Tag: United Kingdom

$100 million… Leta Capital wants to be a friend to Russia-speaking founders everywhere

It’s become increasingly obvious over the last few years, as Vladimir Putin has tightened his grip on his country, that Russian entrepreneurs who want to engage properly with the rest of the world have had to leave their mother country. Gone are the days when a startup in Russia might…

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EU is now investigating Google’s adtech over antitrust concerns

EU antitrust authorities are finally taking a broad and deep look into Google’s adtech stack and role in the online ad market — confirming today that they’ve opened a formal investigation. Google has already been subject to three major EU antitrust enforcements over the past five years — against Google…

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Perspectives on tackling Big Tech’s market power

The need for markets-focused competition watchdogs and consumer-centric privacy regulators to think outside their respective ‘legal silos’ and find creative ways to work together to tackle the challenge of big tech market power was the impetus for a couple of fascinating panel discussions organized by the Centre for Economic Policy…

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UK’s ICO warns over ‘big data’ surveillance threat of live facial recognition in public

The UK’s chief data protection regulator has warned over reckless and inappropriate use of live facial recognition (LFR) in public places. Publishing an opinion today on the use of this biometric surveillance in public — to set out what is dubbed as the “rules of engagement” — the information commissioner,…

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Australian ID verification startup OCR Labs raises $15M Series A to expand into UK/Turkey/Europe

With the gig economy came the need for ID verification, thus startups like OnFido (raised $188.8 million) appeared, alongside several others. But this sector is by no means ‘done’ yet. Now, OCR Labs, which emerged from Australia, has announced a €12.5M / $15 million Series A funding round led by…

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Motorway’s auction platform for second-hand cars raises $67.7M Series B led by Index Ventures

Motorway, is a UK startup that allows professional car dealers to bid in an auction for privately-owned cars for sale. The startup has had rapid success by removing a lot of friction in the process. It’s now raised £48m / $67.7m in a Series B round led by Index Ventures, along with…

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