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Whether you’re an Android or iOS person, most people have heard of PicsArt. The platform launched more than a decade ago and has become one of the go-to services for all things image and video editing, with more than 150 million monthly active users.
However, it hasn’t been an easy journey for the company. Despite being an early mover in the smartphone-based editing domain, the company has seen significant competition from players like Canva and Adobe who have been playing a cat-and-mouse game for quite some time—building their own similar products. When I spoke with Artavazd Mehrabyan, the CTO of the company, at the recent WCIT conference in Armenia, he was pretty vocal about the challenges, saying it is tough to be or at least stay different for long in this market.
“A lot of things that PicsArt had before were copied into the competitors. PicsArt was the first all-in-one editing service on mobile. There was no other player before 2011. We started with this approach and it was copied, among many other things,” Mehrabyan said. He pointed out that the same is happening with AI, where competitors, including mainstream photo services, are offering very similar capabilities.
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For example, PicsArt offers object generation, allowing users to use advanced AI to create required photo elements. The same capability has also been incorporated into other products in the category, creating an overlap of sorts.
However, instead of pushing to stand out by adding more tools to its existing batch of over two dozen AI capabilities, the company is looking to make a mark on users by improving the quality of what it is delivering. Specifically, Mehrabyan said, the focus is on how they are productizing and tailoring the features to help customers get to their goal – whether they want to remove a specific object from a vacation image or generate visually appealing advertisements, complete with images and copy.
Training high-quality creative AI
In the early stage, when AI was not a thing, Mehrabyan said most of PicsArt’s technology research and effort went towards making mobile-based editing seamless.
“It was very hard to get all these editing functionality working on the device offline. Then, the next challenge was to scale our ecosystem and infrastructure to support a surging user base. This took us to hybrid infrastructure. We started with multi-cloud and a data center, which, till now, continues to be the best solution as it’s more cost-efficient, highly performant and very flexible,” Mehrabyan explained.
With this tech stack in place, the company launched its first AI feature in 2016, running a bunch of small models offline on user devices. This gradually transformed into a large-scale AI effort, with the company transforming into an AI-first organization and leveraging its infra and backend services to serve larger models and APIs for more enhanced capabilities like background removal/replacement. More recently, with the generative AI wave taking shape, PicsArt started training its own creative AI models from scratch.
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In the creative domain, it is very easy to lose a user. A small error here or there (leading to low-quality results) and there’s a good chance the person won’t come back again. To prevent this, PicsArt is extremely focused on the data side of things. It is selectively using data from its own network – marked by users as public and free to edit – for training the AI models.
“We have a special ‘free to edit’ license. If you are posting publicly and tagging your image – from stock photo across any category to a sticker or background – as free to edit, it allows another user of the service to reuse or work on top of it. So, in essence, the user is contributing this image to the community and PicsArt itself,” Mehrabyan said.
The license has been in place from the early days of the service and has given PicsArt a massive stock of user-generated content for training AI. However, as the CTO pointed out, not all of that is of high quality and ready to use right away. The data has to pass through multiple layers of cleansing and processing, from manual and AI-driven, to be transformed into a safe training-ready dataset.
“At the end of this, we have quite a big dataset that is proprietary to PicsArt. We don’t need to have additional data,” he said.
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However, having a large volume of high-quality data in hand was just one part of the puzzle.
The real challenge for PicsArt, as Mehrabyan described, was to build the “data flywheel.” A self-reinforcing cycle covering not only data accessibility but also aspects like how to annotate data, how to use it and eventually how to leverage it as part of a continuous learning process to improve over time.
Establishing a feedback loop to achieve this was a long and complex process, he said.
“We built our own annotation technology. We internally developed all related infrastructure and ecosystem technologies, including those for identifying and classifying images, tagging them and adding different types of labels to them,” Mehrabyan said. “Then, we created a team to help refine the pipeline and give feedback over time. It’s mostly been very automatic, AI-driven with human feedback in between so that we can have continuous improvement.”
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Feedback loop leads to contextual intelligence
While the human-driven feedback loop has been a critical part in improving PicsArt’s products – enhancing the quality of the outputs they generate – it is also taking the company towards what Mehrabyan calls “contextual intelligence” or the ability of the platform to understand user needs and deliver exactly what they want.
This function is particularly important for the platform’s growing base of business-focused users who are looking to get work done right on their smartphones. Whether that’s generating graphics or a full-fledged ad for a social media campaign. The platform is still mostly used by individuals looking to edit personal content, but the company says its research shows many want to take it to work, especially for marketing use cases.
“Contextual intelligence not only tracks your history or what you were doing to help you to be more productive in your journey but also predicts your next intent. It’s both reactive and proactive,” he explained.
