The UK has become the first country in the world to approve CRISPR gene-editing therapy. The landmark biotech decision involves the treatment of two specific blood dieseases, but also opens the door for the use of the technology in treating many other genetic disorders.
Regulators approved the use of CRISPR for the treatment of inherited diseases sickle-cell anaemia and β-thalassaemia on Thursday. The former affects the shape of red blood cells of 20 million people worldwide and can cause debilitating pain.
People with the latter need to receive regular blood transfusions to counteract a reduced production of haemoglobin, which in turn reduces levels of oxygen in the body. About 80 to 90 million people carry some version of β-thalassaemia worldwide.
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. These are repetitive DNA sequences in the genomes of organisms such as bacteria. The bacteria transcribe these double stranded DNA elements to single-stranded RNA upon a viral infection. This then guides what is called a nuclease — a protein that “cuts” DNA — to the viral DNA to protect the bacteria. CRISPR therapy is like precise genetic surgery. Doctors can perform it inside the body by injecting a guide RNA system that matches what is going wrong in the DNA code. This system carries the protein that acts like scissors (Cas9) and cuts out the faulty bit of code. The cell can then rewrite the code as it fixes the cut. The “surgery” can also happen outside of the body, where doctors edit the cells first and then put them back.
Company founded by Nobel Prize winner
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The approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) follows promising results from a clinical trial developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston, Massachusetts, and CRISPR Therapeutics in Zug, Switzerland. CRISPR Therapeutics was co-founded by Emanuelle Charpentier, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020 for repurposing CRISPR into the tool for gene editing.
The specific product from the trials is Casgevy. While the treatment itself is a one-off, patients may need to spend some time in the hospital for related procedures, such as preparing the bone marrow to receive the edited cells. “Patients may need to spend at least a month in a hospital facility while the treated cells take up residence in the bone marrow and start to make red blood cells with the stable form of haemoglobin,” the MHRA said in a statement.
The companies behind Casgevy have yet to disclose the price of the therapy. However, it will most likely be somewhere between $1mn and $2mn, something that will naturally limit accessibility. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is reportedly also reviewing the treatment for both diseases.
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A new AI model from Google DeepMind is the world’s most accurate 10-day global weather forecasting system, according to the London-based lab.
Named GraphCast, the model promises medium-range weather forecasts of “unprecedented accuracy.” In a study published today, GraphCast was shown to be more precise and faster than the industry gold standard for weather simulation, the High-Resolution Forecast (HRES).
The system also predicted extreme weather further into the future than was previously possible.
These insights were analysed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), an intergovernmental organisation that produces the HRES.
A live version of GraphCast was deployed on the ECMWF website. In September, the system accurately predicted around nine days in advance that Hurricane Lee would make landfall in Nova Scotia.
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In contrast, traditional forecasting methods only spotlighted Nova Scotia about six days beforehand. They also provided less consistent predictions of the time and location of landfall.
Intriguingly, GraphCast can identify dangerous weather events without being trained to find them. After integrating a simple cyclone tracker, the model predicted cyclone movements more accurately than the HRES method.
Such data could save lives and livelihoods. As the climate becomes more extreme and unpredictable, fast and accurate forecasts will provide increasingly vital insights for disaster planning.
Matthew Chantry, a machine learning coordinator at the ECMWF, believes his industry has reached an inflection point.
“There’s probably more work to be done to create reliable operational products, but this is likely the beginning of a revolution,” Chantry said at a press briefing.
Meteorological organisations, he added, had previously expected AI to be most useful when merged with physics. But recent breakthroughs show that machine learning can also directly forecast the weather.
How GraphCast works
Conventional weather forecasts are based on intricate physics equations. These are then adapted into algorithms that run on supercomputers.
The process can be painstaking. It also requires specialist knowledge and vast computing resources.
GraphCast harnesses a different technique. The model combines machine learning with Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), an architecture that’s adept at processing spatially structured data.
To learn the causes and effects that determine weather changes, the system was trained on decades of weather information.
Traditional approaches are also incorporated. The ECMWF supplied GraphCast with training data from around 40 years of weather reanalysis, which encompassed monitoring from satellites, radars and weather stations.
When there are gaps in the observations, physics-based prediction methods fill them in. The result is a detailed history of global weather. GraphCast uses these lessons from the past to predict the future.
GraphCast makes predictions at a spatial resolution of 0.25-degrees latitude/longitude.
To put that into perspective, imagine the Earth divided into a million grid points. At each point, the model predicts five Earth-surface variable and six atmospheric variables. Together, they cover the planet’s entire atmosphere in 3D over 37 levels.
The variables encompass temperature, wind, humidity, precipitation, and sea-level pressure. They also incorporate geopotential — the gravitational potential energy of a unit mass, at a particular location, relative to mean sea level.
In tests, the results were impressive. GraphCast significantly outperformed the most accurate operational deterministic systems on 90% of 1,380 test targets.
The disparity was even starker in the troposphere — the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere and the location of most weather phenomena. In this region, GraphCast outperformed HRES on 99.7% of the test variables for future weather.
GraphCast is also highly efficient. A 10-day forecast takes under a minute to complete on a single Google TPU v4 machine.
A conventional approach, by comparison, can take hours of computation in a supercomputer with hundreds of machines.
AI’s future in weather forecasting
Despite the promising early results, GraphCast could still benefit from further refinement. In the cyclone predictions, for instance, the model proved accurate at tracking movements, but less effective at measuring intensity.
Gentry is keen to see how much this can improve.
“At the moment, that’s an area where GraphCast and machine learning models still lag a little bit behind physical models… I’m hopeful that this can be an area for further improvement, but this shows that it’s still a nascent technology,” he said.
Those improvements could now come from anywhere, because DeepMind has open-sourced the model code. Global organisations and individuals alike can now experiment with GraphCast and add their own improvements.
The potential applications are, ironically, unpredictable. The forecasts could, for instance, inform renewable energy production and air traffic routing. But they could also be applied to tasks that haven’t even been imagined.
