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  • Most interest in AI gigafactory builds is European, Commission says

    The European Commission announced plans to mobilise funds to build AI factories earlier this year; an official call will follow later this year.

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    The “vast majority” of responses to a European Commission call for interest to invest in artificial intelligence gigafactories is European, despite global investors also being permitted to participate in the public-private partnerships, EU Commissioner for Technology told journalists at a press conference on Monday.
    Henna Virkkunnen updated plans announced by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier this year to mobilise €200bn for investment in artificial intelligence through an InvestAI fund.

    Of this, €20bn will be earmarked for four to five AI gigafactories, needed to allow for “collaborative development” with the most complex AI models, according to the Commission.
    The aim is to enable even small companies to access large-scale computing power for future development.
    The proposals received so far “are immense in scale”, Virkkunen said, adding that together the companies are ready to invest more than €230 billion. “It does not mean that all of them will materialise, but it is positive news,” she added. 
    In total, there were some 76 expressions of interest.
    The Commission will now enter into discussions with the respondents to the Commission’s call, as well as the member states.

    An official call will come later this year, as part of the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking – a joint initiative between the EU, member states and private partners.

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    The Commission announced plans to build seven AI factories last year, but the larger gigafactories will have around 100,000 last-generation AI chips, around four times more than the AI factories currently being set up. 
    The gigafactories funded through InvestAI aim to be the largest public-private partnership in the world for the development of trustworthy AI, according to the EU executive. The Commission’s initial funding for InvestAI will come from existing EU funding programmes which have a digital component, such as the Digital Europe Programme, Horizon Europe, and InvestEU.
    EU member states can also contribute by committing investment from existing earmarked cohesion funds.

    That call came after other regions in the world, including the US, outperform Europe when it comes to AI funding and investment.
    Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump also announced a joint venture, with Stargate, OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure in the country.  The joint venture team will set up a separate company, deploying $100bn (€96bn) immediately and increasing the investment up to $500bn (€480bn) over the coming four years. 

  • OpenAI hires the team behind Xcode coding assistant Alex

    OpenAI hires the team behind Xcode coding assistant Alex

    Acqui-hires feel like they’re here to stay: The team behind Alex, a popular tool that lets developers use AI models within Apple’s development suite Xcode, is joining OpenAI.

    In a post on X, Alex’s founder Daniel Edrisian said the startup’s team is joining OpenAI’s Codex division, which is building the company’s AI coding agent.

    Y Combinator-backed Alex was founded in 2024 and sought to integrate AI models into Xcode. Apple, however, earlier this year updated Xcode to let users tap ChatGPT and other AI models without needing external tools. Edrisian didn’t mention if this was a reason his startup’s team has joined OpenAI.

    “When we started out, Xcode had no AI. Building a “Cursor for Xcode” sounded crazy, but we managed to do it anyway. And, over time, we built the best coding agent for iOS & MacOS apps,” Edrisian wrote in his post.

    In a post on Alex’s blog, the startup said that it would continue supporting existing users, though the app will no longer be able to be downloaded after October 1. The company noted that the team won’t add new features to the tool, but would maintain the product as long as existing users are using it.

    Alex’s Y Combinator listing notes that the startup had three people working on the coding tool. It is not clear if all these employees are joining OpenAI.

    We’ve asked OpenAI for a comment, and we will update the story if we hear back.

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    OpenAI has done a few similar “acquisitions” in the past, hiring only the team behind a startup rather than buying the whole company. The company earlier this week said it was acquiring product testing startup Statsig for $1.1 billion.

  • Netskope follows Rubrik as a rare cybersecurity IPO, both backed by Lightspeed

    Netskope follows Rubrik as a rare cybersecurity IPO, both backed by Lightspeed

    Cybersecurity is a massive sector, but startups in the category are more likely to be acquired than go public. Even Wiz, which for a time held the title of the fastest-growing startup, abandoned its IPO ambitions when it agreed to sell to Google earlier this year.

    In the past few years, there have been scant few significant cybersecurity debuts such as SentinelOne in 2021, and Rubrik last year.

    Next week, the sector is expected to add one more public company: the cloud cybersecurity platform Netskope. The 13-year-old startup also shares its earliest and largest investor with Rubrik: Lightspeed Venture Partners.

    The large Silicon Valley firm had a 23.9% ownership of Rubrik when it went public at $6.6 billion last year. In the case of Netskope, Lightspeed owns 19.3% of the company that aims to achieve a valuation of as much as $6.5 billion, according to the updated S1 filing.

    Lightspeed first backed Netskope in 2013, leading the company’s $21 million Series B.

    The company set its IPO price between $15 and $17 per share, and at the upper end of that range, giving Lightspeed an approximately $1.1 billion windfall, in terms of the value of its stake.

    Netskope’s other major investors include ICONIQ Growth, which holds 19.2% of the company’s stock, followed by Accel with a stake of nearly 9%.

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    Netskope is known as a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) provider. It offers cybersecurity for an enterprise’s cloud infrastructure, with such products as secure web gateways and firewall as a service. The company’s main competitors are Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks.

    The company was last valued at $7.5 billion, when it raised a $300 million Series H led by ICONIQ Growth in 2021, the height of the ZIRP era. It also took on a $401 million convertible note in 2023.

    But those capital infusions weren’t enough to get Netskope to profitability. For the first half of the year, Netskope’s revenue grew to $328.5 million from $251.3 million a year ago. During that time, its net loss narrowed to $169.5 million from $206.7 million, the filing shows.

    If Netskope goes public at a valuation of $6.5 billion, the company would be among a number of VC-backed companies that have recently debuted below their final private market valuation.

    Other companies that went public below their latest private valuations include Chime and Hinge Health. But not all new listings are being met with caution. Some recent IPOs, like Figma and Circle, have soared on the first day of trading.