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Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden revealed the move as he set out his Ten Tech Priorities to power a golden age of tech in the UK this week.
The new AI strategy will focus on:
- Growth of the economy through widespread use of AI technologies
- Ethical, safe and trustworthy development of responsible AI
- Resilience in the face of change through an emphasis on skills, talent and R&D
Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said: Unleashing the power of AI is a top priority in our plan to be the most pro-tech government ever. The UK is already a world leader in this revolutionary technology and the new AI Strategy will help us seize its full potential - from creating new jobs and improving productivity to tackling climate change and delivering better public services.
The Government will build on the UK’s strong foundations put in place through the AI Sector Deal to develop and deliver an AI Strategy that is both globally ambitious and socially inclusive.
It will consider recommendations from the AI Council, an independent expert committee that advises the government, which published its AI Roadmap in January, alongside input from industry, academia and civil society.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: The UK is already harnessing the enormous potential of AI to improve all our lives - from faster and more effective disease diagnosis, to controlling the heating in our homes. Through this strategy we will nurture our AI pioneers to accelerate bringing new technologies to market, unlock high-skilled jobs, drive up productivity and cement the UK’s status as a global science superpower.
The National AI Strategy will align with the government’s plans to support jobs and economic growth through significant investment in infrastructure, skills and innovation. This comes as the UK sees a boost in R&D investment through the government’s Research and Development Roadmap to reach 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027.
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NFTs – or non-fungible tokens, a newfangled way to trade virtual assets – truly exploded into the mainstream on Thursday when Christie’s auctioned off its first-ever NFT digital artwork for $69,346,250. Not a typo.
That's perhaps a lot to unpack. An NFT is a unique string of numbers and characters that act as a digital certificate proving ownership of a particular item. The token is published on a blockchain to record this ownership, and the token can be later transferred to another person. The chain of ownership is indelibly reflected in the token's blockchain. The value lies in how much you can sell the token for to the next person.
You can make an NFT for pretty much anything – and ideally something someone wants to pay for. Digital artwork, music, the written word, whatever can be represented as a token. In the case of the $69m artwork: it's a giant JPEG. It's a big picture. Like all NFT assets, it exists outside the blockchain. Someone bought, presumably, the full thing for tens of millions of dollars, and got a token in a blockchain to prove it.
In general, the creator of such NFT works can retain the copyright if they wish. The asset might even already be public, or sold separately like, say, on iTunes. Again, NFTs are a hyped up, cryptographic way of proving you own an official copy of something. Using an append-only log of receipts that consumes a non-trivial amount of energy.
The craze has been bubbling along as celebrities, musicians, and tech moguls made NFTs out of stuff like individual public tweets and albums. It hit another level, though, with the sale of a JPEG file titled "Everydays: The First 5000 Days," deemed to be worth, we say again, $69m (£49.3m) in the cryptocurrency Ether when it was auctioned off this week.
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The EU is expected to allocate an estimated €2 billion to fund digital projects over the next seven years, it has emerged.
This is part of a new deal reached by the European Parliament (EP) and Council negotiators on new funds for transport, digital, and energy projects under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) for 2021-2027.
The CEF is an EU funding instrument focused on promoting growth, jobs, and competitiveness through targeted infrastructure investment across member states.
Under the newly-announced provisional deal, which is still under legal review, the CEF will receive an overall budget of about €30 billion to fund projects aiming to modernise various cross-border projects. This will include an estimated €10 billion to help EU countries complete missing transport links as well as €1.4 billion for fast-tracking the completion of major missing cross border railway projects which are to be selected by the Commission on a competitiveness basis.
A CEF spokesperson told IT Pro that the digital section of CEF will be allocated around €2 billion of the overall fund.
This will include the development of “projects of common interest on safe and secure very high capacity digital networks and 5G systems, as well as the digitalisation of transport and energy networks”, and the rollout of 5G coverage across important transport axes by 2030.
Congressional lawmakers passed the long-awaited government stimulus bill Wednesday, which included cash injections for federal technology efforts.
The House of Representatives passed the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion package designed to help US households hit by the pandemic. It included $7.1 billion in emergency connectivity funding for remote learning and $1 billion for the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), a funding hub for federal IT projects.
The broadband money came in the form of the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF), which would allocate money for schools and libraries to buy Wi-Fi hotspots, modems, routers, and connected devices for students to use for remote learning during the pandemic. The Fund resulted from pressure from education advocates who petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in January for emergency E-rate funding.
The ECF is a separate measure to the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program passed as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act in December.
Influencer-driven fashion etailer In The Style has applied for admission to AIM after raising £49m in an “oversubscribed” placing which has set its market capitalisation at £105m.
The funds were raised after it placed 5.5m new ordinary shares, of 0.25 pence each and 24.5m existing ordinary shares at a price of 200 pence each, to institutional and other investors.
On admission, In The Style will have just under 52.5m ordinary shares in issue and a free float of approximately 44.2%.
The placing of the new shares is expected to raise £11m for the company and the placing of the sale shares £49m for the selling shareholders.
In The Style chief executive officer Adam Frisby said: “We are thrilled by the very positive reception to our IPO from a wide range of high-quality institutional investors.
“This is a great testament to In The Style’s differentiated brand, innovative influencer collaboration model, and exciting opportunities for future growth.
“I’m incredibly proud of the ITS brand and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone connected with In The Style – including our team, customers, partners and influencers – for their continued support of the business, which has contributed to both its success so far and today’s exciting milestone.
“We are delighted to welcome our new shareholders and are looking forward to the next exciting chapter of In The Style’s journey as a public company.”
