The magazine of the European tech scene

Independent since 2024

EuropaNow

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Future

Future on Europa Now: AI, climate tech and the long bets that will decide what Europe builds next.

Elon Musk’s quietest investor has built a $40B SpaceX stake

AI

The $40 Billion Bet: How a Four-Person Dubai Fund Became SpaceX's Quiet Power Player

Vy Capital's stake in SpaceX dwarfs Europe's entire sovereign satellite ambitions, raising questions about the continent's ability to compete with private space capital.
Trump’s former AI czar tells Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, and to stop asking for anything in return

AI

Trump's AI advisor urges OpenAI and Anthropic to embrace liability over regulation

David Sacks, the White House's former AI czar, has called on leading AI companies to abandon requests for antitrust exemptions and regulatory approval, arguing that product liability and market forces provide sufficient oversight.
Xi pitches open-source AI to BRICS as Beijing weighs curbs on its own models

AI

China courts BRICS with open-source AI push while tightening domestic model controls

Xi Jinping championed a Beijing-led open-source AI initiative at the BRICS summit, even as China deliberates restrictions on its own most capable models—a contrast with Europe's published regulatory framework.
China’s data regulator plans standards for embodied AI, ten days after industry asked

AI

China races ahead on embodied AI data while Europe struggles to catch up

Beijing's data regulator is moving swiftly to standardise training data for humanoid robots, backed by over 70 operational facilities across the country. Europe, meanwhile, has created rules governing data access but lacks the infrastructure to generate the vast datasets these systems require.
The European AI Act never once uses the phrase human in the loop, which comes from a 2012 report calling for a ban on killer robots, and whose absence lets a company sit one person in front of a screen, let the system run, and still be compliant

AI

The Human Oversight Phantom: Why Europe's AI Act Never Says What Everyone Claims It Says

A critical gap in the EU's AI Act allows companies to deploy systems that merely monitor outcomes rather than approve decisions in advance. The missing language traces back to a 2012 weapons-control framework that warned against exactly this loophole.
Sam Altman backs Dario Amodei’s call to slow down, and says OpenAI will do the same

AI

Altman backs Amodei's safety-first approach as OpenAI pledges independent evaluator access

Sam Altman has endorsed Anthropic's call to decelerate AI development and committed OpenAI to granting independent safety auditors workplace-equivalent privileges, following Dario Amodei's push for industry coordination on risk assessment.
Larry Ellison has cancelled his plan to sell $7.5bn of Oracle stock, a day after it surfaced

AI

Ellison scraps $7.5bn Oracle stock sale plan within hours of disclosure

The Oracle chief executive cancelled a trading arrangement the day after it became public, having sold no shares under it. The incident highlights how American and European rules for executive stock transactions differ fundamentally.
The US transport secretary told Ford to cut its Chinese ties, including one in Valencia

AI

US and EU Take Divergent Paths on Chinese Auto Partnerships

America's transport secretary has pressured Ford to abandon collaborations with Chinese battery makers and Geely, while Brussels moves to reshape such deals through stricter ownership and technology-sharing rules.