Costantino Mariella

A great thought piece by Netradyne CTO David Julian discussing some exciting R&D he and his team are doing on grounding large pretrained foundation models in the diverse long tail of real world driving situations across billions of road miles. "....the benefit of pretrained LLMs and LGMs is that they have been fed countless data points about not just road safety but other topics that interplay with road safety, such as DMV manuals, severe weather safety tips and local laws. Their drawback is that they haven’t been fed much driving data from around the world. Fine-tune pretrained LLMs and LGMs with driving data from around the world, and you can get the best of both worlds: a super tool that understands the subtleties of complex driving situations. A solution that combines both approaches would be able to identify, contextualize and, arguably most importantly, anticipate various road hazards more precisely, even picking up on different driving conventions around the world. At my company, we see the value in both of these individual approaches and are excited about the additional value the combined approach can yield..."

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I'm pleased to share that Lightrock has continued to support Thomas Doering and Distribusion Technologies in their $80 million Series C funding round. Distribusion is the leading global B2B ground transportation marketplace, addressing inefficiencies in this €700 billion market. The industry’s progress has been hindered by legacy technology, making multi-modal travel planning and booking difficult and time-consuming. This increases costs for consumers and negatively impacts sustainability as travellers opt for private cars and taxis over less polluting transportation options. Using a single API, Distribusion connects transport carriers like National Express LLC, Amtrak, and Deutsche Bahn with retailers such as Expedia Group, Google Maps, and Alipay. This allows consumers to seamlessly compare and purchase tickets on trusted platforms. There's a high likelihood that Distribusion has facilitated your travel without you knowing it. We led the company's Series B in 2022, and since then Distribusion has grown tenfold, creating the largest global B2B network of ground transport operators. This growth, combined with achieving profitability, has encouraged us to reinvest and continue with this company on this exciting journey. We look forward to continuing our work with this team. Learn more about #Distribusion via the link in the comments. #TravelTech #FutureOfTravel

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▶ 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗙𝗔𝗖𝗧 On this exact day, July 27, 1866, a crucial milestone in telecommunications was achieved with the beginning of operations of the transatlantic telegraphic cable. Since then, Europe and the Americas have been connected. ▶ 𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗜𝗧 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 This was a major engineering breakthrough, overcoming numerous technical challenges that had plagued earlier efforts. The establishment of a continuous communication link dramatically transformed global communications and the world as we know it. We can hardly imagine the world without global communications. Today, in the digital age, there are over 600 submarine data cables in operation globally. To these, we must add a fast-growing number of satellites and satellite constellations, as well as various other technologies that enable real-time communication and data transfer. These infrastructures support an ever-growing demand for data and connectivity. While global trade grows at 2-3% per year, data flows are increasing at a rate of 22-24%. ▶ 𝗠𝗬 𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗨𝗚𝗛𝗧𝗦 𝗢𝗡 𝗜𝗧 The rapid growth in global data flows underscores the critical importance of maintaining, securing, and expanding our telecommunications and data infrastructures. The world depends on these systems. Physical infrastructures are essential and, in many cases, neglected. From cyberattacks to extreme weather events, from terrorism to accidents, these infrastructures are increasingly under pressure. The recent global IT failure (https://bit.ly/4dj49In) highlights another aspect: there are various layers of software infrastructures that users have no clue about and that need to be properly managed. In addition to maintaining existing infrastructures, we need to develop and deploy new ones. This is a major tech, business and security frontier. While we are deploying global satellite-based networks at speed—with around 10,000 satellites in space and the number growing by 30% per year, with companies like SpaceX, Amazon and the Chinese SSST launching thousands of satellites for their constellations—other infrastructures are being neglected. In particular, the soft cybersecurity infrastructures, including protocols, standards, software development methodologies and beyond, are much needed. Additionally, we should not forget the development of future 6G and 7G, quantum, edge and other technologies and networks. All of this requires significant investment and careful planning to ensure both the resilience of current systems and the successful deployment of future innovations. While big companies and some national actors have the resources and capabilities to explore new frontiers, some of the much-needed infrastructures are still underfunded. How can humanity address that? What innovations do you think will shape the future of global connectivity? How can we build better, accessible, secure, and resilient global networks? #TelecommunicationsHistory #GlobalConnectivity #InnovationMilestones #Digital #Space