“There’s a lot of downstream use cases for weather forecasts,” said Peter Battaglia, Google DeepMind’s research director. “And we’re not aware of all of those.”
Climate tech is receiving a proportionally larger share of what is, undeniably, a muted venture capital investment environment. VC and private equity investment in the sector has, thus far in 2023, fallen by 40% — just as the evidence of the need for more money for potentially planet-saving technology is becoming increasingly insurmountable.
However, the total amount for all venture and equity investment was down 50.2% year-over-year. So, while climate tech is far from escaping the current economic downturn unscathed, it is faring… not as horribly as other tech segments.
Still, the news earlier this autumn that leading Dutch climate tech VC SET Ventures had raised €200mn for its fourth fund — doubling the size of its previous one — was particularly uplifting. The fund will invest in 20 to 25 European companies that are innovating the energy transition.
TNW sat down for a conversation with SET Ventures’ Managing Partner, Anton Arts, to see what it takes to be a venture capitalist in climate tech, the enormous economic opportunities arising from our move toward net-zero, and how startups garner favour in an increasingly difficult investment landscape.
“It’s a bit of a funnel,” Arts explains when discussing the process of selecting which companies to back among an avalanche of pitches. “The first thing we ask is: does this fit into our scope?”
Does it move the impact needle, and is there a market opportunity?
SET has a clear idea about what it wants to invest in — digital technologies that advance a carbon free energy system. “So a major question that we try to answer whenever a proposal comes to us is, how does this affect the energy system of the future?”
Arts adds that this is a much more narrow focus than what someone thinking about climate tech in a more generic way would have. However, as energy is linked — directly or indirectly — to 72% of global emissions, trying to address those emissions is a “more than large enough” problem: “We also ask ourselves, does this really move the needle in terms of impact?”
“The second area that we then focus on is really some of the same questions that all VCs try to answer. Do we think this is a fantastic founder team? Is there a market opportunity that is large enough? Can you truly develop a differentiated and unique offering in that market? And, ultimately, is it going to be financially rewarding to take on that opportunity?”
Flight to quality increases VC competition
After having found an exciting investment opportunity, the process then becomes somewhat of a two-way street. Sure, there is less capital up for grabs as the funding optimism of the past few years has waned (unless you are in generative AI, that is) — but the startups that meet the more stringent criteria can instead have their pick among suitors.
“In the current market, there is also a flight to quality, which means that the bar for what is a great company is raised. But for those companies that meet the bar, there is intense competition between investors in order to fund that opportunity,” Arts states, adding that there is also a founder who has to make a decision which investors to go with.
Additionally, Arts says it is a healthy market dynamic, and one that is influenced to a great deal by the fact that climate tech has moved from a relative niche from an investment perspective, to much more of a mainstream market.
Solving problems — why this, why now?
Another question that always comes up, Arts says, is “what problem is this solving? Why this, but also, why now? Because many of these problems are not new. What has changed in the past few years that now there is a solution to an existing problem that wasn’t there before? Maybe it is the technology, maybe it is the people, etcetera.”
And finally, Arts says, as a VC, you have to “skate to where the puck is going,” meaning you have to be willing to make a bet on something that the rest of the world hasn’t seen yet. Or, as he puts it — “what do you want me to believe that other people aren’t believing yet?”
When thinking about investing with environmental or social impact as a criteria, the question inevitably arises as to whether there are compromises in terms of return on investment versus doing a good thing for the planet. Arts would argue, perhaps unsurprisingly, that not necessarily — and definitely not when it comes to energy.
“We think that this transition to the energy system of the future is really a generational opportunity in magnitude,” he states.
Clean technologies will outgrow oil in revenue
Indeed, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a new energy economy is emerging, pushed forward by policy action, technology innovation, and the increasing urgency of the need to tackle climate change. This, the IEA says, provides a “huge market opportunity” for clean technologies.
The agency estimates that, if the world gets on track for net-zero emissions by mid-century, the annual market opportunity for wind turbines, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, electrolysers, and fuel cells will grow tenfold to $1.2 trillion by 2050. That means that those five segments collectively would be larger than today’s oil industry and its associated revenues.
And that’s “just” the hardware stuff. The new energy economy will also require digital tools to manage the complex interactions and relationships between things like electricity, fuels, and storage markets. Managing platforms and data will become increasingly important parts of energy efficiency and clean energy innovation.
“What people might need to be reminded of is that you can’t always predict timelines. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be longer. Sometimes you see changes happening very quickly. And for us as investors, we think that if you look at the past, then, of course, we’ve seen a lot of success in software businesses, and, for instance, business-to-consumer internet businesses.
“We think the opportunity of the next decade is really shifting to climate tech as a category, and we are absolutely convinced that we will see similar types of return expectations, as we’ve seen in the tech business in the past.”
One of the reasons for that, Arts says, is that more and more talent is moving into climate tech, having perhaps previously been successful in other industries and looking to make more of a difference. And, a chain is starting to emerge all the way from early stage investment to very large growth equity funds. SET invests across Europe at the Series A stage, but with the ability to keep supporting portfolio companies through multiple rounds of financing.
From physical assets to digital solutions
Essentially, SET Ventures believes in three things: that the world is changing very fast, and that the energy transition is the biggest trend driving markets in the next decades; that there is too much emphasis on miracle technologies that exist only in the lab and not enough on the business models and applications that will scale what’s right in front of us; and, from a systems perspective, value migration will move from only physical assets, to the collection of digital solutions that together form the energy system.
Among the startups and scaleups in SET’s portfolio are Dutch companies Sensorfact and Energyworx. The former helps clients reduce industrial energy waste through plug and play hardware, smart software, and dedicated consultants. Founded in 2016, Sensorfact has already scaled to 1,300+ customers in over 40 countries and identified more than 112+ GWh of energy savings. Energyworx is a SaaS provider for energy providers to ingest and manage data across the entire energy chain.
