Latest news with #Kiefer
NBC Sports
3 days ago
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Lee Kiefer, Lauren Scruggs lead U.S. women's foil team to world title
The U.S. women's foil team followed its first Olympic title in Paris by winning the world title on Monday. Lee Kiefer, Lauren Scruggs, 16-year-old Jaelyn Liu and Emily Jing combined to win all four rounds, including routing France 45-24 in the final in Tbilisi, Georgia. Kiefer and Scruggs returned from the 2024 Olympic champion team. They also took gold and silver in the individual event in Paris. Kiefer won double gold at both the 2024 Olympics and 2025 Worlds. Last Friday, she earned her first individual world title to go along with team foil gold from 2018. Kiefer, a 31-year-old, four-time Olympian, now has nine career World Championships medals to go with her three Olympic gold medals. She is the second-most decorated fencer in U.S. history behind Mariel Zagunis, who won four Olympic medals and 14 World Championships medals. The World Fencing Championships run through Wednesday. Nick Zaccardi,
The Sun
6 days ago
- Sport
- The Sun
Olympic champion Kiefer finally claims world title
LOCAL hero Sandro Bazadze made history in Tbilisi on Friday, winning Georgia's first-ever World Fencing Championships gold medal in the individual sabre event, while Olympic champion Lee Kiefer secured the United States' first gold in women's foil. Bazadze sent the home crowd into raptures as he secured a commanding 15-9 victory over France's Jean-Philippe Patrice in the final. The two-time European champion earlier dispatched Egypt's Ahmed Hesham, who upset several top seeds on his way to the semi-finals, with a 15-10 win. Meanwhile, three-time Olympic gold medallist Kiefer captured her long-awaited first individual world title with a dominant 15-4 win over France's Pauline Ranvier. She previously overcame third seed Martina Favaretto of Italy 15-10 in the semi-finals. Kiefer, 31, is aiming to become the first woman to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals in foil at the 2028 Los Angeles Games. The championships have been steeped in history-making performances. Earlier in the week, Hong Kong's Choi Ryan became his country's first world champion by defeating Russia's Kirill Bordodachev, competing as a neutral athlete, 15-9 in the men's foil final on Wednesday. Ukrainian Vlada Kharkova added to the drama by claiming the women's epee title in a nail-biting 15-14 victory over two-time Olympic medallist Katrina Lehis of Estonia - REUTERS
Straits Times
6 days ago
- Sport
- Straits Times
Fencing-Olympic champion Kiefer finally claims world title as Georgian Bazadze makes history
Find out what's new on ST website and app. Tokyo 2020 Olympics - Fencing - Men's Individual Sabre - Semifinal - Makuhari Messe Hall B - Chiba, Japan - July 24, 2021. Sandro Bazadze of Georgia reacts during the match REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/ File Photo Local hero Sandro Bazadze made history in Tbilisi on Friday, winning Georgia's first-ever World Fencing Championships gold medal in the individual sabre event, while Olympic champion Lee Kiefer secured the United States' first gold in women's foil. Bazadze sent the home crowd into raptures as he secured a commanding 15-9 victory over France's Jean-Philippe Patrice in the final. The two-time European champion earlier dispatched Egypt's Ahmed Hesham, who upset several top seeds on his way to the semi-finals, with a 15-10 win. Meanwhile, three-time Olympic gold medallist Kiefer captured her long-awaited first individual world title with a dominant 15-4 win over France's Pauline Ranvier. She previously overcame third seed Martina Favaretto of Italy 15-10 in the semi-finals. Kiefer, 31, is aiming to become the first woman to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals in foil at the 2028 Los Angeles Games. The championships have been steeped in history-making performances. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore SMRT to pay lower fine of $2.4m for EWL disruption; must invest at least $600k to boost reliability Singapore MRT service changes needed to modify 3 East-West Line stations on Changi Airport stretch: LTA Singapore S'pore could have nuclear energy 'within a few years', if it decides on it: UN nuclear watchdog chief Asia 'Nothing like this has happened before': At least 16 dead as Thai-Cambodian conflict enters second day Life 'Do you kill children?': Even before independence, S'pore has always loved its over-the-top campaigns Singapore Lung damage, poor brain development, addiction: What vaping does to the body Singapore Tipsy Collective sues former directors, HR head; alleges $14m lost from misconduct, poor decisions Singapore Kopi, care and conversation: How this 20-year-old helps improve the well-being of the elderly Earlier in the week, Hong Kong's Choi Ryan became his country's first world champion by defeating Russia's Kirill Bordodachev, competing as a neutral athlete, 15-9 in the men's foil final on Wednesday. Ukrainian Vlada Kharkova added to the drama by claiming the women's epee title in a nail-biting 15-14 victory over two-time Olympic medallist Katrina Lehis of Estonia. REUTERS
NBC Sports
6 days ago
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Lee Kiefer adds first individual world title to her three Olympic fencing gold medals