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Very Exciting News... Introducing NexAI, our game-changing AI-powered industrial intelligence platform! After months of hard work, countless cups of coffee (sometimes beer), and invaluable input from our amazing clients (you know who you are!), we're thrilled to unveil it. NexAI is designed to supercharge your IoT and OT investments, unlocking hidden value and transforming the way you operate. Whether you're looking to streamline processes, gain real-time insights, or harness the power of AI, NexAI has got you covered! A massive shout-out to our incredible team for their tireless efforts and unwavering dedication! To our clients who have been with us every step of the way - thank you for your trust, support and feedback. Your partnership has been instrumental in shaping NexAI into the powerful platform it is today. This is just the beginning of an exciting journey, and we can't wait to see how NexAI will revolutionise industries and drive enhanced value for our clients. Stay tuned for more updates and groundbreaking developments! #NexAI #CapitalAI #IndustrialIntelligence #AIoT #IndustryDisrupted

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🤝 Very proud to announce that GRYD has joined forces with leading renewables supplier Good Energy in a deal that is the first of its kind in the UK. ⚡Good Energy customers will now start receiving clean energy generated from homes across the country in GRYD’s decentralised smart solar network. We’re doing this through a unique export-only power purchase agreement that - for the first time in the UK - doesn’t require households to use the same supplier for both energy export and import. 🙌🏾 Good Energy are true pioneers in the renewables market and I’m excited to see our partnership grow as the network of GRYD homes expands across the UK - unlocking clean energy access for millions of homeowners and accelerating Britain’s net zero transition. 🚀 We're committed to creating new innovative models to supercharge the solar rooftop revolution in the UK and make the move to decentralised energy deliver even more benefits for homeowners! 👏🏾Great to work with James Rees, Nina McDouall and the Good Energy team & more to come from GRYD, Tom Jordan, Scott Whiteside! 🔗 Link to Tech.eu write-up on the deal in the comments. Thanks Lucy & Danielle 🙏🏾!

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"The great promise of embodied AI is that it can transform the things we do and allows us to do so much more with our lives. (…) There’s no better example than self-driving cars. This will give people the first chance to experience embodied AI, one that can deliver goods and move people around in a way that is more safe and sustainable than transportation as we know it today." Great to see our What's Next series launch today, chatting to Wayve CEO Alex Kendall. Excited to be exploring the possibilities emerging deep-tech innovations hold, the positive impact they can have on our health, livelihood and planet, and how we mitigate the risks. Let's get excited about What's Next.

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Magnetic’s work was recently covered by Forbes. Thank you for the conversation with the team, David Prosser. We fund vastly ambitious companies addressing our largest challenges. We back theme-setters before the theme is there, with dedication. Occasionally, we help to design and architecture them. Our investment themes will see iconic, technology-driven champions emerge over the coming decades: 🧲 The lack of resilience and technology dependence – an inescapable move towards homegrown champions in critical areas like security, healthcare or energy 🧲 Climate opportunities and the adaptation to a new, hotter reality 🧲 The modernization of our core, backbone industries or services through building radically different businesses, upending traditional markets Reach out to us if we could be a partner on your journey to build the inevitable future: [email protected] Link in comments 👇🏻 David Rosskamp Mario Lebherz Maike Haase Magnetic Capital

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🔐 Unlocking Product-Market Fit in Challenging Industries - For Deeptech founders and investors 🤖 With Silicon Roundabout Ventures we've just published the full video from my keynote at the The AI Summit Series @ London Tech Week 2024 Sharing my insights from a decade of running the largest deeptech meetup community in the UK and now as General Partner of my soloGP deeptech VC. I'll link the video in the comments below 👇 Here the key highlights: 📊 Market Understanding: - SMEs vs. Startups: SMEs play the game of improvement; startups play the game of step-change: you can't have a good idea or a good product ─you need to find what is it that you do ABSURDLY better than the status quo. - Competitive Analysis: Identify anomalies to exploit. 🔧 Industrial Manufacturing Challenges: - Complex Supply Chains: How to penetrate intricate global supply chains. - Solutions: Modular design approach, pilot programs, and turning challenges into assets. 💡 Energy Market Insights: - High CAPEX: Projects often require large upfront investments. Think: can you turn a challenge into a moat? - Strategies: Align with global sustainability goals, focus on government support, and leverage partnerships. 🛡️ Defense Sector Navigation: - Regulatory Compliance: Turn compliance challenges into competitive advantage by working with people who have insider contacts. - Government Partnerships: Help agencies tackle critical needs with ready-to-deploy solutions. 🚀 Key Milestones for Product-Market Fit: - Identify compelling value propositions. Why would an incumbent almost NEED to work with you. - Segment the market (beachhead vs. long term): figure out Proprietary feedback mechanisms. 🌍 Post-COVID Adaptation: - Regulations into Moats: Incorporate regulatory wins into your business model. - Early Revenue: In a post 2021 world, even in deeptech you should prioritise early revenue streams to prove demand above revenue-less competition. - Be Different: Dare to be different, avoid crowded spaces. 🤝 Partner Leverage: - Early Wins: Secure early wins and build trust for larger projects. - Customer Centricity: Map and segment customers to find innovative ways to win them over. 💬 What did I miss? Share your thoughts! _______________________________________________________ #deeptech #familyoffices #limitedpartners #venturecapital #angelinvesting I'm a soloVC building my firm & community in public. 📢 On a mission to build a new kind of tech-driven VC firm at the intersection of Venture, Science and Community 👩‍🔬 👨‍💻 👫 💹 ❤️ & Follow+ to keep up with the journey 🛣️