Another example of SET’s investment strategy is Germany’s Instagrid. The company has built a 20kg 230V portable power system for professionals to work off-grid. On a full charge (2.5 hours), an industrial vacuum cleaner can run for 105 minutes, you can brew 1,200+ cups of professional catering espressos, and high quality projectors can run on full brightness for five hours.
SET’s latest fund is backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF), Triodos Energy Transition Europe Fund, a.s.r., and Amsterdam-based Carbon Equity.
A UK-based startup is looking to breathe new life into a century-old technology that could power tropical island nations with virtually limitless, consistent, renewable energy.
Known as ocean thermal energy conversion or ‘OTEC,’ the technology was first invented in 1881 by French physicistJacques Arsene d’Arsonval. He discovered that the temperature difference between sun-warmed surface water and the cold depths of the ocean could be harnessed to generate electricity.
OTEC systems transfer heat from warm surface waters to evaporate a low-boiling point fluid like ammonia, creating steam that drives a turbine to produce electricity. As the vapour cools and condenses in contact with cold seawater pumped from the ocean’s depths, it completes the energy cycle.
How it works:
In theory, OTEC has the potential to produce at least 2,000GW globally, rivalling the combined capacity of all the world’s coal power plants. And unlike many renewables, it is a baseload source of power, which means it can run 24/7 with no fluctuation in output.
However, technological barriers, a lack of funding, and the meteoric rise of cheaper forms of renewable energy have largely pushed OTEC to the wayside. Globally, only two small demonstration plants are currently feeding energy to the grid — a 100kW one in Hawaii and another similarly-sized facility in Japan. That’s only enough energy for a hundred or so households.
Pipe problems
You see, for OTEC to work it requires a temperature difference between hot and cold water of around 20 degrees Celsius. This can only be found in the tropics, which is not a problem in itself.
The real caveat is that an OTEC plant needs a constant supply of vast quantities of cold water from around 1,000m beneath the surface to operate efficiently. This means building a monumentally huge, storm-proof metal pipe of the kind that is, simply put, bloody expensive. Just to create a modest 1MW plant, the pipe alone could cost between $60mn and $80mn. For comparison, the cost of setting up an equivalent solar farm ranges between $800,000 to $1.36mn.
Yet, one startup based out of the UK remains undeterred by these seemingly insurmountable cost barriers. For aptly named Global OTEC, the time has come for an ocean energy renaissance.
The company is developing a commercial-scale OTEC offshore rig that is specifically aimed at weaning small island nations off diesel fuel and onto clean, baseload energy. Named Dominique, the structure could generate 1.5MW once operational. The barge is set to be installed off the coast of the African archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe in 2025.
Learning from past mistakes
Global OTEC chose a floating barge design because onshore OTEC plants “require several multi-kilometre pipes fixed to the seabed” to facilitate the acquisition and safe discharge of water. Offshore rigs on the other hand just require one large cold-water pipe travelling straight down into the ocean’s depths — cutting costs.
“History is an important teacher, and we are committed to learning from it,” said Grech. “Failure of previous OTEC projects highlights where we should exercise caution,” he said. In June, the company gained a key design certification for the structure’s cold-pipe technology, an important step towards viability.
Tropical islands are largely dependent on imported fossil fuels, but with their wealth of sunshine, wind, and waves have huge renewable energy potential. For Grech, ocean thermal energy tech is ideally suited to supplying these island nations with baseload energy, alongside cheaper, but more intermittent renewables like wind and solar.
While Global OTEC is confident of its approach, the technology is still largely unproven on this scale. And as of the time of writing it remains uncertain as to where exactly the money for the Dominique installation will come from. Yet, with climate change accelerating — and island nations being among the most vulnerable to its impacts — attempting to harness the ocean’s heat on a commercial scale is surely, at the very least, worth a shot.
Britain’s biggest chip plant has been bought by US semiconductor firm Vishay for $177mn.
The Newport Wafer Fab in Wales was previously owned by Nexperia, which acquired the business in 2021. Nexperia is headquartered in the Netherlands, but the company is a subsidiary of China’s Wingtech. This ownership structure attracted intervention from UK lawmakers.
Last year, the British government ordered Nexperia to sell the majority of its stake in Newport Wafer Fab. The move was explained as an attempt to “mitigate the risk to national security.”
The end result is a new owner for the factory, which makes semiconductors for millions of products, from household equipment to smartphones. The chips are particularly prominent in the automotive sector.
Announcing the acquisition, Vishay highlighted the potential applications — and the political concerns.
“For Vishay, acquiring Newport Wafer Fab brings together our capacity expansion plans for our customers in automotive and industrial end markets as well as the UK’s strategic goal of improved supply chain resilience,” Joel Smejkal, the company’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
Nexperia, meanwhile, described the deal as the most viable option available. The company welcomed Vishay’s commitment to develop the 28-acre site, but criticised the British government’s actions.
“Nexperia would have preferred to continue the long-term strategy it implemented when it acquired the investment-starved fab in 2021 and provided for massive investments in equipment and personnel,” said Toni Versluijs, country manager for Nexperia UK.
“However, these investment plans have been cut short by the unexpected and wrongful divestment order made by the UK Government in November 2022.”
When you hear “the future of food,” what comes to mind? Star Trek-like food synthesisers, pills to replace your lunch, lab-grown meat, and insects for protein? Yes, the future of food might contain those things. However, it will also be a lot less… strange.
That is according to Beatriz Jacoste Lozano, the director of the KM ZERO Food Innovation Hub. TNW caught up with her during last week’s Valencia Digital Summit, to learn more about the crucial work of transforming the way we source our food, while still catering to the emotional connection we have to what we eat.
“If we want a product to work in the market, it needs to be aligned with cultural identity,” Jacoste Lozano says. “Food is something very close to our identity, our memories, our desires. So it has to also be delicious, right, and that is our first requirement for a novel food. That being said, there is a lot that needs to change — our food system is broken.”
How our food systems are failing
And a broken system it is indeed. The food industry is largely dominated by multinational corporations that encourage unsustainable and unhealthy patterns of production and consumption. It is also the primary driver of biodiversity loss on the planet. In fact, agriculture alone is the identified threat to 24,000 of the 28,000 (86%) species at risk of extinction.
