Vertical Aerospace has been thrown a crucial lifeline, staving off potential bankruptcy at the cash-strapped air taxi startup. The UK-based company—which makes electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft—secured the fresh funds from its largest creditor, American debt investor Mudrick Capital. The agreement, announced Monday, includes a $50mn cash injection and a substantial debt-to-equity swap. Mudrick will invest $25mn upfront and guarantee another $25mn in future funding, offset by contributions from third-party investors. Mudrick will also convert half of its $130 million in outstanding loans into equity at $2.75 per share, taking its ownership stake in Vertical to just over…
Author: Olsi
Photonics—a field that underpins light-based systems for manipulating data—has a bright future, as the rise of AI demands better computing performance, but it has yet to be fully applied to a new generation of chips. German startup Akhetonics hopes to change that. It’s raised a €6 million seed funding round (approximately $6.33 million) to deliver on this promise, The Tech Spot can exclusively reveal. While several companies are working with photons on tangential issues or point solutions that mix electronics and photonics, Akhetonics—whose name is a portmanteau of Akhet, an Egyptian hieroglyph for “horizon,” and photonics—is outright aiming to build…
When the Paris Court of Appeal recently blocked four porn sites in France for not having a proper age verification system, the two online child protection nonprofits that had pushed for the blocks probably thought they’d scored a big victory. But in one case, it turned out to be a bit of a self-own. As l’Informé reports, the nonprofits went after Iciporno, Mrsexe, Tukif, and xHamster. Their complaints listed the web addresses of the sites, but for xHamster they put “fr.xhamster.com,” pointing to the site’s French subdomain. As a result, the court ordered the blocking of “fr.xhamster.com,” including the “fr.”…
If you’ve used ChatGPT Search or Perplexity, you know that being able to search the web and see citations inline greatly improves these AI chatbots. Results are better when they involve timely information, and web search may reduce so-called hallucinations (i.e., when a generative AI outputs incorrect information). That’s why French startup Linkup is building an API that lets developers access web content from premium, trusted sources and hand the results to a large language model (LLM) to enrich its answers. Many AI developers call this workflow Retrieval-Augmented Generation (or RAG). More importantly, the future of scraping bots is uncertain.…
Many startups and large tech companies are building AI agents or programs that can handle multi-step tasks without user supervision. Once available, these agents will need to collaborate with each other to complete complex jobs, such as booking and paying for flights, hotels, and excursions. /dev/agents, a new company started by former Google executives who helped develop Android during the early days of the smartphone era, believes a new operating system is needed to fully realize the potential of AI agents. “Before Android existed, we could all see the promise of mobile, but as a developer, it was just too…
In a step likely to be tracked around the world, Australia has approved legislation that will ban the use of social media for children under 16. The bill was only introduced about a week ago but had backing from the main conservative opposition party as well as the center-left government over concerns the tech services negatively impact kids’ well-being. The ban is expected to take effect in November 2025, per Reuters. At that point, social media platforms in the market will need to be able to demonstrate they’re taking “reasonable steps” to ensure age verification is in place to stop…
Google Chat is rolling out instant voice meetings—similar to Slack’s Huddles—that let you quickly switch to a voice or video call from within a chat. Google is not giving the feature a new name, though, opting to call the feature “Huddles” as well. If you are in a Google Chat, you can quickly start a huddle by clicking on the drop-down menu next to the call icon and then selecting the “Start the huddle” option. The call will default to a voice call, but users can turn on video or share their screens, just like with Google Meet. The feature,…
Decarbonizing our economies in the race to fight climate change demands a wholesale overhauling of all sorts of production processes to make them as sustainable as possible. Greening chemicals, which are used as ingredients in all sorts of products, is where U.K. startup Deep Blue Biotech is putting its energies. The biotech startup founded in May 2023 is building a business around a photosynthesis-based form of biomanufacturing that will enable it to manufacture chemicals in a more environmentally friendly way than conventional production methods, such as refining fossil fuels. The startup also claims its method can achieve cost parity with…
Intentional phone usage is a tricky habit to develop. Operating systems like iOS and Android, along with social media networks like Instagram and TikTok, have built timers, nudges, and controls around the usage of the apps or the platform. But at times, you mindlessly unlock your phone as a force of habit to eventually do nothing or scroll timelines. To get rid of the habit, Ukrainian developer Yaroslav Neznaradko has built an Android app called Intenty, which nudges you to provide a reason or do an action like breathing or stretching every time you unlock the phone. Neznaradko started thinking about this problem in…
A venture capitalist, a recruiter from a big company, and a newly hired remote IT worker might not seem to have much in common, but all have been caught as imposters secretly working for the North Korean regime, according to security researchers. On Friday at Cyberwarcon, an annual conference in Washington, DC, focused on disruptive threats in cyberspace, security researchers offered their most up-to-date assessment of the threat from North Korea. The researchers warned of a sustained attempt by the country’s hackers to pose as prospective employees seeking work at multinational corporations, with the aim of earning money for the…
