London, England: The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has reported a 400 percent increase in cyber-security incidents being disclosed to it, following the implementation of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In the period from April to June 2018, there were 414 reports of “cyber-incidents” made to the ICO from various industries. This compares to 97 in the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, in the broader category of data security, the ICO said that in the same period, there were 3,146 “incidents”, equating to a rise of 228 percent compared to 957 in the preceding quarter.

The increase coincides with the commencement of GDPR rules in May 2018, requiring all incidents be reported to the ICO within 72 hours.

EU Approves Microsoft’s USD 7.5 bn GitHub Deal

Brussels, Belgium: The European Commission has announced that it has given the green light to the USD 7.5 billion acquisition of Github by Microsoft.

The Commission said that effective competition in the relevant markets would remain and that Microsoft would have no incentive to undermine the open nature of GitHub’s platform which has a 28 million developer community worldwide.

Lyft buys UK Start-up to Advance Self-Driving Vehicles

London, England: US ride-hailing company Lyft, has bought UK technology start-up, Blue Vision Labs.

Blue Vision was founded in 2016 by a team from the University of Oxford and Imperial College London and raised $17m from investors including Alphabet’s, GV, Accel and Horizons Ventures.

The acquisition gives Lyft the expertise in computer vision to develop maps of the environment surrounding a vehicle.

Blue Vision’s 40-person staff will join Lyft and will remain in London. Lyft’s London presence in is in addition to the Munich base it opened last year to advance its mapping technology.

US Fortinet Cybersecurity makes EU Acquisition

Edinburgh, Scotland: US-based cybersecurity firm, Fortinet has acquired ZoneFox – an insider threat detection and response company headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland.

ZoneFox, a spin-out from Edinburgh’s Napier University, was established in 2010 and focuses on providing security systems that tackle the growing issue of insider threats to organisations across the globe. Its customers include healthcare firm Craneware, Zenith Bank, Rockstar Games, Bede Gaming, Pinsent Masons and Virgin Care.

ZoneFox’s team will join Fortinet as part of the agreement, while its technology will be implemented in the FortiClient endpoint security solution.

Uber Surcharge in London to Subsidise Electric Cars

London, England: Uber is planning to add a surcharge to all fares booked via its app in London in a move to assist drivers to buy electric vehicles.

The fee, expected to be 15p ($0.20) per mile, will be introduced “early” in 2019.

The surcharge will add about 45p (($0.59) to the cost of an average London journey.

Uber says drivers working for 40 hours per week could generate a contribution of up to £1,500 ($1950) a year via the top-up fee and says it expects the scheme to raise more than £200m ($260m) over the “next few years” to assist its drivers to switch to electric vehicles and that the scheme will also contribute towards plans to curb air pollution in the London capital.

The initiative comes soon after the UK government cut the subsidies available for purchasing greener cars. From November, grants for plug-in hybrids will cease and those for all-electric cars will drop from £4,500 ($5,850) to £3,500 ($4,550).

Facebook Hires Former UK Deputy Prime Minister

London, England, / Menlo Park, California: Facebook has hired former UK Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Nick Clegg, as head of its global affairs and communications team.

The 51-year-old politician was leader of the Liberal Democrat Party and formed a coalition government with the David Cameron led Conservative Party in 2010.

Ironically, Mr Clegg whas not been a past advocate of Facebook, commenting that he was “not especially bedazzled by Facebook and I actually find the messianic Californian new-worldy-touchy-feely culture of Facebook a little grating, nor am I convinced that companies such as Facebook really pay all the tax they could – though that’s as much the fault of governments who still haven’t got their tax act together.”

However, these past sentiments do not seem to have hindered either his recruiters or his own decision to join the company now.

Sir Nick’s new job title will be VP Global Affairs and Communications. He will start immediately and he will move permanently to California with his family in the New Year.

Berlin-based scooter rental start-up raises €25M

 Berlin, Germany: Berlin-based tech company, TIER has secured a €25 million ($32.5) funding round.

