😌BTF is back😌

It's that time of year!

Yep BTF is back and we've announced our first tranche of speakers 🙌🏾

Now lots of events will hit you with 

CEO of X is speaking or VP of Y is doing Z, well yes we have that, but we're proud ESPECIALLY, because we actually have people DOING talking about what they are DOING, at the event.

Soooo check our this list of our first few folks if you want to tick your list of 

A coproate exec from Big tech

• Pamela Maynard - Corporate Vice President, AI Transformation, Microsoft <<< Probably one of the most senior Black women in Microsoft PERIODT and she's been featured in VOGUE

A CEO from a company you know 

• Emily Turner - CEO, HSBC Innovation Banking UK << HSBC heard of them, yep, so there you go

Someone hella influential on AI

• Kalbir Sohi - UK Government Chief AI Officer, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport <<< Kalbir is the most senior civil servant on AI and he's gota big job tasked with making it work for the UK

A senior spokesperson from a Frontier AI LAB

• William Isaac - Principal Scientist, Google DeepMind <<< Gemini everywhere and now you know why

And thats just four, check out more speakers here

📚 Read More on Joinbtf.com

🚕 The UK finally has robotaxis

TL;DR, Uber and British autonomous-driving startup Wayve have launched the UK’s first public-facing self-driving taxi service in London. Fifteen AI-powered Ford Mustang Mach-Es are carrying passengers through the Uber app except every single one still has a licensed safety driver behind the wheel. Meanwhile, genuinely driverless taxis have been operating commercially in parts of the US for years. Welcome to the future, Britain. Please mind the gap. 🇬🇧🤖

What Happened?

Uber has begun offering supervised autonomous rides in London using Wayve’s technology, making the capital the first city where Wayve’s system is being used for public rides through Uber. Riders requesting UberX, Uber Electric or Uber Comfort can be matched with one of 15 autonomous vehicles at the same price as a normal journey, although passengers can opt out. 🚘

There is one fairly substantial asterisk attached to the word “autonomous”: there is still a licensed safety driver sitting behind the wheel of every car, legally responsible for the vehicle and ready to intervene. And on the BBC’s test journey, the safety driver actually did take control after the vehicle braked sharply beside a van. Wayve said it believed the system would have handled the situation safely without the intervention. 👀

Wayve’s approach is interesting because rather than relying primarily on painstakingly pre-mapped routes, its system uses cameras, radar and you guessed it AI to interpret what is happening around it and make driving decisions. 

London with cyclists, buses, pedestrians, roadworks and the occasional person deciding that Oxford Street is an appropriate place for a three-point turn is quite the final boss. 🕹️

Why This Matters?

There is something wonderfully British about treating this as the arrival of the autonomous future when the future has been driving around America for years😅. Waymo began offering fully driverless public rides in Phoenix in 2020 and removed safety drivers from its San Francisco service in 2023. It now operates paid driverless services across multiple US cities. 🚕

So London has reached the exciting technological frontier of… a self-driving car with a driving instructor. 🇬🇧😂

That doesn't make Wayve’s launch insignificant. It is a big deal moving from controlled testing into an app used by millions of ordinary people is a meaningful step, and doing it on London's complicated roads provides Wayve with a serious proving ground. But let's perhaps hold off on the victory parade. 🥳

The regulatory gap is particularly interesting. TfL approved Wayve and Uber's vehicles in August only on the condition that a qualified human remained behind the wheel, while Britain's wider regulatory framework for fully autonomous commercial services is still being developed. 🚦

The Bigger Picture

This exposes one of the slightly uncomfortable contradictions in Britain's ambition to become an “AI superpower.” We are extremely enthusiastic about AI investment announcements, strategies, summits and declarations of technological leadership. Actually deploying frontier technology at scale? Suddenly everyone would like another consultation. 📋

To be fair, there are very good reasons for caution. Autonomous vehicles have had real safety problems in the US, London is vastly more complicated than many American road systems, and putting experimental technology on public roads deserves serious scrutiny. Moving faster is not automatically the same thing as moving better. 🛑

But there is also a difference between sensible regulation and moving so slowly that everybody else gets a multi-year head start. Britain has had the luxury of watching the American experiment unfold — the successes, accidents, regulatory fights and technological improvements — before allowing its own first supervised commercial service. 🐌 But that isn't innovation at speed, perhaps following the leaders. Also if this is painful for companies it may not inspire the next set of startups to go ahead on their own ideas.

And that makes Wayve particularly important. Britain actually has a serious homegrown contender in one of the biggest emerging technology markets. Founded in Cambridge in 2017, Wayve is attempting to build autonomous-driving technology capable of generalising between cities rather than being painstakingly engineered for each individual location. 🇬🇧

The nightmare scenario would be painfully familiar: Britain develops world-class technology, regulates its domestic deployment at glacial speed, and then watches American and Chinese companies build the enormous global industry around it. We've seen variations of that film before. 🎬

So What?

