Data from Dealroom was used for the State of European Tech report. Dealroom defines deep tech as 16 fields: Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Drones, Autonomous Driving, Blockchain, Nanotech, Robotics, Internet of Things, 3D Technology, Computer Vision, Connected Devices, Sensors Technology, and Recognition Technology (NLP, image, video, text, speech recognition).

In 2019, there was $10.2 billion capital invested in European deep tech. In 2020, that dropped to $8.9 billion:

I think it’s fair to say that 2020 has been a tough year for most people and businesses. Economic uncertainty – not just from COVID-19 but also trade wars, Brexit, and a rather tumultuous US presidential election – has naturally led to fewer investments and people tightening their wallets.

For just one example, innovative satellite firm OneWeb was forced to declare bankruptcy earlier this year after crucial funding it was close to securing was pulled during the peak of the pandemic. Fortunately, OneWeb was saved following an acquisition by the UK government and Bharti Global—but not all companies have been so fortunate.

Many European businesses will now be watching the close-to-collapse Brexit talks with hope that a deal can yet be salvaged to limit the shock to supply lines, prevent disruption to Europe’s leading financial hub, and help to build a friendly relationship going forward with a continued exchange of ideas and talent rather than years of bitterness and resentment.

The report shows the UK has retained its significant lead in European tech investment and startups this year:

Despite the uncertainties, the UK looks unlikely to lose its position as the hub of European technology anytime soon.

Investments in European tech as a whole should bounce back – along with the rest of the world – in 2021, with promising COVID-19 vaccines rolling out and hopefully some calm in geopolitics.

94 percent of survey respondents for the report stated they have either increased or maintained their appetite to invest in the European venture asset class. Furthermore, a record number of US institutions have participated in more than one investment round in Europe this year—up 36% since 2016.

You can find a full copy of the State of European Tech report here.

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Countries around the world are vastly increasing their budgets for AI, and with good reason. Just look at Gartner’s Hype Cycle released yesterday to see how important the technology is expected to be over the next decade.

Russian president Vladimir Putin famously said back in 2017 that the nation which leads in AI “will become the ruler of the world”. Putin said that AI offers unprecedented power, including military power, to any government that leads in the field.

China, the third global superpower, has also embarked on a major national AI strategy. In July 2017, The State Council of China released the “New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan” to build a domestic AI industry worth around $150 billion over the next few years and to become the leading AI power by 2030.

Naturally, the US isn’t going to give that top podium spot to China without a fight.

The White House has proposed (PDF) a 30 percent hike in spending on AI and quantum computing. Around $1.5 billion would be allocated to AI funding and $699 million to quantum technology.

According to a report published by US national security think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Chinese officials see an AI ‘arms race’ as a threat to global peace.

The fear of the CNAS is that integrating AI into military resources and communications may breach current international norms and lead to conflict-by-accident.

China and the US have been vying to become the top destination for AI investments. Figures published by ABI Research at the end of last year suggested that the US reclaimed the top spot for AI investments back from China, which overtook the Americans the year prior. ABI expects the US to reach a 70 percent share of global AI investments.

Lian Jye Su, Principal Analyst at ABI Research, said: 

“The United States is reaping the rewards from its diversified AI investment strategy. 

Top AI startups in the United States come from various sectors, including self-driving cars, industrial manufacturing, robotics process automation, data analytics, and cybersecurity.”

The UK, unable to match the levels of funding allocated to AI research as the likes of the US and China, is taking a different approach.

An index compiled by Oxford Insights last year ranked the UK number one for AI readiness in Europe and only second on the world stage behind Singapore. The US is in fourth place, while China only just makes the top 20.

The UK has focused on AI policy and harnessing the talent from its world-leading universities to ensure the country is ready to embrace the technology’s opportunities.

A dedicated AI council in the UK features:

• Ocado’s Chief Technology Officer, Paul Clarke
• Dame Patricia Hodgson, Board Member of the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation 
• The Alan Turing Institute Chief Executive, Professor Adrian Smith
• AI for good founder Kriti Sharma
• UKRI chief executive Mark Walport
• Founding Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, Professor David Lane

British Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright stated: “Britain is already a leading authority in AI. We are home to some of the world’s finest academic institutions, landing record levels of investment to the sector, and attracting the best global tech talent. But we must not be complacent.”