TIER’s co-founders include Lawrence Leuschner, CEO, who founded and ran reBuy; Julian Blessin, CPO, an experienced Angel investor who worked with the electric road scooter start-up COUP; and Matthias Laug CTO, a lead consultant at Thought Works in Berlin and former CTO at Takeaway.com.

Last week, 250 of their green electric scooters hit the streets of Vienna as TIER launched its first scooter-hire scheme. The company says it is planning to expand into other, yet unspecified European cities.

Its current fee for the scooter rental is €1 to unlock the vehicle and €0.15 per minute of riding.

Similar to the US-founded pioneers Bird and Lime and Sweden’s Voi Technologies – recently raised €2 million – TIER offers low-cost rental of electric push scooters scattered around the city streets. Users unlock a TIER scooter via an app and then leave it behind, wherever, once their journey is complete.

Stockholm-based AR/VR Start-up Raises $7.5 million

Stockholm, Sweden: Stockholm-based start-up, Resolution Games, has raised up $7.5 million in Series B funding at an $87.5 million valuation.

The round was led by MizMaa Ventures with participation from GV, GP Bullhound, Fly Forever, David Helgason, Partech, Bonnier Ventures, Creandum and Sisu Game Ventures. To date, the company has raised $13.5 million.

The studio has been primarily building for headset based experiences and has been among the first adopters for many of the emerging platforms.

Resolution Games has titles for Magic, Leap, Oculus Rift, Gear VR, Daydream and HTC Vive, though most of their work has been focused on mobile VR systems.

The company is also working on a follow-up to their Bait fishing title which brings gameplay to mobile via ARKit.

German travel platform GoEuro Secures $150m

Berlin, Germany: GoEuro, a Berlin based booking platform for trans-European travel has raised $150 million, doubling the company’s total capital raised to date.

Founded 5 years ago as a metasearch engine, GoEuro operates a multi-modal transport booking platform in Europe, making direct sales on its platform for 80% of its transport providers.

Headquartered in Berlin with over 300 employees, the company plans to use the fresh capital to advance its vision of unifying transport globally, by accelerating product innovation and expanding into new markets.

The investment values the company at between $900 million and $1 billion according to estimates.

TravelPerk secures $44 million funding

Barcelona, Spain: Travelperk, a startup which turned into one of the fastest growing ‘Software as a Service’ companies in Europe, has secured $43.7 million (€38 million) in a Series C funding participated in by some of the world’s most successful tech investors including Kinnevik, Yuri Milner and Tom Stafford.

This new funding will primarily be used to expand into new markets and accelerate growth towards its ambition to become the world’s leading corporate travel platform.

Founded in 2015, TravelPerk says it is simplifying the travel management process for hundreds of thousands of travellers, by cutting the time needed to manage a trip, from 3 or 4 hours to just 10 minutes.

The company says that its streamlined process saves companies more than 20% in annual travel costs.

The post E.U. Business Tech News Brief: October 23rd 2018 appeared first on Orsasaiwai.

Copenhagen: Borsen, a Danish business journal has reported that Copenhagen based augmented reality firm, Spektral, was quietly acquired last year by Apple.

Apple has since confirmed the acquisition.

Spektral began life as CloudCutout and was initially pitched as ‘green screen’ editing software. The technology includes machine learning elements and was developed using over 100,000 professional-level cut outs.

Last year, Apple also quietly acquired German computer vision company SensoMotoric, a provider of eye tracking glasses and systems.

Overstock in European Jobs Expansion

Ireland:  Utah-based Overstock is to expand its European base in Ireland, creating 100 research & development roles.

The company, which was founded in 1999 has a global workforce of 1,740 and already employs 40 people in Ireland where it first set up in 2013.

The new roles will be in software development & testing, machine learning and data analytics.

Coinbase Cryptocurrency Exchange Opens Irish Office 

Dublin: San Franscisco based Coinbase is to open a new office in Dublin, Ireland, as part of its contingency planning for the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Coinbase setup its European base in London in 2014 and received its e-money licence from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) last year.

The company plans to continue to operate in the UK, post-Brexit.

CoStar Expands European Footprint 

London: Nasdaq-listed CoStar Group has acquired UK online commercial  property portal, Realla.