The important question isn't simply whether robotaxis work. It is how much technological risk Britain is prepared to tolerate if it genuinely wants to lead in emerging technologies. You cannot simultaneously demand that British companies build frontier technology and insist that nobody deploys it until every conceivable uncertainty has disappeared. ⚖️

America has effectively been running this experiment in public for years. Britain has been able to watch and learn from it. If we're still years behind after getting to copy everyone else's homework, eventually the problem stops being technological readiness and starts looking a lot more like British institutional speed. 👀

For now, enjoy London's glimpse of the autonomous future: the car drives itself, the human watches the car drive itself, and the regulator watches the human watching the car drive itself. Silicon Valley has robotaxis. Britain has robotaxis with chaperones. Progress! 🇬🇧🤖🚕

📚 Read More

BBC News — Uber and Wayve launch supervised self-driving rides in London 🚕
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce9e838jzpzo

BBC News — Autonomous vehicles and the road towards driverless services in Britain 🚦
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3w07qg43j6o

FindArticles — Uber and Wayve begin supervised autonomous rides in London 🤖
https://www.findarticles.com/uber-wayve-supervised-autonomous-rides-london/#google_vignette

🧠 Nvidia just bought the “GitHub of AI” — as the AI world starts building walls

TL;DR: Nvidia is buying Hugging Face for $12.9bn, giving the world’s dominant AI chipmaker ownership of one of AI’s most important developer platforms. Meanwhile, OpenAI is cutting its models off from Cursor after its acquisition by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. AI started with lots of talk about openness. Increasingly, it looks like a handful of giants building their own kingdoms. 🏰

📰 What Happened

First, a translation for normal people. Hugging Face is basically the GitHub of AI: a huge online library where developers can find, download, share and test AI models and datasets. It has 18m+ developers, 3m+ models and 200,000+ companies using it. Nvidia — the company making most of the chips powering the AI boom — is now paying $12.9bn to own it. 🤗

Nvidia says Hugging Face will remain open and developers won't be forced to use Nvidia chips or services. That's important because Hugging Face's value comes partly from letting developers experiment across different models and technologies rather than being locked into one company. 🔓

And then there's Cursor. Think of it as an AI-powered coding workspace: developers use AI models such as Claude and OpenAI's models to write, understand and edit software. Its parent company, Anysphere, was recently acquired by Elon Musk's SpaceX for $60bn. 💻

OpenAI has now said it will stop providing its models to Cursor from 12 November, saying it cannot be confident SpaceX will comply with its terms based on its previous experience with Musk's companies. Cursor says OpenAI represents only around 5% of its traffic, while Anthropic has already offered more Claude capacity. 🍿

🧠 Why This Matters

Put the two stories together and you can see where AI is heading. Owning the model isn't enough anymore. Everyone wants to own the infrastructure around it too. ♟️

Nvidia already dominates AI chips. Hugging Face now gives it a direct relationship with millions of developers choosing which models to build with. That's particularly useful as Nvidia customers including Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI invest in their own chips. Also it gets to see what is popular giving it a first hand view about where it may want to make future strategic developments. If the world buys fewer Nvidia GPUs, Nvidia still has another enormously influential part of the ecosystem. 🧱

And Cursor shows the other side of this consolidation: access can become a weapon. OpenAI can simply decide its models aren't available on a platform owned by a rival. Anthropic can step in. Developers get caught somewhere in the middle. 🚧

🌍 The Bigger Picture

The AI industry talks endlessly about “open ecosystems” and developer choice, while simultaneously buying the platforms, chips, models and distribution channels those developers depend on. 😂

Nvidia says Hugging Face will stay open and it may genuinely benefit from keeping it that way. But there's a difference between open and neutral. Nvidia doesn't need to ban competitors; making its own infrastructure cheaper, easier or better integrated could gradually influence where developers build. 👀

For startups, that's worth watching. The fewer companies controlling chips, models and developer platforms, the more exposed smaller businesses become when somebody changes an API, price, contract or access policy overnight. Cursor just got a very practical demonstration. 🧑🏾‍💻

🧠 So What?

