Latest news with #Nous
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE How much will YOUR energy bill drop this summer? Interactive calculator reveals how gas and electricity bills will fall from July
A new online calculator has revealed how much your energy bill will fall this summer as experts hailed the reduction as a 'glimmer of good news' for households. Ofgem confirmed today that energy bills will drop by 7 per cent from July - impacting the bills of 35million households on a variable rate for their gas and electricity. The typical bill will drop by £129 to £1,720 per year under the new price cap, which sets the limit on how much firms can charge customers per unit of energy. The fall is welcome news to struggling families still battling the cost-of-living crisis after a spike in the rate of inflation, which rose to 3.5 per cent last month. The price cap covering England, Wales and Scotland does not limit total bills because householders still pay for the amount of energy they consume. But households can now get an idea of the amount by which their bills will fall, thanks to a widget from AI household money saving firm Greg Marsh, chief executive and co-founder Nous, said: 'Falling energy prices offer a glimmer of good news to households still struggling with the rising cost of living. 'Unfortunately this isn't enough to counteract the impact of 'Awful April'. 'Our Nous research found a typical household was left £451 worse off as a result of energy, water, council tax, mobile, broadband and entertainment subscriptions all shooting up last month. 'With all of us losing out on such significant sums, it's crucial we don't end up overpaying on our bills. Unfortunately, almost all of us are.' He added that 'staying on top of our contracts takes up valuable time and energy', with many people not realising 'they were paying far more than they needed to'. The July price cap is £660 (28 per cent) lower than at the height of the energy crisis at the start of 2023 when the government implemented the energy price guarantee. However, prices remain elevated with the upcoming level £152 (10 per cent) higher than the same period last year. Ahead of the next rise, the price cap since April is currently set at around £1,849 for a typical household after three consecutive increases in bills. But it is now going to fall after US President Donald Trump 's aggressive tariff plans led to a significant slump in gas and oil prices. Q&A: What is the energy price cap and how does it work? What is the energy price cap? The price cap sets a maximum price that energy suppliers can charge consumers in England, Scotland and Wales for each kilowatt hour (kWh) of energy they use. Regulator Ofgem changes the cap for households every three months, largely based on the cost of energy on wholesale markets. What is the update today? The typical bill will drop by £129 to £1,720 per year when the regulator's 7 per cent drop in the price cap comes into force in July. How does this compare to before? The latest level is £660 (28 per cent) lower than at the height of the energy crisis at the start of 2023 when the government implemented the energy price guarantee. However, prices remain elevated with the upcoming level £152 (10 per cent) higher than the same period last year. How do actual bills vary? The price cap does not limit total bills because householders still pay for the amount of energy they consume. The figures given are just for an average bill. How long has the cap existed? The cap was introduced by the Government in January 2019. What about other bills? Households have endured an 'awful April' of bill rises, including Ofgem's last 6.4 per cent price cap increase. Britons were also hit with the biggest increase to water bills since at least February 1988, alongside steep rises across bills for council tax, mobile and broadband tariffs, as well as road tax. Bill increases have led to Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation jumping to 3.5 per cent in April, up from 2.6 per cent in March and the highest since January 2024. Should you move onto a fixed deal? Which? urged households still on a price cap-linked standard tariff to consider moving to a fixed deal. The consumer group recommends looking for deals cheaper than the price cap, not longer than 12 months and without significant exit fees. Those on a fixed deal which will be more expensive than the July price cap are advised to check their exit fees and consider switching if they are on a deal with no charges to leave early. However, the predicted drop is slightly less than the previously forecast 9 per cent fall following an easing of trade tensions in recent weeks. Cornwall Insight said it expects the reduced price cap to be followed by a 'modest drop' this October and another similar dip in January next year. The price cap does not limit total bills because householders still pay for the amount of energy they consume. However, news of a fall in energy costs will come as a relief for households, who suffered through an 'awful April' of bill rises, including Ofgem's last 6.4 per cent price cap increase. Under-pressure households have also been hit with the biggest increase to water bills since at least February 1988, alongside steep rises across bills for council tax, mobile and broadband tariffs, as well as road tax. Bill increases have led to Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation jumping to 3.5 per cent in April, up from 2.6 per cent in March and the highest since January 2024. Tim Jarvis, director general of markets at Ofgem, said: 'A fall in the price cap will be welcome news for consumers, and reflects a reduction in the international price of wholesale gas. 'However, we're acutely aware that prices remain high, and some continue to struggle with the cost of energy. 