EU Unveils "AI Continent" Strategy to Accelerate AI, OpenAI Aims to Compete with Apple, and Gemini Launches Deep Research
Artificial Intelligence news nº 65/2025
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News 🗞️📰
EU Launches “AI Continent” Strategy to Accelerate Local AI Growth: The EU is set to unveil its “AI Continent” plan—a charm offensive aimed at simplifying regulations, boosting local computing power, and upskilling 100 million Europeans—to help businesses overcome tariff shocks and accelerate AI adoption.
OpenAI Considers Acquiring Jony Ive’s AI Hardware Startup io Products for At Least $500M: OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, is reportedly mulling a deal of at least $500M to acquire io Products—a startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, with a team that includes former Apple designers. The acquisition could place OpenAI in direct competition with Apple by integrating io Products’ design expertise into its AI hardware strategy.
Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental Launches Deep Research: Gemini Advanced subscribers can now access Deep Research—an AI research assistant that delivers superior analytical reasoning and synthesis, with reports preferred over other providers by a 2-to-1 margin. Available on web, Android, and iOS, and featuring Audio Overviews for podcast-style summaries.
Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke: Employees Must Learn to Use AI Effectively: In a leaked internal memo, Lütke stressed that AI is now a baseline expectation at Shopify. He announced that performance reviews will include AI usage metrics and urged employees to share their learnings to help merchants thrive using advanced tech.
These 3 Jobs Could Vanish in 20 Years Due to AI: A new Pew Research survey finds that both AI experts and the general public predict that cashiers, journalists, and factory workers are most at risk of disappearing as AI automates routine tasks. While experts remain optimistic about AI’s broader economic impact, a majority of U.S. adults express concern over the potential job losses.
Super-Efficient Transistor Breakthrough by Spanish AI Researcher Mario Lanza Could Transform AI Hardware: Singapore researchers at the National University of Singapore, led by Spanish AI expert Associate Professor Mario Lanza, have developed a silicon transistor that mimics both neurons and synapses using conventional 180-nm technology—drastically cutting hardware complexity and energy consumption for next-generation AI systems.
Inside OpenAI’s Ambitious AI Academy: OpenAI has revamped its Academy into a free, flexible platform offering tutorials, case studies, and community spaces for educators, job seekers, and businesses worldwide. The initiative, with multi-language support and global partnerships, reinforces that AI literacy is essential infrastructure for the future.
Midjourney Announces V7 Amidst Native Image Generation Frenzy: Midjourney's new V7 model, featuring default personalization and a 'Draft Mode' that renders images 10× faster at half the cost, delivers enhanced quality across textures, bodies, hands, and objects—positioning itself competitively against OpenAI's GPT-4o and Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash model.
Google AI Mode Expands for More Testers with New Image Search Feature: Google is rolling out its AI Mode—a dedicated Search tab powered by Gemini 2.0—to millions of Labs users in the US. The new multimodal integration with Lens lets users upload images and ask detailed questions about what they see, available via the Google app on Android and iOS.
Funding 💼💸
Krea Raises $83M to Empower GenAI Creatives: San Francisco-based Krea has secured $83 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with Andreessen Horowitz and Abstract Ventures also participating. The platform unifies advanced generative AI models, allowing designers to effortlessly create, customize, and refine digital content. The Spanish founders, Victor Perez and Diego Rodriguez, who met in Barcelona, built Krea to enhance human creativity by harnessing rapid AI innovation.
Foliume Raises $1M to Transform Insurance Distribution with AI Automation: Backed by Pitchdrive, Íope Ventures, Telefónica Insurance, and Wayra, Foliume is modernizing broker operations by eliminating repetitive tasks and unlocking new revenue opportunities in the InsurTech sector. The spanish startup, led by CEO Martín Fagioli, the innovative team is addressing urgent industry challenges to drive digital transformation and boost productivity for insurance professionals.
PyannoteAI Raises €8.1M to Build the First Language-Agnostic Speaker Intelligence Platform: Paris-based pyannoteAI secured €8.1M in Seed funding, led by Crane Venture Partners and Serena, with support from key industry angels. Founded by Hervé Bredin and Vincent Molina, the platform distinguishes speakers across languages, offering enterprise-grade voice analysis for sectors like transcription and media, with plans to expand in the US and Europe.
London’s Sagittal AI Raises $2.2M to Revolutionize Software Development with Autonomous AI: London-based Sagittal AI, founded by Michael Smith and José Palazon, has secured $2.2M in pre-seed funding led by Twin Path Ventures, with additional support from SineWave Ventures, Fuel Ventures, Blue Lake VC, and angel investor Husayn Kassai. Its flagship product, Neo, seamlessly integrates into existing software development workflows—enabling teams to delegate tasks to AI and achieve productivity gains of 50-100%, turning multi-day tasks into mere minutes.