Founded 2 years ago, Realla is a free-to-list search engine for commercial property. It currently carries 90,000 UK property listings and employs 17 staff.

CoStar says it plans to double or triple its investment in Realla and expand the firm into mainland Europe.

New Relic Acquires to expand Kubernetes

Gent: Software analytics company, New Relic has acquired CoScale, a Belgian company that develops software for monitoring container environments with a specific focus on Kubernetes.

Founded in 2013, investors have included Microsoft’s ScaleUP, PMV and the Qbic Fund.

The acquisition will accelerate New Relic into container and microservices-based software architectures.

New Relic first added container and microservices to its stack in 2016.

Stockholm Might Ban Electric Scooters

Stockholm: Stockholm City Council is working on a way to deal with citizen’s complaints about electric scooters on its pavements.

Hundreds of shared electric foot-scooters have been deployed on the city’s streets over the past few  of months by Voi Technology, a Swedish startup.

Voi’s business model is similar to the US-based counterparts like Bird and Lime where customers rent foot-scooters via an app, ride as much or as far as required and then leave them at their destination for fellow customers to use.

However, Stockholm residents are not happy about “scooter litter” and its city authorities are looking at ways to resolve with an outright ban not being entirely ruled-out.

In the US, cities such as San Francisco and Santa Monica have banned shared electric scooters over the past few months while in the UK, the law requires any vehicle powered by an electric motor to be registered and licensed, thereby rendering the shared concept effectively illegal.

RingCentral Acquires French Digital Platform

Paris: California based RingCentral Inc., a provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions, has announced the acquisition of French digital customer engagement platform, Dimelo.

Dimelo’s cloud based platform enables enterprises to manage all of their digital customer interactions through a single platform.

The company counts a number of leading global organizations such as Allianz, AXA, BNP Paribas, ENGIE and Orange as its clients.

Dimelo was founded in 2008 and is based in Paris, France. No financial details of the deal were revealed.

UK Cybersecurity Firm Garrison Raises $30m

London: Garrison, a UK cybersecurity firm which provides ultra-secure web browsing technology, has raised $30 million in series B round.

The funding was led by London based Dawn Capital, with participation from existing investors BGF, IP Group and NM Capital.

Founded in 2014, Garrison has developed technology that enables users to access web content without a risk of exposing their organization to cyber-attack.

According to Garrison’s CEO and Co-Founder, David Garfield, the solution “applies national-security-grade levels of protection to commercial environments at an accessible price point, in a way that doesn’t destroy the user experience as employees go about their work.”

The post E.U. Business Tech News Brief: October 16th 2018 appeared first on Orsasaiwai.

Brussels: The European Parliament has voted to revise EU rules on audiovisual media services.

The changes include the introduction of a minimum quota of European content, stricter rules on advertising, and enhanced protection of minors.

The guidelines will require that at least 30 percent of content carried on streaming services operating in the European Union originates from the region.

On-demand platforms are also being asked to contribute to the development of European movie and TV series, either by directly investing in content or by contributing to national subsidies with the level of contribution in each country must be proportional to the on-demand revenues in that country.

The legislation is yet to be formally approved by the European Council following which, Member States will have 21 months to incorporate the new rules into their countrys’ legislation.

Upland Software Makes Second EU Acquisition This Year

London: Austin TX based Upland Software Inc., has announced the acquisition of Rant & Rave Limited for $58.5m.

U.K. based Rant & Rave is a provider of cloud-based customer engagement solutions which will be integrated within the Upland Mobile Messaging (UMM) platform and supported for delivery via SMS, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Rich Communication Services (RCS), mobile wallet, and text-to-call.

In March, Upland made their first EU acquisition when they acquired Irish based, InterFax.

Instana Secures $30m To Expand Globally

Dusseldorf: Instana, the first monitoring solution to fully automate all aspects of application performance monitoring (APM), has raised $30 million in Series C investment led by Palo Alto based, Meritech Capital with participation from existing investor Accel.

The round brings company’s total funding to date to $57 million.

The investment will be used to fulfill increasing demand for Instana’s automated monitoring solution for containerized microservice applications across global markets and expand its product line.