The AI stack is consolidating remarkably quickly. Nvidia has the chips and now Hugging Face. SpaceX has Cursor. OpenAI controls access to its models. Anthropic can swoop in when OpenAI walks away. Everyone wants openness preferably inside an ecosystem they control. 😏

So perhaps the biggest question about Nvidia buying Hugging Face isn't whether it stays technically open. It's whether one of AI's most important neutral meeting places can remain genuinely neutral once it belongs to one of the most powerful companies in AI. 🤔

The open AI revolution isn't disappearing. It's just acquiring an increasing number of landlords. 🏠😂

📚 Read More

BBC News — Nvidia strikes $12.9bn deal to buy AI platform Hugging Face 🤖
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4vnr5g1k7o 🔗

Inspenet — Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $12.9bn 💰
https://inspenet.com/en/news/nvidia-buys-hugging-face-12900m-ia/ 🔗

Yahoo Finance — OpenAI cuts Cursor off from its models after SpaceX takeover 🚪
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/openai-cuts-cursor-off-models-223547147.html 🔗

CNA / Reuters — OpenAI to cut off AI models for SpaceX-owned Cursor ⚔️
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/openai-cut-ai-models-spacex-owned-cursor-escalating-feud-musk-6348951 🔗

🗺️ The world map is changing. Turns out maps were never as neutral as we pretended.

TL;DR: The UN has voted overwhelmingly to move away from the 450-year-old Mercator world map towards Equal Earth, which shows countries and continents closer to their true relative sizes. Africa suddenly looks enormous. Greenland suddenly doesn't. 164 countries voted yes. The only country voting no? The United States. Which is particularly funny given America's current enthusiasm for… changing maps. 😏

📰 What Happened

The Mercator projection was created in 1569 for European sailors. It was excellent for navigation because compass bearings appear as straight lines. The problem is that turning a spherical planet into a flat rectangle requires distortion, and Mercator massively enlarges places further from the equator. 🌍

The most ridiculous example is Africa and Greenland. On the familiar map they look vaguely comparable. In reality, Africa is around 14 times larger than Greenland. You could fit the US, China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe inside Africa and still have room. Yet generations have grown up looking at a version of the world where Africa appears dramatically smaller. 🤯

The new Equal Earth projection, created in 2018, preserves relative land area much better. Africa gets substantially bigger, Europe gets smaller and Greenland finally accepts that it is, in fact, not a continent-sized superpower. It isn't a “perfect” map afterall no flat map can perfectly preserve area, shape, distance and direction simultaneously, but it's much better if what you're trying to understand is how big places actually are. 📏

🧠 Why This Matters

We should disclose a serious conflict of interest here: the editor of this newsletter actually has a Geography degree, which gives us approximately 400% more authority to discuss map projections than most people currently shouting about this online. 🎓😂

And one of the first things you learn in geography is that maps aren't simply pictures of reality. They're choices about how reality gets represented. What goes in the middle? What goes at the top? What gets enlarged? What gets named? Where are the borders? Who drew them? 🧭

There is a reason maps became such powerful tools of empire. European explorers didn't simply discover territory; they mapped it, named it, divided it and often used those maps to establish claims over it. History is famously written by the victors. Geography was often drawn by the explorers. 🗺️

That doesn't mean Gerardus Mercator sat down in 1569 plotting to make Africa look insignificant. His projection solved a genuine navigation problem brilliantly. But a map designed for 16th-century European sailors navigating an age of exploration and empire somehow became the default mental picture of the planet for billions of people 450 years later.

 Context matters. ⛵ And size matters too😜. Researchers and geographers have long argued that larger, more centrally positioned places can appear more important. The UN resolution explicitly argues that Mercator has contributed to the “symbolic minimization” of Africa, Latin America and South Asia. 🧠

🌍 The Bigger Picture

Which brings us to the absolutely irony of the United States being the only country to vote against changing the map. 🇺🇸

Because apparently America is deeply concerned about unnecessary cartographic revisionism now. This is the same administration that renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, recently ordered Lake Ontario renamed “Lake America” for US federal usage, and has now posted a map crossing “Mexico” out of New Mexico and replacing it with “America”. 🫠

Google subsequently changed Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for US Maps users after the government's geographic database was updated, while Canadians still see Lake Ontario. MapQuest refused  and promptly shot to No.1 among navigation apps in Apple's US App Store. 📱

So America appears perfectly comfortable with changing maps when the change makes America look more American, but when 164 countries want a map that makes Africa look its actual size, suddenly the proposal is “superfluous”.👀 ✏️

🧠 So What?

This isn't really about whether one map is politically “correct”. Every flat map distorts something. The more interesting question is why a particular distortion became the default  and what happens when we stare at it for hundreds of years. 🤔

Maps influence classrooms, technology, borders, navigation and eventually our mental model of the world. If you've spent your entire life seeing Africa depicted far smaller than it really is, that visual hierarchy becomes completely unremarkable. That's precisely why changing it feels strangely radical despite being, geographically speaking, more accurate. 🌍

And there is a wider lesson here for technology. Google Maps isn't merely displaying geography when it shows one person “Lake America” and another “Lake Ontario”. Platforms increasingly mediate which version of reality different users see, often according to government databases, national borders and political decisions. The digital map hasn't removed politics from cartography; it's made changing the map considerably easier. 📲

