European tech industry increasingly demands control over its own artificial intelligence

At TechBBQ, held in Copenhagen on 26–27 August 2026, one of the most prominent discussions within Europe’s technology industry was no longer about which products could be built with artificial intelligence. The debate had moved to a much more fundamental level: who controls the models, computing power, cloud infrastructure and data on which European businesses increasingly depend. Startup founders, investors and technology executives repeatedly returned to the same concern. European companies may create products, services and intellectual property, yet the critical infrastructure beneath them remains concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of American and Chinese providers.

The issue now extends far beyond another debate about digital sovereignty. Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming infrastructure with strategic importance comparable to energy, telecommunications and financial systems. A European company may control its own product and customer relationships while remaining dependent on a foreign AI model, an American cloud provider, overseas processors and decisions made outside Europe about where and under what conditions technology remains available. For that reason, the discussion at TechBBQ was increasingly framed not around creating a European copy of every American platform, but around preserving genuine choice and ensuring that Europe can determine the conditions under which its most critical technologies are used.

French startup Lupin Dental raises €15 million to bring robots into dentistry

French startup Lupin Dental, based in Montpellier, has raised €15 million in a Series A round to accelerate the development and commercial expansion of its robotic technology for dentistry. The round was led by investment firm Fynveur, which committed €10 million, with additional participation from existing shareholders, new private investors and financing support from Bpifrance. The company is developing a system that combines digital treatment planning with robotic assistance for highly precise dental procedures. Rather than creating an autonomous machine intended to replace dentists, Lupin is building a platform in which the doctor remains responsible for treatment while the robot performs predefined mechanical tasks within carefully controlled limits.

The story is significant far beyond the size of the funding round because it illustrates how robotics is moving from factories and major hospital operating rooms directly into everyday medical practices. Industrial robots have been common for decades, and robotic surgery has gradually become established in large hospitals, but dentistry represents a very different environment: smaller clinics, shorter procedures, highly individual anatomy and extremely limited tolerance for error. Lupin Dental is attempting to prove that robotic precision can be useful in this setting without removing the dentist from clinical decision-making.

Berlin startup Nanolope turns walls and ceilings into thermal energy storage

Berlin-based deep-tech startup Nanolope has raised €800,000 in pre-seed funding to develop a technology designed to turn ordinary surfaces inside existing buildings into passive stores of heat and cold. The financing came from IBB Ventures through its B# fund together with business angels and specialists from the energy, real estate and materials sectors. The company plans to use the capital to scale production, launch its first pilot projects and expand its team. Unlike conventional energy-storage systems, Nanolope’s approach does not require a separate battery or large technical installation because the storage function is integrated directly into panels mounted on walls, ceilings and floors.

The technology is particularly relevant for Europe’s property market, where a huge proportion of buildings were constructed long before modern energy-efficiency standards were introduced. Comprehensive renovation of those properties can be extremely expensive, require long periods of disruption and generate additional emissions through the production of new construction materials. Nanolope is trying to offer a different route by improving the thermal performance of existing buildings with relatively limited intervention. If the technology performs as expected in large-scale projects, walls and ceilings could effectively shift from being passive parts of a building into active elements of its energy infrastructure.

At the core of Nanolope’s system are phase change materials, commonly known as PCMs.

Russian-speaking hackers use Cursor AI in real attacks against European companies

Russian-speaking cybercriminals used the AI coding assistant Cursor during attacks against at least seven companies, including Belgian chemical and hygiene products manufacturer Christeyns, headquartered in Ghent. Researchers at Gambit Security uncovered the campaign after the attackers accidentally left one of their servers exposed to the internet. The material found on that infrastructure included 28 sessions between the hackers and the AI agent, offering unusually detailed evidence of how a commercial artificial intelligence tool was used during real corporate intrusions rather than in theoretical experiments or controlled cybersecurity demonstrations.

The case is particularly important because the technology was not a custom-built hacking model. The attackers used a commercially available coding assistant and repeatedly tried to convince it that their actions were part of legitimate security testing. According to Gambit Security, the AI participated in hundreds of potentially harmful operations involving credential searches, privileged account access and attempts to exploit discovered vulnerabilities. Cursor sometimes refused requests it recognised as dangerous, but the attackers could often restart the interaction, change the framing and present the same activity as an authorised simulation, allowing the operation to continue.

The logs examined by researchers cover activity between 8 April and 21 May 2026.