question, then, is beyond spending billions of euros, how can a smaller company compete with the might of established bodies?

“A new platform must be ten times better than the one it hopes to win users from. Or be radically new,” Nicki Sprinz, Global MD of ustwo tells me. Their business helps create and design new products, something it’s done with the Peloton Lanebreak and The Body Coach.

The problem is, Sprinz explains, that huge tech companies are “too big to fail” when the platforms trying to compete with them do a similar thing with a near identical business model.

What this means is a service attempting to be another version of Twitter or Bandcamp won’t succeed. It needs to look beyond being a copycat.

But there’s hope: “Technology is today’s agent of creative destruction,” Sprinz says.

Smaller companies can challenge huge business, but they need to be doing something noticeably different in order to take away market share, whether that’s offering a new user experience or utilising the latest technological advancements. 

It makes sense: Facebook didn’t upend MySpace by copying it, it did so by creating something that was noticeably different.

Now one of the technologies that’s offering a way of doing things differently is decentralisation. The question is whether it could be the remedy for smaller businesses to fight back against the biggest players?

The decentralisation question

To find out, I spoke with Martina Larkin, CEO of Project Liberty. This is a body spearheaded by billionaire Frank McCourt to build a new, decentralised internet.  

Larkin tells me that the goal of decentralisation is to take “the power and control of social media out of the hands of a few platform providers and [give] it to users and developers.”

The benefit of these types of systems is they give people ownership over their information, meaning they can “take their data such as their followers from one app to another” while also connecting with people across other apps.

I asked why this shift to decentralised platforms hasn’t happened yet, and Larkin says that the technology to create these sorts of systems — such as blockchain — is only just maturing.

“People are increasingly uneasy about the way social media influences and manipulates their online presence, especially how big tech controls their data,” she says, “decentralised technology systems provide the opportunity for companies to both operate sustainably and provide a fair and equitable economic value to all participants.”

The simple life

These are excellent points and is the way I hope platforms shift in the future, but there remain two broad issues for me.

The first is ease. It’s no coincidence that Apple has become the biggest company in the world when it could broadly sum up its approach as making previously fiddly things easy. Fundamentally, that’s what people want: a simple life.

While decentralised networks like Mastodon and Bluesky are growing, they are nowhere near as user-friendly as Twitter. Until they can adequately solve that complexity — which may never be entirely the case — I feel that huge amounts of the public will not opt in.

The second point is around payments. Decentralisation may work for social media, but when there’s a platform like Bandcamp on which money is swapping hands, most people would prefer there to be a reliable middle figure. 

You only need to look at how cryptocurrency has — so far at least — failed to become a de facto payment method despite huge pushes. There’s reliability in a middle man, and this is especially true when it comes to money.

It doesn’t matter whether these beliefs are logical, it’s simply the state we’re in.

Power from the platforms

What we’ve discovered isn’t rocket science: it is not easy to dislodge pre-existing online platforms with large user bases. In fact, if you’re trying to do pretty much the same thing as them, it’s nigh-on impossible to overcome that market share and attract the product.

This gives huge companies a certain amount of licence to do whatever the hell they want, users be damned. I’m certain there is a tipping point somewhere, but the fact Facebook hasn’t already found it suggests it’s pretty dark.

But don’t get disheartened — this doesn’t mean there’s no hope for change.

For upstart platforms to alter the current system, the key is they need to do something different. Whether that’s offering a new way of engaging with content (think of how TikTok reimagined YouTube) or incorporating a burgeoning technology like decentralisation.

Looking to compete with Instagram or Twitter or Bandcamp isn’t going to work. Companies need to look beyond them, to think of a new way of delivering what those platforms are striving to.

Yet this isn’t all, as simplicity and ease-of-use is king. New platforms need to show people that it is not only much better than the previous one, but it’s also just as easy to use. 

Without that? Well, we probably won’t be quitting them any time soon.

Why don’t we leave the internet platforms we dislike? Read More »

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For European startups, the US is still the land of opportunity

Ecosystems, Next Featured, Startups and technology / /

With under 2 million people, a landmass that’s half the size of Greece, and a recent history of communist rule, Latvia doesn’t have textbook foundations for building world-leading businesses. But building a world-leading business is exactly what Latvia’s Printful did. In 2021, the on-demand printing startup was valued at over $1 billion, making it the country’s first-ever unicorn.

To reach the local landmark, Printful took an international route. But rather than focus on its home continent of Europe, the company set its sights on the US.

“We wanted to make something big — and to this day, there is no bigger market than the United States for technology companies,” Davis Siksnans, the co-founder and former CEO of Printful, told TNW at the TechChill conference in Riga, Latvia, earlier this year. 

“We’re glad that we had some people from Latvia who were willing to uproot themselves and move to the United States and work there on the ground.”

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It’s a move that Hussein Kanji wants more European entrepreneurs to make. As a partner at Hoxton Ventures, a VC investor based in London, Kanji has backed some of the continent’s most successful startups, including the unicorns Deliveroo and Darktrace. 

His firm selects these businesses because it believes they can become category-defining companies. To reach this level, Kanji wants more founders to look stateside.

“Once you’ve built something and validated that it’s actually good relative to its peers, you should be focused on the US market as early as possible — you’re going to build a bigger company,” Kanji told TNW.

As a Stanford University graduate who’s worked for both startups and tech giants in the United States, Kanji has extensive experience with the rewards on offer in the country. He also has the data to substantiate his views. In new research, Hoxton Ventures found that nearly all European startups with over $500mn in revenue have succeeded by winning the US market. 

Slide showing European startups that achieved success in the US
Companies from across the continent have found success in the US. Credit: Hoxton Ventures

For European startups, the US market has numerous attractions. It’s got more customers, more capital, and more talent. There’s also the powerful network effects that fizzle across Silicon Valley.

The allure was irresistible for Printful. In classic startup style, the company’s founders built their early business from a garage in California. 

“We leveraged a physical presence in the United States, which gave us immediate credibility with the customers there,” Siksnans said.

The move soon paid off. After four years of focusing on the US, Printful reached $46mn in revenue.

Still, not everyone is willing to migrate. Many European founders prefer to stay closer to home for familial, social, or patriotic reasons. Others are concerned about the risks of relocating.

“The US is way more expensive, way more competitive, and you’re way more likely to fail… but if you win, you win so much bigger,” Kanji said. “And we don’t care so much about the failure side — we care about the winning side.”

Risk and reward

Companies from larger countries are often reluctant to cross the Atlantic because they’re confident that their home market is already big enough. Startups from smaller countries, meanwhile, may prefer to target another European nation for its early European expansion. Geographical proximity, cultural connections, and personal relationships can make the local moves more alluring.

When these arguments are made to Kanji, he advises them to start in the US and then return to Europe when they’re on a winning streak. To his chagrin, they don’t always agree.