So yes, this newsletter has finally found a legitimate reason to deploy its editor's Geography degree. And the conclusion is pleasingly simple: maps have always told stories about power. For once, Africa is asking the world to draw one that actually shows how much space it takes up. 🗺️✊🏾

📚 Read More

CNN — UN votes to adopt new map that makes our world look very different 🌍
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/04/world/un-vote-new-world-map-intl-scli 🔗

BBC News — What different world maps get right — and what they get wrong 🗺️
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly5r60v4mro 🔗

The Guardian — UN votes to adopt new world map that shows Africa's true scale 🌍
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/04/un-vote-world-map-mercator-equal-earth-africa 🔗

Sky News — Trump posts map renaming New Mexico as 'New America' 🇺🇸
https://news.sky.com/story/trump-posts-map-renaming-new-mexico-as-new-america-13582712 🔗

The Independent — MapQuest surges after refusing to rename Lake Ontario 🧭
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/mapquest-viral-trump-lake-ontario-google-b3042271.html 🔗

📈 The tools behind the tech📉

📦Product📦

• Check if a file is made with claude
• GPT 6
• How well do agents use test/verification techniques?

📏Design📏 

• How I design with AI

👩🏿‍💻Code👩🏿‍💻

• How to find problems to solve as a staff engineer
• Writing about Agentic Engineering Patterns

🏢The business behind the tech🏢

• Xbox caps cloud gaming to 15h

💻Bloomberg: Application Success in Technology💻

Are you interested in early career roles at Bloomberg? 

You might be in luck because Bloomberg is opening its early careers roles for Engineers and Data Management Professionals soon, and has partnered with Colorintech for a webinar on how to network effectively and put together an application strong enough to land an interview.
In the webinar you'll learn:  

• Technology at Bloomberg

• Early career opportunities they are hiring for and top tips for a successful application

• How to network effectively as Bloomberg will be at BTF so you can meet them in person

• Panel discussion with Bloomberg’s Data and Engineering teams

• Early careers advice

This webinar is open to penultimate and final-year university students, as well as recent graduates with an interest in software engineering, data, or technology roles.

📆Date: Friday 18th September
⌚️Time: 4pm–5pm UK time
📌Where: Online webinar
💻Register here to secure your spot! 

Want to get a job at BTF? Let’s get you ready. 💼

This year, we’ve partnered with Monzo, Bloomberg and Just Eat Takeaway to host Pitch Perfect: Investing in You, an exclusive pre-BTF event for BTF ticket holders only designed specifically to help job seekers prepare to find their next opportunity.

📅 Date: Tuesday 29th September
🕕 Time: Doors open at 5:30pm
📍 Location: Central London

The job market has changed. Getting in front of the right hiring teams is only part of the challenge. You also need to know how to approach them, what they’re looking for and how to turn a conversation into a career opportunity.

Join speakers from Monzo, Just Eat and Bloomberg for a panel discussion and practical workshop focused on helping you prepare to meet recruiters and hiring teams at BTF. 

We'll cover:

• How hiring teams actually assess candidates beyond the CV

• How to approach recruiters and hiring teams at BTF

• How to clearly communicate your skills and experience when meeting potential employers

• How to prepare before BTF so you know who you want to meet and what opportunities you're looking for

• How to follow up after meeting a hiring team and turn a conversation into a potential opportunity

🚨 BTF ticket holders only🚨

This is a closed event exclusively for BTF 2026 ticket holders. You cannot attend Pitch Perfect without a valid BTF ticket.

When registering for Pitch Perfect, you'll be asked to provide the email address used to purchase your BTF ticket. We'll verify your ticket before confirming your place at the event.

Are you a technologist working on something ambitious - or sitting on a technical idea you think could become much bigger?

Spend two weeks in San Francisco this October with a small group of exceptional individuals, meeting founders, operators and investors at the frontier.

Surface is an in-person residency designed to accelerate what you do next - through proximity to the right people, ideas and opportunities. You’ll meet people from organisations like a16z, Anthropic and OpenAI, alongside investors who backed Figma, Notion, Plaid, Brex and Kalshi and more.

No equity. taken Accommodation arranged. Travel support available.

Apply by 12pm GMT, 20 September 2026.

50% off Civo Navigate London 2026- exclusively for the Colorintech community members 

We've teamed up with Civo Navigate London 2026 to give you an exclusive discount to one of the UK's biggest cloud and AI conferences.

Civo Navigate brings together 800+ developers, engineers, founders, and technology leaders for a full day of learning and connection. This year's event is on 22 September in Central London and features 20+ industry speakers including keynote speaker Kelsey Hightower covering topics like AI, cloud-native technology, platform engineering, digital sovereignty and so much more! 

Register here and use code CIT50 at checkout for 50% off your ticket. 

😃What we are consuming😃

💸Mistral raises a big cheque

🚽Restroom archive