Fernando Carro de Prada

The handling of energy is critical for companies - probably more than ever. This need is recognized in the startup landscape as encentive GmbH, with its AI energy management solution, has raised another €6.3m in a seed round led by General Catalyst. When I invested in encentive about 18 months ago, I was convinced by the vision and the team's spirit. Since then, the startup has further improved its technology and added more industrial factories to its network. encentive's main task is monitoring renewable energy surpluses and deficits and aligning production processes accordingly. Thus, companies can reduce their energy costs up to 20%. At the same time, it helps to drastically reduce carbon emissions by relying more strongly on renewable energies. This represents the ideal concept for me: creating an economic benefit while positively impacting the environment. Keep up the great work 👏

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In the news: I did not make it to the hairdresser before, but thank you to Christian Feld and Tagesschau for still featuring me on the German evening news for the start of the AI Act general-purpose AI model rules. We discussed a number of things; the quote that ended up on TV is about copyright transparency rules on how they might enable follow-on damage claims by rights holders. It is a bit hard, however, to do justice to a highly complex regulatory regime in 15 second statements :-) So, here's my more extended take: 1) I am quite happy about: – the prohibitions (Article 5) – AI literacy (Article 4) – general transparency (Article 50) – the GPAI rules (Articles 51-56) See: https://lnkd.in/enjKwNT2 2) I have more mixed feelings about the high-risk rules, particularly due to unresolved interactions with sectoral regulations, the GDPR, and tort law. See: https://lnkd.in/e6UAd_ai 3) The simplification process will hopefully be a good point to clean this up without gutting the core parts of the Act (see 1)). 4) The concept of "systemic risk" remains an epic fail due to the unnecessary restriction to the "most advanced" models. Hallucinations – a key problem with Generative AI – are likely not covered, for example. Paper on this forthcoming. 5) Regulation is, of course, not generally bad for innovation. Empirical studies show that it very much depends on the type of regulation, and that legal regimes can actually foster innovation. Europe's problems with AI advancement have little to do with the AI Act and a lot with lack of VC financing, access to a absolute top-notch talent, and the general risk mentality among significant parts of the population and incumbent entrepreneurs. See: https://lnkd.in/e43tuk7J; https://lnkd.in/emQEvHFJ; https://lnkd.in/emvfVY59 6) Now: off to the mountains for some decent digital detox. Enjoy your summer! European New School of Digital Studies Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)

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September at WHU’s entrepreneurial ecosystem: Interesting to see an increasing number of AI startups in our monthly overviews 🥳 Here is the overview the WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management investment news for September: ✔ Onconetix (US): Joseph H. Private placement $12.9M Oncology company (Nasdaq: ONCO) with FDA-approved BPH therapy and prostate-cancer diagnostics. ✔revel8 (DE): Julius M. Seed Round €7.0M GenAI simulations that train employees to resist social-engineering across email/SMS/chat/voice/video. ✔ Conduct (UK): Jan Philipp Haas Seed Round $12.0M Agentic AI that understands legacy enterprise system so teams can “chat with” their core software. ✔ Pactos (DE) Antonio Zill, Philipp Eckert Seed Round €2.7M AI-powered platform to manage the external workforce from source-to-pay with compliance built-in. ✔ MELP (LT) Robertas Saltis Šaltis Seed Round €1.25M Employee engagement & internal comms app with secure messaging and anonymous feedback. ✔ encentive GmbH (DE) Nicolàs Juhl (Boldt) Seed Round $7.4M Industrial energy-management platform that shifts usage to greener, cheaper power. ✔ Constant Energy (TH): Franck Constant Debt Financing $9.5M C&I solar developer/operator scaling renewable assets across Southeast Asia. ✔ K2 Mobility (DE): Markus Kroeger Early VC Round SaaS for charge-planning and energy management for electric trucks and buses. ✔ Easee (NL): Elly Nkya, Yves Prevoo Acquisition CE-certified online eye exam (SaMD) bringing tele-optometry to consumers and partners. ✔ betterview (CH): Michael Wendt Acquisition Laser eye-surgery provider offering advanced refractive procedures. This post was also a good excuse to play around with the new Sora2 video generation model 🙃

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