Chama-se Rede Unicorn Factory Área Metropolitana de Lisboa e será apresentada oficialmente no dia 2 de novembro, no Beato Innovation District, para afirmar a região como um território de inovação, empreendedorismo e competitividade internacional. Esta parceria estratégica visa dinamizar o ecossistema empresarial, científico e tecnológico metropolitano nos 18 municípios do território.
Numa iniciativa conjunta da Área Metropolitana de Lisboa (AML) e da Unicorn Factory Lisboa, a nova rede de empreendedorismo e inovação vai permitir a colaboração e partilha de conhecimento, aproximando recursos e competências nos 18 municípios do território.
O objetivo, explica a AML, passa por “estimular o desenvolvimento de projetos inovadores” assim como “potenciar a capacidade de atração e retenção de talento e investimento”. Na prática, sustenta, será criado um ecossistema metropolitano de inovação, com ambição e projeção internacional.
A AML e a Unicorn Factory Lisboa inspiraram-se em modelos europeus de inovação colaborativa para a criação desta rede que “assenta numa visão integrada do território, em que a diversidade e as complementaridades dos municípios constituem uma vantagem competitiva”, detalha a AML numa nota enviada às redações.
A new startup called &Truth is joining the race to automate formal verification, a painstaking process that uses math to prove software works as intended.
We started Exyde as a marketplace for activities and experiences. It taught us how operators work, but it was a crowded market where building a real edge would be hard. We moved into building AI tools for those operators. Our first product, Lucy, was an assistant for their daily work, but still far from an AI employee.
The turning point came from inside our company. We were bootstrapped and close to hiring an operations specialist when I realised the technology was mature enough to build that role with AI instead.
We built Kira, always on and proactive, and I found myself chatting with her from my phone as I would with any teammate. It worked, so we built Alex for our catalogue, Aria for finance and Max for business development.
When we told friends and partners how we run the company, they asked us to build the same for them. They wanted the same method. That is when I realised the product was the way we work.
Roles and human oversight
ChatGPT and Claude are fantastic tools, but they depend on the person using them. In a team, everyone uses them in their own way, and quickly nobody is managing the result.
AI employees work the other way around. Each has a defined role, a place in the team and someone managing it, whether a human or an AI chief of staff.
Our core philosophy is to treat AI as we would people: we give them names, onboard and train them, provide feedback and correct mistakes.
Human supervision has to stay wherever someone is accountable for the outcome. How much depends on the risk and what the technology can do today.
But there is one difference I keep coming back to. A person avoids mistakes because a mistake can cost them their job, which is a kind of survival instinct. AI doesn’t have that.
Building differently
In the past, every new service and market meant hiring and managing more people. When I started Exyde, I wanted to build differently.
I had more work than time, and we had a limited hiring budget. We started with ChatGPT, Claude and automations. They made our lives easier, but only worked while I was prompting and coordinating. The question became how work continues when I am in a sales meeting or asleep.
That is what AI employees changed for me. For most of history, leverage came from people, capital and assets. Now AI is a source of leverage, too. It keeps working while you sleep. That idea is what Exyde is built on.
The opportunity for Cyprus
The frontier labs, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and DeepSeek, are building models that are extremely hard to beat. I don’t think competing with them is where the opportunity lies for Cyprus.
The opportunity is working with businesses, understanding how they operate and putting those models to work in daily operations.
That needs people who know the local market and how companies make decisions, in Cyprus, Greece, the rest of Europe and the Middle East. This is where a small team supported by AI can operate at a level that used to need a larger firm.
What AI will not solve is distance and density. A startup still needs to be close to its customers, capital and talent. Build here, where it is a fantastic place to test, but you need to go outside faster.
About Exyde
Exyde builds and manages AI teams for businesses. It is led by co-founders Michael Economou, Dakis Andreou and Marios Constantinou, who have worked together for more than ten years, including at Foody, which was acquired by Delivery Hero.
EMBIO Diagnostics CEO Constantinos Loizou discusses demand for portable testing, the international expansion of airbeld™ and the development of RapidX. In this interview, he explains how the Cypriot company is moving into industrial diagnostics and environmental monitoring, with plans to turn its technology and partnerships into sustained international commercial growth.
Testing at the point of use
B.EL.D™ is a versatile platform that can be adapted to several diagnostic applications. Today, we are seeing the strongest commercial demand in testing activated carbon and other porous materials, particularly in water filtration. Commercial customers are already using the technology to assess filter performance on site and identify saturation before it causes operational problems or contamination.
Building on this experience, we are finalising an application for assessing the porosity of building materials. Testing in this sector can still be slow and laboratory-dependent, creating a clear need for faster, reliable information at the point of use.
Our goal is to move critical testing from the laboratory to the point of decision, improving quality control, reducing waste and helping operators make better decisions.
Making indoor data useful
airbeld™ is designed to make environmental data useful and actionable. It is an indoor environment management solution for hospitals, offices, warehouses and other commercial spaces, where environmental conditions can affect health, productivity, operational risk and energy use.
One of our main lessons has been that organisations differ greatly in their awareness of these risks.
Some immediately understand the value of continuous monitoring, while others are only beginning to recognise the operational and financial costs of unmanaged indoor conditions. What organisations do not measure, they cannot manage.
We therefore focus on forward-looking customers and partners who see environmental intelligence as part of responsible building management. This approach has helped us build commercial momentum, secure distribution agreements and expand internationally. We are now developing our presence in the United States and preparing broader deployments across several commercial sectors.
Airbeld – Smart Building Analytics Dashboard
RapidX takes shape
RapidX is the industrial evolution of B.EL.D™, initially focused on assessing activated carbon filters in water treatment and measuring the porosity of structural building materials.
In both applications, the objective is to replace slow or indirect processes with faster, practical diagnostics at the point of use. In water treatment, this can help operators use filtration materials more efficiently and intervene before performance deteriorates. In construction, better information about material properties can strengthen quality control and support more efficient resource use.
RapidX also replaces perishable biosensors with longer-life components, combining robust hardware with digital analysis. Funding from the European Innovation Council will help us develop and validate the platform for broader industrial deployment.
RapidX can turn industrial diagnostics from a delayed result into an immediate operational tool, and we believe it could become an important driver of EMBIO’s international growth.
The next 24 months
Over the next 12 to 24 months, our priorities are to complete RapidX, expand the commercial deployment of B.EL.D™ and scale airbeld™ through international partnerships. We are working with organisations in building materials and industrial water management while pursuing broader applications for airbeld™ in corporate campuses, healthcare facilities, warehouses and major sports venues.
We are also using AI internally to accelerate research, product development and commercial decision-making. EMBIO is financially sustainable, and our next challenge is to turn our technology and partnerships into consistent international growth.
Our strategic investment partnership with ASBIS Enterprises is particularly important, giving us access to extensive distribution experience and more than 80 international markets.
We have developed the technology, established the right partnerships and demonstrated that a Cypriot company can compete internationally.
The next 24 months are about turning years of scientific development into global commercial impact. We are ready for that transition.
Most brands still buy influencer marketing the way they bought billboards in the nineties. They pick a face, pay a fee and hope the post lands. The report that follows counts likes and impressions, and nobody in the finance department quite believes it.
At YoCreate, a Limassol company, we build for the other approach, where a creator’s video is judged like any other paid channel. We run two products: YoCreate, an influencer marketing platform for brands, and YoTrends, a trend discovery tool for creators.
YoCreate
YoCreate is an influencer marketing platform for brands. A marketing team uses it to find creators by niche, country and audience, send briefs, sign contracts, pay creators and track campaign results in one place, instead of juggling spreadsheets, DMs and bank transfers.
Brands can run campaigns on the platform themselves or hand them to our in-house team. The team handles casting, negotiation and execution on the same platform, and the client sees every step.
Payments are where influencer marketing usually gets messy. Paying creators in dozens of countries, with contracts and tax documents that hold up, can take longer than the campaign itself. YoCreate handles that part, so a brand in Cyprus can work with a creator in Mexico or Malaysia without a legal project on the side.
Results are measured the way a performance team measures paid media: cost per install, cost per order, return on ad spend. Clients include inDrive, Exness, PepsiCo, Nebius and Higgsfield, mostly from categories where every new user is tracked to the cent, such as fintech, gaming, streaming and AI products. For Nebius, a single campaign delivered 360 per cent return on marketing investment. This year we added YoCreate Performance, which turns creator content into user-generated content ads and runs them as paid media, including through creators’ own accounts via TikTok Spark Ads.
YoTrends
YoTrends is a tool for creators who want to make content people are already watching. You pick your country and niche, and it shows what’s trending on YouTube and TikTok right now: the videos, sounds and formats gaining views fastest this week. Then it turns those trends into video ideas for your own channel, with hooks and scripts you can adapt and shoot the same day.
The problem it solves is timing. Most creators notice a trend once it’s already in their feed, and by then the people who started it have collected the views. YoTrends tracks millions of videos in real time and flags the ones picking up speed early, so you can join a trend while it’s still rising. It covers nine markets, from the US and Japan to Saudi Arabia and South Korea.
Creators can also see who in their niche keeps hitting trending and study what those videos have in common. Brands and agencies use the same view to shortlist creators whose content is working right now.
More than 5,000 creators use YoTrends, and it’s free to start. It also connects to AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT, so a creator can ask what’s trending in their niche today and get a script written from live data in the same chat.
Built in Limassol
Our headquarters is in Limassol, with team members in London, Berlin, Dubai, Manila, Almaty and a few other cities. Limassol has quietly become a hub for the kind of companies we serve, and the time zone lets one team cover Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia in a working day.
The creator economy is usually described as a marketing trend. From where we sit it looks more like a media channel that is still priced wrong. Brands that measure it properly buy attention cheaper than their competitors, and we’d like more of them to be based here.
Ruslan Kurmanaev is the founder and CEO of Zantemark Limited, the company behind YoCreate and YoTrends.
A sociedade de capital de risco BY Venture Partners, com sede no Dubai, escolheu Portugal como berço da operação na Europa. O fundo internacional anunciou esta quinta-feira que abriu um escritório em Lisboa, que funcionará com sede europeia, e fechou o seu terceiro veículo de investimento no valor de 53,5 milhões de euros.
