Microsoft has announced a new London hub for its recently unveiled consumer AI division.
It will be fronted by Jordan Hoffmann, an AI scientist and engineer Microsoft recently picked up from high-profile AI startup Inflection AI, which Microsoft invested in last year.
The news comes some three weeks after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella unveiled a new consumer AI division headed up by Inflection AI’s founders, which include Mustafa Suleyman — co-founder of Deepmind, the AI company Google acquired in 2014.
At the time, Nadella said that “several members of the Inflection team” also joined Microsoft’s new AI unit (Bloomberg reported that most actually joined).
In a blog post today, Suleyman calls Hoffmann an “exceptional AI scientist and engineer,” and with Suleyman himself reporting directly to Nadella in the U.S., Hoffmann will take charge of the new London unit.
Alongside Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman, who Microsoft hired from AI startup Inflection AI last week, Hassabis founded DeepMind out of London in 2010.
So it does make sense that the U.K. would seek to honor one of its most high-profile AI figureheads.
Other notable figures from the technology world to receive knighthoods include Apple’s Jonathan “Jony” Ive back in 2011 for “services to design and enterprise.”Delighted and honoured to receive a Knighthood for services to AI.
It’s been an incredible journey so far building @GoogleDeepMind over the past 15 years, helping accelerate the field and grow the UK & global AI ecosystems.
the king or queen at that given time — technically making the final decision on who receives them.
Global Screening Services (GSS), a London-based regulatory compliance platform that helps financial institutions meet their global sanctions obligations, has raised $47 million in a round of funding.
The raise comes amid a spike in economic sanctions, with the U.S. issuing trade-restrictions and asset-blocking against states including Russia, China, Iran and more.
The company actually raised a similar amount of funding last year from big-name backers including Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), one of the world’s largest banks.
Banks often find themselves at the forefront of sanctions enforcement, given their role in controlling the flow of money around the globe.
GSS sells a sanctions-screening platform to help banks and other financial institutions comply with regulations.
1991 Ventures is the brainchild of Ukrainian brothers Denis and Viktor Gursky, who are better known for running incubation and accelerator programs inside Ukraine.
The Gursky brothers previously backed over 200 startups between 2016 and 2024, via their incubator Social Boost and their 1991 Accelerator.
Startups backed to date include LegalTech startup AXDRAFT; European toll payment app eTolls; and cybersecurity company Osavul.
Finally, TA Ventures is perhaps the best known and most active Ukrainian VC internationally, headed up by the almost-ubiquitous Viktoriya Tigipko.
Of course, many of the tech companies Ukraine will produce in the forthcoming years are likely to be either ‘dual-use’ or related to defence.
A few years ago, setting up shop in Europe was the soup du jour for North American VCs.
North American VCs, understandably, want a piece of that market, but setting up a successful, long-term strategy in the region hasn’t proved easy.
The European startup market comes with nuances that make it a difficult one for North American investors.
It’s no wonder then that North American investors have struggled to find a secure footing as they try to straddle the Atlantic.
The American guys will enter anyway at the Series A or B.”Reason to keep tryingDespite all those challenges, though, North American firms are still trying to plant roots in the region.