It is also responsible for 30% of global carbon dioxide emissions, and 80% of global deforestation is a result of agricultural expansion. And still, the system has not managed to eradicate hunger and starvation. “Our food system is also failing when it comes to providing nourishment to people,” Jacoste Lozano states. “900 million people are still hungry.”
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By 2050, it faces the enormous task of having to feed 9.8 billion people. Furthermore, diet-related diseases are one of the top three causes of death worldwide, putting public healthcare systems under enormous pressure, and at great cost to society.
Reforming the way we produce and consume food is absolutely essential for the health of the planet — and humanity.
Not all food tech is high tech
KM ZERO is looking to facilitate and accelerate that change through open innovation and investment. The hub analyses the needs of the food industry, which mainly take the form of sustainability challenges. These can be related to packaging, water usage, carbon emissions, soil quality, etc. But it doesn’t stop there, and it’s not all high tech.
“We think sustainability is not enough — we are now talking about regeneration and restoration,” Jacoste Lozano says. “We don’t believe all innovation has to be digital and technological, we also believe in looking back at regenerative practices.”
Essentially, what KM ZERO does is scout for solutions from startups that are putting forward novel materials and products, and connect them with investors, the food industry, and retailers so that they can scale their ideas.
“We have 20 associated VCs that specialise in food — so they are smart money. And together, they have got more than €3,000,000,000 to invest in food tech. So we believe we can be a catalyser and speed up the change that is needed.”
Combating food waste by changing perceptions
One of the reasons we have lost our way when it comes to nutrition is how removed we have become from how we source our food. A lack of understanding of and connection to what it takes to produce it also contributes to the massive amounts of food wasted. Every year, around one-third of all food goes to waste.
Remember the nearly 1 million people still going hungry? Or the 30% of greenhouse gas emissions arising from food production? That means that 10% of all global emissions come from food that never reaches anyone’s stomach.
KM ZERO also works with education. Through its initiative Gastro Genius Lab, the organisation gives kids the chance to change their relationship to food, and perhaps learn to love a vegetable or two in the process. “We want to give children a chance to reflect on these challenges. But also, when cooking, they are more willing to eat, for example, broccoli, or other foods they usually don’t love,” Jacoste Lozano explains. “So that also changes the perception. And in terms of waste — if you put a lot of effort into something or if you realise that someone has put in effort, you tend to shift your behaviour.”
One example of a startup looking to do its bit to reduce food waste is London-based Mimica. The company has developed a temperature-sensitive tag to put on food packaging to help discern when a product has actually gone bad, as opposed to relying on an often overly conservative best-before date. When the food starts to go bad, the sticker, called Bump, will go from a smooth to a bumpy texture.
Another company is Trazable, which is putting blockchain technology to good use with software that digitalises food supply traceability records. Contaminated food can thus be traced back to its source within seconds, speeding up response times to alerts, and lets suppliers control the lifecycle of a product in-house or through the whole farm-to-fork value chain.
New protein
Many startups look to workdirectly with the food itself, such as Mimic Seafood and MOA Foodtech. The latter combines biotechnology and AI to transform by-products of the agri-food industry through fermentation into a “next-generation protein” containing all nine essential amino acids. This powder can then be added to almost any product to enhance nutritional value.
While many meat substitutes have failed to capitalise on the initial enthusiasm, often due to lack of nutrition or disappointing textures, new technologies are showing promise in converting more plant-based sceptic parts of the population.
“In the area of new proteins, we are seeing how we can use mycelium or algae and transform it through high-precision fermentation to make high quality protein that tastes good and that has the texture that makes products that people will actually want to eat,” Jacoste Lozano says.
These technologies, using, for instance, bioreactors, have long been deployed in the pharmaceutical industry. Now it is a matter of bringing them to the right level of scale so that the economics behind them makes sense for the food industry. And to get the right investors who understand that things might take a little longer than their usual exit strategy would dictate.
Invisible food tech innovation
Meanwhile, there is also a lot of innovation happening in the ecosystem around food production. For instance, in September this year, 40% of Spain was under drought alert or in “drought emergency.” This causes a decrease in production of foods such as grains and tomatoes.
“This means we need to import much of that food, and this means the price will rise and this will affect food access,” Jacoste Lozano says. “So, we are looking, for example, into regenerative agriculture. Because soil that is healthy needs much less water. In fact, we can reduce water demand by 75% if the soil is healthy. So we need these very ‘unsexy’ innovations as well.”
Another area ripe for disruption is the use of plastic. The fact that we all consume one credit card worth of microplastics in a week is a particularly sobering detail from our conversation. Another London-based startup, Notpla, is making seaweed-based packages for food, drinks, and care products that are entirely compostable.
“I think the press many times doesn’t do a very good job in speaking about the future of food in more natural terms, because they highlight what leads to clicks, right?” Jacoste Lozano states. “So normally, you find that the future food is going to be eating insects, so people are taken aback. That’s why we really emphasise that the future of food does not have to be strange. And that we are going to see a lot of invisible innovation.”
Europe’s first operational continental spaceport has officially opened in a major boost for Germany’s Isar Aerospace — which is hastily preparing for its maiden flight from the site next year.
The Andøya Spaceport, located on the remote island of Andøya in Norway’s northwest, was officially opened by Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon this week. Once fully constructed, the spaceport will host several launch pads. Isar Aerospace has exclusive access to the first launch site, where it will test its two-stage rocket Spectrum.
If the tests prove successful, the company aims to carry out commercial operations at the spaceport in order to meet the growing demand for transporting small- and medium-sized satellites into space. Isar looks to launch up to 15 missions per year from Andoya, at a cost of €10-12mn per flight.
“Over the last five years, we have built a rocket that will help to solve the most crucial bottleneck in the European space industry – sovereign and competitive access to space,” said Daniel Metzler, CEO and co-founder of Isar Aerospace.
