"I don't kill anyone who doesn't deserve it," says Sam (Ben Whishaw), the self-described "triggerman"--hit man--in the new Netflix spy thriller Black Doves. Sam, like the series' other main character, Helen (not her real name, played by Keira Knightley), works for Black Doves' eponymous organization. They are spies, more or less, but spies for hire, and when you get right down to it, most of Sam's gigs seem to be carrying out hits for drug dealers. Sam isn't the only hit man featured in a sleek, starry TV thriller this winter. On Peacock, Eddie Redmayne plays Alex in a new adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal.

After decades of serving as the named inspiration for the beloved franchise The Legend of Zelda, the series' titular princess is finally getting her own game. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, releasing September 26 for Nintendo Switch, gives Zelda her very own hero's journey after Link goes missing. But it does not, sadly, give her her own sword. Players have been clamoring for Hyrule's favorite princess to take the lead in a Zelda game for years now, or at least to be playable in games like Tears of the Kingdom. Excitement around Zelda's triumph was immediately evident on X after Nintendo announced the game Tuesday during one of its Direct presentations.

"Amsterdam is a global city--with a population of less than 1 million," says Ferdinand Goetzen, CEO of Amsterdam-based digital customer-insight business, Reveall. That, in a nutshell, is how Amsterdam has become a tech powerhouse, boasting unicorns such as Booking.com and Adyen, and an impressive crop of sustainability-focused startups. The city has the benefits of being medium sized--efficient public services, bikeability, and a tight-knit business community--but in the same breath, is instinctively outward-looking, dynamic, and business-friendly. Amsterdam's residents speak flawless English, its Schiphol Airport is the third-busiest in the EU, and, starting in 2020, the city gained a direct Eurostar link to London. As part of a business cluster known as the Randstad--which also includes Utrecht, the Hague, and Rotterdam, and is Europe's third region by productivity--it is unsurprising that Amsterdam's startup scene is thriving; it's tech companies are worth a total value of $230 billion as of July 2022, according to Dealroom. Let's get to know Amsterdam's movers and shakers.

The onshoring and buildout of dozens of fabs, many costing tens of billions of dollars, is beginning to spill over into other areas that are critical for chip manufacturing. Materials, in particular, which often gets little attention outside of chip manufacturing, witnessed a big spike in September 2022. In fact, seven materials companies covered in this report made up more than a third of the month's total reported investments, with three of the companies garnering more than $200 million. Other investment targets were sputtering equipment and evaporation materials for deposition, high-purity polycrystalline silicon, fluorine-containing electronic gases, and silicon carbide. In the AI hardware arena, numerous startups are focusing on in-memory and near-memory compute, reducing the volume of data that needs to be moved back and forth between memory and processing elements. Novel architectures also are appearing, such as one that uses sparse mathematics.

Modulate, a leader in the fight against online toxicity, announced the completion of a $30 million Series A funding round led by Lakestar with participation from existing investors Everblue Management, Hyperplane Ventures, and others. In addition, Mika Salmi, Managing Partner of Lakestar, will join Modulate's Board of Directors. The company will use the funds to expand its team and continue scaling its groundbreaking proactive voice moderation platform, ToxMod. "ToxMod is changing the way game developers attack toxic behavior in their communities and this funding is a real validation of our mission to make online communities safer," said Mike Pappas, CEO of Modulate. "We're thrilled to welcome Mika and his vast store of experience to the Board as we grow our team and ramp up the development and deployment of ToxMod."

In addition, new growth investors including iCON and TripActions' CEO and Co-founder Ariel Cohen joined the round. Theator, the creator of Surgical Intelligence, announced today that it has raised $24M in an extension of its Series A funding round. This extension follows an initial $15.5M Series A round announced in February 2021, bringing the round total to $39.5M.[FP1] Theator is pioneering Surgical Intelligence to eliminate the paradigm that where you live determines if you live. Theator's Surgical Intelligence Platform institutionalizes the routine capture of surgical video data, harnessing AI and computer vision to automatically analyze every operation.

In a recent development, Neptune.ai, which builds developer tools for machine learning practitioners, raised $8 million in a Series A funding. The financing round was led by global VC firm Almaz Capital also invested recently in Refurbed and Minut, alongside participation from previous investors btov Partners, Rheingau Founders, and TDJ Pitango. With the latest funding, the total investment raised by Neptune.ai is close to $13 million since its inception. The startup will use the latest investment to deliver an even better experience for developers by rapidly expanding its product and engineering teams across Europe. Neptune's platform is used the most by machine learning engineers and corporate customers of over 100 paying companies, including The New Yorker, InstaDeep and Roche.

Black Crow AI, the no-code machine learning infrastructure company, has raised a $25 million Series A round led by Imaginary Ventures. Additional firms participating in this round include Left Lane, Good Friends, Interplay, and Red Antler, as well as the founders of leading digital commerce brands like Warby Parker, Mejuri, Everlane, Allbirds, Supergoop!, and Reformation. This round brings Black Crow AI's total funding to $30 million and will be used to accelerate the development of new and accessible machine learning use cases in both digital commerce and adjacent verticals. The Black Crow AI platform is democratizing the power of enterprise-grade machine learning, by delivering infrastructure as a service that works out of the box for companies of any size. Its technology analyzes billions of data points in real-time to optimize core business processes, like managing churn, enhancing customer experience, and optimizing marketing spend.

Robotics is one of the top emerging technologies of the modern era. At present, multiple robots are serving various industries like automobile, manufacturing, retail, and many more. Multiple robotics start-ups are coming up with innovative and unique robotic products and services to serve customers efficiently, especially, post-pandemic. Different investment companies are now investing in the field at different stages, right from seed funding and angel investors that help start an idea or buy private equities in well-established firms. Tech investors are looking for opportunities for effective investment in robotics through multiple Series A, B, C, etc. for sufficient funding in robotics for the nearby future. This article features the top 10 best robotics funding in the first quarter of 2022.

TruEra, a startup that offers an AI quality management solution to optimize, explain and monitor machine learning models, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B round led by Menlo Ventures. Existing investors Greylock Partners, Wing Venture Capital (which led its $12 million Series A round in late 2020), Harpoon Ventures, Conversion Capital, the Data Community Fund, as well as new investors Forgepoint Capital and the B Capital Group's Ascent Fund also participated in this round. In total, TruEra has now raised $42.3 million. "We believe that the next big challenge in AI is the quality challenge," TruEra CEO and co-founder Will Uppington said. "AI is at an inflection point: lots of opportunities but also a lot of challenges to make AI actually work in the enterprise. And we think that's the major issue that's preventing AI systems from getting into real-world use and actually delivering on KPIs."