This way, each time an individual uses the platform to create something for their work, they won’t have to define brand language and tonality. The product would already have context in place and use that to generate the required content. Mehrabyan said the company also plans to release a brand kit capability that would allow users to tweak this context to their needs and further improve the quality of generations.
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Creative AI agents on the way
Eventually, Mehrabyan says contextual intelligence will lead PicsArt to an agent-based ecosystem. This is where users will have a copilot of sorts – with all relevant knowledge about their work and design preferences – to help them with their tasks.
“This copilot would understand your intent and historical context to provide interactive support and guide you to be even more productive. We see this use case as integrated within the whole PicsArt ecosystem, from the user’s perspective,” he said.
Beyond this, he also expects AI agents will help PicsArt users execute some tasks in bulk. For instance, if a user has to apply the same design or logic of design to several resources, they could use an agent to automate the workflow on their behalf.
This way, the company hopes to be a key driver in the creative industry, sitting ahead of its competitors and allowing users to grow their creativity and eventually businesses, without too much effort.
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Mehrabyan noted that AI will bring about a major change but users – from businesses to designers and marketers – must try to understand how it affects them and take advantage of the changes to do more than currently possible.
“From the current point of view, it will affect negatively. But if you take perspective from a different side, like from the future, you will see that those people will leverage AI to learn a lot more. They will no longer be narrow specialists. They’ll cover broader areas deeper and faster with the help of AI,” he noted.
According to Future Markets Insights, the global AI image editor market is projected to grow from $80.3 million in 2024 to $217.9 million by 2034, with a CAGR of 10.5%. Meanwhile, AI-driven generation, which has become a core part of most image editing tools/services, including PicsArt, is estimated to grow 38% from $8.7 billion in 2024 to $60.8 billion in 2030.
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In 2022, Deloitte expected that the global semiconductor industry would need to add a million skilled workers by 2030, or more than 100,000 annually. Two years later, that forecast still holds.
But key industry trends continue to compound the talent challenge as the industry races toward $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, according to a new report by Deloitte, the accounting and consulting giant.
The company said that advanced skills driven by demand for Generative AI (GenAI) mean that the talent needed for advancing technologies is often in high demand and can be difficult to attract and retain in a competitive talent market. The report’s timing is interesting, considering the U.S. is reportedly considering limiting sales of AMD and Nvidia AI chips aboard.
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The semiconductor industry is facing an aging workforce without a clear plan for succession, which may be further exacerbated by low industry appeal compared to the broader tech industry. I suppose this is because the chip industry isn’t as sexy as working for AI or social media companies.
Global solutions needed for a global challenge
Localization of manufacturing, as well as overall global demand trends, is contributing to a talent and skills shortage that spans the globe. Semiconductor companies are often left competing over the same insufficient pool of existing talent.
And talent outcomes are tied to global chips laws. Both the U.S. and European chips legislation include specific objectives and grant application requirements regarding workforce development that companies should commit to in order to receive funding, remain in compliance, and achieve growth objectives.
Geopolitical concerns and supply chain fragility continue to contribute to the onshoring of manufacturing (advanced node, trailing node, memory) and back-end ATP (assembly, test, and packaging) processes.
A history of cycles
The cyclical chips industry experienced its seventh downturn since 1990, with revenues declining 9% to $520 billion for 2023. As a result, development of some new fabrication capacity has been extended, which has also likely delayed some of the immediate, short-term need for talent.
This downturn is expected to be temporary, with revenue set to grow by 16% in 2024 to an all-time high of $611 billion. With the industry back on track to reach the $1 trillion figure for 2030, talent will be needed to fuel that growth. But now there’s more time to optimize talent forecasts, mix, pipeline, skills and capabilities, and development plans.
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A richer understanding of the challenges driving the semiconductor talent shortages can enable semiconductor leaders to deploy targeted strategies to help address their looming talent needs.
Advanced skills being driven by demand for GenAI
According to Deloitte’s 2023 Smart Manufacturing: Generative AI for Semiconductors Survey, 72% of industry leaders surveyed predict that GenAI’s impact on the semiconductor industry will be “high to transformative.”
Respondents saw high potential for Generative AI’s use throughout their business, with heavier value realization expectations within core engineering, chip design and manufacturing, operations, and maintenance.
Although GenAI may help alleviate some engineering talent shortages by addressing routine tasks and giving engineers more time to perform their core jobs better and faster, the GenAI skill set scarcity remains.
The semiconductor workforce is expected to need to exponentially grow its GenAI skill sets due to their shortage in the market. And leaders in the field are often in high demand across most sectors of the economy. Semiconductor companies should consider offering more novel benefits beyond competitive compensation, such as having a seat at the table, to better attract AI talent and leadership.
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Having proficient GenAI talent is key in driving the industry’s ability to innovate and reap the benefits of this transformative technology.