“The majority of the time, we probably fail to convince them because a lot of people are minimizing risk, and they have more close relationships in Europe,” he said. “But our view is we can help plug in some of the relationships.”

Black and white photo of Hussein Kanji
Kanji holds an MBA from London Business School and an undergraduate degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford. Credit: Hoxton Ventures

He also reassures the doubters that Silicon Valley is very accommodating towards expats and new faces. The majority of tech workers in the region are foreign-born, and around half of its ‘unicorn’ startups were founded by immigrants. 

It’s also a place that’s accustomed to power players suddenly emerging from out of nowhere. When Mark Zuckerberg was creating a creepy hot or not clone at Harvard, who could have predicted that he would soon transform the online world? 

Such developments are hard to predict, which has encouraged the Valley to welcome new people and ideas. The cofounder of Stripe, for instance, moved there when he was still a teenager after his company had failed to draw financial support in his home country of Ireland. Nine years later, he was the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.

“The Valley is very accommodating towards new stuff — and the new stuff doesn’t have to just be American,” Kanji said. “It could be Swedish, it could be Estonian — but you have to be physically there, building those networks and relationships. If you’re far away, it’s a little less accommodating, because there’s still this bias in the Bay Area that the good stuff gravitates to the Bay Area.”

Taking the first steps

Kanji doesn’t advise leaving Europe as soon as an idea emerges. Startups first need to establish their initial product market fit, determine its worth, and get feedback. Once the value has been established, the founder can move to the US. The rest of the team, however, is often better built at home.

One drawback of the US is the high salaries of tech workers. There are also always bigger companies who want to poach the top talent. In Europe, these costs and risks are lower. 

At Printful, the best balance was dividing roles across regions. While the startup’s founders established a presence in the US, they built their team of developers, designers, and marketers in their home region.

“Very quickly, we learned that even though the target market was the United States, we didn’t necessarily need all the teams on the grounds in the US, because we have a good selection of talent here in Latvia,” Siksnans said.

A Printful founder, however, remained in the US. It’s an approach that has often yielded impressive results.

Phill Robinson, a former Salesforce CMO and CEO of Dutch software giant Exact, has also experienced the benefits. Robinson recently returned to his home country of the UK to found the startup platform Boardwave, which aims to replicate Silicon Valley’s network effects in Europe. Yet he acknowledges that startups targeting the US still need a leader on the ground.

“You’ve got to have your founder move to the States, or a significant part of your management team,” Robinson told TNW. “You’ve got to understand the product market fit, because it might be slightly different. You can’t just rock up with a bunch of salespeople and keep selling more products.”

Phil Robinson, the founder of Boardwave, speaking on a stage
Robinson shared his ideas on building European tech leaders at TNW Conference. Credit: Boardwave

At the same time, Robinson insists that moving to the US isn’t the only option. He notes that access to capital is improving and that startups are now scaling more quickly. A recent report from Dealroom made similar observations. 

The study found that Europe now attracts 20% of global VC funding — compared to under 5% two decades ago — and more than a third of the global investments at early-stage. The continent’s flock of unicorns, meanwhile, has grown by 88% since 2014. In the US, they’ve only increased by 56%. 

Overall, however, the biggest opportunities to scale remain in the US. For Kanji, European founders with ambitions to be global leaders will often face a tricky choice: Stay home and minimise the risk of failure, or move to the US and maximise the chance of success.

For European startups, the US is still the land of opportunity Read More »

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Europe’s battle against the rising media power of Silicon Valley

Corporates and innovation, Ecosystems, Fintech and ecommerce, Next Featured / /

It’s a question as old as the tech industry itself: can Europe compete with Silicon Valley?

This reared up again in my mind for two main reasons. The first is the recent(-ish) shift of Big Tech into being media entities. And the second? That’s Spotify’s struggles as a European stalwart in this field.

Let’s consider the first point.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen Silicon Valley shift its strategy and start investing heavily in media. You only need to look at Apple’s launch of the Apple TV+ and Apple Music streaming services, or Amazon’s foray into movies and TV series. I mean, the latter was behind The Rings Of Power, the most expensive television show ever made.

There are, of course, a myriad of reasons why Big Tech is investing in media, but one of the biggest is using it as a tool to hook people into their ecosystems.

“In the case of Amazon, due to its various revenue channels and methods of connecting with customers, it has a greater understanding of its users and their preferences through data,” Stephen Hateley says. He’s the head of product and partner marketing at DigitalRoute, a business that helps streaming companies understand their customer data.

He tells me that because Amazon “is not primarily or solely a media company, it can combine its customer accounts and upsell to them via its ecommerce, TV, film and music streaming, consumer electronics, and grocery delivery channels.”

For example, the company is able to spend money on shows and encourage people to subscribe to Amazon Prime Video. This comes bundled with Amazon Prime itself, meaning users have an incentive to use the platform to shop on.

Apple takes a similar approach.

In recent years, the company has realised that it’s close to hitting the ceiling of how many devices it can sell. From this point, growth will be tougher. Knowing this, it has shifted focus to services, effectively aiming to upsell software to its existing customers — and it’s working.

Apple not only gives customers free trials of its streaming services with new hardware purchases, but also bundles them together in its Apple One package. And again, like Amazon, it spends big on shows in order to attract people to enter its services ecosystem — with Ted Lasso being a prime example of this working successfully.

“This provides it with more opportunities to monetise its customers as well as collect a great amount of data on their preferences,” Hateley says. 

Spotify’s struggles: An industry signpost

The thing is, all of the above isn’t particularly profitable — and especially not when it comes to the media side of things. In many ways, US tech companies are using streaming as a loss leader. They’re pumping billions into shows and movies with the aim of making money elsewhere, not through the media itself.

This is a huge problem to both media companies in general and European businesses in the same field. And guess who sits in both these categories? Yep, you guessed it: Spotify.

The Swedish company, which is broadly independent, is struggling to keep up with Big Tech. It pays its artists less than its biggest competitors, yet still hasn’t made a profit: 

Chart of Spotify's earnings
This graph from Carbon Finance shows that although Spotify has incredible growth, it’s consistently losing money.

This shows in its behaviour. For example, it made a huge bet on podcasts, investing over a billion dollars in an attempt to bring a wider range of users onto its platform. While this had the clear benefit of making it a podcast leader, the company struggled to turn it into profit, leading to layoffs and a paring back of the approach.

This pattern is being played out across the entire European media landscape. 

“US dominance can prove challenging for European companies attempting to claim their share of the market in any industry, and media is no different,” Hateley says, pointing towards how even organisations like the BBC are struggling in this environment.

This paints a picture of a sector being blasted away by Big Tech’s ability to spend and raises some important questions for the future of media.

Can European countries fight back? And do they need to?

“One way European media companies can compete with the big budgets of US firms is re-evaluating the type of content they’re putting out to audiences,” Marty Roberts tells me. He’s the SVP, Product Strategy & Marketing, at Brightcove, a streaming technology company.

