The Next Web Original and proudly opinionated perspectives for Generation T
- Europe is pouring tens of billions of public money into VC. The hard part is making it workby Allison Steffens Herrera on 18 April 2026 at 11:31
The European Investment Fund is raising a €15 billion fund of funds called ETCI 2 that aims to unlock up to €80 billion in scaleup funding across Europe. Germany’s WIN initiative is targeting €12 billion by 2030. France’s Tibi programme has pledged €7 billion in private capital and […]
- Nvidia’s Huang warns DeepSeek running on Huawei chips would be ‘horrible’ for the USby Alina Maria Stan on 18 April 2026 at 11:14
In short: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned on the Dwarkesh Podcast that DeepSeek optimising its AI models for Huawei’s Ascend chips instead of American hardware would be “a horrible outcome” for the United States, as the Chinese AI lab prepares to launch its V4 foundation model on Huawei’s […]
- Anthropic’s Amodei meets Wiles and Bessent at the White House in first step toward resolving Mythos standoffby Alina Maria Stan on 18 April 2026 at 10:54
In short: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday in what the White House called “productive and constructive” talks over access to Mythos, the frontier AI model capable of finding thousands of zero-day […]
- Palantir, Thales, and a startup are competing to build the FAA’s predictive air traffic AIby Cristian Dina on 18 April 2026 at 10:38
In short: The FAA is developing SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories), an AI system that would extend air traffic conflict prediction from 15 minutes to two hours, with Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence competing for the contract. The project follows the LaGuardia […]
- Cursor is raising $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation as AI coding tools become the fastest-growing software categoryby Ana Maria Constantin on 18 April 2026 at 10:26
In short: AI coding startup Cursor (Anysphere) is in talks to raise at least $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and Nvidia, nearly doubling its November 2025 valuation of $29.3 billion. The company has grown from zero to $2 billion ARR in three […]
- Three more senior executives leave OpenAI as the company kills its side questsby Alina Maria Stan on 18 April 2026 at 10:13
Summary: Three senior OpenAI executives, former CPO Kevin Weil, Sora head Bill Peebles, and enterprise CTO Srinivas Narayanan – departed on the same day as the company shuts down “side quests” including Sora (discontinuing 26 April) and dismantles OpenAI for Science. The exits continue a […]
- NVIDIA didn’t invest in Xanadu, but it made its CEO a billionaire anywayby Cristian Dina on 18 April 2026 at 09:58
Christian Weedbrook, the founder and CEO of Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies, became a billionaire this week without NVIDIA investing a single dollar in his company. His 46.4 million multiple-voting shares were worth approximately $1.5 billion as of midday Friday, after Xanadu’s stock […]
- Anthropic’s Amodei heads to the White House as Washington fights over Mythos accessby Alina Maria Stan on 17 April 2026 at 18:32
Summary: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is meeting White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Friday to negotiate access to Mythos, a frontier AI model that can identify and exploit thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and browser. The meeting follows Anthropic’s […]
- Zoom partners with Sam Altman’s World to verify that meeting participants are actually humanby Ana Maria Constantin on 17 April 2026 at 18:16
Summary: Zoom has partnered with World, Sam Altman’s biometric identity company, to let meeting participants verify they are human using World’s Deep Face technology, which cross-references iris-scanned biometric profiles with live video to display a “Verified Human” badge. The feature […]
- Uber launches $5 doorstep return pickups for Uber Eats purchases across 5,000 US citiesby Alina Maria Stan on 17 April 2026 at 18:00
Uber has launched a service that sends a gig worker to your door to collect items you want to return to a retailer, for $5 a pickup. The feature, called Return a Package, is available in the Uber Eats app across nearly 5,000 US cities and works with nine retail partners including Target, Best Buy, […]