Looming talent cliff and low industry appeal
An aging workforce, regulatory changes, newly required skill sets, and shifting employee expectations are changing the landscape of semiconductor talent. The lack of brand awareness and appeal in the semiconductor industry compared to better-known technology brands can make addressing these challenges more difficult for the industry.
Semiconductor companies seem to recognize that attracting and retaining new and diverse talent is more important than ever, yet it continues to be a challenge for many organizations. Building diversity can be difficult; currently only one-third of the U.S. semiconductor industry employees identify as female and less than 6% as Black or African American.
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The U.S. semiconductor workforce is also older than other technology industries: As of July 2024, 55% of the U.S. semiconductor workforce is 45 or older, with less than 25% under the age of 35.11 In Europe, 20% of the industry is 55 or older, with Germany expecting about 30% of their workforce to retire over the next decade.
Inconsistent knowledge management, and the lack of new talent to adopt institutional knowledge, presents an additional workforce barrier for many semiconductor companies.
Relative to other sectors of the technology industry, semiconductor organizations can offer a sense of trust, stability, and projected market growth—attractive qualities to the most recent college entrants.
While semiconductor companies may have struggled with brand recognition and a competitive employee value proposition, investing in recent high school graduates could help reinvigorate talent pipelines that may be more attracted to stability and flexibility over rapid advancement.
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A global shortage
The need for semiconductor talent is a global issue. Countries are not producing enough skilled talent to meet their workforce needs. And companies can’t continue to tussle over the same finite talent pool while still expecting to successfully grow the industry, launch new (and expand existing) fabs, and keep up with rapid technological advances.
In the United States, where the majority of annual graduates with a master’s degree in semiconductor-related engineering fields are foreign students, 80% of those graduates do not stay in the United States post-graduation.
According to Deloitte China and Asia Pacific’s most recent APAC Semiconductor Industry Trends Survey, 90% of companies surveyed highlighted talent acquisition and development as a top priority to sustain industry growth and competitiveness, while 63.3% highlighted talent capability and retention as major industry risks.18 As Asia looks to expand its semiconductor industry beyond key historical players, significant shortages can also be expected.
For example, India’s semiconductor industry is looking at a potential deficit of 250,000 to 300,000 professionals by 2027.19 For the European Union to achieve its goal of doubling its market share by 2030, an ambition set in the European Chips Act, it is estimated that the industry will need 400,000 additional workers.
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Meanwhile, in the United States, the Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that of the more than 100,000 new industry jobs in manufacturing and design expected by 2030, 67,000 are at risk of going unfilled.
Talent outcomes tied to global chips laws
For companies applying for, or having received, U.S. CHIPS and Science Act funding, their workforce strategy, planning, development, and activation can be critical components for both grant eligibility and ongoing compliance. Funding opportunities require a clearly documented workforce strategy, commitments to training programs in concert with state and local educational entities, and expanded education and employment opportunities for economically disadvantaged individuals.
For the European Chips Act, applicants are asked to include information on their plans to invest in education, skills, and pipeline development, including differentiating between their normal workforce training activities and those targeting specific industry needs in the region.23 As funding continues to be released, and fab expansion ramps up, the need for construction and facilities employees are expected to grow, further challenging the already constrained talent market.
Repatriation of manufacturing and back-end processes Localization of manufacturing and regionalization of supply chains are compounding the semiconductor talent shortage. And there have been communications that talent challenges are contributing to delays in opening new plants.
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Seeking to increase their individual shares of overall chip manufacturing from 10% to 20%, the United States and Europe have already allocated nearly $100 billion in government funding. For advanced node manufacturing specifically, Asia—predominantly Taiwan—continues to lead globally with well over 80% of the market share.26 The United States is expected to increase its advanced node manufacturing share to 22% by 2027.
Europe is also looking to increase its market share through the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC), a joint investment by several semiconductor companies with the goal of bringing advanced node manufacturing to Europe.
In Asia, there is also investment to increase manufacturing outside of Taiwan. Japan has committed $13 billion to reinvigorate manufacturing in the region, including funds to support a joint venture founded in 2022 between several major Japanese companies with the goal of mass-producing the most leading-edge chips.
Malaysia, already strong in testing and packaging, is looking to invest more than $100 billion to increase its design, advanced packaging, and manufacturing capabilities.31 India has also approved more than $15 billion in investments to expand manufacturing capabilities in the country’s growing industry.
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Even with recent announcements of ATP capacity in Poland and Arizona, more than 80% of all ATP capacity still resides in Asia, creating long and often fragile supply chains. Without additional investments beyond the current US and European Chips Acts, the lack of ATP capacity outside of Asia could continue impeding U.S. and European goals of semiconductor manufacturing self-sufficiency.
The United States and Europe should invest in increasing their ATP capacities and work to develop and attract the necessary skilled talent.
