Fortunes Fada

Everything interesting about ML & AI

[African Tech Journal - preparing for Disrupt Expo @afritechjournal]

The founders behind @AvaSuite discovered something most startups overlooked.

Businesses built websites.

Customers still bought through WhatsApp.

So instead of competing with user behaviour, they embraced it.

Now merchants can sell, track sales, create invoices, manage expenses, and engage customers—all inside WhatsApp.

The lesson?

Build where your users already are.

Read the full story: https://t.co/tIhB8lSw1M

[Tim Rocktäschel @_rockt]

Excited to co-found Recursive (@recursive_si) with an exceptional team in London and SF to create AI that experiments on how to safely improve itself, turning compute into knowledge that accumulates in an open-ended process of endless, automated scientific discoveries.

[Stephen Canning @stephencanning]

The UK's sovereign AI problem isn't compute. It's dependency. Almost every AI startup here is renting its entire stack from three American companies. £500m won't fix that.

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

Introducing GPT-Rosalind, our frontier reasoning model built to support research across biology, drug discovery, and translational medicine.

[David Odes @chiefdavidsays]

I emailed ByteToBreach, the threat actor behind the Sterling Bank, Remita, and now Corporate Affairs Commission breaches, with 10 accountability questions.

He answered all of them.

In my latest piece, I break down the Corporate Affairs Commission breach in full.

How he got in. What he accessed. The scale of what was taken, a second access vector into the CAC's systems that he revealed directly to me, not in any published artefact and direct confirmation on whether any corporate records were modified.

He also confirmed he was in active ransom negotiations with Sterling Bank for €250,000 before dumping their data.

The CAC has since issued a public statement. I break down what it says and what it leaves unanswered.

And he told me directly why Nigerian institutions have become his focus.

Read the full piece here:
https://t.co/wk59fdUId4

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Britain’s AI minister scolds OpenAI for pausing its UK data center project, says the real problem is internal financing.

[Claude @claudeai]

Introducing Claude Opus 4.7, our most capable Opus model yet.

It handles long-running tasks with more rigor, follows instructions more precisely, and verifies its own outputs before reporting back.

You can hand off your hardest work with less supervision.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

Anthropic has announced that it is massively expanding its London presence.

It’s just secured a new office for 800 people - a huge jump from its 200 current employees.

OpenAI announced its first permanent office in London this week and now @AnthropicAI is doubling down.

Meta, OpenAI, DeepMind, wayve and so many others have huge offices in London.

It’s becoming the leading AI hub outside of the US.

LETS GO

[Fortunes Fada @fortunesfada]

The best time to build in the UK is now!

[Sovereign AI @UKSovereignAI]

Sovereign AI. Launching Tonight. 🇬🇧

[Sovereign AI @UKSovereignAI]

Sovereign AI. Launching Tonight. 🇬🇧

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

BREAKING: OpenAI has closed its funding round at a post-money valuation of $852,000,000,000.00

[Fortunes Fada @fortunesfada]

NEWS: OpenAI just announced that it has officially closed their latest funding round with $122 billion in committed capital at a post money valuation of $852 billion.

[Google Labs @GoogleLabs]

Introducing the new @stitchbygoogle, Google’s vibe design platform that transforms natural language into high-fidelity designs in one seamless flow.

🎨Create with a smarter design agent: Describe a new business concept or app vision and see it take shape on an AI-native canvas.
⚡️ Iterate quickly: Stitch screens together into interactive prototypes and manage your brand with a portable design system.
🎤 Collaborate with voice: Use hands-free voice interactions to update layouts and explore new variations in real-time.

Try it now (Age 18+ only. Currently available in English and in countries where Gemini is supported.) → https://t.co/pmT9iHEpZa

[OpenAI Newsroom @OpenAINewsroom]

We've reached an agreement to acquire Astral.

After we close, OpenAI plans for @astral_sh to join our Codex team, with a continued focus on building great tools and advancing the shared mission of making developers more productive.

https://t.co/V0rDo0G8h9

[Financial Times @FT]

Microsoft weighs legal action over $50bn Amazon-OpenAI cloud deal https://t.co/4tWV35cO8r

[European Commission @EU_Commission]

We are introducing EU Inc. To make building and growing a business across the EU faster, simpler, and smarter.

🔸 Start a company in less than 48 hours
🔸 No minimum capital requirement
🔸 Fully online and borderless

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

This week has been the craziest week European Tech has ever seen:

> Legora valued at $5.5bn
> AMI raised a $1bn seed
> Lovable surpassed $400m ARR
> Alan valued at €5bn
> Revolut got its banking licence
> Entrepreneurs First became a unicorn
> The UK's @UKSovereignAI launched with $500m
> Three new defence unicorns

If you are still bearish on European Tech you are, respectfully, a chump.

[Google Research @GoogleResearch]

The biggest barrier for AI applications in Africa isn't model complexity -- it's the scarcity of data for the 2000+ spoken languages there.

We just released WAXAL. This open-access dataset delivers 2,400+ hours of high-quality speech data for 27 Sub-Saharan African languages, serving 100M+ speakers. Crucially, this community-rooted effort — led by African organizations — changes the roadmap for truly inclusive voice AI.

Learn more and check out the WAXAL dataset here: https://t.co/OVrDvZq4bl

[Marcel van Oost @oost_marcel]

🚨𝙃𝙀𝙍𝙀 𝙒𝙀 𝙂𝙊! @tryramp has acquired Billhop, the Stockholm- and London-based payments platform licensed in the UK 🇬🇧 and Sweden 🇸🇪

𝗕𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗵𝗼𝗽 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘅𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗹𝘆 $𝟮𝟬.𝟲𝟳 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 in total equity funding across four rounds, having the last raise $11.86M (Servies B) in 2022 having a steady growth to 𝟲𝟱,𝟬𝟬𝟬+ 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 €𝟮𝟱𝟬𝗠+ 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆.

This deal gives Ramp something every US FinTech needs to scale in Europe: licenses, local infrastructure, and regulatory access.

Ramp will also open its first international offices in London and Stockholm and plans to start onboarding UK and EU companies this summer.

A few numbers behind Ramp:

• 50,000+ customers
• $100B+ annual payment volume
• $10B+ saved for customers
• 180+ countries with weekly international transactions

Billhop’s infrastructure lets businesses pay invoices by card even when suppliers don’t accept cards, unlocking working capital and card rewards.

In other words: Ramp isn’t just expanding geographically.

It’s plugging its spend-management platform directly into Europe’s payment rails.

[Kalshi @Kalshi]

JUST IN: Nvidia and Palantir have partnered to create new "AI operating system"