A empresa de venture capital emirati prevê investir em projetos globais recentes (early-stage) e entrar em rondas de financiamento para fases iniciais (pré-seed e série A) com até um milhão de dólares (cerca de 899 milhões de euros). O objetivo é apostar em empresas de inteligência artificial (IA) que estejam a reinventar os fluxos de trabalho das empresas e tenham a ambição de crescer à escala mundial.
“Este fundo tem como objetivo apoiar empresas nativas de IA com ambições globais. Estamos particularmente entusiasmados com o reforço de capital na Europa, onde cidades como Madrid, Londres, Paris e Berlim avançam rapidamente no desenvolvimento de software nativo de IA”, afirmou Ghaith Yafi, sócio-cofundador da BY Venture Partners, num comunicado enviado aos meios de comunicação social.
Para a BY Venture Partners, que tem mais de 178,4 milhões de euros em ativos sob gestão, o hub lisboeta “é uma evolução natural”, depois de realizar investimentos em 16 países, quatro dos quais alavancaram a construção de unicórnios com os dois fundos anteriores. Instalado na zona de Alcântara, a equipa inicial do escritório em Portugal é composta pelo sócio Sohrab Jahanbani e Henrique Pereira, manager de Plataforma e Comunidade, que foi contratado para o efeito, mas há “potencial de crescer”, como disse fonte oficial ao ECO.
"“A Europa forma alguns dos melhores talentos tecnológicos do mundo, mas os fundadores europeus enfrentam muitas vezes uma barreira quando tentam chegar ao capital internacional e a uma escala comercial global.”
“Lisboa e o ecossistema ibérico mais alargado deixaram de ser polos regionais emergentes e passaram a ser verdadeiras rampas de lançamento para a inovação de referência mundial em IA e deep tech. Ao combinar uma presença local com o alcance global da BY Venture Partners no Médio Oriente e na América do Norte, estamos numa posição única para dar aos fundadores ibéricos e europeus o capital, o apoio operacional e o acesso a mercados globais de que precisam para competir”, refere o sócio-cofundador Abdallah Yafi.
O recém-lançado fundo é ancorado pelo Dubai Future District Fund e conta a participação de investidores institucionais da região do Golfo, divisões de empresas de capital de risco e family offices, entre os quais Multi Lane, Transmed Capital e Indriss Family Office da Arábia Saudita. Atualmente, contabiliza 15 investimentos feitos, entre os quais na PQ Shield, Cosyne, Isometric, Huspy e Invisible, mas o portefólio previsto é de 40 empresas.
What problem does DART solve for employers and jobseekers in Cyprus? Take us through one hire fromthe first call to the person starting work.
DART Recruitment helps reduce the time, uncertainty and lack of information that often make recruitment difficult for both employers and jobseekers.
For employers, we take much of the burden out of the hiring process. We first invest time in understanding the business, the position, the team, the salary and benefits, and the type of person who is likely to succeed in that environment. We then search, approach and assess relevant candidates before making an introduction.
We also look beyond the vacancy itself. When relevant, we inform employers about available employment incentive schemes and funding opportunities that they may not know exist, assess whether a proposed hire could be eligible and support them through the process. This means that a recruitment decision can sometimes create not only operational value for the company, but also a significant financial benefit.
For candidates, the relationship is equally important. They can share their CV with DART, tell us what they want from their next career move and become part of our talent network. They do not need to search continuously themselves; when an opportunity arises that genuinely matches their profile and expectations, we can approach them – even if they are not actively looking for a new job at that moment.
In that sense, our radar is always on for talent in the labour market. We are continuously speaking with professionals, understanding where they are in their careers and what might motivate them to consider the right opportunity. This also means that when an employer approaches us, we are often not starting the search from zero.
Communication is central to the way we work. We want to understand the person behind the CV: their ambitions, salary expectations, preferred working environment, location, flexibility and what would genuinely motivate them to make a move.
We also provide practical guidance throughout the process. This can include helping candidates understand their market value, prepare for interviews, negotiate salary and benefits, and better understand the employment terms and rights relevant to a potential move.
Once a suitable match is identified, we coordinate the interviews, keep both sides informed, collect feedback and help resolve differences in expectations. At offer stage, we often act as the link between employer and candidate, helping both sides reach a clear and realistic agreement.
Our involvement continues through the candidate’s notice period and until they actually start work.
For DART, recruitment is not simply about filling a vacancy. It is about understandingwhat both sides need, identifying opportunities they may not have seen themselves, communicating openly and guiding the process towards a decision that creates value for both the employer and the individual.
What did you see missing in Cyprus recruitment, and what has been the hardest step in building the business?
DART Recruitment was launched in 2021 after I saw first-hand how difficult and time-consuming recruitment could be for both candidates and employers.
The idea became very personal when my brother was trying to make a career change. He was highly qualified and had already progressed to a management position at a young age, but because his professional background was in hospitality, employers tended to see only where he had come from rather than the skills and potential he could bring to a different sector.
He was spending a great deal of time applying for opportunities without really having someone to guide him, position his experience differently or help employers look beyond the job titles on his CV. That experience made me realise that there was a gap in the market.
Candidates needed more than access to vacancies; they needed guidance, honest feedback and someone willing to understand the person behind the CV. Employers, on the other hand, were also investing enormous amounts of time searching, screening and trying to identify the right people, often without sufficient support.
That became one of the foundations of DART: to make recruitment more personal, more efficient and more supportive for both sides.
Building the business, however, came with a very different challenge. One of the hardest lessons was learning how to manage the volume and intensity that comes with a growing recruitment company. Recruitment moves quickly, there are many people and processes to coordinate at the same time, and in the early stages of a business you are also learning how to manage uncertainty, responsibility and the pressure that comes with growth.
Over time, that pushed us to build stronger systems, better processes and a team structure that could support increasing demand without losing the personal service that DART was created to provide.
Looking back, that early experience still influences how we work today. We try not to define people only by their previous job title, and we believe that both candidates and employers deserve time, communication and genuine support throughout the recruitment process.
What does ‘people-first’ mean in practice? How do you assess a candidate beyond the CV, and how do you know a placement worked for both sides?
At DART, “people-first” means giving people more than access to a vacancy. It means giving them time, attention, honest guidance and continuous communication throughout the recruitment process.
We believe that recruitment is built on trust, and trust is created through the way people are treated. That means listening carefully, understanding what someone genuinely wants from their career and looking beyond qualifications and job titles.
When assessing a candidate, we consider experience and technical ability, but we also spend time understanding motivation, career direction, expectations, personality and the type of environment in which that person is most likely to succeed. The same principle applies to employers: we want to understand the business, its culture and what it really needs, rather than simply working from a job description.
Communication is a major part of this approach. Candidates should know where they stand, even when there is no immediate development, and clients should feel that someone is actively managing their search. Regular updates, honest feedback and accessibility are fundamental to the service we want to provide.
Perhaps some of the best examples of what “people-first” means are within DART itself.
Joanna first came into contact with DART as a candidate, when we placed her in a role with another company. We recognised her talent early on and stayed in touch, building a strong professional relationship over time. When she later left her job, we took the opportunity to bring her into our own team as a recruiter. Since joining us, she has continued to grow professionally, and her ability, commitment and understanding of recruitment have helped her progress to become Head of Recruitment at DART.
Michalis first worked with DART as a client, when we supported his company with its recruitment needs. Our professional relationship developed through that collaboration, and he later joined the Group, where he now serves as Operations Manager.
We have many examples where professional relationships created through recruitment have developed into long-term relationships and, in some cases, genuine friendships. For us, that says a great deal about the culture we have tried to build.
We know a placement has worked when both sides remain satisfied beyond the initial excitement of the hire: when the employee feels they made the right career decision and the employer sees that person becoming a genuine part of the organisation.
Ultimately, “people-first” means that no candidate should feel like just another CV and no client should feel like just another vacancy. The relationships we build often continue long after the recruitment process itself has ended.
Have you placed a doctor, nurse, radiologist or other specialist in a Cyprus clinic or hospital? Which role, where and when? What made the search difficult?
Yes, DART Recruitment has successfully placed a significant number of healthcare professionals in private hospitals, medical centres, clinics and specialist practices across Cyprus.
Our placements include doctors across a wide range of specialties, including cardiologists, internists, general practitioners, surgeons, IVF specialists and longevity doctors, as well as professionals from several other medical specialties.
We have also placed a large number of nurses across different departments and units, including operating theatres, accident & emergency departments, surgical units and other clinical areas. Our healthcare recruitment activity extends across Cyprus, from private practices and specialist medical centres to clinics and major hospital organisations.
Healthcare is one of the most demanding areas of recruitment because the requirements are highly specialised and the available talent pool can be limited. Professional qualifications, registration and licensing requirements must all be carefully assessed, but the challenge often goes much further.
For a doctor or nurse coming from abroad, accepting a position in Cyprus is not simply a change of employer. It can involve relocating to another country, completing the necessary professional registration and documentation, finding accommodation and adapting to a completely new working and living environment.
This is an area where DART provides significant practical support. We assist healthcare professionals with the documentation and registration process required for their move and employment in Cyprus, guide them through the different steps involved and, where needed, also support them in finding suitable accommodation.
At the same time, salary, benefits, working conditions, shifts, on-call requirements and family considerations can all influence whether an opportunity is genuinely viable.
Our role therefore goes far beyond identifying a suitable candidate. We remain closely involved from the first conversation through to the final agreement and relocation process, often acting as the link between both sides. This can involve clarifying expectations, coordinating documentation, negotiating salary and benefits and, where necessary, helping employers reconsider the overall package in response to market conditions and the competition for highly skilled healthcare professionals.
This level of involvement is particularly important in healthcare, where a technically suitable match will not succeed unless the wider professional, practical and personal circumstances also align.
If specifically requested, and subject to the relevant person’s consent and our confidentiality obligations, we can explore the possibility of arranging a conversation with either an employer or a healthcare professional who has been placed through DART Recruitment.