'The first thing I want to remind people is that you don't have to pay the price cap - there are better deals out there so it's important to shop around, and talk to your existing supplier about the best deal they can offer you. 'And changing your payment method to direct debit or smart pay as you go can save you up to £136. 'In the longer term, we need an energy system where prices are insulated from the volatile international gas market, and which ensures more stable prices and energy security. 'And we're working closely with government to get the investment we need to reach our clean power and net zero targets as quickly as possible. 'We're also doing everything we can to support consumers today and pushing ahead with more changes to help consumers. 'This includes working on ways to support those trapped in energy debt and bringing in reforms to standing charge tariffs for this winter.' Ofgem changes the price cap for households every three months, largely based on the cost of energy on wholesale markets. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said the fall in energy bills from July is welcome but stressed that the Government will continue to work towards clean energy to get off the 'rollercoaster of fossil fuel markets'. 'This fall in energy bills is welcome news for families across the country and will mean that working people keep more of their money in the coming months. 'However, we know that it is only through our mission for clean, homegrown power that we can get off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel markets controlled by dictators and petrostates - and give families and businesses energy security and bring down bills for good. 'As we take back control, we are doing everything we can to support people - from consulting on expanding the £150 warm home discount to around six million households next winter, to upgrading thousands of homes so they are warmer and cost less to heat, to reforming our energy market so consumers are better protected.' The energy price cap was introduced by the Government in January 2019 and sets a maximum price that energy suppliers can charge consumers in England, Scotland and Wales for each kilowatt hour (kWh) of energy they use. Citizens Advice chief executive Clare Moriarty said: 'This drop in energy prices will ease the burden of high bills for some households. 'But the Government must not lose perspective: bills will still be 52 per cent higher than before the energy crisis and nearly seven million people live in households that have fallen behind on bills. 'Today's announcement will be cold comfort to the millions paying off a mountain of debt on top of their monthly costs. Why you should still consider moving off standard tariffs and onto better deals MailOnline's financial expert Simon Lambert, publisher of This is Money, says that although the energy price cap has fallen, households should still consider moving off standard tariffs and onto better deals. He said: 'The energy price cap was designed as a backstop to prevent households who didn't switch energy bills from being hugely overcharged but ended up being a vital protection in the energy crisis, when the ability to find new fixed rate deals vanished. 'However, that's not the case anymore. There are a raft of fixed rate energy gas and electricity deals that are much cheaper than the energy price cap and people should seriously consider switching. 'Not only could you save up to £200 a year on the new price cap, but you will lock in their energy at a lower rate and protect yourself against any potential hikes next autumn and winter.' This is Money's regularly updated round-up of the best fixed energy deals that beat the price cap, can help you compare costs. 'The Government has said it hopes to provide more support to pensioners this winter but we know that people with children are often struggling most of all with energy. 'It must provide more targeted energy bill support to those hardest hit, and upgrade five million homes with money-saving energy efficiency measures.' And Simon Francis, coordinator of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said: 'The Government's reverse ferret on Winter Fuel Payments are a clear sign that ministers know that people are struggling with energy bills - but sticking-plaster solutions and U-turns won't help people in the long-term. 'While bills may fall slightly in July, they're still significantly higher than before the energy crisis and remain tied to the unpredictable cost of fossil fuels. 'Without urgent reform and real investment, millions will continue to face unaffordable bills and cold homes.' Which? urged households still on a price cap-linked standard tariff to consider moving to a fixed deal. Natalie Hitchins, Which? home products and services editor, said: 'As a rule of thumb, we'd recommend looking for deals cheaper than the price cap, not longer than 12 months and without significant exit fees. 'If you are on a fixed deal which will be more expensive than the July price cap then it's worth checking your exit fees and considering switching if you are on a deal with no charges to leave early.' Richard Neudegg, director of regulation at Uswitch, said: 'A 7 per cent fall in the price cap from July will reduce the average annual bill by £129 for the millions of customers still sitting on a standard tariff - a welcome break in the clouds in time for summer. 'But the savings from fixed deals are far bigger than this drop. The cheapest fixed deal could save the average household £203 a year compared with the July price cap. 'Millions of homes are already paying cheaper rates than the new July cap, after switching to a fixed deal. 'There are plenty of fixed deals still available that beat both the current and July energy rates. So for households still sitting on a standard tariff linked to the price cap, now is a great moment to lock in fixed savings before the winter gloom returns.'
