On 1 October, Italy approved €1.3 billion in public support for Silicon Box’s planned €3.2 billion advanced semiconductor packaging facility in Novara. The Singapore-based company could strengthen a vulnerable part of Europe’s chip supply chain. The strategic test is whether the investment builds lasting capabilities that remain commercially competitive and technologically relevant when production reaches scale.
The significance begins inside the package — and extends to the knowledge, customers and decisions surrounding it.
Read More
Europe’s technology leaders have called for the conditions to compete at scale. The operational question is what they can build together. Altair Media proposes a starting framework: two industrial applications, defined contributions and measurable commitments. We invite companies, policymakers, researchers and customers to challenge its assumptions, identify missing capabilities and help turn it into an executable roadmap.
Read More
BNP Paribas is expanding its Mistral AI partnership while adding Google Cloud capabilities to its technology mix. The strategy offers choice, efficiency and a European technology anchor. But autonomy faces a harder test when something goes wrong: can the bank reconstruct a flawed recommendation, establish responsibility and change the system without losing control of essential operations?
The distinction is practical: knowing where a model comes from does not establish whether its conclusions can be checked.
Read More
Europe’s old pilgrimage routes preserve more than religious heritage. They offer another relationship with time. Through walking, hospitality and unexpected encounters, they reveal what modern societies risk losing when every journey — and even rest — must deliver measurable results.
Years after leaving telecom journalism, Siu Lie Tan reappears in Tuscany—working across circular innovation, European regulation and natural cosmetics. In this Coffee Talk, she reflects on curiosity, changing direction and learning that not everything needs to follow the plan.
Michiel Scheffer wants Europe to do more than finance scientific discovery. His vision for the European Innovation Council connects research, patient capital, industrial demand and strategic procurement—turning breakthrough technologies into companies, production capacity and European power.
Under Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission has moved beyond regulation towards crisis management, industrial strategy and geopolitical coordination. Her vision is of a Europe capable of acting—but its growing executive ambition raises questions about power and accountability.