Geopolitics rears its head
The evolving and complex geopolitical landscape is likely to further affect the availability of talent supply globally and may continue to introduce artificially created imbalances, Deloitte warned. The United States has not only restricted export of advanced node AI chips and chipmaking equipment, but also limits US persons from performing work for certain Chinese chipmakers without special licensing.36 In addition, the US government is working with allies across Europe and Asia to similarly control their exports to China.37 To counteract, China has been aggressively recruiting expatriate talent—and is continuing to do so with high salaries, free homes, and more—creating a potentially more appealing job market compared to other semiconductor markets.
While the onshoring or reshoring of manufacturing can be critical to supply chain security, there are also benefits through “friendshoring”—partnering with suppliers from friendly countries— to provide more stability, while also increasing economic resilience of the global supply chain.39 One example of this “friendshoring” can be found in the economic alliance between the United States and Japan to reduce reliance on single suppliers and stabilize the supply of essential electrical components. This means adding production in places where it does not exist today, requiring talent with the right skills to help meet new capacity demands.
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Solutions?
Deloitte said that to help mitigate the challenges outlined above and create new opportunities, semiconductor companies—and the industry as a whole—should consider these priorities across workforce planning and access; workforce skills, development, and retention; and technology enablement:
Workforce planning and access: Companies should enable agile workforce planning by implementing talent strategies with a workforce mix that can help address their immediate operational needs while also allowing them to adjust to market fluctuations. And, in addition to improving brand marketing and job attractiveness to better recruit talent, semiconductor companies should have comprehensive pipeline development and recruiting strategies. These should be defined and implemented in coordination with other semiconductor companies, educational institutions, and industry and community organizations, prioritizing underrepresented populations for a more comprehensive global solution.
Workforce skills, development, and retention: A right-skilled workforce starts with a skilled pipeline. While the pipeline is under development, companies should have a comprehensive view of their current skills and gaps, strategic knowledge management tools and processes, and flexible upskilling/reskilling programs that can allow for career path flexibility strategies and solutions as technology advances and skills requirements change.
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Semiconductor companies can improve industry appeal and talent retention through a shared value proposition with an attractive and supportive culture, total rewards strategy, and comprehensive DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and sustainability strategies. More clearly defined and attainable career paths can also help improve brand perception and meet the expectations of today’s workforce.
Technology enablement: HR organizations should have the capabilities, tools, technology, and data insights to assess their organizations’ workforce supply, demand, and current and projected spend—enabling successful implementation of enterprise workforce strategies. With AI-enabled tools that span the talent life cycle, capabilities such as complex workforce scenario modeling can be more effectively leveraged. Changing workforce technologies also require comprehensive change management strategies to upskill employees, increase adoption, and optimize technological capabilities.
Workforce planning and access
To better attract new talent as opposed to continuing to compete for the same existing talent pool, the semiconductor industry should increase efforts to develop viable and long-lasting talent pipelines—including identifying and accessing more diverse and underrepresented talent—and address the lack of industry appeal.
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While there are company- and region-specific efforts to address semiconductor talent challenges, there currently is no comprehensive industrywide approach designed to address these issues while also providing long-term talent stability for the industry.
Workforce planning strategies
Workforce planning and talent strategies should enable optimal ways of working through a data-driven approach to innovation and human-centered solutions. Talent mix strategies should identify and leverage a diverse workforce mix across build, buy, and borrow models to help fill short- and long-term talent needs within target functions.
To optimize their workforce planning, semiconductor companies should leverage the industry’s robust ecosystem of partners—including trade organizations, educational institutions, and nonprofits—to act holistically and better address the global talent pipeline shortages.
They should also be mindful of talent integration across vastly different corporate cultures as companies expand their global footprint. When talent integration isn’t managed in a deliberate fashion, long-term retention can be at risk, potentially wasting pipeline development and talent attraction efforts.
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And Deloitte said they should address the lack of industry awareness and appeal through targeted marketing using a variety of media to help reach new and underrepresented populations and across adjacent industries. A publicly marketed value proposition can focus on global sustainability and reduced environmental impact, technological innovation, and creation of shared economic and social value— all of which can be very attractive to new talent.
And they should increase investment in younger generations, as well as underrepresented populations, as targets for roles outside of traditional four-year education programs. Multiple semiconductor companies, as well as government and educational institutions, have already implemented training programs aimed at developing semiconductor facility technicians, Deloitte said.
Workforce skills, development, and retention
Workforce strategies and career models should target specific skill development, increase workforce agility and mobility, and improve job appeal—with the goal of prioritizing needed capacity, addressing the aging workforce, and better attracting and retaining talent for long-term sustainability. Attracting a talent pipeline and retaining talent once onboard should be supported by a robust DEI strategy, total rewards strategy, and culture-to-values alignment to help improve workforce agility and mobility.