Effectively, Roberts believes that US streaming giants create too many shows to market effectively. This is an opportunity for smaller entities to do “an amazing job at promoting a couple of new shows a month.”

Alongside this, he thinks that “[a] key strength for European media companies is hyper-localisation in niche markets.” He points towards either non-English language content, or getting particularly good at a specific genre, such as the success of Nordic detective dramas.

Jesse Shemen — the CEO of Papercup, a company that delivers AI dubbing for media companies — is similarly positive about prospects for European media.

“The current trend of bundling is opening up chances for unprecedented collaboration between European companies and US rivals,” he says. “We’re already seeing this in action, with Paramount Global’s partnerships with Sky and Canal+ just one recent example.”

This paints a rosier picture than I was expecting. The doom-and-gloom of European companies not competing doesn’t seem to trouble many experts, with them generally believing the businesses can thrive by not fighting US Big Tech, but instead working alongside it.

Yet is this unified, global approach a good thing?

One element that was brought up during my conversations was that the interconnected and worldwide focus of media now makes borders broadly irrelevant, meaning this focus on the success of European media specifically isn’t helpful.

“When it comes to investment capital, we live in a global village, where giant investors from the US, EU, UK, APAC, and anywhere can pour substantial capital into companies they believe in,” Maor Sadra says. He’s CEO and co-founder of INCRMNTAL, a data science platform.

This blurring of geographic lines, Sadra contends, is true of Spotify too. He points out that the company’s largest institutional investors include the UK’s Baillie Gifford, US-based Morgan Stanley, and Tencent Holidays, a Chinese company.

“The location of key management and employees in a connected world seems almost an irrelevant point of consideration in today’s age,” he tells me.

There’s no doubt that what Sadra and other experts say is true: we live in a global media environment and, for companies to survive, they need to accept that. Looking for outside investment or partnering with bigger organisations like Apple or Amazon is part-and-parcel of existing in this modern world.

This though doesn’t mean it’s not vital for Europe to maintain powerful media bodies.

You only need to look at how Hollywood and TV has benefitted America. It has expanded its cultural influence worldwide, becoming a form of soft power. Just consider, as one micro example, the global footprint of Halloween and Thanksgiving. For Europe to remain an attractive place, for it to carve out its own identity, it requires strong media.

Yes, it’s important to work together with these huge American organisations, yet European businesses in the same sector have to make their own mark too — and one way of achieving that is with tech.

Staying ahead of the wave

There was one theme that came up across many of my conversations on this topic of using tech to remain relevant: artificial intelligence.

“Localisation is one area where technology’s influence, especially generative AI, is being felt,” Shemen from Papercup tells me.

This is being trialled in a number of places already, with Spotify planning on cloning podcast hosts’ voices and then translating them into different languages. This trend will be hugely important for European media creators, especially if they’re making content in non-English. It almost goes without saying how much this could benefit smaller creators and media companies that fall into this category, as their potential reach can skyrocket.

Artificial intelligence will also be a vital part of the puzzle for European businesses when it comes to analysing data. If they can get access to forms of insights currently only available to gargantuan tech companies, they can alter their content to appeal and reach the masses, levelling the playing field.

The European route to success

If European media is going to survive Big Tech’s thrust into the space one thing’s for certain: it can’t stay stationary. Instead, the European industry needs to take advantage of its positive attributes and use them as best it can.

This should involve embracing its ability to create niche content, clever content partnerships, and investing in technologies that can help European content hit a wider audience.

Ultimately, the future of media streaming in Europe is one of balance. While there’s a lucrative future available by partnering with bigger organisations, it can’t risk losing itself in the process. Currently, there’s no real way European media bodies can compete with the bottomless wallets of Silicon Valley. What they can do though is ensure they stay relevant.

The secret to achieving this isn’t all that secret — being nimble and open minded.

Don’t act so shocked: age-old questions often have age-old answers, after all.

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Tree-planting search engine Ecosia launches ‘green’ AI chatbot

Artificial Intelligence, Europe, Next Featured, Startups and technology, Sustainability / /

With COP28 underway in Dubai making it again glaringly obvious just how little lawmakers are prepared to bend for the sake of future generations of Earthlings, the release of the first “green filter” generative AI search chatbot could not have been more timely. 

Berlin-based Ecosia, the world’s largest not-for-profit search engine, hopes the launch of its new product will assist users in making better choices for the planet, and further differentiate its offerings from the “monolithic giants” of internet search. 

Powered by OpenAI’s API, Ecosia’s chatbot has a “green answers” option. This triggers a layered green persona that will provide users with more sustainable results and answers. Say, suggest train rides over air travel.

GenAI + DMA = search market disruption?

Ecosia, which uses the ad revenue from its site (read, all its profits) to plant trees across the globe, is among the first independent search engines to roll out its own GenAI-powered chatbot. When speaking to TNW last month, Ecosia founder and CEO Christian Kroll stated how important it was for small independent players to stay up to date with the technology. 

Further, he highlighted the opportunities generative AI could present in terms of disrupting the status quo in the internet search market. “I think there is potential for us to innovate as well — and maybe even leapfrog some of the established players,” he said. 

Upon the launch of the company’s “green chatbot,” Kroll today added that the past year had introduced more change to the internet search landscape than the previous 14 combined (Ecosia was founded in 2009). “Generative AI has the potential to revolutionise the search market — no longer does it cost hundreds of billions to develop best-in-class search technologies,” he said, adding that Ecosia was targeting a “global increase in search engine market share.” 

Something else that could potentially disrupt the market is the coming into play of the EU Digital Markets Act. From March 2024 onwards, consumers will no longer be “encouraged” to use default apps on their devices (say Safari web browser on an iPhone, or Google Maps on an Android device). This may come to include offering users a “choice screen” when setting up a device, which would invite them to select which browsers, search engines, and virtual assistants to install, rather than defaulting to the preferences of Apple and Android. Ecosia says it is “pushing hard” for this provision.

Green chatbot powered by clean energy

Many companies pay lip service to sustainability. Ecosia actually puts its money where its mouth is. A few years ago, its founder turned Ecosia into a steward-owned company. This means that no shares can be sold at a profit or owned by people outside of the company. In addition, no profits can be taken out of the company — as previously mentioned, all profits go to Ecosia’s tree-planting endeavours. 

“It [tree planting] is one of the most effective measures we can take to fight the climate crisis. But unfortunately, it’s often not done properly. So that’s why it also gets a lot of criticism,” Kroll told TNW. 

“We’re trying to define the standards of what good tree planting means. So first of all, you count the trees that survived, not just the ones that you have planted — then you also have to check on them.” This, we should add, falls under the purview of Ecosia’s Chief Tree Planting Officer. To date, the community has planted over 187,000,000 trees and counting. 