Founded in 2015, Instana’s customers include large enterprise brands across industry verticals including Audi, ClearScore, Sixt Rent-a-Car, Edmunds.com, Yahoo Japan, Macmillan Learning and Franklin American Mortgage.

Preservica Raises $10m To Push International Expansion 

Oxford: Preservica, an Oxford, U.K. and Boston MA, based digital content storage company has secured $10m funding to drive product development and to scale its business internationally.

Mobeus Equity Partners is making the investment, providing an initial $5.3m with a facility for a further $4.7m to support continued global expansion plans.

Preservica provides a software platform that future-proofs all types of digital content against technology obsolescence, ensuring it remains accessible and trustworthy over decades whilst maintaining legal, compliance, governance and brand value needs.

WeWork’s European Business Losses Triple in 2017

London: WeWork’s European business losses tripled to $42 million in 2017, from $14.3m in 2016.

However, the financial statements for their UK & EU business show that revenues in the UK business doubled to $153.8m with membership numbers increasing by 77% to 23,000.

Wework’s UK business has 40 sites (38 in London) with plans to add a further 16.

London is Wework’s 2nd largest base, after New York.

German Cleanroom Technology Specialist Pulls IPO

Stuttgart: Exyte, a German builder of factories used by companies that design and build semiconductors, has pulled its IPO plan for the Frankfurt Stock Exchange after receiving muted feedback from investors.

Sources close to the Exyte plans suggested that stock worth up to 1 billion Euros ($1.15 billion) was expected to be offered in a deal that could have valued the company, formerly known as M+W Group, at as much as 3 billion Euros.

Investors were unimpressed at the valuation of the company, whose projected earnings growth was seen as ambitious.

Finland’s VR Headset Company Raises $31m in Series B Funding

Helsinki: Varjo Technologies, the Finnish startup that made the news earlier this year with its development of a virtual reality headset capable of “human-eye resolution,” has raised $31 million in Series B funding.

The funding will be led by Atomico, with participation from Next 47, EQT Ventures, and Lifeline Ventures.

Founded in 2016, Varjo aims to bring to market “the world’s first” human-eye resolution virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (XR) product, which will be orders of magnitude higher in resolution than existing consumer headsets, such as Magic Leap or Microsoft’s HoloLens.

The company says it is on track to commercially launch its VR headset later this year, with an AR/XR add-on to the headset available in H1 2019.

The post E.U. Business Tech News Brief: October 8th 2018 appeared first on Orsasaiwai.

A working group within the UK’s Department for Transport has published a report urging a number of changes, intended to modernize the rules governing taxis and private hire vehicles, in order to take account of app-based technology changes within the industry.

The report lists 34 recommendations and outlines how companies should treat their drivers, in terms of pay and working conditions and that these should be taken into account by licensing authorities when determining whether or not to grant a an applicat’s licence.

Meet CLAIRE: Europe’s new AI Group

Over 2,000 AI experts from across Europe are joining forces through an alliance called the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe (CLAIRE).

The AI researchers from 29 European countries have joined the alliance with the main aims of strengthening European excellence in AI research and innovation and remaining competitive with China and the US.

Europe’s spend on AI research in 2016 was USD 4 billion while  North America was and China spent USD 24 billion and USD 7 billion respectively.

The Kitty Hawk of Driverless Public Transport

Potsdam, a city near Berlin in Germany, will take its place in history, as the Kitty Hawk of driverless public transport.

On Friday, September 21s, the Siemens Combino tram successfully navigated its driverless way through traffic, as part of an international transport expo, pointing to a future where computer systems aboard large, heavy vehicles can limit the risks posed to pedestrians and other road users in their path.

London Luxury Online Retail IPO

London based luxury online retailer Farfetch has completed a breakout IPO, raising $885 million and setting it a valuation of $6.2 billion.

Farfetch helps well-heeled shoppers globally to fill their wardrobes with the best in luxury brands.

The company also offers services that help sellers create content for online boutiques, manage product returns and analyse consumer data to assist with pricing and inventory management decision-making.