Growing cooperation between the UK and US in a number of technological endeavours could help to harness the strengths of both nations if similarly applied to AI, helping to maintain the countries’ leaderships in the field.

(Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash)

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The startup has also developed a cloud-based platform in order to manage some of the challenges that could not be addressed within the car.

According to FiveAI, the latest round of funding will be used to turn these cloud and in-car systems into products. The aim is to later on collaborate with carmakers to develop these platforms into vehicles.

In October, the company announced the launch of commuter research trials for its self-driving car technology along with motor insurance firm Direct Line. As part of the Streetwise Consortium, a 19 kilometre autonomous driving research route that featured human passengers was launched in Croydon and Bromley to test out the technology. Participants were later on asked for insight on their experiences.

FiveAI CEO Stan Boland said at the time: “Shared, self-driving vehicle services promise a better way for people to get around, we’ll be working with forward-thinking partners to make these services a reality in European urban environments. The lessons learned through Streetwise provide an important step towards that goal.”

This is by no means the only funding taking place in this space right now. Waymo announced earlier this month that it had raised $2.25 billion (£1.75bn) in a fundraising round led by Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Mubadala Investment Company, while autonomous vehicle technology company Pony.ai secured $400m from Toyota, with the company aiming to strengthen its partnership with Toyota in mobility services.

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Altoida, which is led by a team of esteemed neuroscientists, physicians and computer scientists, utilises digital biomarkers to drive better clinical outcomes for brain disease. The company will be using the raised funds to bring its FDA-cleared and CE Mark-approved medical device and brain health data platform to patients, physicians, and researchers around the globe.

Dr. Ioannis Tarnanas, PhD, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Altoida – an ETH University Zurich spin-off – said: “Searching for early, more accurate and scalable preclinical markers of Alzheimer’s disease has been the holy grail for clinicians, researchers and pharma companies alike that are trying to predict Alzheimer’s-type cognitive decline and develop early interventions. The ability of Altoida’s digital biomarkers platform to collect very sensitive and ecologically valid markers of early functional and cognitive changes in the most scalable way, by using only a mobile phone or tablet, is unmatched by today’s medical tests and a game changer for the field.”

Last year, market intelligence firm Tractica had predicted a rise in the global software revenue from 22 main healthcare AI use cases to $8.6bn (£7bn) per year by 2025 and the total revenue for healthcare AI market, including sales from healthcare AI software, hardware, and services, to exceed £27bn by 2025.

 Attend the co-located AI & Big Data Expo events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more. Co-located with the  ,  and Cyber Security &  

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Dr Ling Ge, Chief European Representative at Tencent, said:

“The UK is a global leader in AI and is increasingly becoming a focus for companies looking to invest in the sector. PROWLER.io’s data-efficient approach and focus on human-machine teaming really set it apart.

We are looking forward to PROWLER.io applying its AI decision platform to a broadening range of customers, potentially including some of Tencent’s affiliate companies.”  

Prowler was founded in 2016 by engineers and mathematicians from Cambridge University. The startup aims to be an ‘AI platform for decision-making in a complex, dynamic, and uncertain world.’

Vishal Chatrath, CEO of Prowler.io, commented:

“Having initially focused on developing our AI platform, we are excited to be expanding our product offering into new verticals, underscoring the flexibility and innovative nature of our core technology.

We’re excited to be supporting global corporate and financial leaders like Mandatum Life, Pearson, RB Capital and Tencent with AI tools that enable people to make better decisions.”

Prowler.io launched its AI platform focusing on things such as managing supply chains and making decisions about financial portfolios. The company is now hoping to expand into new areas.

Lauri Vaittinen, SVP at Mandatum Life, a Prowler.io investor, added:

“Prowler.io is on its way to becoming a true enterprise AI platform — successfully expanding from its initial focus on financial services and logistics to apply its core AI technology to multiple adjacent market segments.

We are confident that the strategic partners, alongside the existing funding support, will help the company accelerate practical implementations – including hiring more engineering talent, operational managers, and reinforce the product development expertise.”

Founded in 2016, Prowler.io currently has 110 employees from 29 countries.

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The latest investment builds on SAS’ already solid focus in AI which includes advanced analytics, deep learning, machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision.

The move will focus on three main areas: research and development innovation, where SAS is building on the success of its global AI efforts; education initiatives that address customer needs to understand AI better and benefit from it; and expert services to optimise customer return on AI projects.          