Companies should have a shared value proposition with their employees that can both enable business objectives and support personal growth and priorities. Understanding existing talent skill sets using market intelligence can identify skills gaps that are often exacerbated by rapid market growth. Building a talent strategy around a skills-based organization can match talent gaps with adjacent-skilled workers who can be great candidates for upskilling or reskilling.
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Companies should also integrate internal supply and demand data with external staffing procurement to make better-informed talent decisions.
They should utilize workforce data integration to remove manager bias evaluating the full-time/contingent/gig worker mix, helping to couple talent decisions with the overall business strategy. Firms should leverage workforce planning and modeling to help improve workforce planning, management, and efficiency.
Industry should address skills gaps through targeted solutions such as upskilling existing manufacturing and design talent or prioritizing specific pipeline segment development. They should identify adjacent skill sets, as workers may already possess skills that they may not be using today but can be fast-tracked to take on roles within semiconductor design and advanced manufacturing processes.
It’s also important to invest in regional cross-training and upskilling advanced node fabrication talent, creating a more flexible talent pool and broader career path options. And companies should create comprehensive knowledge management tools and processes to improve organizational skills retention, Deloitte said.
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Technology and HR enablement
As business leaders contend with new technology, it’s important to understand the pulse of adoption and how to accelerate engagement, change management, and upskilling of the workforce. This can be especially true with advanced AI capabilities, which can augment talent and generate significant value.
AI can be used as an integral part of talent acquisition and management, providing insights such as quantifying the potential impacts of AI on human roles or modeling complex workforce scenarios to drive strategic talent decision-making. Skills-based job architectures can be analyzed for opportunities to increase capabilities and efficiencies using AI, consolidating workforce gaps and reducing the total workforce spend.
Additionally, bringing technology and AI into workforce planning can help enable actionable plans for addressing skills-gap hotspots, identifying hiring and internal mobility target areas, and defining upskilling and reskilling opportunities. Deploying predictive analytics via AI-enabled tools to better forecast retention, performance, and longevity can optimize talent acquisition pipelines and internal mobility, leading to more clearly defined and attainable career paths.
The semiconductor industry is at an inflection point: Revenue is forecasted to reach $1 trillion by 2030, but the industry continues to face widespread talent challenges, as outlined above. It is important that semiconductor companies look holistically across their current maturity, capabilities, and pain points to develop talent roadmaps enabled by robust technology solutions.
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Cyber risk has become an increasingly important issue for small companies around the world. While many companies try to avoid and mitigate cyber risks, they rarely discuss transferring those risks to a third party.
That’s why Stoïk is stepping in with a cyber insurance product specifically designed for small and medium-sized businesses. The French startup recently raised a €25 million Series B round (around $27 million at current exchange rates).
In many ways, Stoïk follows in the footsteps of Coalition or At-Bay. However, instead of selling its insurance products to U.S.-based companies, Stoïk focuses exclusively on European companies.
Once insured by Stoïk, businesses receive coverage in the event of a cybersecurity-related claim. For instance, if a company needs to halt production or temporarily close due to a cyber incident, Stoïk can compensate for loss of revenue (gross operating margin) during that period.
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Stoïk currently covers companies with an annual turnover of €750 million or less with coverage limits of €7.5 million. At present, the company operates in France, Germany and Austria.
The startup chose this particular vertical because cyber insurance is more complex than other types of insurance products. For instance, Stoïk has built a small in-house crisis management team to respond to incidents and assist with data recovery and crisis communication.
“Since the beginning of the week, we’ve had a dozen attacks on our portfolio, including a major one,” co-founder and CEO Jules Veyrat told TechCrunch last week. “We have people mobilized in the Lyon region for a ransomware attack that brought an industrial company to a standstill.”
When customers sign up, they receive an overview of their cyber risk exposure. The startup monitors DNS records and scans online databases for password leaks associated with this domain name. Stoïk can also perform internal scans to recommend changes to cloud and active directory configurations.
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“Our thesis is that we’re going to insure companies. On top of that, we’re going to help them better protect themselves against cyberattacks. That way, they’re happy, they get more for the same price. And we’re happy, because we have policyholders who are well protected, and therefore have fewer claims than others,” Veyrat said.
There are still some similarities with the insurance industry at large. Like other insurance companies, Stoïk has to ensure it doesn’t accept too many bad apples in its portfolio of clients, as this could significantly impact the company’s loss ratio.
“The insurers’ job is to select the risk. So, who do I accept and under what conditions? How well do they understand cyber?” Veyrat said. “In other words, am I willing to take on a €50 million industrial company that has no offline backup strategy? This is just an example, but these are the questions we ask ourselves every day.”