In addition, Ecosia’s search engine is powered by solar energy — accounting for 200% of the carbon emitted from the server usage and broader operations. 

LLMs and CO2 are still an undisclosed relationship

You may ask how adding generative AI to a search function is compatible with an environmental agenda. After all, Google’s use of generative AI alone could use as much energy as a small-ish country. 

Ecosia admits that it does not yet have “oversight of the carbon emissions created by LLM-based genAI functions,” since OpenAI does not openly share this information. However, initial testing indicates that the new GenAI function will increase CO2 emissions by 5%, Ecosia said, for which it will increase investment in solar power, regenerative agriculture, and other nature-based solutions. 

Environmental credentials aside, a search engine still has to perform when it comes to its core function. “For us to compete against monolithic giants that have a 99% market share, we have to offer our users a product they’ll want to use day in, day out,” Michael Metcalf, chief product officer at Ecosia, shared. “That means not only offering a positive impact on climate action, but a best-in-class search engine that can go head-to-head with the likes of Bing and Google.” 

Metcalf added that user testing had shown very positive feedback on the company’s sustainability-minded AI chatbot. “We’re going to market with generative AI products before peers precisely because we want to grow: Grow our user base, grow our profits, and then grow our positive climate impact — which is mission critical for our warming planet.”

Tree-planting search engine Ecosia launches ‘green’ AI chatbot Read More »

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This giant dome battery cuts CO2 emissions — by using more CO2

Insider, Next Featured, Startups and technology, Sustainability / /

Renewable energies like wind and solar are clean, abundant, and cheap — but notoriously unpredictable. That’s why so much time and money has been pumped into scaling energy storage solutions: we need to keep the lights on even when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.

While lithium-ion batteries have received the bulk of this investment, there’s another kid on the block that could be cheaper and greener. In an ironic twist, the whole system is powered by the same molecule it is attended to fight — carbon dioxide. 

Imaginatively, it is called the CO2 battery. The way it works is relatively simple. CO2 gets stored in a gigantic dome. When charging, the system pulls the gas from the dome, compresses it into a liquid and stores it in big carbon steel tanks. The compression process also produces heat which is stored in ‘bricks’ made of steel shot and quartzite for later use.  

Then, when power is needed, the liquid carbon dioxide is heated up using the hot bricks, rapidly turning it back into a gas — which refills the dome. On its way back to the dome, however, the gas spins a turbine, producing electricity.

an image of Energy Dome's pilot plant in Sardinia, Italy
Energy Dome’s first pilot plant near Ottana on the island of Sardinia, Italy. Credit: Energy Dome

And what about all the CO2 to fill that dome, you may ask? Well, it’s a closed-loop system so you only need to inject gas into the dome once across the battery’s entire 30-year lifespan. So by using a pinch of CO2 it can support the rollout of renewable energies that can cut our emission of the gas altogether. 

‘Half the cost of lithium-ion’

The brainchild of Italian startup Energy Dome, the battery builds upon existing compressed air and liquid air energy storage technologies. Except, the use of CO2 brings a couple of distinct advantages. 

Pure carbon dioxide is a lot denser than air, which means you can store the same amount of energy in a much smaller space. Up to ten times smaller than compressed air, in fact. And while liquid air energy storage is admittedly more space efficient than either CO2 or compressed air, it must be cooled to almost -200 degrees Celcius to achieve the desired results. This requires a lot of energy, which cuts efficiency, and is why liquid air energy storage has struggled to compete with other storage technologies on cost. 

But affordability is exactly where CO2 batteries excel. They’re built using steel, carbon dioxide, and water. That’s it. The rest of the components — like pipes, compressors, and turbines — can be purchased off the shelf. According to Energy Dome, this means its system can produce electricity at half the cost of lithium-ion batteries. 

Those are some impressive figures, which have naturally caught the attention of investors. At COP28 last week, Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and the European Investment Bank jointly committed €60mn to help Energy Dome build its first commercial-scale plant on the island of Sardinia, Italy. This adds to the €80mn in funding the startup has already secured. 

‘Game-changing technology’

The CO2 battery will store some 20MW of renewable energy supplied by nearby solar and wind farms on the island. Energy Dome already built a demonstration plant on the island last year. The smaller, 2.5MW, facility is currently operating and transmitting power to the grid. 

Gelsomina Vigliotti, vice president at the EIB, called the initiave an “inspiring example of game-changing technology that we need more of in Europe and worldwide”. 

Energy Dome’s founder, Claudio Spadacini, said the Sardinia plant will be the “first of many identical full-scale CO2 batteries”. The company said that the modular, simple design of its CO2 battery means it can be scaled relatively rapidly. 

The company has already signed a deal with Norwegian wind energy giant Ørsted to install “one or more” of the CO2 batteries at its sites in Europe. If all goes well, construction on the first storage facility using Energy Dome’s CO2 battery could begin in 2024.

lithium production in Chile
Brine evaporation pools at a lithium mine in Argentina. The environmental costs of lithium mining are not always factored into the pricetag of the batteries that they are used to produce. Credit: Anita Pouchard Serra/Bloomberg

While lithium-ion batteries will no doubt continue to play an important role in the energy transition, the negative environmental and social consequences of their production have been thrown into the spotlight in recent years. They rely on a number of rare earth metals like lithium, nickel, and cobalt, the mining of which has been linked to extensive environmental degradation and even human rights abuses the world over.

If CO2 batteries can circumvent some of these impacts and undercut lithium-ion on cost, who knows, perhaps they could become the next big thing in energy storage.

This giant dome battery cuts CO2 emissions — by using more CO2 Read More »

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Tech is bringing ancient ruins back to life. Here’s how

Deep tech, Ecosystems, Next Featured, Startups and technology / /

From bringing ancient ruins to life through augmented reality (AR) to 3D-printing centuries-old artefacts, cultural heritage startups are transforming the landscape of heritage preservation and education. By leveraging technology to foster a deeper connection with our past, this breed of companies help safeguard some of the most defining elements of human history.

TNW spoke with three innovative startups in the space to find out how they’re using tech to bridge the gap between past and present.

Wsense

Over 2,000 years ago, the city of Baia near Naples was the go-to holiday destination for the elite of the Roman Empire. Known for its luxurious and hedonistic vibe, it attracted prominent figures such as Cicero and even Julius Caesar himself.

Today, about half of the ancient town lies beneath the surface of the Mediterranean.

Baia is one of the world’s very few underwater sites open to the public, accessible through snorkelling, scuba diving, and glass-bottomed boat tours. But preserving submerged ruins is no easy task.

archeological park of Baia
Diving in Baia. Credit: Campi Flegrei Sub Center

To help protect Baia, in 2019, the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage partnered with Wsense, a spinoff from the Sapienza University of Rome, which specialises in underwater monitoring and communication systems.

