💥🦾 Tariffs and Tech Sovereignty

A Newsletter for Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Computing Geeks

Author

Benjamin Wolba
April 14, 2025

New U.S. tariffs shake up the semiconductor world—chips, phones, and computers were just spared, but it feels like that could flip overnight. Europe’s AI factories and national tech bets are back in the spotlight!

So, just in time, two weeks ago, we explored how to shape the Future of Computing in Europe at our London conference. Huge thanks to everyone who joined—our group photo and aftermovie are live.

Next up: join us at the Future of Neuromorphic Computing Meetup on April 23 at Atlantic Labs with GEMESYS and Spinncloud. And:

We're bringing the most cracked builders to Berlin to push the limits of AI infrastructure, be it training/fine-tuning models, deploying models on actual hardware, or benchmarking performance across hardware and software stacks.

The winning teams from the hackathon will pitch at our next Berlin conference the next day in front of top-tier deep tech VCs and operators. It will be Superventure week, so the entire ecosystem will be in town. Get your ticket now!

Spotlights

“Despite the hype, it’s been surprisingly challenging to find quantum algorithms that outperform classical ones. In this episode, Ewin Tang discusses her pioneering work in “dequantizing” quantum algorithms — trying to achieve the same speeds with classical counterparts.”

“The term AI factory is not a metaphor, but a literal description of what a modern AI supercomputer in a commercial setting really is. And it changes the very nature of not only corporate computing, but of data analysis”

“At its core, optical computing promises to harness the power of light instead of electricity to perform computations. This shift could offer drastically higher speeds compared to traditional computing.”

“… while Trump spared the chips (at least for now), the burgeoning AI industry may not necessarily slip away unscathed. The massive data centers running AI services have lots of exposure to tariffs beyond silicon chips …”

Headlines

⚛️ Major Quantum Computing Advance: Scientists Break 25-Year Barrier in Chip Fabrication (SciTechDaily)

⚛️ New entanglement approach could boost photonic quantum computing (Physics World)

⚛️ Global Business Innovation Programme in The Netherlands - Quantum Technology (Innovate UK)

⚛️ China’s homegrown superconducting quantum computer completes world’s first fine-tuning of billion-parameter AI model (Global Times)

🧠 Researchers Develop Energy-Efficient AI Chips for Small Drones Using Neuromorphic Computing 8iHLS)

🧠⚡️ Neuromorphic photonics for efficient computing (Nature Photonics)

⚡️ An integrated large-scale photonic accelerator with ultralow latency (Nature)

⚡️ World’s first photon-based NPU is 50x faster and uses 30x less power: Q.ANT (The Brighter Side News)

⚡️ Photonic computing startup Lightmatter unveils new tech aimed at AI chips (Seeking Alpha)

🦾 A RISC-V 32-bit microprocessor based on two-dimensional semiconductors (Nature)

🦾 Google's latest chip is all about reducing one huge hidden cost in AI (ZDNET)

🦾 The 'World's Most Advanced Microchip' Has Been Unveiled: A 2nm Chip by TSMC (Science Alert)

🦾 Tech giants launch open GPU interconnect standard to transform AI computing (Capacity Media)

🦾 EU to build AI gigafactories in €20bn push to catch up with US and China (The Guardian)

🦾 Thailand’s New Semiconductor Strategy: Ambitious but Challenging (Fulcrum)

Funding News

🦾 $1.1M Pre-Series A – Calligo Technologies: POSIT-based silicon chips

Learn more about POSITS: a New Kind of Number, Improves the Math of AI (Spectrum IEEE)

⚡️ $10M Seed – InfiniLink: optical connectivity solutions for AI-driven data centers

⚡️ $10M+ Investment – Lumai: Optical Processing Breakthrough Addressing Limitations of AI Compute

🦾 $20M CAD Series A – Blumind: ultra-low-power analog AI chips for edge computing

⚛️ €21.5M Series A – Sparrow Quantum: photonic quantum chip technology, reliably delivering single photons on demand

🦾 €41M Series A – NexGen Cloud: sovereign AI infrastructure in Europe

⚡️ $58M Funding Round – nEye: a networking chip that utilizes optical technology to transmit data between AI chips

🤖 $450M Series E – SandboxAQ: Large Quantitative Models purpose-built for real-world use cases

Bonus:

🦾 HPC cloud provider Qarnot gets funding from the European Innovation Council (DCD)

⚛️ Finnish Quantum Startup IQM Eyes €128 Million Amid Industry Surge (Quantum Insider)

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