Stoïk acts as Managing General Agent (MGA), meaning that it works with insurance and reinsurance companies so that they cover the risks. Stoïk gets to create its own rates, products and policies — but it outsources the risk to bigger insurance companies.
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One such partner is Tokio Marine HCC International, which is the only new investor in the Series B funding round. The rest of the round is made of existing investors. Alven is leading the Series B with Andreessen Horowitz, Munich Re Ventures, Opera Tech Ventures and Anthemis also participating.
Stoïk doesn’t sell its insurance products to its customers directly. Instead, it works with third-party insurance brokers that already have a relationship with SMBs. So far, Stoïk has attracted 1,000 insurance brokers.
By the end of 2024, Stoïk should have 5,000 policyholders. It represents €25 million in premiums. Stoïk plans to ramp up customer signups in the future. In the future, the startup expects to expand into a new country every year starting with a first new European market in late 2024 or early 2025.
Today I am sharing news regarding leadership changes within our team. After more than 30 years at Microsoft, Alan Hartman is retiring at the end of November.
Alan’s career has been marked by innovation, dedication, and an unwavering passion for gaming. Starting as a contractor at Microsoft in the fledgling CD-ROM group in 1988, Alan has worked on a variety of projects in his time here, from Age of Empires, to Brute Force as the studio head of Digital Anvil, to the founding of Turn 10. Over the years, Alan, Turn 10 and Playground Games delivered 13 Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon games, building Forza into one of the top racing franchises in the world and regularly pushing the capabilities of our hardware. His work to advance accessibility in gaming has set a benchmark for the industry and under his leadership, Xbox Game Studios has shipped multiple critically acclaimed titles this year and set the stage for highly anticipated games like Avowed, South of Midnight, Fable, and more.
When seeking our next leader to navigate the complexities of our business and foster the creativity needed for our games to thrive, we collaborated with HR to evaluate both external and internal candidates, considering the unique demands of the XGS role.
I am pleased to announce that Craig Duncan will assume the role of Head of Xbox Game Studios. Craig brings a wealth of experience from his tenure at Codemasters, Midway Games, and Sumo Digital before joining Xbox in 2011 to lead Rare. During this time, Rare has achieved sustained business success and developed new IP, most notably the ever-evolving Sea of Thieves, a cross-platform franchise with over 40 million players.
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In his new role, Craig will continue to focus on helping our studios deliver high-quality, differentiated game experiences that can grow into successful franchises and reach more players by investing in new IP. Craig will report to me and join the Game Content and Studios leadership team, working closely with Alan during the transition. The existing XGS leadership team Alan established will remain intact and report to Craig.
I am also pleased to announce that Joe Neate and Jim Horth will take over as co-leads of Rare. Their leadership has played a crucial role in Rare’s growth, and I am confident they will elevate the studio and its games to even greater heights.
Please join me in congratulating Alan on his retirement and welcoming Craig, Joe, and Jim into their new roles.
Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know the answers.
Your Strands expert
Your Strands expert
Marc McLaren
NYT Strands today (game #226) – hint #1 – today’s theme
What is the theme of today’s NYT Strands?
• Today’s NYT Strands theme is… Beast mode
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NYT Strands today (game #226) – hint #2 – clue words
Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.
THREE
FREE
TREE
CELL
HEEL
SCAR
NYT Strands today (game #226) – hint #3 – spangram
What is a hint for today’s spangram?
• Tooth and claw
NYT Strands today (game #226) – hint #4 – spangram position
What are two sides of the board that today’s spangram touches?
First: bottom, 3rd column
Last: top, 3rd column
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
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NYT Strands today (game #226) – the answers
The answers to today’s Strands, game #226, are…
SCALE
FEATHER
HAIR
HORN
SHELL
WING
SPANGRAM: CREATUREFEATURE
My rating: Moderate
My score: Perfect
This was a tricky Strands puzzle. The words are all well known, but I wasn’t entirely sure what it was I was looking for until a fair way into it, and it took me ages to find the spangram. That answer – CREATUREFEATURE – winds up and down the board using 15 letters, so getting it was fairly crucial to solving the puzzle. It’s always crucial, of course, but on some days it doesn’t have an immediate impact on the ease with which you find most of the other solutions, but here it was so long that you really needed it in order to rule out others. I was never comfortable today until I had it, and that was late on.
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Yesterday’s NYT Strands answers (Monday, 14 October, game #225)
DOLLY
BUNGEE
TRUCK
BOXES
FOAM
CRATE
TAPE
STRAP
SPANGRAM: MOVINGDAY
What is NYT Strands?
Strands is the NYT’s new word game, following Wordle and Connections. It’s now out of beta so is a fully fledged member of the NYT’s games stable and can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
I’ve got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you’re struggling to beat it each day.
Burning household rubbish in giant incinerators to make electricity is now the dirtiest way the UK generates power, BBC analysis has found.