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Thank you to everyone who joined us for an insightful roundtable discussion yesterday in partnership with the UK Space Agency 🌟 🛰 We had an inspiring conversation on the unique challenges and opportunities faced by UK space SMEs as they move from early-stage growth to commercialisation. Together, we delved into the critical gap in support that emerging space companies experience as they transition beyond early-stage funding, and discussed the actionable ways to bridge it. Key themes included: 👉 The barriers to scaling for space SMEs and how the support landscape evolves as the industry matures 👉 Current UK financial support mechanisms that foster growth and attract investment, as well as potential new tools to further strengthen the ecosystem 👉 Opportunities for collaboration between UKSA, the investment community, and SMEs to ensure sustained support through Series A+ funding and beyond Thank you again to all our participants for their contributions to this important dialogue 🚀 Lydia Green – Lead Unlocking Space, UK Space Agency Sofia Chaves – Senior Project Officer Unlocking Space for Investment, UK Space Agency Lucas Bishop – Associate, Seraphim Space Sanjeev Gordhan – General Partner, Type One Ventures Shruti Iyengar – Investment Manager, Future Planet Capital Anatolii Papulov – CEO and Founder, NewOrbit Space Martin Philip – Director, Open Cosmos Patrick Zaitouni – Chief Strategy Officer, HawkEye 360 Steve Young – President of Satellite Missions, ICEYE David Ford – Partner, Silverpeak Julian Tsio – Director, Lazard Edmund Phillips – Senior Investment Partner, NSSIF Nigel Fox FCA – Chief Finance Officer, ALL.SPACE

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I love this parody. It's accurate, but I need to remind our American colleagues that Europe is not a single country with a unified legal system; notaries aren't involved everywhere. One thing is clear: funding is limited here, and most VCs are very cautious before signing a term sheet. #vc #venturecaptal #notaries #kpis #metrics #unicorn #Europe #investments #termsheet

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3… 2… 1… and we are live! SmartViz's products and services are now listed on the UK Government's G-Cloud 14 framework. Public sector firms in the UK can now procure us directly from Crown Commercial Services’ Digital Marketplace. This marks a big step forward in our IoT and building analytics solutions becoming available to public sector organisations across the UK. From optimising space management to enhancing energy efficiency, our technology is now even easier for public institutions to access and integrate. Looking forward to supporting digital transformation within local and central government, education and healthcare! And extending the success stories beyond Barnsley Council, Midlothian Council, Scottish Futures Trust, Cardiff Metropolitan University and a host of other public and private sector clients. #GCloud14 #CampusManagement #WorkplaceManagement #DigitalTransformation #IoT #PublicSector #SmartViz #SpaceUtilisation #SpaceManagement

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🔥🍴 Intel Ignite is still relatively new to the UK tech scene and we're keen to understand more about the VC ecosystem so last week we conducted an experiment. We hosted a dinner for a small group of investors to see what would happen. How open would people be in sharing their experiences? What are the things we can learn from each other? Would people even turn up? I can report that the event was overwhelmingly positive; conversations were flowing, everyone was engaged, we got to know each other personally, insights and lessons learnt were shared and above all, it was a fun time! Some of the things we talked about: 🛰 The rise of defence tech and dual-use investing, plus the increased amount of spacetech deal flow we’re seeing. 😇 Angel investing when you work at a fund. Is it allowed, and if so, can you only invest in companies outside of your fund’s thesis or does the fund get the right of first refusal on those deals? How do you handle conflicts of interest? 🐲 We talked about the incredible impact of DragonChasers, the community for emerging managers to find the right investors and helping LPs from around the world find the right European ventures funds to invest into. 💰 Ofer Shayo shared the story of how his start-up got acquired. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t easy at all. It was an intricate process where there were a lot of moving pieces. We also shared tactical tips with each other including how to engage with student entrepreneurs and university spin-outs, and how we conduct first calls with founders! My thanks to Isabelle O'Keeffe, Harry Morgan, Aashna Gupta and Patrick Gilday for the lively conversation. And here’s a picture of us in our “rave” sunglasses 🕶