Lee Kiefer, the only U.S. fencer to win three Olympic gold medals, won her first individual World Championship in her 12th try. Kiefer won the foil title in Tbilisi, Georgia, routing Frenchwoman Pauline Ranvier 15-4 in the final bout. Kiefer, 31, previously won a team foil world title in 2018, plus individual bronze medals in 2011, 2022 and 2023. She won the last two individual Olympic foil titles, plus team foil gold in Paris. At the 2028 Los Angeles Games, Kiefer can tie the fencing record by winning a third individual Olympic gold medal. Fellow American foil fencer Lauren Scruggs, who took team gold and individual silver in Paris, lost in the round of 16 to Italian Anna Cristino. Earlier at worlds, U.S. Olympic medalists were eliminated in the early rounds: Alexander Massialas (round of 16), Nick Itkin (round of 32) and Gerek Meinhardt (round of 64). Worlds run through next Wednesday, with team finals starting Saturday. Nick Zaccardi,
Forbes
11-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
A Greek-Specific LLM: Kiefer Works On Domestic Intelligence Platform
Church in Oia (Santorini, Greece). A company called Kiefer is embarking on a big challenge: creating an LLM model application specifically for the nation of Greece, an island state with around 10.5 million people, and an old-world place by American standards, at least. Regardless, the whole world is moving into the future – quickly- and according to technologists like Christos, who spoke to me and others recently about the effort, Greece needs its own model. He mentioned a goal that motivates the team: to establish dominance with specific market needs, where linguistic and cultural targeting provides advantages. 'Greek models have superior performance applications with deep understanding of Greek languages, cultural context, and local businesses,' he said, 'because all of our data is based on Greece.' To be sure, it's a tough job. 'We face a lot of issues because of all of the data,' he said. 'It's mostly (in) books that we need to scan and everything that exists on the Internet. It's all Pdfs that you need to curate to extract the data, and after that, to be able to train the model.' There are also headwinds to adoption: Christos cited roughly 9% buy-in, with lower numbers in the government and public sectors. Sovereign AI, Greek Style Under the Hood: What Does Kiefer Use In responding to questions about architecture, Christos said the project uses three different models including one from DeepSeek, which he said was chosen partly because of accuracy, and partly because the model is open source. As for other models, he mentioned Nemotron, and a demo from Google, along with interest in Minimax. Right now, the service is free. But Christos said there's a plan for subscription pricing in the future. 'After we make some implementation (in terms of modalities like) video, we'll start to have a subscription fee per month, which would be lower than the big companies,' he said. Part of that, he added, is to cover costs, like the use of Nvidia hardware. As for the fundamental task, he talked about following the whiplash trends that crop up as innovators stay on the pulse of AI developments. 'It's always something new,' he said. 'We always try to follow the new things in AI. But … if you have a basic structure, for example, if you create your own data, you can follow (best practices) in order to be able for every country, for every person, for every company to create a specific model. It's the data.' He also mentioned the value of iterative research in fine-tuning. 'Because we have already found a specific procedure about how (to do this), it's more easy to implement and to train the next one,' he said. 'We learn from our mistakes, and we win, in time.' Greece and Greek AI There was also an extended discussion on sovereign AI centering around this principle: if those pursuing this kind of national model use the power of international research, can they build stronger, more capable services? The Kiefer team, it seems, is dedicated to building AI systems inside Greece, rather than utilizing outside research assistance – to an extent. While Christopher sounded open to sharing open source data, the overall effort, he suggested, should be kept domestic, for various reasons, including language and culture specific goals, ownership issues, and more. There's also the suggestion of future technology: 'Maybe I want to create a humanoid to help me to collect olives in the future,' he said. 'That's (one reason) why I say it's very important for every country to have the AI.' Data Ownership and IP Issues Christos also indicated that teams are watching the results of IP and data cases like the one with Anthropic, where U.S. judges are ruling on whether authors can sue the company for using book data to train models. Hardware and Humanoids One of the more interesting things that the conversation covered was a Kiefer collab with Unitree for humanoids, using the Nvidia omniverse. Christos didn't give a lot of detail on this, but suggested that Kiefer wants to use its own CPUs and GPUs, and start construction on its AI data centers soon. The infrastructure, he said, will use liquid cooling. He also noted a reliance on Nvidia as a vendor. 'It's not only the GPUs,' he said. 'It's also about software, it's about libraries.' The endgame, he said, is an advanced Greek-language model, to be integrated with Greek universities and other participants, using green token tech and sustainable infrastructure. It's a fascinating example of how nations take initiative right now, with so many choices to make. You can try it at Or feel free to spin it to fit the style of the column articles. Looking forward to it.