The London-based most prominent venture capital firm, Octopus Ventures and 83North recently backed the AI-powered cancer diagnostics startup from Israel – Ibex Medical Analytics – in a £27.3 million Series B funding round.
Along with Octopus Ventures and 83North, the round was also supported by aMoon, Planven Entrepreneur Ventures and Dell Technologies Capital, the corporate venture arm of Dell Technologies, totaling £37.4 million funding to Ibex Medical.
Pandemic disruptions created a backlog for cancer screening for more than 2 million people. The shortage of pathologists resulted in inaccuracy and misdiagnosis of cancer.
AI-powered cancer diagnosis from Ibex Medical Analytics provides a clinical-grade diagnosis for breast and prostate cancer patients. It enables the use of AI technology in routine clinical practice and AI tools for precision medicine in Oncology.
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London-based insurtech Zego raised $150 million (nearly £108 million) Series C funding in the largest ever funding round by any insurtechs in the region. As a result, it becomes the first UK insurtech unicorn with a valuation of $1.1 billion.
Zego is the third unicorn for the UK in 2021, after fintechs PPRO and Starling Bank.
Intends to accelerate European expansion
The Series C round funding round was led by DST Global along with other new investors including General Catalyst. The existing investors such as Transferwise founder, Taavet Hinrikus, and Zego’s board, Target Global, Balderton Capital and Latitude, amongst others, took part in the round. Also, Joel Cutler, founder and MD of General Catalyst, joins Zego’s board.Z
Zegowill use the funding to expand across Europe rapidly and beyond. The company will continue to invest in technology, following its recent acquisition of Drivit, a telematics company and will double down on its fleet offering. Also, Zego will continue to invest in its team, especially across product, engineering and data science, as it aims to double headcount by the end of 2021.
Estonian Sten Saar is one of the three founders of Zego. One of the Zego’s investors is an Estonian, Taavet Hinrikus, serial unicorn builder and founder of Wise (former TransferWise).
Sten Saar, CEO and Co-founder of Zego, said: “This latest round of funding is a huge milestone for Zego. It is a testament to our relentlessly hard-working team and a clear validation of the need for Zego’s products in the market. That being said however, we see this investment as simply another step in our journey towards powering opportunities for businesses across the world.”
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Octopus Energy Group, London-based global energy tech unicorn, has announced the acquisition of Marvel Lab‘s smart energy technology, ‘Configurable.’ This strategic move will boost the capabilities of Octopus’s tech platform Kraken.
Kraken is a tech platform that automates much of the supply chain, allowing Octopus and other licensees to operate much more efficiently than other energy suppliers.
It is already contracted to serve over 17 million customer accounts, across the globe including partnerships with Origin Energy, E.ON, npower, and others.
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Grocery shopping changed drastically in 2020. Several customers switched to online shopping with the lockdowns of the ongoing pandemic. While Amazon, and other big techs made the most of it, some local startups also thrived on the opportunity and with this new trend many new and upcoming ones are now looking to capture more of the industry.
As far as the UK online grocery startups are concerned they seem to be unstoppable. Just last week, Dija bagged £14.4 million funding and already Weezy is making a lot of buzz for its 15 mins grocery delivery service.
£4.4M investor funding
Now another online grocery delivery startup from the capital — Bother has raised £4.4 million — as a pre-Series A round from early-stage investors of Uber, Just Eat and Not on the High Street.
The household items delivery startup got support from Sun Hung Kai & Co and Venrex Investment Management, the early investors of Uber, Just Eat and Not on the High Street.
So, what’s different about Bother?
Bother isn’t focused on getting groceries to customers quickly. Unlike Dija and Weezy, Bother aims to replenish household supplies before they run out, using AI dubbed as Bother Brain to ‘learn’ what a customer needs and when – Bother preempts the order and puts it in the customer’s basket so they just need to approve it. No subscriptions, no substitutions, just free next day delivery.
Douglas Morton, Bother Founder & CEO comments: “There is no reason for dishwasher tablets to be delivered in a refrigerated van. It is neither convenient, cost-effective nor environmentally sustainable. With the rise of Deliveroo, recipe boxes and on-demand groceries, food can be delivered with increasing convenience, but bulky household items still lag behind, sold predominantly through the same channels they have been for 70 years – the supermarkets.
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On International Women’s Day 2021, UK’s female-led challenger bank — Starling — announces a huge £272 million Series D funding round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company (Fidelity), alongside Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), RPMI Railpen (Railpen), the investment manager for the £31 billion Railways Pension Scheme, and the global investment firm Millennium Management. The new investment values the company at £1.1 billion pre-money.
Since launching in 2017 by Anne Boden, the challenger bank has opened more than two million accounts, including more than 300,000 small business accounts. A new customer joins Starling every 39 seconds. The new fintech unicorn’s total gross lending now exceeds £2 billion, while deposits top £5.4 billion. Starling was voted Best British Bank in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and topped the Which? customer satisfaction table for 2020.
The new funding announced today will support Starling’s continued rapid and now profitable growth. The capital will be deployed primarily to support a targeted expansion of Starling’s lending in the UK, as well as to launch Starling in Europe and for anticipated M&A.
Anne Boden, founder and CEO of Starling Bank, said: “Digital banking has reached a tipping point. Customers now expect a fairer, smarter and more human alternative to the banks of the past and that is what we are giving them at Starling as we continue to grow and add new products and services. Our new investors will bring a wealth of experience as we enter the next stage of growth, while the continued support of our existing backers represents a huge vote of confidence.”
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