AI up lad! Yorkshire launches AI investment fund
0
This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.
The Oberon Yorkshire AI EIS Fund, has been developed in partnership with startup incubator Yorkshire AI Labs (YAIL) and will invest in AI-driven companies across Northern England, including those operating in the financial services sector.
According to an announcement, the fund plans to invest millions in the region and will seek to capitalise on Yorkshire's "industrial heritage, strong tehcnology ecosystem and leading research institutions".
'This isn't just a fund, it's the next phase of a blueprint that's already working," said YAIL founder David Richards. "We've shown that you can build nationally significant AI companies right here in Yorkshire. The Oberon Fund allows us to take that model and scale it, to back more founders, accelerate more platforms, and build an ecosystem the whole country can be proud of.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
3 minutes ago
- Reuters
India's Brigade Hotel Ventures sets IPO price band at 85–90 rupees for $88 mln offering
July 21 (Reuters) - Brigade Hotel Ventures ( opens new tab, an Indian real estate developer, has set the price band for its $88 million initial public offering (IPO) at 85 to 90 rupees apiece, according to a newspaper advertisement. The IPO will be open for bids from July 24 to July 28, while anchor investors can submit their bids on July 23.
The Guardian
3 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Has Elon Musk built a Nazi chatbot?
In 2023 Elon Musk launched Grok, an AI chatbot marketed as providing 'unfiltered answers' on X. In part, it was reportedly created to counter other machines that Musk saw as being trained to be 'politically correct'. Fast forward to 2025 and Grok is no stranger to controversy – sharing antisemitic content and white genocide conspiracy theories, and referring to itself as MechaHitler. One X user, Will Stancil, has even been the subject of extreme, violent, and individually tailored assault fantasies created by Grok, as he tells Nosheen Iqbal. 'It's alarming and you don't feel completely safe when you see this sort of thing,' he says. The tech reporter Chris Stokel-Walker explains how Grok is a large language model (LLM) that has been trained on content created by X users, and how despite the numerous controversies and apologies on the part of parent company xAI, it has recently acquired a new contract with the US Department of Defense. He also discusses the difficulties in regulating Grok, especially when some politicians feel comfortable with the content it generates. Support the Guardian today:
The Guardian
29 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Rising food prices driven by climate crisis threaten world's poorest, report finds
Climate change-induced food price shocks are on the rise and could lead to more malnutrition, political upheaval and social unrest as the world's poorest are hit by shortages of food staples. New research links last year's surges in the price of potatoes in the UK, cabbages in South Korea, onions in India, and cocoa in Ghana to weather extremes that 'exceeded all historical precedent prior to 2020'. Such price jumps not only affect local food security and health, particularly for the poorest in society, but have knock-on effects around the world. Unprecedented monthly temperatures in February 2024 after drought in late 2023 and early 2024 across Ghana and Ivory Coast, where 60% of the world's cocoa is grown, led to global prices for the commodity spiking by 300%. The high price of staples can have an impact on public health as low-income households cut back on expensive fruit and vegetables, according to the report from a team including the UK's Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), the European Central Bank (ECB), the Food Foundation, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The study investigated examples across 18 countries between 2022 and 2024 where price spikes were associated with heat, drought and heavy precipitation. It found food price spikes can have a wider economic impact, making it harder for economies to keep down overall inflation and so, for example, bring interest rates down. A hot dry spring in the UK this year, for example, partly drove unexpectedly high UK inflation figures published last week, dampening expectations for further interest rate cuts this summer. The report also suggests 'high rates of inflation can directly alter election outcomes in modern democracies'. Maximilian Kotz, a Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellow at Barcelona Supercomputing Center and the lead author of the report, said: 'It is clear the cost of living played a role in last year's election in the US.' He added: 'These effects are going to continue to become worse in the future. Until we get to net zero emissions extreme weather will only get worse, but it's already damaging crops and pushing up the price of food all over the world. 'People are noticing, with rising food prices No 2 on the list of climate impacts they see in their lives, second only to extreme heat itself. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion 'Sadly, when the price of food shoots up, low-income families often have to resort to less nutritious, cheaper foods. Diets like this have been linked to a range of health conditions like cancer, diabetes and heart disease.' Raj Patel, a research professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, said: 'Food price inflation is always political.' For example, people in Mozambique took to the streets when the price of bread shot up after extreme heat in Russia, a big wheat producer, prompted the country to block exports to protect meagre supplies in 2010 meaning the price of wheat soared globally. The research is published ahead of the UN Food Systems Summit Stocktake on 27 July, where world leaders will meet to discuss threats to the global food system.