Currently, Europe lacks independent access to space satellites, following the decommissioning of Ariane 5 earlier this year, and delays to the launch of its successor Ariane 6. Faced with no local alternatives, the European Space Agency (ESA) inked a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX last month for the delivery of four navigation and communications satellites into orbit next year.
While the ESA doesn’t intend to rely on SpaceX beyond this launch, it may have no other option unless Europe’s emerging new space startups reach commercial viability soon. At present, two German startups, Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg, show the most promise.
Founded in 2018 as a spin-off from Technical University Munich, Isar Aerospace has secured €310mn to date, making it Europe’s most well-funded private space company. Rocket Factory Augsburg, while having raised only a tenth of that of its competitor, has secured exclusive access to the only other potential launch site in Europe — SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland’s Shetland Islands. Both startups planned to launch this year but have faced several delays. Both have now set their sights on 2024.
Currently under construction, SaxaVord aims to host launches from next year, but, unlike Andøya, has yet to secure its spaceport license. As Europe’s new space race heats up, the question remains: who will reach orbit first, Isar Aerospace from Andøya Spaceport or Rocket Factory Augsburg from SaxaVord Spaceport?
VPNs have become popular means of protecting personal data, but there’s a big vulnerability in their defences: the service provider.
These companies can technically gain access to all your unencrypted traffic. Consequently, they can see all the data on your browsing habits.
This frailty has sparked interest in decentralised VPNs. Instead of funnelling all user data through a single server, they disperse the traffic across a network run by multiple users. In theory, this makes the shield more difficult to breach, because there’s no central authority controlling the service.
It’s a theory that Nym Technologies wants to prove true. The Swiss startup today announced that it will launch a new decentralised (dVPN) in the first quarter of next year. Named NymVPN, the service promises to provide an “unparalleled” level of privacy and security.
At the core of the system is a so-called “network of nodes.” A collection of hundreds of gateways, this obfuscates the flow of data by transmitting internet traffic through entry and exit points.
The nodes are run by independent individuals in various countries. Each of these operators routs a user’s internet traffic through various stages of the information pathway, known as hops. According to Nym, this reduces the risk of data breaches, surveillance, identity theft, and censorship.
“We believe that privacy is a fundamental right, and our vision has always been to empower individuals to take full control over their online security,” said Harry Halpin, Nym’s CEO and co-founder. “The NymVPN offers just this.”
Risks of centralisation
The principal appeal of dVPNs is preventing access to unencrypted traffic. However, even encrypted traffic can’t fully conceal metadata, which can expose the sites you visit and the apps you use.
“Don’t just take our word for it,” Jaya Klara Brekke, Chief Strategy Officer at Nym, told TNW. “As former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker said: ‘Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata, you don’t really need content’.”
Users of centralised VPNs, therefore, must place great faith in the provider. If a centralised VPN is asked to hand over data to third parties, the trust could be severely tested.
The internet internet may come to look like a very different place.
Even ostensibly private centralised VPNs could turn over information to authorities. NordVPN, for instance, has acknowledged that it complies with law enforcement data requests. Free VPNs, meanwhile, can sell user browsing habits and data to anyone they like.
“It’s better to eliminate the risk of holding unnecessary data at all,” Brekke said. “This is what actual decentralisation offers.”
Nym’s approach
In the NymVPN app, the decentralisation comes in two different levels.
The first is VPN mode, which is better for streaming, browsing, and other use cases that require high performance but only moderate privacy. Data is transmitted through two hops, each of which is hosted by an independent node operator. The operators are rewarded with NYM tokens, which are used to incentivise good governance.
For extra protection, the app has a mixnet option. This mode is designed for messaging, sensitive file sharing, transactions, and other use cases that require high levels of privacy but only mid-range performance. Data is divided into small, identically-sized packets that are encrypted with a novel system called Sphinx. It travels through five ‘hops’ in the network before reaching its destination.
To further obscure communications, Nym generates fake dummy traffic, which is indistinguishable from the real thing.
“Even in the presence of global network observers or advanced machine learning attacks, this mode ensures your online activities remain confidential and shielded from prying eyes,” Brekke said.
“Thus, it surpasses the privacy properties of traditional VPNs and Tor and is the fastest, most secure mixnet available today, keeping your online activities truly private.”
The VPN market
A dVPN remains a specialist product, but Nym argues that it has mainstream potential. The company is initially targeting four different user groups. The first is privacy enthusiasts, who are typically interested in emerging technologies.
Once that establishes a solid user base, Nym will target journalists, activists, and whistleblowers. B2B and B2G clients are also “definitely on the radar,” according to Brekke. “We’ve received interest,” she said.
In time, Brekke expects the general public to also become customers. As evidence, she can point to the sector’s rapid growth. Industry researchers predict that the global VPN market alone will be worth $358bn by 2032. The value of the worldwide data privacy market, meanwhile, is projected to reach $30bn by 2030.
Investors have also made bullish predictions. In 2020, Fred Wilson, a prominent venture capitalist, warned that mass surveillance by both governments and corporations “will become normal and expected this decade.” This, Wilson continued, will spark a market boom.
“The biggest consumer technology successes of this decade will be in the area of privacy,” he concluded.
Unsurprisingly, it’s a view that Nym welcomes.
“With the shifting sands of censorship and companies threatening to pull their services in the wake of regulations like the Online Safety Bill, it may come to pass that the internet looks like a very different place indeed,” Brekke said.
“In this scenario, a VPN would be an essential part of anyone’s toolkit in order to access the internet as we are used to.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has unveiled a dedicated AI advisory body with a mandate to harness the technology’s power for good and mitigate its risks through international collaboration and governance.
“AI could power extraordinary progress for humanity,” Guterres said, pointing to a plethora of benefits — from health and education to the digitalisation of developing economies. In addition, “it could supercharge climate action and efforts to achieve the [UN’s] 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030,” he added.
However, Guterres cautioned that AI expertise is currently “concentrated in a handful of companies and countries.” This could heighten global inequalities, increase the spread of disinformation and bias, enable surveillance and invasion of privacy — and, overall, lead to the violation of human rights.
