China is currently busy accumulating most of the gold medals in the table tennis events in the Paris Olympics. Meanwhile, an AI-powered robot from Google DeepMind has achieved “amateur human level performance” in the sport. 

In a study published in an Arxiv paper this week, the Google artificial intelligence subsidiary outlined how the robot functions, along with footage of it taking on what we can only assume were willing enthusiastic ping pong players of varying skill. 

According to DeepMind, the racket-wielding robot had to be good at low-level skills, like returning the ball, as well as more complex tasks, like long-term planning and strategising. It also played against opponents with diverse styles, drawing on vast amounts of data to refine and adapt its approach. 

Not Olympic level quite yet

The robotic arm — and its 3D-printed racket — won 13 out of 29 games against human opponents with different levels of skill in the game. It won 100% of matches against “beginner” and 55% against “intermediate” players. However, it lost every single time that it faced an “advanced” opponent. 

DeepMind said the results of the recent project constitute a step towards the goal of achieving human-level speed and performance on real world tasks, a “north star” for the robotics community. 

In order to achieve them, its researchers say they made use of four applications that could also make the findings useful beyond hitting a small ball over a tiny net, difficult though it may be: 

A hierarchical and modular policy architecture
Techniques to enable zero-shot sim-to-real including an iterative approach to defining the training task distribution grounded in the real-world
Real-time adaptation to unseen opponents
A user-study to test the model playing actual matches against unseen humans in physical environments 

The company further added that its approach had led to ​​”competitive play at human level and a robot agent that humans actually enjoy playing with.” Indeed, its non-robot competitors in the demonstration videos do seem to be enjoying themselves.  

Table tennis robotics

Google DeepMind is not the only robotics company to choose table tennis to train their systems. The sport requires hand-eye coordination, strategic thinking, speed, and adaptability, among other things, making it well suited to train and test these skills in AI-powered robots. 

The world’s “first robot table tennis tutor” was acknowledged by Guinness World Records in 2017. The rather imposing machine was developed by Japanese electronics company OMRON. Its latest iteration is the FORPHEUS (stands for “Future OMRON Robotics technology for Exploring Possibility of Harmonized aUtomation with Sinic theoretics,” and is also inspired by the ancient mythological figure Orpheus…). 

OMRON says it “embodies the relationship that will exist between humans and technology in the future.”

Google DeepMind makes no such existential claims for its recent ping pong champion, but the findings from its development may still prove profound for our robot friends down the line. We do however feel that DeepMind’s robotic arm is severely lacking in the abbreviation department.

In the business world (and beyond) everybody loves the success story of an underdog. Estonia’s Bolt is one such example.

The startup was founded in 2013 by then 19-year-old Markus Vilig with €5,000 in his pocket. Since then, it has successfully become the European challenger to Uber, valued at €7.4bn at its latest fundraising in 2022.

The company also claims to be Europe’s first mobility super-app, combining ride-hailing with services including car and scooter sharing as well as food and grocery delivery.

Bolt now operates in over 50 countries across its home continent, Africa, Asia, and Latin and North America.

But what lies behind the startup’s growth and expansion strategy, especially in the ride-hailing segment where it is particularly strong?

“When launching into a new market, the first thing to look into is what’s the size of this market and how much it can grow,” Luiz Fittipaldi, who led the company’s global strategy planning between June 2023 and July 2024, tells TNW.

Adequate supply of drivers and existing competition are also key factors impacting a market’s attractiveness.

A highly fragmented market doesn’t present a beneficial opportunity, according to Fittipaldi. That’s because the presence of multiple players reduces the potential market share as well as access to drivers who have various apps to choose from.

Instead, tapping into a monopolised market is significantly more favourable.

“When you have a single player operating in the market, they usually don’t provide the best service because there is no one challenging them.” This leaves room for competing services that aim for faster vehicle arrival times (ETA) and greater affordability.

Early-stage vs mature markets

When it comes to driving growth, Bolt’s strategy differs depending on the stage of each individual market.

For entrance into new, early-stage markets the company focuses on creating a good value proposition for drivers and competitive pricing for customers. It’s also about compensating an initially lower service quality — until there’s enough driver supply to ensure fast arrival times — with affordability, in order to attract riders.

“The network effect is how we build up,” Fittipaldi says. The idea is simple: more riders attract more drivers and more drivers improve the service for riders. In turn, higher service quality attracts more riders, which engages more drivers.