Rescale Secures $115M Series D to Accelerate AI-Driven Digital Engineering: Founded by Joris Poort, Rescale raised $115M—led by Applied Ventures and Nvidia—to boost its AI-integrated platform for high-performance simulation and digital twin solutions, driving enterprise innovation across industries.
SandboxAQ Secures $450M Series E to Accelerate Quantitative AI Innovation: SandboxAQ closed its Series E round with over $450M in new capital—supported by Horizon Kinetics, BNP Paribas, Google, NVIDIA, and Ray Dalio—to drive breakthroughs in quantitative AI for industries from biopharma to cybersecurity. Existing investors, including Breyer Capital and T. Rowe Price, back its ongoing mission since its 2022 spinoff from Alphabet.
TaxZap Raises £2.2M to Revolutionize Tax Filing: TaxZap, the viral Tinder-inspired tax app, has secured £2.2M in seed funding led by Affinity Ventures. Co-founded by Conor Duggan and Aaron Hickey, the AI-driven platform simplifies self-assessment by analyzing bank transactions via Open Banking and reducing filing time to under 10 minutes. Investors include top names like Aidan Corbett, Nick Mullen, and Henry De Zoete, supporting TaxZap’s expansion across the UK and Ireland.
Phonic Secures $4M Seed Funding to Revolutionize Voice AI: MIT graduates Moin Nadeem and Nikhil Murthy’s startup Phonic raised $4M in a seed round led by Lux Capital—with participation from industry leaders like Replit, Hugging Face, Applied Intuition, and Modal Labs—to build end-to-end, in-house voice models that boost reliability and reduce latency for enterprise applications in insurance and healthcare.
M&A 💰
Nvidia Closes Acquisition of Lepton AI for Hundreds of Millions: Nvidia has completed its deal to acquire Lepton AI, a startup that resells Nvidia GPUs in the cloud, for hundreds of millions of dollars. The co-founders, Yangqing Jia and Junjie Bai, will continue to lead the venture within Nvidia, strengthening its position in the competitive server rental space.
IBM Acquires Hakkoda to Boost AI Consultancy Capabilities: IBM has acquired New York-based Hakkoda, an AI and data consultancy co-founded by ex-Deloitte GM Erik Duffield, to accelerate its AI transformation services in key sectors such as financial services, public sector, and healthcare. The move further strengthens IBM’s consulting arm as it continues its aggressive push in AI and automation investments.
Qualcomm Acquires Vietnamese AI Startup MovianAI to Bolster R&D: Qualcomm has acquired MovianAI—the former generative AI division of VinAI under Vingroup—to enhance its research and development efforts across smartphones, PCs, and software-defined vehicles. VinAI’s CEO Hung Bui will join Qualcomm as part of the deal, underscoring the company's commitment to pushing the frontiers of AI innovation.
Model ML Acquires Flippr to Revolutionize AI-Driven Decision-Making: Model ML, led by founders Chaz and Arnie Englander, has acquired Flippr—known for its top-tier document AI agents that automate presentation review tasks in financial services. Backed by leading investors including YC and LocalGlobe, this acquisition signals a significant push towards dominating the trillion-dollar professional services market, with plans for further strategic expansions across Europe, Asia, and the US.
DNSFilter Acquires Zorus to Boost MSP Security Capabilities: DNSFilter, led by CEO Ken Carnesi, has acquired Zorus, whose CEO Brett Cheloff brings extensive MSP expertise. The merger combines DNSFilter’s AI-driven threat intelligence with Zorus’s endpoint filtering and user behavior analytics to deliver a comprehensive security solution for MSPs.
SpaceBasic Acquires CAMPUS to Expand AI-Driven University Automation: SpaceBasic, an AI-powered student housing automation platform operating across 80+ universities in India and Southeast Asia, has acquired CAMPUS—a platform automating attendance and check-ins—to offer a fully integrated campus experience. Led by CEO Madhavi Shankar, SpaceBasic strengthens its suite with CAMPUS, founded by Shahid M and Siva Sai, aiming to enhance both hostel operations and real-time student engagement.
ServiceNow Acquires Logik.ai to Bolster CRM and Sales Automation: ServiceNow is set to acquire Logik.ai to integrate its AI-powered CPQ solution into the company’s CRM and industry workflows—accelerating sales, reducing manual errors, and boosting efficiency in sectors like manufacturing, high tech, and medical devices.
Siemens Acquires Dotmatics for $5.1B in Strategic Life Sciences Expansion: Siemens, led by CEO Roland Busch, will acquire U.S.-based Dotmatics from Insight Partners for $5.1 billion to strengthen its Life Sciences portfolio and boost its industrial software market by $11 billion—expecting significant revenue synergies from the move.
Interesting Reads 💡🤔
2025 AI Index Report: Comprehensive Snapshot of AI’s Transformative Impact: The report highlights major performance gains on new benchmarks, rapid global AI adoption and record investment, and increasing competition between U.S. and Chinese institutions. It also emphasizes advances in efficiency, heightened regulatory and educational initiatives, and ongoing challenges in complex reasoning and responsible AI development.
