Entrepreneur First

Last week we cohosted the Privacy-Preserving AI Hackathon in Paris with Zama & Hugging Face. Over 50 talented developers and innovators from across Europe came together to implement Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) in real-world applications. Their solutions prioritized both innovation and data privacy, with teams receiving guidance from expert mentors from Zama and Hugging Face. Over the weekend 14 teams worked tirelessly to create solutions that prioritize both innovation and data privacy. These ranged from analysing patient data, to generating watermarks, and detecting deep fakes. A special thank you to Zama and Hugging Face, and all the mentors who contributed their time and expertise to ensure the success of the event. Finally we’d like to congratulate everyone that joined us and made contributions to the field of privacy-preserving AI.

Entrepreneur First will be hosting its Summer ‘24 Demo Day in San Francisco tomorrow. The event will be attended by over 250 Partners from top VC firms and will showcase our new cohort of global technologists as they launch their startups in the Valley.

5 days to go until some of Europe’s most exceptional technologists pitch their startups at Demo Day, to a room of Silicon Valley’s top investors.

Applications are now open for our London Spring and Summer programs. Our talent investors will be meeting people in person at the following universities: - Edinburgh; 25-26 September, 3-4 October - Kitty Mayo - Glasgow; 3-4 October - Kitty Mayo - Cambridge; 8-9 October, 15-16 October - Dominik Diak and Max R. - Imperial; 14 October, 2 November - Laura Sahyoun - UCL; 17 October - Laura Sahyoun - Warwick; 22 October - Jonny Clifford - Dublin; (Trinity and UCD) 20-22 November - Kitty Mayo Comment below if they should be meeting you!

Entrepreneur First is proud to work with a number of organisations to improve the access for female founders in tech and the wider startup ecosystem. Earlier this week we hosted the UK’s fast-growing student entrepreneur initiative Women Who Build 🪄 in our London hub. The panel of inspiring speakers included the founders of skincare tech company Clear, reproductive healthcare insurance platform Juniper, FashTech app Whering, and Zero Gravity who identify talented students from low-opportunity areas and power them into top universities and careers. All the founders faced difficult choices when founding their companies including turning down impressive opportunities from many of the top corporate firms. Next month we will be partnering with ETH Student Project House in Switzerland for a Q&A with more inspiring female leaders and an Edge methodology workshop for women in tech and entrepreneurship. Apply here 👉 https://lnkd.in/dyjEJQUK

Earlier this month Matt Clifford and a team of TIs hosted the new def/acc kick-off summit in London with ideation workshops and two fireside chats. Joining us for these were Jade Leung, former Chief of Staff to Sam Altman and now CTO of the UK AI Safety Institute, and Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind. The weekend-long event presented a unique opportunity for our founders to have open, candid conversations with leaders at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, biosecurity, defence, OSINT, governance and other defensive technology arenas.

I'm excited to announce that we will be hosting EF London's second annual Bio x AI Hackathon on November 2nd-3rd! Over the weekend, EF will be bringing together a select group of exceptional technologists to build AI tools to tackle ambitious challenges in biology. Last year’s event was intense and inspiring, with teams building throughout the night (highlights in the comments👇 ): This is your chance to run fast at the hardest problems in biology and build alongside other ambitious engineers and scientists. Apply now and share with those who should be part of it!

Last week Ramtin N. joined a group of founders at our fireside chat in San Francisco. As Founder and General Partner at Abstract Ventures, Ramtin was well placed to give useful insights into fundraising in the Valley. He advised founders to run a fast and efficient process to meet many VCs in a short time, and discussed dilution sensitivity when giving equity only to exceptional hires.

We’re excited to announce our new exclusive partnership with Entrepreneur First’s autumn AI cohort! 🚀 Together, we’re offering up to $350,000 in Azure credits to empower startups with Azure’s powerful AI infrastructure, including high-performance GPU clusters and leading models like GPT-4 and Llama 3. This partnership will enable startups to tackle global challenges, from pandemics to cybercrime, while advancing the theme of ‘defensive acceleration.’ Learn more about how we’re driving innovation and shaping the future: https://msft.it/6048mOlHr #AzureAI #MicrosoftForStartups #EntrepreneurFirst

Applications closing in 10 days apply: https://lu.ma/q9v8qhcr