“Since GPS, radiocommunication, and satellite signals don’t work underwater, you need to build your own infrastructure for the underwater domain,” Chiara Petrioli, founder and CEO of Wsense and Professor at the Sapienza University of Rome, tells TNW.

Wsense has created a subsea Wi-Fi so that real-time data below the water’s surface can be collected and transmitted back to land. To serve that purpose, the deep tech startup has developed a network of wireless IoUT (Internet of Underwater Things) devices.

Specifically, Wsense’s system relies on multi-sensor nodes, which provide information on various aspects of water quality, from temperature and pressure to pH, salinity currents, and tides.

Data can be transmitted in two ways. Firstly, from one node to the other, a process that is optimised by an AI algorithm that changes the transfer path when sea conditions change. Secondly, it can be transferred to the surface through Wsense’s gateways, which, either integrated into floating buoys or posted on nearby land, connect the underwater network to the cloud — and from there, to the rest of the world.

In the case of Baia, this system allows for remote in-situ monitoring, which doesn’t simply set off alarms in case of unauthorised access, but most importantly provides water information critical for the site’s preservation.

This includes tracking the environmental conditions that could distort the artefacts. It further entails observing CO2 emission levels to understand how the area’s volcanic activity is developing, while enabling the study of climate change’s impact on underwater cultural heritage.

Here’s a video with how Wsense’s system in Baia works:

In addition, the technology has provided a valuable tool for archaeologists diving in the submerged city. Thanks to special micronodes attached to a waterproof tablet, divers can communicate both with each other and with their colleagues above the surface. “Think of it as an underwater WhatsApp,” Dr Petrioli says. At the same time, these micronodes create a type of underwater GPS that helps locate divers in real time.

“We have also been collaborating with a partner to develop an AR app on our tablet, which visitors can use to view 3D reconstructions of Baia while at the site,” she adds.

diver at the underwater city of Baia
Footage of diver using Wsense’s tablet in submerged Baia. CreditL: Wsense

Besides the preservation of cultural heritage, the startup’s technology has multiple areas of application, including environmental and critical infrastructure monitoring and aquaculture. Last January, the World Economic Forum named it “the world’s most innovative company in collecting and managing big data for the purpose of protecting the ocean environment.”

Founded in 2017, Wsense has grown into a team of 50 people, with offices in Italy, Norway, and the UK. In October, the award-winning spinoff completed a €9mn Series A round, raising its total funding to €13mn.

Dartagnans

It doesn’t take a knight in shining armour to save a castle in distress — and that’s exactly what Dartagnans has been proving. Named after Dumas’ famous musketeer, the Paris-based startup is fighting to save and promote castles that would have otherwise fallen into oblivion.

“We wanted to save a castle from A to Z.

Founded in 2015, the startup began as a crowdfunding platform connecting donors to owners/managers of historical monuments. By gradually building a community, Dartagnans became France’s leader in crowdfunding for heritage preservation, just after the first two years of operation.

“After a point, we wanted to have our castle and save it from A to Z,” Romain Delaume, Dartagnans’ co-founder and CEO, tells TNW. “We didn’t have enough capital to buy one but we had a growing community.”

So in 2018, the startup reinvented its business model and introduced the collective purchase of castles concept, offering the opportunity for anyone in the world to invest in endangered castles and become co-owners.

“When we launched the first collective purchase campaign, we raised over €1.6mn in 45 days,” Delaume says. “This means that when you give the opportunity to people, they all gather for a cause regardless of their background.”

In the past five years, Dartagnans has helped save four castles in France: the Château de la Monthe Chandeniers in Vienne, the the Château de l’Ebaupinay in Deux-Sèvres, the Château de Vibrac in Charente, and the Château de Boulogne in Oise.

The Château de Boulogne
The Château de Boulogne. The 19th-century castle features a distinct architecture, inspired from history and esotericism. It was commissioned by Count Charles de Boulogne, a rich Belgian landowner. The castle suffered terribly during WWI and, now, nearly 7,500 people have become co-castellans to save it. Credit: Dartagnans

Following the purchase, the castles go through gradual restoration and are opened to the public for touristic activities, such as visits, events, volunteer projects, and hospitality programmes. The self-funded startup now counts over 50,000 co-castellans and an international community of 300,000 heritage defenders. Since its founding, it has raised €15mn for the safeguarding of monuments.

Co-castellans can invest in castles on the startup’s platform and, in return, they receive ownership shares, which they can keep, sell, or pass on to their children or friends. “It’s a share of a company,” Delaume explains. “We create a company for each castle we operate and then we sell the shares to the public.” Each share costs €79.

According to Delaume, Dartagnans owns one-third of the castles, which allows it to pilot the company and carry out restoration, management, marketing, and tourist activities. “I am like a CEO with thousands and thousands of little shareholders,” he says.

The Château de l'Ebaupinay
The Château de l’Ebaupinay. Classified as an historical monument since 1898, the medieval castle is a rare remnant of the mid-15th century architecture. Credit: Dartagnans

Nevertheless, co-castellans have their own say in big management decisions, with each share representing one vote. The community is also involved through activities, meetings, and assemblies, both in person and online. The company’s biggest event is The Night of the Castles (link), when hundreds of castles across France and Europe simultaneously open their doors at nighttime.

Dartagnans currently employs 14 people and operates solely in France, with future plans for international expansion. Within the next decade, Delaume hopes that they’ll have accomplished half of the restoration needed for the castles. Another goal is to keep growing what he calls “a happy community.”

Hi.Stories

Standing in front of historical ruins or a vase dating back to 500 BCE can cause a feeling of detachment. Even for those with a vivid imagination, reconstructing the past from a centuries-old object is no easy task — but thankfully, technology can help.

Hi.Stories was founded in Sicily in 2017 with the mission to integrate digital technologies into cultural heritage to help facilitate its communication, and in turn, its protection.

The startup offers multiple services. It develops 3D models and prints of museum artefacts; it designs apps for archaeological sites and museums, using storytelling narratives and gamification; and it creates virtual tours based on augmented reality (AR).

Sicily Stories App
The startup developed the Sicily Histories app to help visitors explore the region’s sites using AR and 3D reconstructions. Through storytelling and a gamified narrative, users can help characters explore Sicily. Credit: Hi.Stories

One notable advantage of these tools is that they increase visitors’ interactive experience, and in turn, their engagement with heritage.

“Communication through the realisation of digital use systems allows heritage to be read at different levels: the visitor — on-site or remotely — becomes the protagonist of his or her own visit, being able to choose different degrees of immersion,” Luna Meli, co-founder of the startup, tells TNW.

Another advantage is the improved accessibility of exhibits, which goes well beyond the obvious benefit of accessing sites or museum collections remotely.

The 3D reproduction of objects, for instance, offers an alternative for groups such as individuals with visual impairments to approach works of art through touch. According to the company, this particular service can be used for educational purposes as well, enabling students to develop a direct, physical relationship with artefacts.