Outside healthcare, which sector best shows DART’s range? Could you provide a specific recent placement and explain what was different about that search?
Outside healthcare, DART’s range is best reflected in the diversity of the sectors we now recruit for, including technology, hospitality, construction and corporate functions. What is particularly important is that each of these areas requires a very different recruitment approach.
A recent example was the placement of an AI specialist recruited from Israel. This was a highly targeted search because the client required a very specific technical profile. In technology recruitment, a job title alone is rarely enough; candidates may have very different technical backgrounds, experience with different systems and very different levels of responsibility.
In this case, the challenge went beyond identifying the right technical expertise. Because the candidate was relocating from Israel, we also had to support the process around the relevant visa and employment requirements and coordinate the practical steps required for the move.
The same principle applies across the other sectors we serve, although the challenges can be very different.
In hospitality, for example, Cyprus has a relatively limited local talent pool for certain positions, so our searches frequently extend beyond the island. We regularly source hospitality professionals from Greece and, through our wider international network, from selected markets across Asia, depending on the role and the relevant employment requirements. These searches often involve not only identifying the right experience, but also managing relocation, availability, accommodation and the practical steps required for candidates to move and begin working in Cyprus.
In construction, searches may depend on very specific technical or project experience, while in corporate recruitment, local market knowledge, professional qualifications and the precise scope of the role can be equally important.
What these searches have in common is that there is no single recruitment formula that works for every vacancy. The sourcing strategy, candidate assessment and level of support all need to be adapted to the sector and to the individual circumstances of the hire.
This is also why DART continues to invest in its own sourcing technology, recruitment tools and talent database. These capabilities allow us to map different talent markets more effectively and identify professionals beyond those who are actively applying for jobs.
For us, this is what range really means: the ability to move confidently between very different sectors, understand what makes each search unique and adapt our approach without losing the personal communication, transparency and attention to detail that define DART Recruitment.
Beyond placing people, what do you do with HRDA training, hiring subsidies and payroll?
One of DART Recruitment’s strongest differentiators is that our support to an employer does not stop at finding the right person. We also look at whether that hire can create additional financial value for the business.
A key part of this work involves the employment incentive schemes of the Labour Department. Depending on the applicable scheme and eligibility criteria, an employer may be able to receive approximately €8,600 in financial support for an eligible hire.
What is striking is how many businesses are still unaware of these opportunities. Employers may be ready to recruit, may already have identified the person they want, and may proceed with the employment without realising that the same hire could potentially qualify for substantial funding.
This is exactly where DART adds value.
We do not simply inform employers that a scheme exists. We assess the proposed recruitment, review the eligibility of both the employer and the candidate, identify the most relevant scheme and explain what needs to happen before the employment proceeds. From there, we manage the administrative process: documentation, application, deadlines, follow-up and, ultimately, the payment request.
The schemes cover different groups within the labour market, including unemployed women, economically inactive women, unemployed people over the age of 50 and young people aged 15–29 who are outside employment, education or training, among other eligible categories.
To date, DART has helped employers secure approximately €2.5 million through Labour Department employment schemes.
For us, that figure demonstrates the practical value of combining recruitment knowledge with funding expertise. A client may come to DART because they need an employee, but through the same relationship we may also be able to help them reduce the financial cost of that hire significantly.
A typical example is an employer preparing to recruit an eligible unemployed candidate. Our team can identify the funding opportunity before the employment begins, confirm the relevant requirements, manage the application process and continue supporting the employer until the funding stage. The business secures the person it needs while also benefiting from financial support it may otherwise have missed entirely.
Our support extends further through Human Resource Development Authority of Cyprus (HRDA) schemes, where we help businesses access opportunities for employee training and professional development, as well as through payroll support for employers seeking a more complete workforce solution.
This is how we want businesses to see DART: not simply as the company they call when they need a CV, but as a partner that can help them recruit, save money, access funding, develop their people and manage their workforce more effectively.
What technology has been used to support your recruitment and how effective is it?
We believe DART is one of the most technology-forward recruitment companies in Cyprus. We have deliberately invested in technology because we believe the right tools can make recruitment faster, more precise and more effective for both employers and candidates.
We use an advanced Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to manage vacancies, candidate profiles and recruitment pipelines, together with professional LinkedIn sourcing tools that allow our recruiters to identify and approach talent beyond those who are actively applying for jobs.
Our technology ecosystem also includes workflow management systems, specialised candidate assessment tools, digital marketing platforms and social media tools, all supporting different stages of the recruitment process.
The impact is significant. Technology allows us to organise and search a large talent database more effectively, build specialised candidate pools, maintain better follow-up and identify relevant professionals much faster. A candidate we meet today may be the ideal match for a completely different opportunity months later, and our systems allow us to retain and use that knowledge intelligently.
It also reduces repetitive administrative work, giving our recruiters more time to focus on conversations, candidate assessment, client communication and relationship-building.
However, there is one principle we are very clear about: we do not believe AI can replace people in recruitment.
AI can help us search, organise information, analyse data and improve efficiency, but it cannot fully understand a person’s motivation, ambitions, concerns or the human dynamics between a candidate and an employer.
Recruitment involves important decisions about people’s careers and companies’ teams. Those decisions still require human judgement, empathy, communication and trust.
For DART, the goal is to combine both: advanced recruitment technology behind the process, while keeping genuine human communication at the centre of it.
What was a difficult placement or turning point, and what did your team do that changed the outcome?
Some of the most difficult placements are not necessarily the ones where the right candidate is hardest to find. Sometimes, the real challenge begins after the match has already been made.
This is particularly true when a candidate is relocating to Cyprus. Accepting a new role may also mean moving country, reorganising family life, finding accommodation, understanding a new working environment and dealing with practical questions that go far beyond the job itself.
In these cases, our role often becomes much more personal. We stay close to the candidate throughout the relocation process, help them understand the practical steps involved, remain available for questions and, where needed, liaise with the employer to clarify issues around the start date, accommodation, working conditions or other elements that may affect the move.
We have had placements where the candidate was professionally an excellent match, but the process reached a point where the relocation itself could have prevented the hire from going ahead. Rather than simply passing messages between the two sides, our team spent time speaking with both the employer and the candidate, understanding what was creating uncertainty and working through each issue one by one.
That persistence and communication changed the outcome.
For us, this is where recruitment becomes much more than matching a CV to a vacancy. A person relocating for work is making a major life decision, and we believe they should feel that someone is there to guide them through it.
It also reflects the people behind DART. Our recruiters become personally invested in the searches they manage. When we believe that an opportunity is genuinely right for both sides, we stay involved, keep communicating and try to remove the obstacles that could otherwise prevent a good match from becoming a successful placement.
Sometimes the most important part of our work happens after the offer has already been accepted.
Where is DART now: team, base, main sectors and Cyprus reach? How does it relate to CAS Recruitment Group?
Today, DART Recruitment operates nationwide across Cyprus, with its base in Larnaca and a team of 10 professionals working across recruitment, funding consulting, marketing and the wider operational needs of the business.
Our main areas of recruitment activity include healthcare, hospitality, accounting and finance, construction and engineering, administration and corporate roles, sales and marketing, and increasingly technology. As the business has grown, we have also developed greater sector specialisation within the team, allowing us to combine broad market coverage with more focused expertise.
Our presence in Cyprus is firmly pan-Cyprian. We work with employers and candidates across the island, while our searches regularly extend internationally when a role requires access to a wider or more specialised talent pool.
A significant milestone in DART Recruitment’s development was its acquisition by CAS Recruitment Group.
CAS is an international recruitment group with more than three decades of experience in cross-border recruitment and workforce mobility. Its activities include sourcing and deploying skilled and unskilled professionals across international markets, with particular experience in sectors such as hospitality and tourism, healthcare, construction, manufacturing, agriculture and domestic services. The Group also has dedicated migration expertise to support the legal and practical processes involved when employees move internationally for work.
Today, CAS Recruitment Group brings together more than 100 professionals across its international operations, with offices in six countries.
For DART, becoming part of this wider Group means combining our strong Cyprus market knowledge and specialist recruitment expertise with broader international sourcing capabilities, infrastructure and access to talent markets beyond Cyprus – while retaining the DART Recruitment identity and the personal approach on which the business has been built.
The next stage of our development includes our expansion in Greece. DART already has recruitment activity and established relationships in the Greek market, and our team and specialist advisers are now preparing the transition towards a stronger presence there, including our new office in Thessaloniki.
For us, growth is about combining the accessibility, sector knowledge and personal service of DART Recruitment with the scale, international reach and cross-border expertise of CAS Recruitment Group.
What comes next for DART and for hiring in Cyprus?
For DART Recruitment, the next phase is not simply about becoming bigger. It is about becoming better, more specialised and more consistent in the quality of service we provide.
Our priority is to continue improving the experience of both employers and candidates through clearer communication, stronger follow-up, more targeted searches and better market insight. As we grow, maintaining a personal and responsive service remains fundamental to the way we want DART to operate.
At the same time, our ambition is to continue developing DART into a 360-degree HR and recruitment organisation, supporting businesses more broadly across recruitment, workforce development and other employment-related needs.
A key part of that growth is continued investment in our own people – their knowledge, expertise and wellbeing. We believe that the quality of our service is directly connected to the quality and development of our team. We will therefore continue strengthening sector specialisation and investing in continuous learning.
We are also investing further in DART’s own recruitment technology and digital infrastructure, using better systems, sourcing tools and data to improve speed, precision and efficiency. Technology should make our recruiters more effective, while allowing them to dedicate more time to the human side of recruitment.
Geographically, our next chapter includes further growth in Greece, building on the activity and relationships we already have there and supported by the wider structure of CAS Recruitment Group.
For hiring in Cyprus, we believe employers will increasingly need to compete not only on salary, but also on working conditions, flexibility, career development, company culture and the overall employee experience. Cyprus will also continue to rely on international talent for specialised and difficult-to-fill roles, making relocation and long-term retention increasingly important.