SAS is making investment in R&D innovation in all primary areas of AI, with a special focus to benefit users with different skill levels, ranging from business experts to AI Analytics Engineers to data scientists. The company is immersing AI capabilities into the SAS Platform and solutions for data management, customer intelligence, fraud and security intelligence and risk management, as well as applications for industries including financial services, government, health care, manufacturing and retail.

The company is continuing to team up with innovative companies and technology providers like Accenture, Cisco Deloitte, Intel, and NVIDIA. This work brings the latest advances and practices in AI and machine learning to customers, and ensures SAS AI technologies perform optimally in customers’ hardware and cloud environments.

“At SAS, we remain dedicated to our customers and their success, and this investment is another example of that commitment,” said SAS CEO Jim Goodnight in a statement. “With our innovative capabilities in AI, SAS helps businesses deter damaging fraud, fight deadly disease, better manage risk, provide exemplary service to customers and citizens, and much more.”

This is by no means the largest amount staked in this arena in recent months. Chinese AI startup SenseTime Group is looking to raise about $2 billion in fresh funding in 2019. The Beijing-based firm had raised over $1.2 billion in 2018, including a round announced in May, valued at over $4.5 billion. The funding from firms including Fidelity International, Silver Lake Partners and Hopu Capital followed a deal to sell a stake to Qualcomm in 2017 that valued SenseTime at over $1.5 billion.

 Attend the co-located AI & Big Data Expo events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam to learn more. Co-located with the IoT Tech Expo, , and Cyber Security & .

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The new research centre is called the Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence and was created in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Facebook, like many companies, is fighting outside concerns about the development of AI and its potential societal impact. The centre should help to ensure Facebook keeps up with ethical best practices.

Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Director of Applied Machine Learning at Facebook, wrote in a blog post:

“At Facebook, ensuring the responsible and thoughtful use of AI is foundational to everything we do — from the data labels we use, to the individual algorithms we build, to the systems they are a part of.

We’re developing new tools like Fairness Flow, which can help generate metrics for evaluating whether there are unintended biases in certain models. We also work with groups like the Partnership for AI, of which Facebook is a founding member, and the AI4People initiative.

However, AI poses complex problems which industry alone cannot answer, and the independent academic contributions of the Institute will play a crucial role in furthering ethical research on these topics.”

Independent, evidence-based research will be conducted by the institute to provide insight and guidance for society, industry, legislators, and decision-makers across the private and public sectors.

Furthermore, the institute wants to specifically address the concerns surrounding AI such as safety, privacy, fairness, and transparency.

Dr. Christoph Lütge, TUM Professor and head of the institute, commented:

“At the TUM Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, we will explore the ethical issues of AI and develop ethical guidelines for the responsible use of the technology in society and the economy.

Our evidence-based research will address issues that lie at the interface of technology and human values. Core questions arise around trust, privacy, fairness or inclusion, for example, when people leave data traces on the internet or receive certain information by way of algorithms.

We will also deal with transparency and accountability, for example in medical treatment scenarios, or with rights and autonomy in human decision-making in situations of human-AI interaction.”

AI has the potential to do immense good in the world by improving things like healthcare, productivity, and enhancing lifestyles. On the other hand, it could be devastating if used for military purposes, replacing entry-level jobs, or if things such as facial recognition continue to suffer from bias.

Hearing independent AI ethics centres open is always welcome, let’s just hope enough companies are willing to invest time in listening as well as money.

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The chip giant is specifically looking at startups building on-device AI technologies. We’re increasingly seeing NPUs (Neural Processing Units) debuting in the latest devices, so it’s little surprise to see Qualcomm seeking to fund technologies which may provide an edge.

Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated, said:

“At Qualcomm, we invent breakthrough technologies that transform how the world connects, computes, and communicates. For over a decade, Qualcomm has been investing in the future of machine learning.

As a pioneer of on-device AI, we strongly believe intelligence is moving from the cloud to the edge. Qualcomm’s AI strategy couples leading 5G connectivity with our R&D, fueling AI to transform industries, business models, and experiences.”

Qualcomm has made AI investments through its evergreen venture fund in the past, including in China’s facial recognition darling SenseTime.

SenseTime became the most funded AI startup in the world earlier this year, with a reported valuation of over $3 billion.