3D print of the Capitoline Wolf
3D print of the Capitoline Wolf, the symbol of ancient Rome. According to the legend, the female wolf nurtured the twins Remus and Romulus, the mythical founders of the city. The original statue is displayed at the Palazzo dei Conservatori. Credit: Hi.Stories

Meli says that, after the pandemic, awareness of the need to use digital technologies for cultural valorisation and appropriation has grown. This has led to an increased demand for these services — especially regarding the creation of content and platforms that can be used in multimedia guide applications, webapps with AR, and immersive tours. Meanwhile, 3D models and prints have shown the biggest demand, partly because of their potential to improve the accessibility of exhibits.

In the video below, you can watch part of the startup’s 3D reconstruction and virtual tour of the Necropolis in Via Sant’ Euplio in Catania:

Currently, the bone-in ribs are only available in limited releases in the EU, UK, and US — at a premium of €66 per kilogram. Being a distinguished TNW reporter, I was lucky enough to be sent one of the first packs for free. (The vegan ribs will launch for regular purchase on the company’s webshop in early 2024).   

Founded in 2020, Juicy Marbles is perhaps best known for creating the world’s first marbled plant-based steak. Our resident senior reporter (and vegetarian) Thomas Macaulay already tested these last year and was, perhaps predictably, satisfied. But would the startup’s latest offering really indulge the taste buds of a savage carnivore?    

Upon delivery, my first impression was that the ribs looked pretty similar to the real thing — the addition of ‘bones’ and beetroot juice (for colour) definitely helps with the aesthetic.  

Encouraged, I began prepping them for the ‘braai’ (what we call BBQ in my homeland). Overall I was quite impressed with how these plant-based ribs held up on the grill. The outer layer crispened to perfection, and generally, the rack looked delicious — although it did begin to break apart towards the end. Total cook time was around 10 minutes. 

The taste test

 As advertised, the ‘meat’ is succulent and flakes off the ‘bone’ with ease. But it has more of the texture of pulled pork than pork ribs. Minor qualm there. 

The taste was decent — it reminded me somewhat of other soya-based products I’ve tried but with more meaty substance. This is probably thanks to Juicy Marbles’ patent-pending 3D assembly system which layers the proteins into linear fibres, which mimic the muscle structures of meat. The ribs also did a good job of absorbing the spices and marinade. 

As for a convincing replacement for a rack of pork ribs? I’m not so sure.   

The spoonfuls of sunflower oil added to the soya protein simply cannot replace the deliciousness of real pig fat. And the flavour profile feels unidimensional compared to the real thing. 

My biggest gripe however was how stuffed they make you feel — these plant-based ribs hit your stomach like a tonne of bricks. The high soya protein and oil content are probably to blame for that.

And what about the edible vegan bones you ask? Well the bones, which apparently have the same protein content as beef jerky, are purportedly meant to be fried or baked as a crispy snack. Maybe I did something wrong, but after 10 minutes in the air fryer, my bones still remained chewy — perhaps edible, but definitely not enjoyable. Nevertheless, they remain a cool addition, even if just for show. 

Sharing is caring

Juicy Marbles says it wants to recreate joys of eating meat with others, and that’s where I think these bone-in ribs really hit the mark. I’ve often felt like vegans or vegetarians are excluded from the shared pleasures of a BBQ simply because they don’t devour animal protein. But plant-based whole cuts could unite us all around the fire.

“Anyone cutting down on meat can probably confirm that the hardest part is not missing meat’s flavour, but feeling excluded from cultural traditions,” explains Mićković. “That’s why we chose ribs as our next product — we wanted to create something that evokes the primal joys of sharing food.” 

juicy marbles steak
Plant-based whole cuts like Juicy Marbles’ tenderloin could become a common feature at the barbecues of the future. Credit: Juicy Marbles

Overall, I was left feeling impressed by the world’s first plant-based bone-in ribs. This was definitely the most realistic plant-based whole cut I’ve tried (as opposed to a burger). The texture and addition of bones make it pretty legit. For what it is, I think Juicy Marbles did a great job. 

The pursuit of plant-based meat perfection could also have benefits beyond bonding with your brethren behind the barby.  

Converting the carnivores 

One recent UK study found that almost 90% of consumers who ate plant-based meat and dairy were meat-eaters or flexitarians. Another found that plant-based products with a similar taste, texture, and price to processed meat had the best chance of replacing meat. 

While products like plant-based burgers, steaks or ribs aren’t always enough to turn carnivores into vegans, they have been shown to reduce overall meat consumption, which is good for the planet and our health.

Livestock farming contributes 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions, uses 78% of agricultural land worldwide, and sucks up an estimated 25% of all potable water. Moreover, plant-based meat products are generally healthier than their processed meat equivalents. 

So maybe Juicy Marbles’ pursuit of plant-based meat perfection is also meaningful way to shift our diets in a more sustainable direction.

Europe leading the shift

Despite the benefits, demand for plant-based meat actually declined in the US last year, while Silicon Valley plant-based burger poster children Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have been losing money and customers.

However, the picture looks more promising in Europe. The plant-based food sector here has grown by 49% over the past two years.       

Figures from the German Agriculture Ministry show that meat consumption dropped to 52 kgs per person in 2022, the lowest figure since records began in 1989. 

Meat consumption in the Netherlands is also declining. 

Many experts believe that the rise of plant-based alternatives has had a direct impact on the reduction in meat consumption in Europe. Another contributing factor could be that recent soaring inflation has closed the cost gap between conventional meat and plant-based alternatives, which are usually more expensive in supermarkets. 

Whatever the reason may be, plant-based alternatives are here to stay. As the costs begin to decline, the benefits become unequivocal and the options become more legit than ever before, I think it’s likely that plant-based whole cuts like Juicy Marbles’ bone-in ribs will become a common fixture at the barbecues of the future. Herbivores delight! 

Vegan ribs with edible bones: This could be the future of BBQ Read More »

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Dutch biotech startup bags €22M for proprietary generative AI model

Artificial Intelligence, Deep tech, Europe, Next Featured, Startups and technology / /

It has been nearly a year since OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world, and it seems as if no one (at least in tech) has stopped talking about generative AI since. Meanwhile, the applications of GenAI go way beyond chatbots and copyright-grey-area image ‘artistry’. 

For instance, Cradle, a biotech software startup out of Delft, Netherlands, is using it to help biologists engineer improved proteins, making it easier and quicker to bring synthetic bio-solutions for human and planetary health to market.

In synthetic biology, people use engineering principles to design and build new biological systems. Scientists can use parts of DNA or other biological elements to give existing organisms new abilities. 

This has tremendous potential for programming things like bacteria to produce medicine, non-animal whey proteins, detergents and plastics without petrochemicals, yeast to make biofuel, or for instance crops that can survive in tough environments… the list goes on. 