Ultimately, the direction for DART is clear: higher service quality, deeper expertise, continuous investment in our people, smarter use of technology and sustainable growth – while preserving the personal communication and human judgement that define DART Recruitment.
AI coding startup Cogniton is fielding offers for a new funding round.
The round could value Cognition between $70 billion and $80 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
The new offers come weeks after the company announced a $2 billion round at a $48 billion valuation.
Just weeks after announcing a new round of funding at a $48 billion valuation, AI coding startup Cognition is fielding new investor interest at a much higher price.
The startup has received offers valuing it at between $70 billion and $80 billion and is seriously considering a round before the end of the year, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The talks around the financing are still early, and valuation targets could still change.
Founded in 2023 by Scott Wu, Steven Hao, and Walden Yan, Cognition is best known for Devin, an AI coding agent designed to automate software engineering tasks. The San Francisco-based company's existing investors include a16z, Accel, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Elad Gil, and Pear VC.
Cognition's rapid valuation climb underscores the investor frenzy around AI coding, one of the hottest and most competitive corners of the AI market. As companies race to sell AI coding agents that can take on more of the work engineers do, investors are placing increasingly expensive bets on the few startups they think could emerge as leaders.
Last month, Cognition was drawn into a public feud with rival Factory AI, which accused Cognition employees of posing as job applicants to seek product information and faulted a former Factory adviser for meeting with Cognition executives. Cognition and the former adviser denied that confidential information was sought or shared.
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Alexander Gromov explains why Europe’s savings market remains fragmented, how PickTheBank gives customers access to licensed banks and higher savings rates without holding their money, and why Cyprus is the company’s immediate priority.
PickTheBank started in 2022 as a comparison platform for European savings products. Today, you have expanded into a platform where customers can also apply for and manage deposits with selected partner banks. What drove this evolution, and what have you learned about the needs of European savers?
PickTheBank began with a personal question: where should I keep my savings to earn a better return without unnecessary risk? In 2023, we launched a comparison platform covering rates from almost every retail bank in Europe. It quickly gained popularity, especially in Western Europe.
We learned comparison alone was not enough, particularly for us in Cyprus. Knowing a better rate exists abroad differs from being able to access it. Customers need a familiar language, effective onboarding and confidence their money goes directly to a licensed bank.
That is why, in 2025, with Lidion Bank in Malta, we expanded into customer onboarding and fixed-term deposit management. Today, thousands use PickTheBank to find, apply for and manage savings products.
The lesson is simple: people want competitive rates, convenience and local support. A European deposit should be as easy to open and manage as one at home.
Europe has a single market, but banking and savings remain highly fragmented across national borders. What are the biggest barriers preventing Europeans from accessing savings products in other EU countries, and how is PickTheBank trying to remove that friction?
Europe has a single banking market on paper, but savings remain largely national. Customers in Cyprus may never discover or access competitive banks in Germany, Italy, Malta or the Baltics, while banks face significant costs to localise products, onboarding, support, marketing and operations country by country.
This creates major differences in rates for similar euro deposits. Some European markets currently offer returns of up to 3.5 per cent in EUR, while many customers in Cyprus earn very little, allowing inflation to reduce their savings’ real value.
This fragmentation has a real cost. Average household deposit rates in Cyprus remain among the euro area’s lowest, while statistics indicate that the average Cypriot holds around €30,000 in banks. If €30,000 earns 0–1 per cent locally instead of 3.5 per cent, the annual difference is approximately €750–€1,050.
PickTheBank bridges this gap through a familiar localised interface, while helping partner banks reach new markets without rebuilding their customer-facing infrastructure.
Trust is critical when a fintech company is helping people make decisions about their savings. How does the PickTheBank model work in practice, particularly around regulation, customer funds, deposit protection, and relationships with partner banks? How do you convince customers to look beyond their traditional local bank?
First, customers choose PickTheBank to diversify their savings. Those with larger balances may not want everything in one institution. Since eligible deposits are generally protected up to €100,000 per depositor, per bank, accessing additional banks can reduce concentration risk and make better use of deposit protection.
Second, PickTheBank is a service partner to licensed banks, not a bank, and never holds customer funds. The partner bank provides the deposit, holds the contractual relationship and receives the money after approval. PickTheBank provides technology, onboarding, a localised interface and support, while the banking product, funds and deposit protection remain with the bank. This aligns with customers’ desire to keep savings with banks rather than a fintech that invests or reallocates them.
Third, thousands of customers have used PickTheBank, and millions of euros have been placed with partner banks, demonstrating demand for competitive rates, diversification, transparency and bank-held savings.
PickTheBank is headquartered in Limassol but is addressing a European market. What are your priorities for the next 12–24 months? Are you planning to add more partner banks, markets or financial products, and are there any new partnerships, investment plans or announcements you can share with us?
Our priorities are focused on two areas.
First, we see strong organic demand in Cyprus. Over the next 12 months, we plan to localise the product further and focus more of our marketing efforts here. PickTheBank started from a problem we experienced ourselves, and we are excited to bring more value and a broader range of savings options to customers in Cyprus.
Second, we are working on adding new partner banks. We hope that already this autumn Cypriot customers will be able to access a second partner bank through PickTheBank, giving them more choice, better diversification and access to a wider range of competitive deposit rates.
Our longer-term ambition remains European: one familiar platform, available in local languages, where customers can preserve and grow their savings with licensed banks across the EU.
About PickTheBank
PickTheBank is a European savings platform based in Cyprus. It helps customers compare savings products, apply for and manage partner bank fixed-term deposits through a localised digital interface.
PickTheBank acts as a service partner to licensed banks and never holds customer funds. Customers transfer funds directly to the relevant bank.
Lidion Bank plc is a credit institution registered in Malta and licensed by the Malta Financial Services Authority, or MFSA.
The bank combines traditional banking services with digital solutions, including financing, cash management, treasury operations and multi-currency services. Lidion Bank serves retail depositors with the support of PickTheBank.
Dalet Labs, an AI commerce startup, is coming out of stealth mode with a $7 million pre-seed round.
It's launching a new app called Scene, where you can scroll through shoppable, AI-generated images.
Read the 5-page pitch deck the startup used to raise capital — months before finalizing its product.
Would you shop from a feed of AI-generated images?
The startup Dalet Labs is betting you will.
The AI-commerce company exclusively told CMO Insider that it raised a $7 million pre-seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and is launching its first product, a shopping app called Scene.
Founded by Omer Bar-Tal in 2025 after he left the AI video startup Runway, Dalet Labs recently came out of stealth mode. The startup raised its pre-seed in late 2025, before finalizing its product road map. In addition to Lightspeed, venture capital firm SV Angel and individual angel investors participated in the round.
Lisa Han, the Lightspeed partner who led the round, said that Bar-Tal has a combination of "video AI research expertise" and a "deep understanding of what consumers want."
Scene, which became available on the Apple App Store in the US on Wednesday, lets people scroll through a feed of shoppable AI-generated images. The app will be invite-only at launch, and isn't yet available on Android. While the images of people or scenes are AI-generated, the products themselves come from real brands across categories like fashion, home decor, and sports.
Scene is a feed of AI-generated images that link directly out to actual products.
Dalet Labs
Bar-Tal envisions Scene as a tool people can turn to when they want to buy something but are still uncertain about exactly what they have in mind. It's similar to scrolling through Pinterest or TikTok in hopes of being inspired to buy something, but Bar-Tal said there's a key difference: You come to Scene to shop, not be entertained.
Bar-Tal sees Scene as a virtual "mall" where users can window-shop, save items to their cart, and make purchases.
Commerce has become an increasingly attractive use case for AI tools like chatbots and agents (including Meta's Muse). However, Bar-Tal argues that AI shopping tools are missing something.
"AI is amazing when you know what you want, but it's really important to actually have an ability to discover and to see things," Bar-Tal said. Agentic commerce, he added, "misses the point in shopping — which is essentially a delightful experience."
As a Scene user scrolls and interacts with products linked in the app, the feed adapts to what type of brands or items the user is interested in. Then, Scene uses AI to generate scenes with people wearing or using those items.
Bar-Tal did not comment on which third-party models Dalet Labs uses.
Bar-Tal said Dalet Labs doesn't see its product as replacing influencers, but rather as "complementary."
"The content here is AI, but it is not aiming to replace creators because we are not aiming to create entertainment," he said.
However, even if Scene isn't competing with influencers for entertaining content, it's still competing with their business model: making money by promoting brands' products and ultimately driving sales.
Scene has a catalog of hundreds of brands and retailers, Bar-Tal said, and is making more partnerships. The company did not share further details on what brands Dalet Labs has already established relationships with.
Bar-Tal said the company is also leveraging affiliate marketing to monetize the app early on, working with affiliate networks to earn from each in-app transaction.
Dalet Labs' Scene is entering a crowded market of apps offering people ways to discover brands and goods, like TikTok's growing Shop presence in the US or Pinterest's visual search prowess. Startups like Doji and Alta have also raised millions on the promise of tech that lets people try on clothes using AI-generated versions of themselves.
How will Dalet Labs get people to download an entirely new app?
Using influencers and social media to promote the app will be a core part of Dalet Labs' user acquisition plan. It also plans to roll out a coupon campaign during the holidays, offering new users discounts on purchases made through the Scene app. Bar-Tal didn't share whether the discounts would be funded by Scene or by brand partners.
The New York-based startup, meanwhile, is using its pre-seed funding to hire more engineers and researchers to build out Scene.
Read the 5-page pitch deck Dalet Labs used to raise its $7 million pre-seed:
Courtesy of Dalet Labs
The deck starts with background on the technology
Courtesy of Dalet Labs
Here's what the slide says:
For over half a century, every major shift in computing has been driven by an interface revolution.
The move from terminals to graphical user interfaces (GUIs) transformed computers from expert tools into mass-market products.
The rise of the web and mobile extended that pattern: each new medium made digital interaction more visual, intuitive, and consumable.
Text, by nature, demands active cognitive effort; Visual interfaces go a step further by allowing users to grasp high bandwidth information almost instantly with minimal cognitive effort.