When it comes to more mature markets where Bolt is operating in, competitive pricing and ETA are also key targets for achieving growth.

But according to Fittipaldi, the company’s primary aim isn’t taking away a part from a rival’s market share. It’s expanding the market itself by bringing in new customers.

“In this case, even if we keep the same market share, we can grow by three to five times in about five years.”

One way to attract new customers is catering to different needs, such as pet-friendly vehicles or cars with child seats.

The biggest potential, however, lies in shifting consumer behaviour towards a transportation model that depends less on private cars.

The environmental benefit is only one part of the equation, Fittipaldi says. The other part is offering services that compete financially with car ownership, especially for consumers with limited car use.

This means providing transportation options — from ride-hailing to car rental for longer trips, and scooter sharing for short distances — that can be more affordable in the long term than the accumulated costs of car maintenance, insurance, and fueling.

Regulation

For companies like Bolt, regulation is a major factor impacting both the attractiveness of new markets and the potential growth in existing ones.

“It comes down to assessing whether existing regulation can enable the supply of drivers, and whether the investments needed to comply with regulatory requirements is worth it in the long run,” Fittipaldi says.

For the ride-hailing segment, one regulatory parameter is the type of licences needed for drivers — alongside the power of taxi associations and the legislation that protects them.

In the UK, for example, there are more favourable conditions. To sign up on the app, drivers can have either a taxi licence or private hire vehicle (PHV) licence — which allows individuals outside of the taxi profession to participate in the service.

The situation is different in Cyprus, where only taxi licence holders are eligible.

Similarly in Greece, where Bolt doesn’t operate, ride-hailing apps are only available to taxi drivers, following a series of protests from taxi unions causing Uber to suspend its UberX service, manned by private drivers.

Meanwhile, Bolt will also have to navigate upcoming rules on gig worker rights in its home markets.

The so-called EU platform workers directive addresses concerns about the misclassification of gig workers as independent contractors, which can deprive them of labour rights. It aims to provide those misclassified as self-employed with full-employment status and benefits — increasing demands and costs for platforms like Bolt.

The legislation is now pending approval by the European Council. Estonia has reportedly been among the EU countries opposing the change, calling for less comprehensive rules.

According to Fittipaldi, regulation is one of the biggest challenges Bolt is facing in the European market.

“But Europe is the region that is the closest to reshaping cities and claiming space from private cars to give it back to people,” he says.

Climate-focused venture capital funds have already raised $6.9bn since the beginning of 2024, up from $5.2bn for the entirety of 2023, according to a new report from Venture Capital Journal.

While climate VCs have closed less funds overall — 24 compared to 26 last year — the average pot size has swelled from $202mn to $267mn so far in 2024.

This climate tech cash boost is largely reflective of a new fund from billionaire Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV). The American climate tech funding vehicle recently closed its third fund at more than $839mn. BEV also closed a smaller, but still significant, $555m fund in January. 

Bill Gates founded BEV in 2015 alongside some of the world’s richest people (men), including Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Richard Branson. The investment thesis was clear: back technologies that have the potential to decarbonise all facets of the world economy.

While the VC is based across the pond, it has made dozens of major investments in European startups. These include UK-based Mission Zero, which is developing modular carbon capture machines, and Sweden’s Heart Aerospace, which is building a hybrid-electric regional passenger plane.  

While Bill Gates’ deep-pocketed firm is funneling big figures in Europe, a number of homegrown climate tech funds are raising substantial amounts of money as well. 

This year, Sweden’s Norrsken raised $346mn and Berlin-based World Fund closed its first fund at $325mn. Spain’s Seaya Ventures also secured $325mn to invest in climate tech startups, becoming Southern Europe’s largest climate tech VC in the process. 

The $6.9bn raised since the start of this year represents funds specifically set up to finance technologies designed to tackle climate change. Total private investment in climate tech, however, is much higher. 

In 2023, VCs globally invested just over $50bn in climate tech startups, according to Dealroom data. This surpassed all other previous years apart from 2021 ($76bn), which saw record-high venture capital activity across industries. Promisingly, 2023 saw Europe surpass the US for climate tech VC funding.

While we’ll only get the full picture at the end of the year, heightened climate tech VC activity shows promising signs for the sector as a whole. As the globe pushes to decarbonise, climate tech has remained remarkably resilient despite an overall downturn in tech investment.