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"Funding Collapse sends investment in start-ups to six year low" The Times today covering the shocking stats that VenturePath uncovered, with our partner Beauhurst. Great quotes from supporters Michael Moore CEO, BVCA and Julian David CEO, techUK. * UK VC funding at Series A is -44% from last year, and worsening * Q3 24 is down a staggering 57% from Q2, itself down from Q1 * 9 in 10 seed funded startups cannot access Series A VC funding, the next 'rung on the funding ladder' * Just 32 future scaleup companies across the whole of the UK were able to access their first VC funding round in Q3...a 6 year low * Half a billion less capital is going in to UK scaleups at Series A, than just 2 years ago! As the UK scaleup funding gap widens, we are losing ground against other countries, at both startup stage (a position the UK worked hard to achieve, since 2011), and for scaleup support. OECD data: 13th in the world for scaleup support, and that's before Series A funding access dried up. I get that its confusing. Another report (BBB, Nations & Regions) released this week spoke of positive trends in private investment, stating "The data for Q2 2024 shows that investment value has continued to grow". Great, I love to see optimistic data. But under analysis that bundles venture with private equity (later stage), where a few megadeals skew the numbers. Otherwise the exact opposite is true. Our independent research here, for the UK ScaleUp Investment Mission, is laser beam focussed on Series A. The funding round where companies move from the c.1m startups launched each year, through the 2,179 that access seed funding, into the rarefied category of being recognised as future scaleups, attracting Series A funding (£2-10m). The UK venture landscape is currently funding just 248 pa of these companies, and declining. We've been sharing this urgent call for support with the new Government since the day after the election. I've personally met with several Ministers, and spoke to all the relevant Government departments. I will shamelessly repeat loudly what is at stake. UK scaleup funding at Series A has nearly halved in a year, and continues to decline steeply, more than halving in the last quarter. VenturePath developed The UK ScaleUp Investment Mission to convene the scaleup support ecosystem and £7bn of funders to help address this problem, to improve nationwide access to VC investment, and create more venture-backed successes. We have clear support, clear recommendations to reverse this decline in UK scaleup investment, and have made a clear ask of Government for participation in this, to ensure immediate action is taken to create the conditions for success for UK scaleups, ensuring the focus on growth isn't undermined by lack of capital, or equitable access to it. Government decision makers, we'd love your interest, to progress to action. HM Treasury: Rt Hon Rachel Reeves Spencer Livermore James Murray & CC Poppy Gustafsson (welcome to the debate).

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Exciting developments for IATT - Independent Air Treatment Technology Ltd. through Aer AI! 🚀 Earlier this week we made big strides in integrating cutting-edge hardware and software for Aer Ai, a game-changer for Independent Air Treatment Technology (IATT). This innovative solution will revolutionise how we monitor, manage, and maintain air treatment systems, making our services even more efficient and proactive for our customers. With real-time data capture and advanced analytics, we’re setting the stage for proactive maintenance and smarter operations. This integration isn’t just about technology; it’s about delivering better outcomes for clients and staying at the forefront of the air treatment industry. Next up: Testing and pilot program with a view to complete the roll out by Q2 2025.

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🚀 From Garage Startup to Financial Powerhouse: The Full Journey of Mattioli Woods plc 🚀 Join me as I explore Ian Mattioli's journey from a garage startup to the financial giant Mattioli Woods plc. Ian shares insights on work-life balance, structuring a startup, and evolving from pensions to wealth management. Discover how his vision shaped Mattioli Woods plc and our health tech ventures, Care Hires and Kanabo. Ian helped Care Hires grow to a platform connecting 19,000 care workers with care homes across the UK. At Kanabo, he's supported our growth as a telemedicine startup listed on the LSE, connecting 4,200+ pharmacies and launching medical cannabis clinics. A must-watch for entrepreneurs and startup founders seeking inspiration to turn their vision into reality. Learn how these lessons drive innovation and growth in Care Hires and Kanabo Full Version linked below 👇 #Entrepreneurship #StartupSuccess #WealthManagement #BusinessGrowth #LeadershipLessons #Inspiration #HealthTech #MedicalCannabis Leicester Startups, Loughborough University, University of Leicester De Montfort University, Avihu Tamir, Nizam Bata ACCA, Tharaka De Alwis.

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The article outlines five critical priorities for the UK government to support SMEs better: improving access to finance, enhancing digital infrastructure, reducing regulatory burdens, fostering innovation, and expanding international trade opportunities. These actions are essential in empowering SMEs, the backbone of the economy, to thrive in a competitive and rapidly evolving market. The government can help SMEs overcome challenges, drive economic growth, and create more resilient and sustainable businesses by addressing these key areas.

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