Then it explains Dalet Labs' thesis
Courtesy of Dalet Labs
Here's what the slide says:
Today, artificial intelligence represents the most profound computing shift since the PC. Yet, paradoxically, our interface to AI remains stuck in the terminal era.
We converse with models through text prompts and receive text streams in return in synchronous manner. Our product thesis is simple and inevitable: AI requires a native GUI.
We believe the GUI to AI will not be code-based, but rather generated by media models.
It then outlines the competition
Courtesy of Dalet Labs
Here's what the slide says:
The core product of AI consumption platforms is inseparable from their textual chat interfaces.
For example, the OpenAI brand is strictly associated with the chat interface of ChatGPT.
Moreover, by decoupling the user interface from any specific model provider, we can integrate multiple frontier models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or open-source systems) and focus our innovation on the new media generation GUI platform. This modularity becomes increasingly valuable as AI models are commoditized. In addition, their technical stacks are anchored in the code generation paradigm, in contrast to our focus on Media Models.
Finally, it introduces Dalet Labs' founder
Courtesy of Dalet Labs
Here's what the slide says:
Omer Bar-Tal
Research experience from Weizmann Institute.
Built the first method for editing real-world videos using text
Papers in CVPR, ECCV, ICML, ICLR etc.
Trained video foundation models (Google, Pika, Runway)
Built creative applications with media models (eg video editing, reference-to-video, etc.)
In this interview, Redox One outlines its technology, progress towards commercial deployment and international ambitions. It also explains why Cyprus, home to its headquarters, could become an early market and demonstration base for wider regional adoption.
From development to deployment
Redox One was established in 2022 by Tharisa plc to develop iron-chromium redox flow battery technology for safe, sustainable and cost-effective energy storage.
Building on Tharisa’s expertise in chromium production, mining, metallurgy and chemical processing, the company was created to address one of the most significant challenges of the energy transition: storing renewable energy reliably at scale.
A key strength is our vertically integrated approach, spanning chromium resources, electrolyte production and complete energy storage systems. This provides greater control over quality, supply security, cost and long-term scalability.
One of our biggest challenges has been moving from technology development to fully integrated, real-world energy storage systems. Important milestones include the successful operation of demonstration systems at our European Technology Centre in Germany and the development of a 625 kWh demonstration system in China.
Our next focus is advancing larger demonstration projects and progressing towards commercial deployments that can support renewable energy growth worldwide.
Storage built for duration
Our iron-chromium redox flow battery technology is designed to transform intermittent renewable energy into dependable, dispatchable power. It complements lithium-ion batteries by addressing applications that require longer-duration storage, high utilisation rates and long operating lifetimes.
The technology uses abundant materials such as iron and chromium and is engineered for decades of operation with minimal capacity degradation.
Safety is a major advantage. The system uses a water-based, non-flammable electrolyte that eliminates the thermal runaway risks associated with conventional lithium-ion batteries.
Flow batteries also offer significant economic benefits for long-duration storage because power and energy capacity can be scaled independently. Extending storage duration primarily requires additional electrolyte and storage tanks rather than a complete battery system expansion.
From a sustainability perspective, the electrolyte can be reused and recycled, while the battery chemistry relies on widely available materials. Together, these attributes create a safe, sustainable and cost-effective solution for large-scale energy storage.
International growth
Our commercialisation strategy is international from the outset. We are advancing the technology through demonstration projects and strategic partnerships across Europe, China and South Africa, while engaging with utilities, industrial customers, renewable energy developers and technology partners.
Our immediate priority is to validate demonstration systems and use operational data to support larger commercial projects. We see strong opportunities in mining, industrial, utility-scale and renewable energy applications where long-duration storage can improve reliability, flexibility and asset utilisation.
Our connection to Tharisa provides access to critical raw materials and metallurgical expertise, enabling participation across the value chain, from electrolyte production to complete energy storage systems.
Cyprus could potentially play an important role as a gateway to Southern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Over the next three to five years, our goal is to develop a growing portfolio of commercial installations and establish scalable manufacturing and supply-chain partnerships.
Cyprus as an early market
Cyprus is home to our headquarters and an important part of our long-term growth strategy. As an island electricity system with abundant solar resources, it faces many of the challenges that long-duration energy storage is designed to solve.
Our technology can store excess renewable electricity during periods of strong solar generation and deliver it when demand exceeds supply. This improves grid flexibility, reduces renewable energy curtailment, enhances energy security and helps lower reliance on imported fuels.
We believe Cyprus could become an important early market for sustainable energy storage and a valuable demonstration platform for wider deployment across Southern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean.
More broadly, Cyprus has the potential to strengthen its position as a regional deep-tech and clean-energy hub. Faster pathways for demonstration projects, targeted funding programmes and closer collaboration between government, industry, universities and investors would encourage more innovation-led companies to establish and expand their operations on the island.
Cyprus has the potential to become a regional innovation hub, but turning that ambition into globally successful companies will require startups to look beyond the domestic market, stronger corporate partnerships and easier access to international customers and investors.
In an exclusive interview with the Cyprus Mail, director at Plug and Play Cyprus, Filippos Kyprianou, discussed how the global innovation platform is connecting Cypriot founders with more than 600 corporations across over 60 locations, while helping them develop the commercial skills needed to scale internationally.
He also examined the role of local corporate partners, the challenges facing startups and what success should look like over the next five years.
Plug and Play has a global network spanning more than 60 locations. What does bringing that network to Cyprus mean in practical terms for a startup based on the island, and what can founders access through Plug and Play that they could not easily access before?
In practical terms it means a founder in Limassol is one introduction away from a decision-maker at a bank in Frankfurt or a shipping company in Singapore. Plug and Play works with more than 600 corporations across 60-plus locations, and those are not logos on a wall. They are relationships where the corporate has a team, a budget and a mandate to work with startups. Until now a Cypriot founder who wanted that kind of conversation had to get on a plane and hope.
The second thing is people. Every week of the programme we bring in mentors from across the network: operators who have scaled companies, investors, people who have run innovation inside large corporations. They would not normally be in Cyprus on a Tuesday morning, and our founders get time with them, one to one, on whatever is actually broken that week.
The third is capital. Plug and Play’s venture arm is one of the most active early-stage investors in the world. It hasn’t invested in Cyprus yet but our investment team sees every company that comes through the programme, and we want the first Cypriot startup in the portfolio to be the first of many.
None of it costs the founder anything. We take no equity, and the programme is covered through the Research and Innovation Foundation’s voucher scheme. And we are not here only for the ten companies in a cohort. The centre is a front door for the whole ecosystem. If you are a founder in Cyprus and need to reach a corporate or an investor in our network, come and talk to us.
The Cyprus centre has been developed through cooperation between Plug and Play, the government, the Research and Innovation Foundation and corporate partners. How important is that collaboration to building a sustainable ecosystem, what does it look like in practice, and where is there room to improve?
I’d say the collaboration isn’t something that helps the ecosystem, it is the ecosystem. When people look at Silicon Valley they see the startups, but what they’re really looking at is a loop that has been turning for seventy years, where Stanford produces the talent and the research, the funds on Sand Hill Road put money behind it, the corporates buy from the startups and eventually buy the startups themselves, and all of it sits on decades of government research spending that nobody remembers paying for. Each part feeds the next, and if you took any one of them out you’d be left with a pleasant university town.
In practice, collaboration means each party puts something real on the table and is accountable for it, and you can see that happening across the island, not only in our programme. The government sets the direction and removes the obstacles, through the grants RIF puts into early-stage companies, the spin-off framework that lets researchers leave a university with their own work, and the visa schemes that bring talent in. The corporates are starting to treat startups as suppliers and partners rather than as a sponsorship line. The universities are beginning to see a company coming out of a lab as a success rather than a loss.
Local funds and programmes are backing companies at the stage before they reach us, and we bring the international network, the programme and twenty years of knowing how this is done. Our piece of it is funded by RIF and co-funded by our partners, the targets are public, and we sit down with RIF regularly to look at the numbers together, so anyone can see whether it’s working.
That’s what collaboration looks like when it’s real: everyone has something at stake and nobody can hide behind the others.
Plug and Play’s core business worldwide is helping large companies work with startups. What would you say to a Cypriot company that wants to do more of that?
Most of the Cypriot companies I speak to already want to do this. What they ask is where to start, and my answer is usually smaller than they expect, and with different people in the room than they expect.
The way we do it with corporates around the world – and we’ve been doing it for twenty years with more than six hundred of them – is to start from a problem the business actually has rather than from a general wish to innovate.
A bank might want to cut the time it takes to onboard a business customer from weeks to days. A ship manager might want better data coming off its vessels. We take that problem, go through the startups we know, which at this point is tens of thousands, and bring back the handful that have already solved something similar for someone else.
The company meets them, picks one or two, and runs a pilot with us helping on both sides. The difficult part is rarely the technology, it is getting a company of eight people through the legal and security process of a company of eight thousand, and getting the company of eight thousand to make a decision in weeks rather than quarters.
If the pilot works there is a contract, and sometimes the corporate invests as well. That is more or less how a navigation startup ended up in every new Mercedes vehicle.
Where it goes wrong is when it is treated as an event instead of as work. If the innovation team organises a demo day and the head of operations isn’t there, nothing comes of it no matter how good the startups are, and if a pilot starts without anyone having agreed what happens when it succeeds, it will finish without anyone deciding.
I have watched this happen in Germany and in Singapore, so it is not a Cypriot problem, but it is the main reason companies try once and give up.
So my advice to a Cypriot company would be to pick one problem that someone in the business is already losing sleep over, give that person a modest budget and the authority to run a pilot and let us find the startups. Do one properly and the second is much easier. None of it needs an innovation lab.
Plug and Play works with major corporations around the world. How do you see Cyprus-based corporates such as Tototheo Global, ASBIS, ECOMMBX and Mastercard contributing to the development of local startups beyond simply providing sponsorship or support for programmes?
The funding is the smallest part of what they do. Each of the four came into this for reasons of its own, and the longer I work with them the more I think that mix is one of the programme’s strengths.
