The Innovator's Radar newsletter enables you to stay on top of the latest business innovations. Enjoy this week's edition.
Jennifer L. Schenker
Innovator Founder and Editor-in-Chief |
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| In May ARX Robotics, which specializes in autonomous unmanned ground systems (UGVs) announced a strategic alliance with ATMOS Space Cargo, a European space logistics startup. Their aim is to significantly enhance Europe’s civil and defense logistical capabilities in everything from immediate disaster relief to complex and integrated defense operations by integrating orbital re-entry logistics with autonomous unmanned systems.
Land operations remain vastly under-automated despite accounting for 80% of all military activities, 70% of material usage, and 40% of total procurement. ARX Robotics is bridging this gap by digitizing and autonomizing European forces – equipping them with advanced capabilities through high-performance UGVs, modernized legacy systems and AI-driven connectivity across land, air, and sea. Now the German scale-up, which recently raised €31 million in private capital, is adding space into the mix.
The collaboration with ATMOS “significantly expands European military strategic capabilities and operational possibilities for NATO [ North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s ] forces,” Marc Wietfeld, CEO of ARX Robotics said in a statement. "It contributes directly to NATO readiness by enabling allied forces to act faster, further, and with greater autonomy than ever before.”
The alliance reflects the multidimensional future of European defense, with startups playing a bigger role. But technology alone is not enough. To prepare for the future NATO has published a report that outlines the six key trends that will shape the technology landscape (and be important to defense) in the next 20 years.
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- I N T E R V I E W O F T H E W E E K - |
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Who: Robert Opp is the Chief Digital Officer of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations' global sustainable development organization. He leads the agency’s digital transformation, an organization-wide effort, to accelerate achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and ensure no one is left behind. Under his leadership, UNDP’s Digital, AI and Innovation Hub supports more than 120 countries in building open, inclusive and rights-based digital ecosystems. It also brings expertise, insights and lessons from the country-level to inform global digital policy, to ensure that technologies, including digital public infrastructure and artificial intelligence accelerate sustainable development. Opp also leads UNDP’s own internal digital transformation effort.
Topic: Closing the global technology equity gap
Quote: "If the Global South had the kinds of capacity and compute power it needs it would create new business opportunities. At a time of great geopolitical uncertainty and exponential change, businesses are struggling with how to prepare for the future. If both tech companies and corporations had the foresight to make the necessary investments and partnerships in the Global South now, they would reap the dividends down the road. Closing the global technology equity gap would not only benefit people and planet it would also significantly expand the global consumer market."
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- S T A R T U P O F T H E W E E K - |
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Boreal Bioproducts, a biorefinery start-up, uses industrial side streams, such as sawdust and bark, to create green chemicals for adhesives, coatings, personal care products and composite materials. It seeks to replace chemicasl used by companies in the coatings, polymer, paint, adhesives, leather and animal feed sectors.
“We offer functional benefits beyond traditional biofillers, advancing sustainable manufacturing and enabling industries to transition to a renewables based and circular economy,” says CEO Jaako Pajunen.
The Finnish startup’s approach – as well as those of other European startups working on converting wood waste into renewable carbon alternatives – could underpin a biomaterials economy in which everything from packaging materials to adhesives and plastics are built from biomass rather than fossil feedstocks. |
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- N U M B E R O F T H E W E E K - |
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| Amount OpenAI says it will pay to buy IO, a one-year-old start-up created by Jony Ive, a former top Apple executive who designed the iPhone. The all-stock deal is intended to usher in a new family of hardware products for the age of AI.
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| During this week's Choose France Summit Bpifrance, the French national investment bank, MGX, the UAE investment fund focused on AI and advanced technology, generative AI scale-up Mistral AI, and AI computing infrastructure company NVIDIA announced plans to establish Europe’s largest AI campus in Paris. The campus will support the entire AI lifecycle - from model training and inference to real-world deployment in critical sectors like healthcare, energy, mobility, finance, and manufacturing. Construction kicks off this year, with the campus set to be fully operational by the end of 2027. |
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The Innovator's Editor-in-Chief Will Be Moderating At The Following Events:
VivaTech, June 11-14, Paris, France World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting Of The New Champions, June 24-26, Tianjin, China |
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