Top 3 tech, startup and sustainability stories of the week, 17th

This week’s stories come from EU, Korea and USA, covering startup, sustainability and tech

1-Europe leads in climate tech startups but faces funding challenges

Europe hosts twice as many climate tech startups as the U.S. (30,000 compared to 14,300). However, a lack of venture capital funding is pushing these companies to seek financial support beyond the continent, according to a new report released at the Munich Security Conference.

I saw this story at The Next Web and between 2013 and 2023, VC investment in Europe averaged only 0.2% of GDP—far below the U.S. average of 0.7%. While Europe excels at launching clean tech startups, it struggles to provide the necessary funding to sustain them.

The report, The Importance of Climate Tech for European Resilience, authored by the World Fund, Kaya Partners, and Worthwhile Capital Partners, warns that this funding shortfall is more than just a business issue—it threatens Europe’s economic and geopolitical stability. The continent’s reliance on foreign nations for critical technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles is weakening its resilience. (By the way I have a story here , a Turkish startup operating in sustainability)

The report urges bold, long-term policy and investment strategies in four key areas: energy, food security, advanced technologies, and raw materials, with defense as a unifying factor. Key recommendations include modernizing the energy grid, expanding long-term energy storage, and supporting emerging technologies such as AI, fusion, and quantum computing. It also advocates for increasing EU defense spending to at least 3% of GDP.

Europe leads in climate tech startups but faces funding challenges

2-Arm develops its own in-house chip

Arm is reportedly working on developing its own processor, which could be a component of the massive $500 billion Stargate AI initiative. According to The Financial Times, the chip design company plans to introduce its first in-house CPU this year, with Meta as its initial customer. The processor is intended for data center servers and may be tailored for specific clients. While Arm will design the chip, production will be outsourced to a contract manufacturer like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). Sources indicate that the chip could be unveiled as early as this summer.

Last month, Arm’s parent company, SoftBank, announced the Stargate project—a collaboration with OpenAI aimed at building extensive AI infrastructure worth up to $500 billion. Arm, along with Microsoft and NVIDIA, is a key technology partner in this initiative. The new chip may contribute to this project and could also be part of a secretive AI-powered personal device being developed by Jony Ive in partnership with OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Let me note that Arm’s chip designs power nearly all smartphones and mobile devices worldwide, including Apple Macs and Qualcomm-based Windows PCs. Known for their energy efficiency compared to Intel and AMD processors, Arm-based chips are becoming increasingly popular in AI-driven data centers.

By producing its own chips, Arm would be competing directly with some of its major clients, such as Nvidia, which manufactures its own Arm-based server processors. Historically, Arm has focused on licensing its designs and patents to companies like Apple, which then modify the designs and rely on manufacturers like TSMC or Samsung for production.

Arm develops its own in-house chip (Photo: Getty Images)

3-DeepSeek banned in South Korea

DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, has temporarily paused downloads of its chatbot apps in South Korea while it works with local authorities to address privacy concerns, according to South Korean officials last week.

South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission said DeepSeek’s apps were removed from the local versions of Apple’s App Store and Google Play on Saturday evening and that the company agreed to work with the agency to strengthen privacy protections before relaunching the apps.

The action does not affect users who have already downloaded DeekSeek on their phones or use it on personal computers. Nam Seok, director of the South Korean commission’s investigation division, advised South Korean users of DeepSeek to delete the app from their devices or avoid entering personal information into the tool until the issues are resolved.

Many South Korean government agencies and companies have either blocked DeepSeek from their networks or prohibited employees from using the app for work, amid worries that the AI model was gathering too much sensitive information.

The South Korean privacy commission, which began reviewing DeepSeek’s services last month, found that the company lacked transparency about third-party data transfers and potentially collected excessive personal information, Nam said.

Nam said the commission did not have an estimate on the number of DeepSeek users in South Korea. A recent analysis by Wiseapp Retail found that DeepSeek was used by about 1.2 million smartphone users in South Korea during the fourth week of January, emerging as the second-most-popular AI model behind ChatGPT.