Nearly half of the rubbish produced in UK homes, including increasing amounts of plastic, is now being incinerated. Scientists warn it is a “disaster for the climate” – and some are calling for a ban on new incinerators.
The BBC examined five years of data from across the country, and found that burning waste produces the same amount of greenhouse gases for each unit of energy as coal power, which was abandoned by the UK last month.
The Environmental Services Association, which represents waste firms, contested our findings and said emissions from dealing with waste are “challenging to avoid”.
Nearly 15 years ago, the government became seriously concerned with the gases being produced from throwing away household rubbish in landfill and their contribution to climate change. In response, it hiked the taxes UK councils paid for burying waste.
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Facing massive bills, councils turned to energy-from-waste plants – a type of incinerator that produces electricity from burning rubbish. The number of incinerators surged – in the past five years the number in England alone has risen from 38 to 52.
This is certainly the case for food waste, which produces less harmful greenhouse gases when burned, but it is not the case for plastic waste. Plastic is made of fossil fuels and burning it, rather than burying it in landfill, produces high levels of greenhouse gases.
In the past few years, more plastic has been going to incinerators and less food waste – which councils are now sending to anaerobic digesters or to be composted. But the government’s own calculations continue to assume that we send the same mix of rubbish as we did back in 2017 – potentially underestimating the scale of the issue.
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The BBC’s five-year analysis used data on actual pollution levels recorded by operators at their incinerators, and found that energy-from-waste plants are now producing the same amount of greenhouse gases per unit of electricity as if they were burning coal.
For the past three decades, the UK has been reducing its use of coal because of how polluting it is – and last month closed its last coal plant. The government hopes this will help it achieve its target of ensuring electricity generation produces no carbon emissions by 2030.
This now leaves waste incineration as the dirtiest way the UK produces power. According to the BBC analysis, energy produced from waste is five times more polluting than the average UK unit of electricity.
About 3.1% of the UK’s energy comes from waste incinerators – but the government’s independent advisory group, the UK Climate Change Committee, warns that incineration will make up an increasing part of emissions from electricity generation.
It’s an “insane situation”, said Dr Ian Williams, professor of applied environmental science at the University of Southampton.
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“The current practice of the burning of waste for energy and building more and more incinerators for this purpose is at odds with our desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
“Increasing its use is disastrous for our climate.”
Lord Deben, the Conservative environment minister who introduced the landfill tax in 1996, told the BBC: “We’ve got too many [incinerators], and we shouldn’t have any more… they begin to distort our ability to recycle.”
And yet, incinerators are still being built in England. The UK government approved a new £150m site in Dorset last month, overturning the local council’s decision to block it.
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Dorset Council leader Nick Ireland told the BBC at the time that it “kneecaps” the county’s efforts to achieve their “net zero” target – the goal of no longer adding to carbon emissions by 2050.
In the past few years, Wales and Scotland have introduced bans on new incinerator plants over environmental concerns, and there have been increasing calls from leading academics and environmental groups for the same to happen in England and Northern Ireland.
These include the UK Climate Change Committee, which has recommended that no more plants be built without efforts to capture all their carbon emissions.
There are currently only four out of 58 incinerators in the UK with approved plans to capture their emissions and one pilot project that is operating. This project at Ferrybridge EfW collects one tonne of carbon dioxide annually – but the site produces more than half a million tonnes of CO2.
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Incinerators getting dirtier and bigger
Without action, it is expected that the use of incinerators in the UK will continue to grow and they will probably get more polluting.
There are currently dozens of new plants going through the planning process, and existing ones are growing in capacity. The BBC investigation found nearly half of all incinerators in the UK have managed to get a capacity increase approved by the Environment Agency without applying for a new permit – which requires public consultation.
The waste they are burning is increasingly made up of plastic, according to local government data. Because plastic is produced from fossil fuels, it is the dirtiest type of waste to burn.
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According to the government’s own statistics, burning plastic produces 175 times more carbon dioxide (CO2) than burying it in landfill.
Prof Keith Bell, who sits on the UK Climate Change Committee, said after reviewing the BBC’s findings: “If the current government is serious about clean power by 2030 then… we cannot allow ourselves to be locked into just burning waste.”
In April, a temporary ban on permits for new incinerators was introduced in England by the previous Conservative government, while it reviewed the role of burning waste, but when the ban lapsed in May it was not continued.
It appears that the current government has yet to decide its position on the issue.
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In a letter last month, senior civil servants at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said they were unable to decide whether to approve a proposed incinerator in North Lincolnshire until the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) had decided the government’s policy on burning waste for power.
Considering the Dorset incinerator was approved by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, this letter raises questions about the consistency of the government’s approach on this issue.