The company’s facial recognition and video analysis technologies are used by the Chinese government and the company is aiming for its ‘Viper’ system to be able to process and analyse over 100,000 simultaneous real-time streams from traffic cameras, ATMs, and more to automatically tag and keep track of individuals.

Some other AI investments made by Qualcomm include General Motors-owned autonomous driving firm Cruise, and Tel Aviv-based AnyVision who are developing face, body, and object recognition technology.

 AI & >.

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US-based AI semiconductor manufacturer Syntiant raised $25 million (£19.5m) in its latest series B funding round that was led by Microsoft Corp.’s venture fund: M12. Strategic investors like Amazon Alexa Fund, Applied Ventures, Intel Capital, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital and Robert Bosch Venture Capital were also part of this fundraiser. At this event, Syntiant also announced that it is expanding its board to five members by appointing Samir Kumar, managing director of M12, and Bret Johnsen, CFO of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). He will serve as an independent director.

Syntiant is developing semiconductor solutions designed from the ground up for deep learning inference. Syntiant’s neural decision processors (NDPs) use an analogue neural network offers orders of magnitude lower power by extreme memory efficiency along with massively parallel computation with modest precision. This is done without the constraints of legacy processor architectures. The company enables always-on deep learning inference in battery-powered devices that are ideal for applications like hearing aids and IoT, smart speakers and mobile phones, etc.

Canadian language translation services provider Knowtions Research also raised $5 million (£3.9m) in series A funding round led by Information Venture Partners, with participation from Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund. Knowtions intends to help health insurers in a time when the rapidly increasing healthcare costs are threatening to make insurance policies less affordable for people. The company wants to reverse this trend and is working towards transformation of such health insurers with the power of AI.

Knowtions has developed an AI platform, called Lydia, which helps health insurers unlock and use predictive insights in unusable health data. It learns how people seek medical care globally to make predictions on fraudulent behaviour and health risks. Insurers can use these predictions to create AI-assisted workflows that automate claims processing and personalise customer experience.

Grid4C, an Israeli developer of AI and machine learning solutions for the energy industry, has also raised a $5 million led by ICV — a venture capital firm focused on industrial technology, backed by French energy giant ENGIE and other leading utilities in Europe and in Asia. iAngels and AxessVentures were also among the list of investors.

The company is working with the leading utility companies across the world, delivering billions of predictions for millions of smart meters every day. The company’s analytics solutions leverage the ability of AI and data science to offer utilities with granular predictions and actionable insights for their operations and customer-facing applications.

Attend the co-located AI & Big Data Expo events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam to learn more. Co-located with the IoT Tech Expo, Blockchain Expo, and >.

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The so-called ‘Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’ researches a range of innovative new technologies. Many of these advancements will have an impact beyond defence.

As such, DARPA’s funding initiative will be open to applications beyond the defence community. That means any AI project you’re involved with could be in the running to receive a nice cash boost.

DARPA is calling its campaign ‘AI Next’ and applications are now open. Previous similar initiatives from the agency have been wildly successful.

Back in 2004, DARPA held ‘Grand Challenges’ with a $2 million first-place prize. Challengers had to race autonomous vehicles.

In the first year’s race, there were no winners. Just a year later, five vehicles crossed the finishing line. The initiative was lauded for creating a huge leap for driverless cars.

Fast-forward three years and those vehicles were successfully navigating traffic as part of the ‘Urban Challenge’ by DARPA.

In fact, even Siri (yes, the one which may be on your iPhone right now) was first created in part from DARPA funding. We’re talking before it was acquired by Apple, back when it was developed by SRI in Menlo Park.

DARPA is looking to make a similar leap in artificial intelligence with its AI Next initiative. The agency is focusing on the ‘third wave’ of AI which adds “contextual reasoning” (otherwise known as common sense to most of us).

That means future AIs will be able to analyse scenarios they’ve not been specifically trained for, much like humans.

Beyond simply being able to recognise there’s a person stood on the beach with a bottle of water, for example, it could notice things such as sand on the knees and equipment lying around which suggests the individual is hydrating after a game of volleyball.

This category in DARPA’s initiative is aptly called ‘Machine Common Sense’. Others include ‘Learning with Less Labels’ which aims to reduce the cost of labelling data, and ‘Lifelong Learning Machines’ which focuses on machines’ ability to transfer what’s been learnt from one environment into another.

You can apply for the funding here if your project is suitable.

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