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Patrick Collison, CEO and co-founder of Stripe, speaking at 2022’s Italian Tech Week in Turin, Italy.

Giuliano Berti | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Founders of some of Europe’s largest technology unicorns on Monday backed an open letter calling for a “tech renaissance” fueled by the creation of a single pan-European entity to promote startups and innovation in the bloc.

The list of entrepreneurs backing the proposal includes the likes of Patrick Collison, CEO of payments tech giant Stripe; Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of money transfer app Wise and venture capital firm Plural, and Eléonore Crespo, CEO of French accounting software unicorn Pigment.

The letter was also signed by VC firms Index Ventures, Sequoia and Seedcamp.

“The multitude of countries and cultures in Europe is its unfair advantage. But because of that, our startup scene is fragmented,” read the open letter, which was published Monday on a newly created website for the EU Inc initiative.

“Legal and regulatory compliance is a burden, and cross-border collaboration is rare,” said the letter, which added that, unlike U.S. venture capitalists, the capital from European investors tends to remain within national borders. This results in “stifled momentum, unrealized potential, and an artificial limit on our startups’ chances of success.”

Rather than writing new legislation at an EU-wide level to simplify regulations for tech startups, the founders are calling on policymakers to allow for the creation of a new single entity, called EU Inc, under the bloc’s 28th regime.

So-called 28th regimes are proposed legal frameworks within the EU that offer an alternative to member states’ own national rules instead of replacing them.

For example, the European Company Statute offers an alternative 28th option — in addition to the existing national laws of the EU’s 27 member states — for setting up of public limited-liability companies in the EU.

The new structure of EU Inc would “standardize investment processes, simplify cross-border operations, and create a unified employee stock options framework” to help European startups scale rapidly and attract more capital, according to a Monday press release. 

Other signatories to the open letter include Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell, the Finnish mobile game publisher owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent, and Miki Kuusi, CEO of Wolt, the European food delivery app owned by American online takeout platform DoorDash.

The launch of EU Inc as an initiative comes as numerous officials have been calling for major European reforms to help the bloc compete more effectively with the U.S. and China as an economic superpower.

Last month, former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi issued a long-awaited report calling for 800 billion euros of additional investment per year to make the EU more competitive on the world stage.

Citing technology innovation as a key area where improvement was needed, Draghi said that the region is still “stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies rising up to disrupt existing industries or develop new growth engines.”

Meanwhile, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has made supporting innovation, competitiveness and smarter regulation a key part of her focus since winning a second term as president.

“In the startup world, momentum is everything. Anything that slows you down doesn’t just slow you down – it kills you by stopping you from reaching escape velocity,” said Andreas Klinger, co-initiator of the EU Inc proposals and an investor at Prototype Capital.

“Despite the world-class talent, global ambition and unique strengths of the European startup ecosystem, it’s still absurdly hard to build here. EU Inc is about removing those artificial constraints and allowing our startups to truly accelerate.”

Europe has long lagged behind the U.S. and China when it comes to generating global tech giants. The U.S. is the biggest market for tech, home to Amazon, Google, Meta and Apple. China, meanwhile, has its own tech giants, including Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu.

“Building a tech giant from Europe today requires navigating a maze of different regulations and market conditions,” said Martin Mignot, partner at Index Ventures. “EU Inc is our opportunity to streamline and simplify the landscape dramatically.” 

European tech startups raised $45 billion worth of venture capital funding last year, according to Atomico’s 2023 State of European Tech report. That pales in comparison to the U.S., where startups raised $120 billion. Chinese startups, meanwhile, raised $48 billion in 2023, according to Atomico’s data.

While the volume of new startups created in Europe outpaces the U.S., European tech firms are 40% less likely to secure venture funding after five years than their U.S. counterparts, Atomico said in its report, which was published in November 2023.

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. 

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Google pushes "AI Mode" on homepage

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than  million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Read more CNBC tech news

The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.

Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.

Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.

WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.

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