In response to a request for comment, a Defra spokesperson said: “We are considering the role waste incineration will play as we decarbonise and grow the economy.”
Councils ‘locked in’ to burning waste
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The challenge is that even if local authorities wanted to move away from the use of energy-from-waste plants they are often unable to due to restrictive, long-term contracts.
The BBC made Freedom of Information requests to every UK local authority responsible for disposing of waste, which revealed that they have at least £30bn-worth of contracts with waste operators involving incinerators, some lasting more than 20 years.
These arrangements have been criticised by the House of Commons public accounts committee for locking councils into financially burdensome arrangements.
Dr Colin Church, who led an independent review of incineration for the Scottish government which resulted in the ban, said: “‘Lock-in’ is a real issue, the energy-from-waste sector swears blind it’s not, but it is.”
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In 2019, Derbyshire County Council and Derby City Council terminated their contract with waste company RRS because an incinerator it had built for them did not pass initial tests, with residents complaining about the smell and noise.
Although the plant had never been used, the councils were were ordered to pay £93.5m in compensation to RRS’s administrators for terminating the contract early.
The BBC also found that dozens of councils had clauses in their contracts which demand a minimum amount of waste to be sent to incinerators for burning – known in the industry as “deliver or pay”.
In 2010, Stoke-on-Trent Council was left facing a £329,000 claim from Hanford Waste Services for not sending enough waste to be incinerated.
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The council declined to say if it paid the claim but told us the clause has since been removed from its contracts with the operator.
But the Local Government Association (LGA) – representing local authorities in England and Wales – expressed concerns to the BBC that these contracts have left councils unable to explore the use of more environmental solutions, such as recycling, for fear of a fine for breach of contract.
Joe Harris, vice chair of the LGA and leader of Cotswold District Council, said: “If we can adapt those contracts which allows us to reduce the amount of waste going to incineration and if we can boost recycling we want to do that, but we can’t have councils facing financial penalties.”
For the past 10 years recycling rates have failed to increase, remaining stuck at about 41% in England – despite a previous commitment by the previous Conservative government for 65% of the UK’s household waste to be recycled by 2035. Wales is the only nation to have hit the 65% target.
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But the Environmental Services Association, the waste industry body, said burning rubbish for energy has been “complementary to efforts to recycle more” over the past decade and that “stagnant recycling rates are only indicative of a failure to develop recycling policies”.
A Defra spokesperson told the BBC: “We are committed to cutting waste and moving to a circular economy so that we re-use, reduce and recycle more resources and help meet our emissions targets.”
How we calculated the emissions
In order to calculate the emissions produced per unit of energy from England’s incinerators, the BBC needed to obtain the emissions produced and the power output from these sites.
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Each incinerator in the UK produces annual monitoring reports, which record key statistics associated with the plant including its total emissions.
But in a few cases the emissions were not recorded in the annual monitoring report and so the figures recorded in the government’s pollution inventory report were used.
The IPCC, the UN climate science body, recommends that “biogenic” emissions – which come from burning organic matter like food – are not included in calculations because they are recorded under the emissions for the land and forestry sector.
So we had to remove these biogenic emissions from the total by working out what share of the waste being burned was organic.
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Some operators recorded this, but in the cases where they did not the government guidelines advise applying a factor based on the share of household waste that was recorded as biogenic during a 2017 survey by the environmental NGO WRAP.
This gave the BBC the total fossil emissions – meaning those associated with burning the “fossil” waste (or non-organic waste) at the site, including plastic.
Then we calculated a carbon intensity figure – the carbon emissions per unit of energy generated – for every site, by dividing the total fossil emissions by the energy generated.
Methodological support was provided by Francesco Pomponi, professor of sustainability science at Edinburgh Napier University; Massimiliano Materazzi, associate professor of chemical engineering at University College London; and Dr Jim Hart, sustainability consultant.
Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.
Some days are trickier than others. If you’re having a little trouble solving today’s Connections puzzle, check out our tips and hints below. And if you still can’t get it, we’ll tell you today’s answers at the very end.
In Connections, you’ll be shown a grid containing 16 words — your objective is to organize these words into four sets of four by identifying the connections that link them. These sets could encompass concepts like titles of video game franchises, book series sequels, shades of red, names of chain restaurants, etc.
There are generally words that seem like they could fit multiple themes, but there’s only one 100% correct answer. You’re able to shuffle the grid of words and rearrange them to help better see the potential connections.
Each group is color-coded. The yellow group is the easiest to figure out, followed by the green, blue, and purple groups.
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Pick four words and hit Submit. If you’re correct, the four words will be removed from the grid and the theme connecting them will be revealed. Guess incorrectly and it’ll count as a mistake. You only have four mistakes available until the game ends.
We can help you solve today’s Connection by telling you the four themes. If you need more assistance, we’ll also give you one word from each group below.
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