“Without entering into a host of doomsday scenarios, it is already clear that the malicious use of AI could undermine trust in institutions, weaken social cohesion, and threaten democracy itself,” noted the Secretary General. “For all these reasons, I have called for a global, multidisciplinary, multistakeholder conversation on the governance of AI so that its benefits to humanity — all of humanity — are maximised, and the risks contained are diminished.”
By the end of this year, UN’s AI advisory body will make preliminary recommendations for three specific areas. These cover international governance of artificial intelligence; a shared understanding of risks and challenges; and key opportunities and enablers for the organisation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
These recommendations will be used for the preparation of the UN’s Summit for the Future in 2024, and will specifically form part of the proposed Global Digital Compact. The initiative aims to outline shared principles for “an open, free, and secure digital future” for all humanity.
The 39-member body hails from a wide range of countries and sectors, such as private companies, academia, governments, and civil society organisations.
Similar global initiatives to ensure the responsible use of artificial intelligence include the G7 AI code of conduct and the upcoming AI Safety Summit in London.
Around 250 kilometres off the north coast of Scotland, theShetland isle of Unst undergoing a dramatic renovation.
On a peninsula flanked by giant cliffs and open ocean, builders are constructing a spaceport. They call the project SaxaVord. They say it could host the first-ever vertical rocket launches from Western Europe.
It’s a bold objective that welcomes auspicious signs. One was discovered just this summer; another was already known when the team laid their founding stone.
“It’s going from the Bronze Age to the Space Age.
Over 1,000 years ago, the locals say, Unst became the first footfall of the Vikings in the North Atlantic. Staff at SaxaVord would joke that they were exchanging longships for spaceships. They hoped to inherit the Norse spirit of exploration.
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The second harbinger revealed an even older heritage. While excavating the site, workers unearthed an ancient burial ground. The discovery suggests the site has over 4,000 years of human activity — three millennia longer than the Viking heritage. SaxaVord sensed another good omen — and a cute new slogan.
“It’s going from the Bronze Age to the Space Age. That’s how we see it,” Scott Hammond, the spaceport’s operations director and deputy CEO, tells TNW. “We also think there’s a stone circle, which would have been aligned with the stars. It just goes to show, doesn’t it? If it was a good location in the Bronze Age, it’s a good location now.”
It’s a good location for several reasons — but more on that later. It’s also a location with a powerful pull for Europe’s burgeoning spacetech sector.
Declining costs, rapid innovation, and growing commercialisation are democratising access to space. In 2022, an estimated 6,905 active satellites were orbiting Earth — 2,105 more than in the previous year.
Back on our home planet, the demand for rocket launch sites is rising. Dr Christoph Baumeister, who scouts spacectech investments for VC firm Possible Ventures, says the sector is searching for new locations for lift-offs.
“They definitely are looking for options because you don’t want to be dependent on one country or one company,” he says. “If you look at the spaceports that we have at the moment, they will not be enough to cater for the launches that are projected to happen and that are being planned.”
The surge in launches will also bring benefits down to Earth. From GPS and weather forecasting to solar cells and medical treatments, space delivers countless real-world benefits. As the number of spaceports increases, the breakthroughs could proliferate.
Hammond envisions SaxaVord at the forefront of the innovations. He compares the spaceport’s potential to the canals and railways built during the Industrial Revolution. Once that infrastructure was in place, a boom period began for scientific, technological, and economic development.
“That’s effectively what we are: an infrastructure,” he says. “We will be an enabler for everything else.”
At least, that’s the plan. But building a spaceport isn’t your average construction project. At SaxaVord, the plan comprised a unique series of steps.
1. Find a location
Western Europe has a dearth of suitable sites for spaceports. At present, the region’s only orbital launch complex is the Guiana Space Centre in, err, South America. On the mainland, a combination of densely populated nations, heavy air traffic, and limited easterly expanses of water have left few favourable locations for rocket launches.
Unst is a rare exception. The 120 km2 island is remotely located, surrounded by ocean, and home to only 600 people. It also has a low volume of both sea and air traffic.
In the north of Unst, satellite launchers can get a clear, unobstructed route into orbit. In addition, the isle already had decent transport links, which were built for the nearby North Sea oil and gas fields.
The SaxaVord team is also confident about the weather conditions. They estimate that 95% of days from spring to autumn will have three hours of suitable winds. During winter, that will drop to around one day in three.
The British government shares SaxaVord’s optimism. In 2017, the UK Space Agency identified the location as its preferred site for satellite launches.
“The site offering the maximum payload mass to orbit is SaxaVord in the Shetlands, from where direct launch is possible to both SSO [sun-synchronous orbits] and polar orbits,” the report reads.
It’s a compelling package for a spaceport.But Unst’s natural attractions also created problems.
2. Study your environment
The location and environment of the Shetland Islands make the peninsula a wildlife haven. The archipelago is home to nearly a million seabirds — the largest colony of its kind on this side of the Atlantic.
As the northernmost point of the British Isles and home of the Hermaness nature reserve, Unst has a particularly powerful appeal to migrating birds. A new spaceport could threaten their habitat.
It’s a repercussion that’s caused controversy for Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The company’s rocket launches in Texas were blamed for the decline of an endangered bird species, which threatened plans to expand the spaceport.
SaxaVord is obligated to mitigate such risks. To launch rockets into space, every British operator must be licensed by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Part of the licence application is an environmental assessment.
“We are the most real of all the UK’s spaceports.
In SaxaVord’s application, the spaceport proposed a maximum of 30 launches per year, some of which would occur during the bird breeding season.
RSPB Scotland, a conservation charity, had initially opposed the plans. But the organisation withdrew its objection when SaxaVord pledged to avoid launches between mid-May and the end of June — a key period for bird mating.
As part of the assessments, the spaceport took two years of bird counts on the land. The results not only guided the project, but also shone new light on another threat to avians: bird flu.
“Over on Hermanes, puffins are down by 90%,” says Hammond.
