‘Our industry sees the risks and is concerned’: Europe tech leaders join calls for AI slowdown

• Billions of dollars are being invested in Europe, with several fast-growing sectors attracting significant funding, including defence technology, AI, robotics, and autonomous transport. • KPMG reports that defence technology is likely to remain a key investment area due to geopolitical tensions and European countries' efforts to develop their sovereign defence capabilities.

• The United States' technology sector is widening its gap with Europe's due to the AI boom, with American giants such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, and Meta benefiting from the revenue. • American hyperscalers plan to invest more than $1 trillion annually, further solidifying their position in the technology sector.

• The University of Scranton has entered the U.S. News and World Report rankings of the best colleges in the United States, following its reclassification as a National University by Carnegie last year. • The university's impressive run in the U.S. News Regional rankings has been further validated by this new recognition, according to the report.

• Apriorit launched CodeTuna, a cybersecurity-focused AI code reviewer for Bitbucket, to catch vulnerabilities that generic tools miss, as reported by EIN Presswire. • CodeTuna and similar tools, such as Fabrix.ai's Governed VibeOps and Legit's VibeGuard 2.0, aim to improve code security with features like centralized control and cost metering.

• A French company has received new funding from investors including Samsung, Scaleup Europe, and PSG Equity, valuing it at over €21 billion. • The company's valuation is based on its latest funding round, which was led by these prominent investors and has propelled it to a valuation of over €21 billion.

• Nvidia launched an Israel AI lab to develop drugs and drive medical breakthroughs, with a new team under CTO Michael Kagan. • The lab will recruit dozens of researchers and work with partners like Sheba and Mount Sinai on genomics, drug discovery, and advanced materials, according to the announcement.

• Germany's startup ecosystem is gaining momentum, with 3053 startups founded in 2026, the highest number since 2019. • A total of 3053 startups were founded in 2026, indicating a surge in new company creation in the country.

• Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo has suffered a multimillion-euro loss due to fraudsters using AI-powered impersonation and messaging to trick executives into authorising international money transfers. • The fraudsters specifically targeted Fideuram, Intesa Sanpaolo's private banking division, to carry out the fraudulent transactions.

• Respan introduced Span-1, a dedicated behavior-evaluation model designed to judge full agent traces. • The model was benchmarked against Jev, frontier models, and open models, positioning it as an alternative to general-purpose LLM-as-judge evaluations.

• OpenAI is calling for the United States to lead international efforts to establish technical standards for advanced AI, including systems capable of autonomous behaviour and recursive self-improvement. • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has argued for a coordinated approach to slowing or "pacing" frontier AI development, amid growing concern over models that can evade safeguards.

• The White House requested OpenAI and Anthropic to delay releasing new models to UK testers until they undergo a US review. • Google is launching Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, into space, which are custom-built chips designed to accelerate artificial intelligence tasks.