12 Graphs That Reveal the State of AI Today: Stanford’s comprehensive report outlines key trends in AI performance, investment, and adoption in 2025. It highlights rapid model improvements, falling inference costs, increasing global investments, and emerging challenges in sustainability and regulation—offering essential insights for policymakers and business leaders.
AI Isn’t the Threat—It’s the Humans Controlling It: Professor Billy J. Stratton argues that our real concern should be human misuse of AI, not the technology itself. Drawing on sci-fi insights and ethical reflections, he contends that the focus must be on responsible leadership and governance to build a fairer, more prosperous future.
Reid Hoffman Uses Replit to Build LinkedIn Clone with One Prompt: Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, demonstrated AI’s power by asking Replit to “clone LinkedIn” with one prompt, resulting in a surprisingly functional prototype. This experiment hints at a future where AI drives most coding—aligned with trends like vibe coding—as Replit gears up for fresh capital at a nearly $3B valuation.
50 Hacks for Visual Content Creation Using ChatGPT 4o’s New Image Generator: ChatGPT 4o’s new image generator offers 50 practical hacks for designers, marketers, gamers, and educators to create, edit, and manipulate visuals with precision—from logos and product mockups to infographics and storyboards—while also highlighting essential ethical considerations.
AI 2027: Superhuman AI Set to Redefine Our Future Beyond the Industrial Revolution: Forecasted by leading figures from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic, "AI 2027" presents a detailed scenario where superintelligence may emerge within five years, transforming society on a scale exceeding the Industrial Revolution. Drawing on extensive research and expert interviews, the report explores both disruptive and hopeful outcomes, urging a broad conversation on steering AI development toward positive futures
Lovable Steals Developers from Cursor and Windsurf: Lovable has dramatically lowered the entry barrier for building apps and websites, enabling early-stage founders and indie hackers to prototype in hours rather than weeks.
New LLM Optimization Technique Cuts Memory Usage by Up to 75%: Tokyo-based Sakana AI has introduced "universal transformer memory," which uses neural attention memory models (NAMMs) to discard redundant tokens and optimize LLM context windows. In tests on models like Llama 3-8B, this breakthrough reduced memory requirements by up to 75% while enhancing performance across coding and natural language tasks.
Startups / Tools 🧰🛠️
Goku: Goku, developed by ByteDance, is a flow-driven video generation model available in two configurations—with 2 billion and 8 billion parameters respectively—trained on 160 million image pairs and 36 million video pairs
GPTBots.ai: Provides comprehensive AI solutions for businesses by implementing intelligent agents in areas such as customer service, internal search, data analysis, and lead generation.
AI Image Upscaler by Upscale.media: Allows increasing image resolution up to 4x without quality loss by removing artifacts and avoiding pixelation, available free of charge permanently.
Codesphere: A cloud-based integrated development environment that combines an online code editor with integrated pipelines to deploy applications rapidly, without requiring DevOps experience.
Venturefy.ai: Uses artificial intelligence to offer a public wiki of verified B2B relationships, enabling both consumers and companies to discover reliable business connections.
ChainGPT: A state-of-the-art AI model that assists with no-code smart contract programming, debugging, and analysis, particularly aimed at the blockchain ecosystem.
ioni: An AI agent platform that automates regulatory compliance tasks—including gap analysis, research, policy drafting, and contract creation—to enable swift adaptation to changing regulations.
Temperstack: Enhances incident management and infrastructure monitoring by integrating automated alerts, AI-driven runbooks, and incident management processes, optimizing operations for Dev and SRE teams.
Zerve.ai: Zerve’s Data Science Development Environment gives data science and ML teams a unified space to explore, collaborate, build and deploy data science & AI projects.
Zeda.io: Zeda.io is an AI-powered product discovery and strategy platform that helps product teams uncover problems to solve for customers, decide what to build next, and create strategies to drive outcomes.
NTV Highlights 🪩🎉
We are actively looking for AI startups
At Next Tier Ventures, we are actively looking for the next generation of AI startup founders ready to scale and create meaningful impact. Our investments range between $500K and $2M, accompanied by strategic support to help founders achieve their vision.
If you’re building cutting-edge B2B AI solutions let’s connect 👉
http://apply.nexttier.vc
We participated in the Business Digitalization Fair of the Canary Islands, Digeon Canarias 2025, in a presentation titled "Innovate, no matter what: where to invest in AI to lead tomorrow."
Next Tier was proud to participate in the annual SpainCap Congress, held on April 4 at the EDEM Auditorium in Valencia. This year’s event, centered on “Integrity + Transparency + Diversity” and united under the hashtag #UnidosPorLaDANA, brought together key stakeholders in private equity, entrepreneurship, and investment.
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