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Exclusive: Crypto VC giant Paradigm makes $50 million bet on decentralized AI startup Nous Research at $1 billion token valuation
The crypto industry has been fighting to get a piece of the red-hot artificial intelligence sector, but despite some hefty investments, blockchain companies have struggled to break through. That might finally be changing with Nous Research, a decentralized AI startup using the Solana blockchain as a key component in the process it uses to train its open-source models. After operating mostly under the radar for two years, Nous is bursting on the scene with a $50 million Series A round, financed almost entirely by the crypto venture giant Paradigm, which confirmed the funding amount to Fortune. The round values Nous at a token valuation of $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke with Fortune on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential fundraising details. Nous previously raised seed rounds totaling around $20 million from investors including Distributed Global, North Island Ventures, and Delphi Digital. While most projects at the intersection of blockchain and AI have come from crypto-focused startups and struggled to find traction, Nous was founded by a group of AI researchers who decided to use blockchain technology for its coordination and incentive capabilities. The company aims to develop its own open-source models that would compete with the likes of OpenAI and DeepSeek, though Nous is at a much earlier—and more experimental—stage. The other major difference is that Nous seeks to train its models not in a central data center, but in a completely distributed way, harnessing spare computing capacity from people around the world. 'We very much came from a mentality that we want to create and serve the world's best AI,' said cofounder Karan Malhotra in an interview with Fortune. Malhotra described Nous as an open-source research organization, created in 2022 as a group of volunteers who met on social media and software platforms including Discord, GitHub, and Twitter. They started to tinker with existing AI large language models such as Meta's Llama and Mistral to create their own versions, releasing a series of models under the name Hermes that gained popularity in the open-source community. They also began to release research papers around extending the memory of models, which have been cited by Meta and DeepSeek, as well as proposals for training models with GPUs, or graphics processing units, the kind of computer processors used for AI applications, that are not colocated. Nous collaborated with Diederik P. Kingma, a member of the OpenAI founding team, on the research. The breakthrough enabled Nous to create a method for training open-source AI models that would allow people to contribute their own idle computing power—a potential boon for the costly and resource-intensive process. Nous's method works with both industrial and consumer-grade GPUs, though it will start with only allowing people who can tap into data centers to participate. Nous is turning to blockchain technology to drive participation. 'We think of the incentive mechanism behind crypto to push people to actually utilize their idle compute less as a donation but more as a transaction,' Malhotra said. He added that the crypto layer is necessary to de-incentivize bad actors in a distributed training approach, where users could send back inappropriate data that could poison the process. That's because of blockchain's intrinsic features like Byzantine fault tolerance, which allows systems to continue functioning correctly even if specific components are faulty, though questions remain whether Nous's method can fully prevent data poisoning while staying as efficient as training models from a single data center. 'We see crypto as the method that allows us to perform this in a safe way,' Malhotra told Fortune. He acknowledged that the AI community has been broadly skeptical of crypto, largely because there's 'a lot of room for grift,' as he put it. Still, Malhotra described Nous's founding team as 'crypto native,' though he said they were hesitant about adding a blockchain element before their research breakthrough of distributed training. 'We don't want to get kind of bogged down by the traditional view of how crypto operates when we're a very serious research lab and an academic lab,' he told Fortune. '[But] this is really the only way in which we can make such a massive training run and such a democratic thing possible.' Founded by Coinbase's Fred Ehrsam and Sequoia's Matt Huang, Paradigm is one of the largest crypto-native venture firms, with a new fund of $850 million closed last year. Still, after the collapse of its portfolio company FTX in late 2022 and the ensuing crypto downturn, the firm indicated that it would pivot to making more AI-focused investments, drawing scrutiny from crypto entrepreneurs and its own backers. Haung clarified in a 2023 post on Twitter that Paradigm would continue to invest in crypto, though it was exploring the intersection with AI. Nous represents Paradigm's largest bet in the field, though the firm also wrote a much smaller check last year for the startup Vana, which allows users to pool training data through DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations. 'This open, community-oriented approach is a powerful contrast to the closed, centralized efforts from incumbent labs,' said Paradigm partner Arjun Balaji in a statement shared with Fortune. Nous will launch its decentralized training system on the blockchain Solana. Malhotra said the team is actively building the product, though he declined to share a timeline for when it will go live. He said Nous is still deciding whether users will be rewarded with a proprietary token created by the startup or Solana's native cryptocurrency. Nous currently has a 20-odd-person team, with much of the new funding going to compute power, as well as expanding its research capabilities. As the AI industry hurtles forward, Nous is one of the first serious projects to embrace blockchain. 'It's quite clear to me that the ideals of open source and the crypto ethos are extremely aligned in having total transparency, recognizing the importance of the individual, and treating people as a node in themselves,' Malhotra said. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