The flotation comes at a time of growing competition among independent online fashion retailers and luxury brands rolling out their e-commerce operations, including cash-rich luxury heavyweights like Louis Vuitton which is experimenting with its own multi-brand site.

The global market for personal luxury goods will be worth about $446 billion by 2025, up from $307 billion last year, according to Bain and Compnay data cited in the IPO prospectus.

Millennials are expected to be key drivers of the trend. In fact, the list of key terms and performance indicators in the prospectus includes definitions for Generation X, Generation Z and Millennials, alongside such items as “Farfetcher,” meaning an employee of the company.

European Techs Call for Tougher EU Rules

Music streaming sites Spotify and Deezer are among European tech industry players calling on the European Union to get tougher on unfair business practices applied by U.S. giants like Apple, Google and Amazon.

In a joint letter, the group urged European Union ministers to go beyond current proposals aimed at regulating online platforms that act as middlemen between customers and businesses.

They say that regulation doesn’t go far enough to ensure dominant tech companies avoid practices that “reinforce their privileged position or unfairly favor proprietary services.”

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and Deezer CEO Hans-Holger Albrecht were among the signatories to the letter, issued this week to EU Competition and Business Ministers.

Travel websites, digital media companies and trade associations also signed the letter, which accuses the tech giants of having “disproportionate bargaining power” and using their “privileged position to become gatekeepers to the digital economy.”

Concern that U.S. tech companies have grown too big is a recurring theme for EU authorities, who last year slapped Google with a record 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) fine for unfairly favoring its own online shopping recommendations in search results.

More recently, EU competition authorities have opened preliminary investigation of Amazon’s treatment of smaller merchants on its site.

Asana Relocate EMEA HQ To Ireland

Asana, the San Francisco headquartered technology company set up by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has relocated its European, Middle East and African (EMEA) headquarters to new premises in Dublin, Ireland.

Asana is already on the lookout for additional office space in the Irish capital as it looks to continually increase employee numbers on the back of international growth.

Staff numbers at Asana’s Irish operations have jumped from 17 to 30 over the past 12 months.

CEO & co-founder Dustin Moskovitz was speaking as new figures showed Asana now has 50,000 paying organisations, up from 20,000 18 months ago and these are in addition to the more than the 1 million other businesses that use a free version of the company’s productivity management software.

The company has recorded sales growth for six consecutive quarters with revenue growth rate up about 90 per cent year on year. Half of the company’s revenues come from outside of the US, with Europe being a key market, hence the importance of the Irish operation.

UK Cybersecurity Firm Now Worth $1.65 Billion 

Darktrace, the UK cybersecurity start-up backed by Autonomy founder Mike Lynch, has raised $50m (£38m) in new funding, bringing the company’s valuation to $1.65bn, up from a valuation of $1.25bn in May this year.

The Cambridge (UK)-headquartered company is seen as one of Britain’s most promising technology start-ups, and claims to have pioneered “self-learning” algorithms that mimic the way the human immune system fights viruses to protect corporate computer systems.

The new investment into the business comes mainly from Vitruvian Partners, the London-headquartered private equity firm which has also backed Farfetch, the fashion marketplace, and food delivery business Just Eat.

Other funding comes from existing investors KKR and 1011 Ventures. Poppy Gustafsson, one of Darktrace’s two chief executives, said that the funding would go towards international expansion and hiring globally.

Spotify move to further shake and stir the music industry

Spotify plans to allow artists to upload songs directly, bypassing record labels or distributors.

Spotify, the largest player in the fast-growing format of streaming, said that the feature for now is only in the test phase for select US-based independent artists who have secured their own copyrights.

The feature, if eventually put to scale, could in the long run, drastically change the business decisions for artists who would not need to go through a label or one of the batch of new companies, such as TuneCore, that provide uploading services for independent artists.

Spotify said artists would simply upload their songs to the platform, first seeing a preview of how it will look, with the Swedish company automatically sending royalties each month.

The handful of artists who have already been selected for the feature include Noname, the Chicago rapper who has won acclaim for her songs of African American women’s struggles framed as telephone conversations, and Michael Brun, the Haitian-American DJ and producer known for his lively inter-cultural mixes.

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