Startup Lighthouse Reaches $1 Billion Valuation, Becoming Europe’s Latest Unicorn - 1

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Startup Lighthouse Reaches $1 Billion Valuation, Becoming Europe’s Latest Unicorn

  • Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert

The SaaS company Lighthouse, specializing in the travel and hospitality industry, raised $370 million in a Series C round. The AI-powered data analytics startup based in London became Europe’s latest unicorn after this funding as it reached a $1 billion valuation.

In a Rush? Here are the Quick Facts!

  • The SaaS company raised $370 million in a Series C round, led by the firm KKR
  • Lighthouse became Europe’s latest unicorn reaching a $1 billion valuation
  • The company currently provides AI-powered software to more than 70,000 hotels across 185 countries

According to a recent announcement , the funding comes from the investment firm KKR and the software provider expects to grow, expand, and invest in its current talents and network. Lighthouse currently has as clients over 70,000 hotels across 185 countries, including large brands like NH Hotel Group, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and Radisson Hotels.

“We are thrilled to announce that we’ve secured a $370 million investment from leading global investment firm KKR to support the next phase of our growth,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, Lighthouse CEO, in the public statement. “With KKR’s support, we will accelerate the development of our next generation data and AI capabilities in the Lighthouse platform, giving our customers access to tools that deliver real business impact”

According to Sifted , the investment raised moves the startup to the unicorn category, raising a total of $470 million in funding. Lighthouse is now the twelfth unicorn of 2024 in Europe, following the lead of the German gym software provider Egym, the UK-based menstrual flow tracking app Flo, and the French AI startup Poolside.

Other big tech companies in Europe have also announced raising funds for growth and expansion. The London-based startup Tessl, the AI software development company, recently raised $125 million , reaching a $500 million valuation. The French company LightOn recently became the first generative AI company to be listed in the European market.

Chinese AI Company DeepSeek Releases New Reasoning AI Model - 2

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Chinese AI Company DeepSeek Releases New Reasoning AI Model

  • Written by Andrea Miliani Former Tech News Expert
  • Reader’s Comments 1

The Chinese AI startup DeepSeek launched a preview of its newest model DeepSeek-R1-Lite yesterday.

In a Rush? Here are the Quick Facts!

  • DeepSeek launched a preview of its latest model DeepSeek-R1-Lite
  • The new model can reason and compete with OpenAI’s o1
  • Users on social media have already tested and compared the model

According to TechCrunch , DeepSeek’s new AI model competes with OpenAI’ o1 , released in September. The intelligence is capable of reasoning, completing tasks, planning, and processing information before answering a user’s query.

DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview is web-based and available for everyone for free. The Chinese startup said the new model has been tested on the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) and MATH benchmarks. The company said that the API and open-source models will be released soon.

🚀 DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview is now live: unleashing supercharged reasoning power! 🔍 o1-preview-level performance on AIME & MATH benchmarks. 💡 Transparent thought process in real-time. 🛠️ Open-source models & API coming soon! 🌐 Try it now at https://t.co/v1TFy7LHNy #DeepSeek pic.twitter.com/saslkq4a1s — DeepSeek (@deepseek_ai) November 20, 2024

Multiple users on X have already tested the chatbot capabilities and shared results. “Nice release! I tested it on a few math, coding, and knowledge tasks. Lots of thoughts on this one,” said one user . “Deep Think is awesome, congratulations! Reading the inner thoughts removes the impression of a black box like OpenAI o1 and is fun to read. I am very impressed,” added another one .

Other users commented on the speed—the bot takes a few seconds to answer questions—but most agree that this model’s preview outperforms OpenAI o1’s preview.

DeepSeek was founded in 2023 , backed by the Chinese quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer Capital Management, and is committed to an open-source approach. They have already released multiple advanced AI models, including DeepSeek Coder V2—which beat GPT4 Turbo —and DeepSeek-V2.5.

Alibaba, one of DeepSeek’s Chinese competitors in the AI race, released over 100 open-source AI models in September.