Unst’s environmental protections extend to human habitations. On the land of the spaceport lies a historical monument site — an old radar base for Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War.
It’s a landmark that was pivotal to the spaceport’s origins. SaxaVord is the brainchild of Frank and Debbie Strang, a married couple who met while serving at the RAF. After discovering the old military site was for sale, the couple bought the land with plans to develop an ecotourism business.
In 2008, they made a dramatic change of direction. When the UK Space Agency nominated Unst for a spaceport, the Strangs decided to bring the vision to reality. But their origin story had a troublesome subplot.
Conservationists were concerned about SaxAvord’s threat to the monument. In 2021, an environmental agency made a potentially fatal intervention.
Historic Environment Scotland said the spaceport would have an “extensive and adverse impact on the cultural significance” of the radar station. The organisation rejected the construction application. But after a year of negotiations and reassurances from SaxaVord, the objection was withdrawn.
As the regulatory barriers lifted, the development moved forward.
3. Design your spaceport
A spaceport is a uniquely challenging design project — particularly in a country that’s never had one before.
As the UK had no specific guidance for rocket launches, Hammond sought direction from US regulations.
“They come under something called CFR 420, which specifies how you need to approach the design of a spaceport,” he says. “And the first focus is always safety.”
Upon review of the rules, SaxaVord fine-tuned its safety guidelines. Among the final requirements were specific distances from populated areas, proximities to roads, and circumventions of flight paths or busy seas.
“It’s providing a one-stop shop for space.
On the site, the guidance steered the positioning of launch pads, rockets, fuel load, and hangars. The pads, for instance, needed a certain space between them to avoid any explosions spreading fires across the spaceport. A similar concern guided the rocket hanger locations.
“I want my hangars to be as close as possible because bringing a rocket in and out takes time and there’s risk involved with that process,” Hammond says. “But equally, I don’t want it so close that an explosion on the pad would destroy my hangar.”
Another crucial part of the plan is the launch schedule.
SaxaVord has applied for up to 30 vertical rocket launches a year. To squeeze in all those lift-offs, the spaceport will operate like a commercial airport. Launches will be scheduled across regular timeslots, with a busier timetable during the summer, when travel conditions are more favourable.
It’s a model that’s attractive to the satellite companies. According to spacetech investor Baumeister, startups want to show clients that they have multiple takeoff options.
“It’s about the speed that they can offer customers,” he says. “If they can have possibilities to launch in Northern America, in Europe, and in Asia… they’re well positioned.”
Once the plans were finalised, the construction could commence.
4. Start building
SaxaVord elected to build three launch pads, each of which is linked to a set of hangars. The pads will fire rockets of up to 30 metres in length, with maximum payloads of 1,500 kg. They will then fly into sun-synchronous, polar and high-inclination orbits, as well as suborbital trajectories.
To make that happen, SaxaVord has set up facilities for satellite monitoring, fuel storage, launch vehicle preparation, and payload processing. Connectivity will be provided by a ground station network of 1.5m to 3.7m antennas.
All of that requires extensive support infrastructure. To protect the spaceport, security fences have been erected around the perimeter. Access to the site is being improved by extensive upgrades to approach roads, which need to accommodate lorries carrying rockets from the mainland. SaxaVord has also leased an airfield close to the site.
To monitor the launches, on-site tracking and telemetry systems have been installed. The project is also getting flight termination systems — in a case a rocket soars in the wrong direction and disappears.
In addition to the common challenges, SaxaVord has had to overcome another barrier. Unlike most spaceports, the project has received little public funding. Instead, the site largely relies on private investments.
“We could hit the moon from here.
Hammond points to the model’s benefits. He acknowledges that SaxaVord’s funding plan initially attracted scepticism, but the approach seems to have paid off.
“Because the whole industry is used to being government-led, people would say that if the government’s not giving you any money then you’re not real,” he says.
“We had to get over that. And now, we are the most real of all the spaceports — because it’s private money. Because if we’re spending our own money, we’re a damn sight more careful about our decisions.”
That doesn’t mean that it’s been cheap. In May, SaxaVord CEO Frank Strang told a parliamentary committee that his company had spent nearly £30mn (€34.6mn) on the spaceport. He added that the project had recently secured a £139mn (€160mn) debt facility.
Three months later, the BBC reported that the venture had secured £20mn (€23mn) in equity and £10mn (€11.5mn) in debt and loans, along with a large development bond.
Launch operators have provided a crucial source of funding. Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), which has secured exclusive access to one launch pad, said the deal included a “double-digit million-pound investment” in SaxaVord.
Private investors have made another vital contribution. They include Anders Holch Povlsen, a Danish billionaire and the largest landowner in northern Scotland. Povlsen had previously raised an environmental objection to another spaceport planned for near his land in Sutherland.
Supplementary income streams add another cash injection. As well as the launch service, there’s the aforementioned hotel, plus support and data services.
“It’s providing something of a one-stop shop; they just come to us and they get everything when they arrive,” Hammond says.
6. Start the countdown
A final piece in the SaxaVord jigsaw is the spaceport license. According to Hammond, the project is currently at the final stages of the application process, which involves an array of time-consuming details.
“It’s like when you buy a house,” he says. “That last bit takes bloody forever, and there are lots of little things that come out of the woodwork.”
The next step will be getting those rockets in the sky. Alongside RFA, SaxaVord has attracted launch partners including American aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, Edinburgh-based rocket firm Skyrora, and HyImpulse, a spinoff from the German Aerospace Centre.
Some could even fly before the spaceport license arrives. British aviation regulators have pledged to permit suborbital launches within an altitude of 50 km and using engines below a set size.
On this basis, HyImpulse has permission to attempt the maiden voyage of its SR75 rocket from Unst. The launch can take place between December 1, 2023 and November 30, 2024, European Spaceflight reports.
SaxaVord hopes to make it happen before the end of the year. The first orbital launch, meanwhile, has been earmarked for next summer. If all goes to plan, the spaceport will host four to five launches next year, across both orbital and suborbital trajectories.