“At the core of all these products are proteins, which are little cellular machinery,” Stef van Grieken, co-founder and CEO of Cradle, told TNW a little while back. “If you want to change them to be better for the application you have in mind, you have to alter the DNA sequence. That’s a really complicated task because DNA is basically an alien programming language.” 

woman in lab coat performing experiments
Cradle is based in Delft, Netherlands, and Zurich, Switzerland.

This whole process takes a long time — and costs a lot of money. Which is where Cradle’s web-based software comes in. When prompted, Cradle’s AI platform can generate a sequence of a molecule that has a higher probability of matching what researchers are looking for, than when scientists need to try everything out for themselves. 

This equals fewer and more successful experiments, drastically reducing R&D time and costs. For most projects, this means they can proceed at twice the speed compared to the industry average.

Putting AI to good use for future generations

Cradle’s proprietary AI model has been trained on billions of protein sequences, as well as data generated in the company’s own wet laboratory.

“It dramatically increases the probability that your molecule has the characteristics that you care about when you try it out in your laboratory, and that significantly accelerates R&D time, and therefore dramatically reduces the cost of the R&D phase for bringing these types of products to market,” van Grieken, previously Senior Product Manager for Google AI, added. 

Why did van Grieken leave a cosy job at Google to set up a synbio AI startup in the Netherlands? “Because I have two young daughters who are three and six. And they’re gonna ask me, 10 years from now, ‘what did you do when the earth caught fire?’ And the answer could not be ‘I was a plumber for an advertising company’.”

“For me personally, success would be helping a company to make a bio-based version that replaces some petrochemical or animal-based product, and does that better and cheaper. And that more of these companies start existing in the world.”

Increased demand for synbio software

Cradle, founded by van Grieken and bioengineer Elise de Reuse in 2021, has already signed up with industry partners including Johnson & Johnson, and just announced the $24mn Series A funding round. It is now working on more than 12 R&D projects including vaccines and antibodies. 

Cradle team offsite
The Cradle team currently consists of 20 people. Credit: Cradle

The team currently consists of 20 people, split between Delft, the Netherlands and Zurich, Switzerland. The latest funding round was led by Index Ventures with participation from Kindred Capital. Angel investors including Chris Gibson, co-founder and CEO of Recursion and Tom Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters and Lead Director, Merck, also participated in the round.

The fresh injection of capital will allow Cradle to grow the team, build out additional laboratory and engineering facilities in Amsterdam, and continue to develop its platform and user experience to allow it to onboard more customers, in line with growing demand. 

Dutch biotech startup bags €22M for proprietary generative AI model Read More »

he-quit-a-genai-leader-in-protest.-now-he-wants-to-create-fairer-systems-for-artists

He quit a GenAI leader in protest. Now he wants to create fairer systems for artists

Corporates and innovation, Deep tech, Insider, Next Featured, Startups and technology / /

Ed Newton-Rex had reached a breaking point. As the vice president of audio at Stability AI, the 36-year-old was at the vanguard of a revolution in computational creativity. But there was growing unease about the movement’s strategy.

Stability was becoming an emerging powerhouse in generative AI. The London-based startup owns Stability Diffusion, one of the world’s most popular image generators. It also recently expanded into music generators with the September launch of Stable Audio — a tool developed by Newton-Rex himself. But these two systems were taking conflicting paths.

Stable Audio was trained on licensed music. The model was fed a dataset of over 800,000 files from the stock music library AudioSparx. Any copyrighted materials had been provided with permission.

Stable Diffusion had gone in a different direction. The system was trained on billions of images scraped from the web without the consent of creators. Many were copyrighted materials. All were taken without payment.

These images had taught the model well. Diffusion’s outputs pushed Stability to a valuation of $1bn in a $101mn funding round last year. But the system was attracting opposition from artists  — including Newton-Rex.

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GenAI’s ethical dilemma

A pianist and composer as well as a GenAI pioneer, Newton-Rex was at odds with the unsanctioned scraping.

“I’ve always really wanted to make sure that these tools are built with the consent of the creators behind the training data,” he tells TNW on a video call from his home in Silicon Valley.

Stability was far from the only exponent of this method. The image generators MidJourney and Dall-E apply the same approach, as do OpenAI’s ChatGPT text generator and CoPilot programmer. Visual arts, written works, music, and even code are now constantly being reworked without consent.

In response, creators and copyright holders have launched numerous lawsuits. They’re angry that their work is being taken, adapted, and monetised without permission or remuneration. They’re also worried that their livelihoods are at stake.

“It’s in the AI industry’s interest to make people think that only the big players can do this.

Artists say that generative AI is stealing their work. The companies behind the systems disagree. In a recent submission to the US Copyright Office,  Stability argued that the training was “fair use” because the results are “transformative” and “socially beneficial.”

Consequently, the company asserted, there was no copyright infringement. The practice could therefore continue without permission or payments. It was a claim that had become common in GenAI, but one that Newton-Rex disputed.

“It really showed where the industry as a whole stands right now — and it’s not it’s not a place I’m happy with,” he says.

Newton-Rex considers the practice of exploitation. Last week, he resigned from Stability in protest.

The departure doesn’t mean that Newton-Rex has quit generative AI. On the contrary, he plans to continue working in the field, but following a fairer model. It’s not the impossible mission that the GenAI giants might depict. In fact, it’s already been accomplished by a range of companies.

Alternatives are available

Newton-Rex has a long history in computational creativity. After studying music at Cambridge University, he founded Jukedeck, a pioneering AI composer. The app used machine learning to compose original music on demand. In 2019, it was acquired by TikTok owner Bytedance. 

Newton-Rex then had spells as a product director at Tiktok and a chief product officer at Voicey, a music collaboration app that was acquired by Snap, before joining Stability AI last year. He was tasked with leading the startup’s audio efforts. 

“I wanted to build a product in music generation that showed what can be done with actual licensed data — where you agree with the rights holders,” he says.

That objective put him at odds with many industry leaders. GenAI was edging into the mainstream and companies were rushing to ship new systems as quickly as possible. Scraping content from the web was an attractive shortcut.

It was also demonstrably effective. At that time, there were still doubts that the licensed datasets were large enough for training state-of-the-art models. Questions were also raised about the quality of the data. But both those assumptions are now being disproved.

“What we call training data is really human creative output.

Stable Audio provided one source of counter-evidence. The system’s underlying model was trained on licensed music in partnership with the rights holders. The resulting outputs have earned applause. Last month, Time named Stable Audio one of the best inventions of 2023.

“For a couple of months, it was the state-of-the-art in music generation — and it was trained on music that we’d licence,” Newton-Rex says. “To me, that showed that it can be done.”

Indeed, there’s now a growing list of companies showing that it can be done. One is Adobe, which recently released a generative machine-learning model called Firefly. The system is trained on images from Creative Commons, Wikimedia, and Flickr Commons, as well as 300 million pictures and videos in Adobe Stock and the public domain.