What each of them brings is quite different. Tototheo Global started out in maritime technology and has grown well beyond it over the years, but what matters most for our founders is that it is a company that built itself in Cyprus and then scaled into international markets, which is exactly the road the startups in our cohort are about to go down.
ASBIS is headquartered here and operates in dozens of countries, so it offers the kind of reach into other markets that a Cypriot startup could never buy on its own, and it is also one of the few corporates on the island that already invests in technology companies, which gives it a very practical interest in what comes out of the programme..
ECOMMBX built its payments infrastructure in Limassol and sells it internationally, so it knows from its own experience what a regulator will ask and what a bank’s due diligence actually looks like, and that is knowledge a fintech founder would otherwise spend a couple of painful years acquiring.
Mastercard brings the view of a global network that sees where payments are going before almost anyone else.
Some of them are here because they want startups working on problems inside their own business, some because they want to invest, and some because they believe the island needs this and would rather be part of it than watch from the side. What they have in common is that they all committed before there was a cohort or a single result to show them, when it would have been very easy to wait a year and see how it went. In my experience that kind of early commitment is the hardest thing to get from corporates anywhere in the world, and here we had it from the first day.
The first Plug and Play Cyprus cohort includes ten startups operating in areas ranging from artificial intelligence and diagnostics to energy and digital platforms. What were you looking for when selecting the first cohort, and what have you learned from working with these companies so far?
We kept the first cohort open to every sector on purpose, because when you start somewhere new you don’t know where the talent is, and the quickest way to find out is to open the door and see who walks in. We spent time with the finalists and picked ten.
At this stage you are backing people rather than plans, since the plan will change several times before it works, so what I look at is what a team has managed to do with almost no money, whether they can explain what has changed in the world that makes this possible now, and whether they have a real reason for the decisions they’ve made on price, market and hiring or are telling themselves a story. I also pay attention to what has moved between our first conversation and the second, because two weeks is usually enough to tell.
What has struck me so far is that the technical quality here is better than people outside Cyprus assume, and we have companies in diagnostics, energy and AI that I would put in any cohort in our network. Where they need us is on the commercial side, pricing for a market bigger than Cyprus, building a sales process that doesn’t stop when the founder is on a plane, and turning a pilot into a contract, which is what the three months are for.
Filippos Kyprianou
Cyprus has a growing technology community, but the domestic market is small. How important is internationalisation from the very beginning, and beyond funding, what are the biggest obstacles facing startups in Cyprus today?
It matters from before day one, from the moment you decide what to build. The question I ask every founder is: where do you want to be in five years? If the answer is Europe, build for Europe now. Price for it, hire for it, design for it and use Cyprus to test. You’ll hear me say this a lot. You’re not building a company for Cyprus. You’re building a company from Cyprus to serve global markets.
Estonia has about the same population as Cyprus and has produced around ten unicorns. It did that because nobody there could hide in a home market. A small market is only a problem if you let it set your ambition.
Beyond funding, the obstacles I see are distribution and ambition, in that order, and capital a long way behind. There’s more money looking at Cyprus than ever. What’s hard is the first international customer, the first salesperson who can close without the founder in the room, and being willing to fail in public. That last one matters more than people think. We have a culture, and it’s southern European more than Cypriot, where failure is something you hide. In Silicon Valley a founder who has failed once is easier to fund, not harder, because they learned something expensive and someone else paid for it. Part of what we’re here to do is bring that attitude with us.
Plug and Play has described Cyprus as having the potential to become an innovation hub in the Eastern Mediterranean. What would need to happen over the next five to ten years for that to translate into globally successful companies built from Cyprus, and how does Cyprus fit into the wider ecosystem?
The honest answer is that it needs a few Cypriot companies to make it internationally, because that is what sets everything else in motion. Once that happens, the people who built those companies go on to start new ones and invest in others, international investors begin to look at Cyprus seriously, and the next generation of founders can see that it is possible. Estonia is the clearest example: one exit, Skype, produced the founders and the capital behind most of the country’s startup scene today.
For that to happen here, a few things need to continue improving over the next five to ten years. Founders need to build for international markets from day one rather than for the island. Local corporates need to work with startups as a normal part of doing business, since a startup’s first serious customer is usually a local one. It must become easier to raise capital while keeping the company and the team in Cyprus, rather than relocating to raise. The island needs more experienced operators, people who have scaled companies before, which is what the government’s talent and visa schemes are designed to address. And universities need to see a company emerging from research as a success rather than a loss. None of this is new, and most of it is already moving. The next decade is about whether it compounds.
As for the region, Cyprus sits inside the EU, in a time zone that overlaps with Europe, the Middle East and India, and in a country small enough that you can reach anyone within a week, which makes it a natural meeting point. Reflect Festival already brings founders and investors from across the region to Limassol every May, and by bringing our network into it we want a founder from Athens or Dubai to be able to meet our corporates and our investors here, rather than having to fly to San Francisco to find them.
Looking beyond the first cohort and the November innovation Expo, what should success look like for Plug and Play Cyprus in three to five years, and what would convince you that the programme has made a lasting contribution to Cyprus’ startup ecosystem?
We have targets and we will be measured on them, and we take that seriously, but the targets describe the programme, not the ambition. What we want is for Cyprus to be a place where founders believe they can build something that matters and stay here while they do it, and we think that belief is the thing that is still missing. The talent is here and the money is coming. What hasn’t fully happened yet is the moment a few founders prove it can be done from here and everyone else stops asking whether it can.
In three to five years we would like to be able to point to Cypriot companies with customers in ten countries, with investors who came here to find them, with the first employees of those companies starting companies of their own. I would like a corporate in Limassol to have worked with enough startups that it does so without thinking, and a researcher at one of our universities to see starting a company as the obvious thing to do with a result, not a brave one. And we would like founders from abroad to consider Cyprus a serious place to build, not an unusual one.
The Expo on November 11 is the first time we put all of that in one room, our startups, our partners and investors from across the network, and I’m excited to see what comes out of it. As for what would convince me the contribution has lasted, it’s when the things we’ve described start happening on their own as well as through us, when the introductions we made in the first years have become relationships that no longer need us in the middle, and when Plug and Play has gone from being the reason a founder gets a meeting to being one of several good reasons to build a company from here. We’re in Cyprus for the long term.
A queda da Unbabel, que no ano passado vendeu apressadamente todos os seus ativos a uma concorrente por apenas 5,7 milhões de dólares, deixa uma marca profunda no ecossistema de startups português, juntando-se a uma lista que inclui a Chic by Choice (2018) e a Farfetch (2023). Embora com desfechos muito diferentes, são histórias que oferecem lições aos empreendedores nacionais, contadas geralmente nas páginas dos jornais. A que vai ler a seguir, sobre uma startup de traduções com inteligência artificial (IA), que um dia sonhou ser 'unicórnio', tem vindo a ser contadapeloECO. Mas nunca antes foi reportada com este nível de detalhe.
A Unbabel foi fundada em 2013 por cinco empreendedores, entre os quais Vasco Pedro, que comandou a startup até à insolvência declarada pelo Tribunal da Comarca de Lisboa em março de 2026.…
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Anthropic is touting its ability to use different AI chips in its initial public offering filing.
Analysts say a multichip strategy could weaken Nvidia's pricing power.
Switching chips is hard and expensive, putting it out of reach for smaller players.
Anthropic is hedging its bets by using multiple chips to handle its AI work — a strategy that could eventually erode Nvidia's dominance.
The AI lab says it manages compute "as a single, fungible pool from multiple strategic partners" — with software that can direct its work to different chips depending on where they're most productive, according to Anthropic's S-1 filing, which came out Monday as the company prepares to go public.
Anthropic says it uses hardware from four chip families: Amazon Trainium, Google TPUs, Nvidia GPUs, and AMD GPUs.
That flexibility, which Anthropic said "took years and significant investment to build," could make major AI companies less dependent on Nvidia over time and give them more negotiating leverage, analysts said.
"The real exposure could be Nvidia's pricing power," said Patrick Moorhead, founder and CEO of Moor Insights & Strategy, "because a customer that can shift work across four platforms negotiates very differently than one that can't."
Ashish Nadkarni, an analyst at IDC, added that a multichip approach also makes Anthropic less vulnerable to fluctuations in Nvidia's chip supply.
Breaking Nvidia's grip isn't easy
Although Anthropic's chip mix isn't new, the company is now pitching it as a core advantage to investors, Moorhead said.
The threat has its limits. Switching between chips is still difficult — especially when it comes to training AI models as opposed to running them, Moorhead said — and only the biggest AI companies have the resources to do it.
Anthropic also continues to spend billions on Nvidia compute, Moorhead said.
Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, said that while other major companies like OpenAI likely take a multichip approach, it may not be worth the effort and investment for smaller players.
Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence at Circular Technology, said Anthropic's strategy doesn't represent a major near-term threat. Having more chip options doesn't erase Nvidia's advantages in performance, networking, and software, he said.
There's a broader risk for Nvidia if AI compute becomes more of a commodity.
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has warned that if supply overtakes demand, it could drive down rental prices.
"GPUs, like airlines, have a very low marginal cost to run," he told Bloomberg last week. "The moment you have overcapacity, pricing goes into freefall."
Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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Cyprus may still be an unlikely place to build a biotechnology company, but Dr Marianna Prokopi-Demetriades, co-founder and director of Theramir, is increasingly convinced that this is precisely what gives the island something to prove.
At Theramir, that means developing precision-oncology technologies, building the manufacturing and regulatory foundations needed to move experimental therapies closer to patients, and trying to show that globally relevant biotech can emerge from a small ecosystem.
The work is slow by design. Cancer therapies cannot be rushed through validation, safety testing, manufacturing or regulation, and even strong laboratory results can take years to reach the clinic.
For Prokopi-Demetriades, that reality sits alongside a much bigger ambition. She wants Theramir to help prove that Cyprus can do more than support innovation from elsewhere. It can create it, retain the intellectual property and take it international.
From a small island to global biotech
That ambition received fresh recognition this year when Prokopi-Demetriades was named the 2026 Study UK Alumni Awards global winner for Business and Innovation, selected among 1,800 candidates from 120 countries.