Despite the progress, there are further obstacles ahead. There are still facilities to build and a license to obtain. Some tests, such as flight tracking trials, can only be passed when satellites are launched into space. Only then will the spaceport have accomplished its initial mission. Nonetheless, Hammond is already dreaming of the stars.
“We could hit the moon from our location,” he says. “But we are really an enabler for everything else.”
Around his office on Unst, the development is progressing as we speak. Hammond still has revolution on his mind.
“We had the Industrial Revolution and the digital revolution — this could be a revolution of access to space.”
There are plenty of conversations around how AI can progress healthcare. And indeed, it has numerous applications in the form of diagnostics and accelerated drug discovery. However, wouldn’t it be even better if artificial intelligence could help prevent us from getting sick in the first place?
Anyone who has ever tried to get past (or even to) a GP in the Netherlands or any other European country feeling the healthcare capacity crunch knows that it can be a process leaving you almost as drained as being unwell itself. Often, getting access to proper care can become a matter of being able to advocate for yourself, at times across language barriers.
HealthCaters is a female-founded startup based in Berlin that wants to change the status quo of healthcare gatekeeping. Its founders say they are not simply looking to make money and grow the company. Rather, they want to change the future of preventative medicine — in a way that is accessible and affordable for all. And when speaking to its two co-founders, Yale-educated Dr Lily Kruse and ex-VC and former head of business development at medical travel platform Medigo Tanya Eliseeva, I feel that I believe them.
“I was a heart surgeon in the US. And for me, the most important thing was to help people and to make sure that they are healthy. And I realised quickly that medicine is not so much about that. It’s more about treating people who are already sick,” Dr Kruse says.
“But if you think about it, there’s so many people that are getting sick, but are not sick yet. It was quite emotional to have somebody on the operating table, knowing that this could have been prevented.”
Preventative health beyond statistics
According to the WHO, by 2030, the proportion of total global deaths due to chronic diseases (or noncommunicable diseases, NCDs) is expected to reach 70% — up from 61% in 2005. Apart from the tremendous individual suffering they inflict, lifestyle-influenced diseases, such as heart disease, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes, are also a huge burden on health services worldwide.
Considering that in 2011, Harvard Business School predicted that NCDs would cost society more than $30 trillion over the coming two decades, it is baffling that national healthcare plans hardly, if ever, take preventive measures into account.
Hoping to function as an extension of the existing healthcare system, HealthCaters has developed what they call DIY health screenings, using a portable testing station and an accompanying app. Taking around 30 minutes, the system guides the user through a series of steps to measure things such as blood pressure, cholesterol, lung function, heart rate, kidney and liver health, metabolic health, etc.
A proprietary algorithm then analyses the results and provides a comprehensive risk assessment, including probability and factors impacting each risk. The app also provides practical advice on how to mitigate said risks, based on scientific evidence.
“It’s not just a sheet of different values, and then a thumbs up, like you’re okay or you’re not okay, and that’s it,” Eliseeva says. “We put together a very comprehensive risk assessment that allows you to understand what your actual risks are. What do I need to pay attention to? And for every risk that we identify, we show the probability and the factors that impact that risk.”
Unlike the doctor’s office, or by employing the services of a test lab, the user doesn’t just receive the numbers, but the algorithm also takes lifestyle into account to determine what the specific numbers mean to each individual in terms of risk.
“Our goal is preventative medicine that is not just statistics,” Eliseevea continues. “It’s not about having a 10% chance of developing something. It’s more like ‘what do I have to care for, in order for me to stay healthy?’”
‘Explosive demand’ from corporates
HealthCaters offers their services to corporates that can set up health screening days for employees with the portable boxes and access to the app with personalised plans. Customers include the likes of IBM, WeWork, and Barmenia. Furthermore, the startup just opened up its first centre for the public in Berlin (prices start at €39).
“We are seeing explosive demand from corporates right now,” Eliseeva says, adding that the company signed three new clients last month — no small thing for a startup its size.
“Usually we do it in the framework of a health day or health week, which means we go there and we set up, and employees can book slots. They come to the health case, and they can do the screening themselves,” Dr Kruse explains. “So it’s completely self-managed.”
Sometimes, the process is arranged by an insurance company that acts as the intermediary, which also allows corporations to lower premiums for employee insurance.
Growing a team that understands tech for health
While any startup in preventative or diagnostic healthcare over the past few years may have had to battle the ghost of Theranos in the minds of investors, HealthCaters recently secured $1.2mn in seed funding led by Barmenia Next Strategies. They will use the funds to expand the team, both on the tech and operational business side, as well as “double down” on the product.
“It’s so important to make sure that there is a strong team behind your tech that understands at what point and how to take all this technology [generative AI] in, and to implement it without jeopardising the actual essence of the product,” Eliseeva says. “Because it’s not tech for tech, right? It’s tech for health.”
Lack of accessibility increases anxiety
The company has also held pop-up events throughout Europe. Circling back to the Dutch healthcare system we referenced earlier in this article, when HealthCaters held an event in Amsterdam earlier this year, the audience was in parts unexpected.
“You always think that out-of-pocket expenses for health care is something that is upper-middle class territory. But many of the people who came to us were taxi drivers,” Eliseeva retells the experience. “And they said, ‘Well, I tried to have a doctor’s appointment, they asked me to wait for three months. When I finally went, it was over in literally two minutes. They looked at me and said — you’re okay, why are you here?’ They said that it makes them very anxious, and this word, anxious, is repeated by so many people we talk to [in relation to healthcare].”
The company has plans to further integrate the product with wearables and data such as genetic screenings and family history. With so much personal medical data being involved, I cannot help but ask about privacy and security. Eliseeva highlights that it was not something she and Dr Kruse would ever cut corners on as it is a “cornerstone” of the product.
“Before we hired a single person, we already asked ourselves, how are we going to deal with data security? We even interviewed on the basis of what they would do with this data,” she stated, further adding that the company runs its own trial audits, and is passing on every single criteria.