As this data is provided with permission, it’s safe for commercial use. Adobe also stressed that creators whose work is used will qualify for payments.

A collage of images generated by Adobe Firefly
The pictures in this collage were generated by Adobe Firefly, which was trained on licensed images. Credit: Adobe

Another alternative model comes from Getty Images. In September, the company launched Generative AI by Getty Images, which is trained solely on the platform’s enormous library. Craig Peters, the firm’s CEO, said the tool addresses “commercial needs while respecting the intellectual property of creators.”

Nvidia has also developed GenAI in partnership with copyright holders. The tech giant’s Picasso service was trained on images licensed from Getty Images, Shutterstock, and Adobe. Nvidia said it plans to pay royalties.

These approaches won’t work for everyone. As mega-corps with deep content pools, the companies behind them have resources that few businesses can match. Yet startups are showing that licensing can also be done on a budget.

GenAI for the people

Bria AI has provided one example. The company has developed a new commercial open-source model for high-quality image generation. All the training is done on licenced datasets, which were created in collaboration with leading stock photo agencies and artists. A revenue-sharing model provides creators and rights-holding with compensation for their contribution

It’s a similar approach to the one Newton-Rex used at Stable Audio — but it’s not the only one.

Companies can also provide upfront payments to artists, create joint ventures that give rights holders equity in the business, or use content with a Creative Commons license, which can be freely re-used without explicit permission. GenAI firms may dismiss these efforts, but they have ulterior motives. 

“It’s in the AI industry’s interest to make people think that only the big players can do this — but it’s not true,” Newton-Rex says.

“You might need to get a little inventive. You certainly have to do some negotiations and be willing to spend the time. But ultimately, what we call training data — and what is really human creative output — is a resource for tech companies. They need to work to get that in the same way they need to work to get any resource.”

If they’re willing to do that, GenAI can work in harmony with human artists. And hopefully, let all of us enjoy the creativity unleashed by them both.

He quit a GenAI leader in protest. Now he wants to create fairer systems for artists Read More »

uk’s-quantum-plans-could-‘unlock-billions-—-and-a-geopolitical-advantage’

UK’s quantum plans could ‘unlock billions — and a geopolitical advantage’

Deep tech, Government and policy, Investors and funding, Next Featured, Startups and technology / /

The UK’s new quantum computing missions have been praised as “visionary” and “exciting” plans that can reap financial and geopolitical benefits.

The five long-term moonshots were launched today by the British government.

The first aims to build quantum computers that can run 1 trillion operations by 2035. Another with a deadline for that year is deploying the world’s most advanced quantum network at scale. This initiative aims to pioneer the future quantum internet.

Three other projects have an earlier target date of 2030.

One plans to provide quantum sensing-enabled solutions to every local National Health Service organisation, for use in early diagnosis and treatment of chronic illnesses.

The second intends to equip aircraft with quantum navigation systems. The third aims to unlock new situational awareness with mobile, networked quantum sensors. This would be integrated into critical infrastructure.

Startups and investors welcomed the ambitious plans.

“The missions are bold and contain some genuinely exciting and visionary thinking,” said Stuart Woods, COO of Quantum Exponential, a VC fund and accelerator for the sector.

“The plan to implement quantum technology wide scale in the NHS to save money is particularly welcome and our expertise in medical quantum sensing is already world-class — this could greatly accelerate point-of-care diagnostics.”

Analysts have also pointed to the economic benefits. According to McKinsey, quantum computing could create $1.3 trillion ($1.2 trillion) in value by 2035. To maximise its share of that money, the British government is taking a targeted approach.

“The UK can’t outspend the United States, China or the European Union,” Steve Brierley, the CEO of quantum startup Riverlane, told TNW.

“As a nation, we’re unlikely to even outspend some of the US and China’s individual technology giants. But with a focused approach as outlined today, the UK quantum computing industry can work to solve the scaling problem for all quantum computers globally.”

The politics of quantum computing

Not everyone is a fan of the plans. Critics argue that governments should minimise their direct involvement in technological development. Instead, they want politicians to focus on fostering the broader investment environment, by providing tax incentives and improving infrastructure.

Brierley would like both forms of support. He points to the examples set in the US, where the government has built NASA for aerospace advances, IARAP for intelligence technologies, DARPA for defence tech, and national labs for supercomputing.

The impact of these bodies has spread far beyond their founding missions. They’ve introduced innovations ranging from GPS and smartphone cameras to a little something called “the internet.”

“Emerging technologies with enormous potential often first need public seed investment to take it from development to commercial stages,” Brierley said. “If done right, early government investment can unlock industries worth billions in the long-term as well as geopolitical advantage.”

That investment, however, remains a concern. Funding for the new missions will reportedly come from the £2.5 billion (€2.86bn) that was previously committed to a 10-year national quantum strategy. Woods believes the ambitious missions will need a bigger cash injection.

“While it’s encouraging to see a commitment from the government across the spectrum of quantum technologies, it is simply not practical for the UK to strive for ‘world-leading’ status in such a range of deep technologies with a £2.5bn, inadequately defined national quantum strategy,” he said.

UK’s quantum plans could ‘unlock billions — and a geopolitical advantage’ Read More »

ai-hallucinations-pose-‘direct-threat’-to-science,-oxford-study-warns

AI hallucinations pose ‘direct threat’ to science, Oxford study warns

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Large Language Models (LLMs) — such as those used in chatbots — have an alarming tendency to hallucinate. That is, to generate false content that they present as accurate. These AI hallucinations pose, among other risks, a direct threat to science and scientific truth, researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute warn.

According to their paper, published in Nature Human Behaviour, “LLMs are designed to produce helpful and convincing responses without any overriding guarantees regarding their accuracy or alignment with fact.”

LLMs are currently treated as knowledge sources and generate information in response to questions or prompts. But the data they’re trained on isn’t necessarily factually correct. One reason behind this is that these models often use online sources, which can contain false statements, opinions, and inaccurate information.

“People using LLMs often anthropomorphise the technology, where they trust it as a human-like information source,” explained Professor Brent Mittelstadt, co-author of the paper.

“This is, in part, due to the design of LLMs as helpful, human-sounding agents that converse with users and answer seemingly any question with confident sounding, well-written text. The result of this is that users can easily be convinced that responses are accurate even when they have no basis in fact or present a biased or partial version of the truth.”

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When it comes to science and education, information accuracy is of vital importance and the researchers urge the scientific community to use LLMs as “zero-shot translators.” This means that users should provide the model with the appropriate data and ask to transform it into a conclusion or code, for instance — instead of relying on the model itself as a source of knowledge.

This way it becomes easier to check that the output is factually correct and in line with the provided input.

LLMs will “undoubtedly” assist with scientific workflows, according to the Oxford professors. But it’s crucial for the community to use them responsibly and maintain clear expectations on how they can actually contribute.

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