For years, she said, Cyprus “was not a place people immediately associated with biotechnology”, even though its technology and innovation ecosystem has grown enormously over the past decade.
Being recognised internationally therefore felt “both like a very personal milestone and a huge surprise”, but Prokopi-Demetriades also sees it as an opportunity to put Theramir and Cyprus more firmly on the global biotech map.
She is careful, however, not to confuse recognition with progress itself. “Of course, awards do not suddenly bring deals or open doors,” she said, noting that in biotech, progress still depends on years of scientific R&D, validation, manufacturing and regulatory work.
What recognition can do is bring visibility to a field that often feels like “a long and lonely path”.
Her hope is that the award brings more confidence and excitement around biotechnology in Cyprus, inspires the next generation of scientists and helps strong science find “a real path to scale and, ultimately, reach patients”.
What Theramir is trying to do differently
The science behind Theramir starts from a simple but difficult reality. Cancer does not behave in the same way from one patient to another.
Each tumour has its own molecular profile and can evolve under treatment, Prokopi-Demetriades explained, particularly in metastatic and treatment-resistant disease, where cancer can activate several pathways in order to survive.
Theramir’s EVmiR® platform is designed around that complexity.
“We use extracellular vesicles (the body’s natural cellular messengers) to deliver microRNAs, small molecules that can regulate multiple cancer-driving pathways simultaneously,” she said.
The distinction lies in how those molecules act. “Rather than blocking one target, the aim is to interfere with networks controlling tumour growth, resistance and metastatic spread,” she explained.
The company’s lead programme targets triple-negative breast cancer, with expansion into bladder and pancreatic cancer. Because EVmiR® is a platform technology, different microRNAs can be selected for different tumour biology, creating what Prokopi-Demetriades described as “a potentially adaptable precision-oncology approach”.
Could a blood test help tell us what comes next?
Theramir is also developing companion biomarker tools alongside its therapeutics, bringing diagnosis and treatment closer together.
The aim, Prokopi-Demetriades said, is “to connect treatment with the biomarkers that can tell us who is most likely to benefit and how the disease is responding”.
Today, Theramir evaluates LCP-1 expression through tissue biopsy, while liquid biopsy allows the team to study circulating microRNAs and tumour-associated extracellular vesicles in blood.
The value comes from combining those sources of information. “Together, these markers could support patient selection and provide a more dynamic picture of treatment response, with future potential for real-time monitoring and earlier detection of progression, resistance or recurrence,” she explained.
When the laboratory is only the beginning
A new challenge begins when promising science has to leave the laboratory.
“A promising laboratory result is only the beginning,” Prokopi-Demetriades said, because before a therapy can reach patients, the science must be reproduced consistently, safety and efficacy confirmed preclinically and the product transferred into GMP manufacturing with strict quality control and batch-to-batch consistency.
“This is why biotech development takes years rather than months,” she said.
Medochemie’s involvement is therefore significant. As she explained, “Medochemie’s involvement is important because it brings pharmaceutical manufacturing, quality and regulatory expertise directly into this next phase.”
For Theramir, the next major milestone is to translate EVmiR® into a clinical-grade product, establish a robust GMP manufacturing process and generate the data required to support first-in-human clinical development.
The expensive patience of biotech
That timetable also changes the way a biotech company has to think about investment.
Unlike a software startup, which can launch, test and change direction in months, biotech may spend years generating evidence before conventional revenues appear.
“Biotech investors are backing scientific progress long before conventional revenues appear, so milestones look very different: reproducible data, preclinical validation, GMP manufacturing, regulatory progress and eventually clinical development,” Prokopi-Demetriades said.
Public funding, she explained, helps de-risk the early science, while private investors “mainly place trust in the founders, the vision and the potential to create something with real patient impact”.
Strategic partners such as Medochemie then add sector expertise alongside capital.
There is, however, a limit to what money can accelerate. “Money can accelerate execution, but it cannot shortcut biology, safety or regulation” is how Prokopi-Demetriades put it, adding that this patience is part of “building biotech for the greater good”.
What could Cyprus become?
The question for Cyprus is whether individual companies such as Theramir can eventually become part of something broader.
Prokopi-Demetriades said the country has “come a long way since Theramir started”, when it was only the second company approved as an innovative company locally.
Her ambitions for the sector are focused. “Competing directly with mature biotech hubs is still unrealistic, but we can build our own niche,” she said.
Instead, she sees a real opportunity in next-generation biomanufacturing, developing specialised GMP capabilities that can take innovation from the laboratory towards the clinic.
Equally important is “creating and retaining Cyprus-made intellectual property”, then scaling it internationally through strategic partnerships and licensing.
That, she believes, would allow Cyprus “not simply to host innovation, but to originate and export it”.
When the science becomes personal
Behind the science, however, there is also a more personal contradiction.
Prokopi-Demetriades has spoken openly about losing people she loves to cancer while spending years working on therapies for the disease.
“There is a painful contradiction in spending years working on cancer therapies while, at the same time, losing people you love to the disease,” she said.
That experience creates an instinct to move faster.
“It makes you want to move faster, but it also reminds you why you cannot take shortcuts,” she said, adding that patients deserve “evidence and safety, not just promising science”.
Through the slower periods, she remains focused on why Theramir began. “The long timelines can be frustrating, but I know why we started,” she explained.
Reaching the first patient with a Theramir therapy would therefore mean far more than another development milestone.
It would be, she said, “a major scientific milestone and, for me, an intensely personal one”.
DUBAI: A Saudi-based startup is deploying 32 artificial intelligence agents across nine departments to help entrepreneurs turn business ideas into fully fledged startup projects, covering everything from financial planning and market research to website development and marketing. Hatchio AI is designed for non-technical founders, established businesses and startup incubators, bringing multiple business functions together on a single platform. The startup aims to reduce the time and resources re
Just two months after launching i spy, Cypriot founder and CEO Nicole Georgiou is already seeing signs that the way people discover fashion online may be changing faster than the tools they use to shop it.
The London-based fashion-tech platform is built around a familiar problem. An outfit catches your eye on TikTok, Instagram or Pinterest, but finding the pieces behind it can mean screenshots, Google searches, several retailer tabs and saved posts scattered across different platforms.
Georgiou is trying to bring those steps together, allowing users to take inspiration from elsewhere, search for exact or similar items, save products into boards and return to them when they are ready to buy.
Early users show real purchase intent
For Georgiou, the clearest early sign that there is a genuine problem to solve has come from user behaviour, with early users showing that “people aren’t just coming to i spy for inspiration, they’re coming with real purchase intent”.
That interest has translated into activity. In the platform’s first two months, entirely through organic growth, “we’ve seen more than 20,000 searches and 800 user-created boards, alongside thousands of products being saved,” she said.
Those searches are also increasingly tied to genuine buying decisions, with users looking for “things they genuinely want to wear and potentially buy, wedding guest dresses, holiday outfits, bridal looks and pieces they’ve seen elsewhere”.
For Georgiou, however, repeat use matters more than the initial download. “What matters to me isn’t just that someone downloads i spy, but that they come back,” she said, adding that “A download tells you someone was curious. Coming back tells you you’ve created something they actually want to use.”
The same applies to how users save products. Georgiou said “a save means something different on i spy”, explaining that on a traditional inspiration platform it can simply mean “I like this”, while on i spy it can mean “I might actually buy this”.
That difference is reflected in the way users behave, she added, with people beginning to “search, compare, save and organise products they are genuinely considering”.
Fixing a fragmented shopping journey
Asked what problem i spy is actually solving for consumers, Georgiou pointed to the increasingly fragmented nature of online shopping, saying “The way we shop online has completely changed, but the infrastructure hasn’t caught up.”
A typical journey, she said, might involve seeing an outfit on TikTok, saving something on Instagram, finding inspiration on Pinterest, using Google to search for the product, opening multiple retailer tabs and taking screenshots on a phone.
The result is that “The inspiration, search, saving and purchasing parts of the journey are completely disconnected,” she said.
That is the gap i spy is trying to close. Georgiou put it simply when she said “i spy connects that journey”, allowing users to “take inspiration from anywhere, find the exact or similar products, save them, organise them and come back when you’re ready to buy”.
Building between inspiration and purchase
While visual search itself is not new, Georgiou sees i spy as occupying a different place from larger platforms.
She described Google Lens as “a strong image search tool” and Pinterest as “incredible for inspiration”, but said i spy is “specifically built around fashion and around what happens between seeing something you like and deciding to buy it”.
That space between discovery and purchase is central to the company’s proposition, with Georgiou describing it as “the consideration layer between inspiration and purchase”.
Taking on the bigger platforms
Asked what makes i spy defensible when Google, Pinterest and other large platforms could potentially build parts of it, Georgiou said there is “a structural reason why this space is still relatively unowned”.
In her view, large platforms face conflicting incentives. “Pinterest ultimately wants to keep you on Pinterest, while Google operates within its own ecosystem,” she said, while i spy is “deliberately cross-platform and consumer-first, if you discover something anywhere, you can bring it into i spy”.
Georgiou acknowledged that large platforms could technically build elements of the same experience, but said “creating a system that connects users across different platforms and retailers doesn’t naturally align with their existing business models”.
Focus is another part of the argument. “We’re also incredibly focused,” she said, contrasting i spy with platforms “building for hundreds of millions of people across many behaviours”.
By comparison, she said, “we’re building one thing for one specific behaviour: what happens between seeing something you want and deciding to buy it”.
That focus also feeds into the technology itself. Georgiou said “Our proprietary fashion technology and the behaviour we’re learning from searches, saves and interactions become increasingly valuable as the platform grows.”
Using AI to understand taste
When asked what AI can understand about a shopper that traditional search cannot, Georgiou said its value lies in reducing rather than expanding choice.
“I think AI is most useful when it reduces choice rather than simply giving you more of it,” she said.
The company is using technology to learn “someone’s real, underlying taste”, looking not just at what a person has searched for once, but at “the patterns across what they repeatedly search for, save, put into boards and eventually keep in their closet”.
