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UrbanVolt raises €26m, businesses shy away from investment, and what good is the Digital Services Act?

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UrbanVolt finances and installs solar panels for business clients. Photograph: Eloi Omella/Getty Images

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Úna McCaffrey
Thu Aug 31 2023 - 06:30

Irish energy business UrbanVolt has raised €26 million from specialist investor Verdane to fund further European expansion. Barry O’Halloran has more on the story, which will see the European investment firm taking shares in the Irish business.

Inflation rose unexpectedly in August, a move that will bring no succour to those seeking relief from cost-of-living pressures. Eoin Burke-Kennedy explains the backdrop to the increase to 4.9 per cent, while Cantillon muses on the likelihood of another European Central Bank rate hike in September.

Irish businesses are putting innovation on the back boiler as they contend with cost pressures, according to a new report from InterTrade Ireland. Colin Gleeson has more details on the research, which finds 43 per cent of companies across the island say they have not undertaken innovation activity over the past two years.

In her weekly column, Karlin Lillington casts a forensic eye on the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which came into force last weekend. She concludes that while it is undoubtedly significant in its efforts to rein in technology giants, it might not amount to a lot more than a welcome start in dealing with the societal problems they can create.

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As schools get firmly back into the swing of teaching again, Ciara O’Brien tries out an online service that could change the way many parents and students approach expensive grinds. She says that while Irish e-learning start-up SimpleStudy doesn’t set itself up as a replacement for grinds, it aims to be a kind of DuoLingo for exam students.

In our innovation section, Frank Dillon considers digital transformation, exploring the idea that strategy can trump technology if companies want to change more efficiently. In other words, perhaps your IT department doesn’t have all the answers. Separately, Ian Curran reports on an Expleo study that finds businesses are pulling back from their digital transformation strategies, again because of costs.

Our New Innovator this week is Durotimi AI, which reckons that artificial intelligence could play a vital role in catching cancer early. Olive Keogh explains how it might work.

And still with AI, what do we really know about this still-new technology? A merry band of hackers tried to find out exactly this when they descended upon off-Strip Las Vegas for the DEFCON conference recently, all with the goal of finding AI’s vulnerabilities before bad actors came across them first.

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