Category News

Flying car AeroMobil raises further investment to target Asian market

A month on from its previous round of funding, flying car startup AeroMobil has secured a fresh injection of capital from InfraPartners Management (IPM). The terms of the investment were not disclosed.

The Slovakian company is developing a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) flying vehicle that it claims it will deliver to customers by 2020. Prices per vehicle will be between €1.2 million and €1.5 million.

With the new investor’s help, AeroMobil will take its flying car on an investment roadshow in Asia with a particular focus on South Korea and China, where IPM has a regional presence. It is headquartered in London...

Diabetes app mySugr acquired by drugmaker Roche

Austrian healthtech startup, mySugr, which makes a diabetes management app, has been acquired by Swiss medical multinational Roche. No terms for the deal were announced.

The Vienna-based startup was purchased 100% by the Swiss health industry giant. The app’s tech will help inform Roche’s digital strategy for the diabetes market moving forward. “[The deal] means that we, people with diabetes, will be in the driver’s seat, supported by the global leader in diabetes therapy,” said mySugr in a statement. mySugr will continue to operate on its own.

The app is used by diabetics to track their condition in between doctor visits. It has one million users globally.

Prior to the acquisition, Roche’s venture fund had invested in the startup...

Some well-deserved praise for those organizing events in less obvious places in Europe, and the role they play in developing the local startup ecosystem(s).

Running from one European tech conference to the next has the unfortunate side effect that everything tends to become a blur. At events, ranging from small meet-ups to large summits, forums and festivals (the term ‘conference’ has definitely fallen out of fashion), I would meet with startup founders, investors, policymakers and other industry stakeholders, never quite certain where and when exactly I met them if run into them a second time.

And yet, I find it important to attend and occasionally speak at events that have a crucial role in developing a local ecosystem, whether it is a regional or a national one.

Over the years, I’ve...

Connect and learn with top-tier entrepreneurs, artists, and scientists at a beautiful location.

Experience inspirational storytelling, interactive panels, know shops, pillow talks, art installations, live music, and so much more…

Find out more… Tech Open Air 2017

Be part of the digital financial transformation, fintech revolution and cryptocurrency movement that is happening to the world.

Use this opportunity to grow professionally and cement your future for the next 30 years. One partner in our ecosystem wants to hire several Developers/Programmers (up to 5) for its regional technology hub in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Their skills requirements must be:

Objective PHP HTML5/CSS3 Javascript jQuery SQL

Optional skills: Linux, Hana Cloud Platform, Apache C++; C# Java Solidity

We don’t expect that you will know all of this, but at least some good part of it.

What we cherish more than anything is hard work, properness and willingness to learn.

Our candidates are expected to work with us at our premises in Slovenia, Ljubljana but also they can work remotely fr...

Digital Single Market: EU negotiators agree on the WiFi4EU initiative

Silicon Valley is by far the most successful tech hub on the planet. However, European and Asian cities have started gaining on the startup mecca — so much so, that you could even say Europe has become better than SV.

But as we’ve pointed out, Europe isn’t one large monolithic block, each country and city has it’s strengths and weaknesses when it comes to startups. If we truly want to understand European startup ecosystems better, we’ll need to take a more in-depth look at each country.

That’s why TNW contacted Brigitte Zypries, Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, to get more information about how Germany — one of Europe’s biggest and most influential economies — plans on stimulating it’s startup scene.

Why only have one ‘Silicon Valley’ when you can...

TWELVE YEARS AFTER DROPPING out of Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg returned to campus—a few years older, a few commas richer—and delivered a commencement speech that expressed a radically different vision of his purpose in life from the one he spelled out in instant messages sent from the dorm room where it all started. The Facebook founder’s address started boilerplate enough, with Zuckerberg centering his talk around the importance of purpose, which, for him, is the nonthreatening concept of “connecting the world,” his longtime hobbyhorse. He urged the graduating class not to underestimate the impact of small actions and the importance of working toward a greater good.

But then Zuckerberg ventured out of his comfort zone...

EU fines Facebook 110 million euros over WhatsApp deal

European Union antitrust regulators fined Facebook 110 million euros ($122 million) on Thursday for giving misleading information during a vetting of its deal to acquire messaging service WhatsApp in 2014.

Calling it a “proportionate and deterrent fine”, the European Commission, which acts as the EU’s competition watchdog, said Facebook had said it could not automatically match user accounts on its namesake platform and WhatsApp but two years later launched a service that did exactly that.

“The Commission has found that, contrary to Facebook’s statements in the 2014 merger review process, the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook and WhatsApp users’ identities already existed in 2014, and that Facebook staff were awa...