Over time, Georgiou said, that allows i spy to understand “the person behind the search” and give users “better results, recommendations and discovery”.
She is also keen to distinguish that approach from the growing number of AI shopping agents. “We’re not trying to build another AI shopping agent that simply gives you a list of products,” she said, adding that “I want technology to understand someone’s taste while keeping the human and social side of fashion intact.”
Changing where shopping begins
Georgiou’s ambitions stretch beyond building another fashion app.
Asked what she means when she describes i spy as becoming “the default system for online shopping”, she linked that ambition to a change in where the shopping journey actually begins.
“When i spy becomes the default system for online shopping, it will be because we’ve changed where people think shopping starts,” she said.
That behaviour is already shifting, in her view, because “Shopping used to start with a search bar. Increasingly, it starts with a TikTok, an Instagram post, a creator, a Pinterest board or something you see in real life.”
For Georgiou, that is the space i spy wants to occupy, with the aim to “own the moment between seeing something you want and deciding to buy it”.
Fashion is where the company is starting because “it’s one of the most visual and fragmented categories”, although she believes “the underlying behaviour is much broader”.
Georgiou is also building the company from London as a Cypriot founder, saying the city has given her “access to fashion, technology talent, investors and brands”, while she still sees “a huge opportunity for Cyprus to support globally ambitious consumer technology companies”.
The company is now moving into fundraising after what she described as “strong interest from early investors”, with plans “to scale the technology, team and user growth”.
Ultimately, however, Georgiou’s measure of success is much simpler. She wants someone to see something they love and instinctively think “I’ll i spy that.”
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, Hyperbolic founder Jasper Zhang, and Walden Catalyst partner Shankar Chandran.
Luke Dietz
Infrastructure startup Hyperbolic raised a $30 million round led by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan's VC firm.
The startup connects companies with neoclouds and makes their AI chips easier to use.
Hyperbolic also wants to let customers resell unused computing power.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan is backing an infrastructure startup that has raised $30 million to help companies rent compute across hundreds of different AI cloud providers.
Hyperbolic, an AI chip marketplace and software startup, has raised $50 million to date.
Walden Catalyst, the venture capital firm founded by Tan and former Samsung president Young Sohn, led the Series A-1 funding round. Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst, Vista Equity Partners, and Cambium Capital also participated.
As companies scramble for computing power, one challenge is that AI cloud providers, or neoclouds, use a mix of different chips, networking, and software. Hyperbolic helps customers find compute resources from different providers and creates software that makes it easier to use them all, rather than dealing with each one separately.
"It's been a really fragmented market that makes the customer experience really painful," said 31-year-old founder and CEO Jasper Zhang.
Hyperbolic also wants to let customers resell compute that they're paying for but no longer need.
The four-year-old startup works closely with about 30 neoclouds, including WhiteFiber and Vector Core Compute. It says it has roughly $200 million worth of compute connected to its software annually.
Hyperbolic previously raised a $12 million Series A round in 2024, led by Variant and Polychain Capital, following a $7 million seed round earlier that year. The company expects to have 50 employees by the end of the year and will use its funding to expand software tools for managing AI chips across different neoclouds.
Zhang said the company is aiming for $150 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of the year and is already breaking even. More than 250,000 developers, including teams at Modal, Higgsfield, and Daytona, use Hyperbolic.
Before founding the company, Zhang worked as a quantitative researcher at Citadel Securities. As Wall Street explores ways to financialize AI chips, he said his startup's plans to let companies resell unused compute could help pave the way for a futures market.
Here's a look at the pitch deck Hyperbolic used to raise its $30 million Series A-1. Slides have been redacted so that the deck can be shared publicly.
GPTZero cofounder Edward Tian's last day at the GPTZero office before the team moved to the Superhuman offices.
Courtesy of Edward Tian
Edward Tian co-founded GPTZero in college, building it into a success before selling to Superhuman.
He said he thinks that creating 'artificial scarcity' for the product contributed to its success.
He said he'd major in the humanities, not computer science, if he went to college today.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Edward Tian, the 26-year-old cofounder of GPTZero, who's based in New York. His words have been edited for length and clarity.
I was never planning to go down the founder path straight out of college. I had a visual investigations fellowship lined up for after graduation and was ready to start a journalism career.
My cofounder Alex and I went to high school together. When ChatGPT came out, he was pursuing his Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Toronto, and I was in my senior year at Princeton. Over winter break, we built an AI detection tool and put it online. The success was almost overnight.
Three years later, we sold our company, GPTZero, to Superhuman, and have stayed on board to work with the team. Superhuman is a very pro-AI company, and I think it was an unexpected move for us as an AI detection company to join them.
We didn't build GPTZero to say there should be no AI on the internet. I think that's the biggest misunderstanding about why we started our company, but my feelings on AI have changed.
I had a different job lined up for after graduation
I studied computer science at Princeton and worked with a professor at the Princeton Natural Language Processing Lab on AI research. I also worked on a few other startup projects in school, but I was always hoping to work in journalism.
While in college, I became very involved in the open-source investigation community. I ended up working on open-source investigative projects with the BBC and Bellingcat, and had a visual investigations fellowship at The New York Times lined up after graduation, which I was excited about but ultimately didn't take.
After ChatGPT came out, I was inspired to investigate where and when AI was being used online. It took about a week over winter break to build the first version of our AI detection tool, and it was released in January 2023.
We created artificial scarcity to help grow the business
My cofounder Alex and I posted on social media to market the tool so people could try it, but we didn't view it as a business right away. However, it blew up online pretty quickly. After seeing the success, we wanted to double down on the opportunity and turn it into a legitimate site.
One piece of advice I have for founders is that using a waitlist is really helpful for generating hype and excitement. We put the first version of GPTZero on a waitlist because it had reached capacity. So I think that artificial scarcity was also very helpful in the success.
We had a lucky combination of very talented engineers and some traction and buzz, so we started reaching out to VCs. Many of our early VC partners went to my alma mater, and kind of all knew each other. Jack Altman is also an investor, and I remember we had a call where I was in my dorm room, and he was like, "Oh, I recognize that dorm room too."
For founders raising funding for the first time, my advice is not to optimize for the flashiest name or the biggest brand because you think it will attract future talent. Go for where there's familiarity and trust; trust is the most important thing when working with an investor.
We raised around $3.5 million in our first funding round. I stayed at Princeton to finish my senior year and graduate, and we kept growing the business. My cofounder Alex left his Ph.D. program to focus on the business.
It was bittersweet to sell the company
When Shishir, the new CEO of Superhuman, joined in 2025, we spoke with him about his broader platform vision for a suite of products. He thought we could be part of the authenticity suite he wanted to create.
It was bittersweet to think about giving up something that we started from scratch and put so much energy and care into. At the same time, it was a lot easier because the team stayed on. I'm now a director of product at Superhuman.
For company acquisitions, a lot of folks think the three most important things for a great fit are product match, people fit, and economic sense. We had similar people philosophies, and the deal made sense financially. Then, product-wise, we realized we're definitely not against AI use anywhere in education. We just want to make sure there's some authenticity and truth with that usage.
Over the next few years, we're going to take our shot at building a startup within a larger company. I've seen a lot of startup founders go to larger companies and start their moonshots from within.
The bigger mission we have is to take steps to ensure people are being respectful of the person who's on the receiving end of AI generations and productivity now. We want it to be that we're reaping the benefits of AI without making other people deal with more work.
I wouldn't major in computer science anymore
When we first started GPTZero, I think I was actually more pro-AI than I am now. I believe people should know when something is AI-generated, but I wasn't saying not to outsource anything at all.
In the past year, though, I've started to see an over-reliance on AI among people who finished university after ChatGPT was launched, especially with writing. If I went back to college right now, I wouldn't major in computer science. I'd probably major in journalism and get a minor in computer science. I'd get a humanities degree because those are the important skills now.
I've started to see a friction point at work when people can't write or edit, and everything they send reads like AI. Part of what I'm doing now at Superhuman is working on responsible AI usage policies and guidance.
People are allowed to use these tools however they see fit. At the same time, I feel a profound sadness for the internet at large.It's important to make sure we still have human-written content online.
Do you have a story to share about working on a tiny team? If so, please reach out to the reporter ataapplegate@businessinsider.com.
Simile, an AI startup, raised $300 million at a $2 billion valuation to build models that simulate consumer behavior.
Alistair Berg/Getty Images
Simile raised $300 million to build models that simulate consumer behavior.
CEO Joon Sung Park said users can define an audience and ask simulated consumers questions.
Park said CVS and companies in finance and entertainment are already working with Simile.
Companies could soon have a new way to find out your shopping habits — by asking your digital clone.
Joon Sung Park, Co-Founder & CEO of Simile, an AI startup, told show host Molly O'Shea on the Sourcery podcast released on Monday that the company is building simulations of people that businesses can quiz about everything from products to marketing campaigns.
Park said the company is "creating a foundation model of human behavior that basically can take as input a description of a person or a group of people and then simulate what these people might do in different contexts," Park said.
"So they get access to this web interface where they can basically come in and define two things," Park added of existing users. "They can say who they want to talk to and what questions they want to ask. And really they can ask anything, and right now they can ask any number of questions."
Park said Simile raised $300 million in total at a $2 billion valuation.
Simile’s pitch comes as retailers turn to AI to get shoppers to spend. Amazon and Walmart have rolled out AI shopping assistants that answer questions, compare products, and recommend items, while retailers use customer data to personalize what shoppers see. Executives at both companies have said their AI tools are helping boost online sales.
Park said CVS has worked with Simile to better understand consumers, including their responses to store layouts and messaging. The startup also works with financial institutions and entertainment companies, Park said.
Simile maintains simulated panels for different industries and collects additional data when customers want to understand a specific population. Park said Simile's partnerships with organizations, including Gallup, which have access to actual humans who have agreed to participate, provide it with data from more than 40 million people globally. He said the company also uses behavioral information, such as transaction and mobility data, to train its models.
“If we can create simulations of people and be able to ask any questions at any time," Park said, "That becomes a superpower for these companies."
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