Pouring gas on the bonfire of news tech, Google recently announced that it has distributed more than €27 million ($30 million) into projects spanning the European news tech scene.

The fund’s goal is to ‘help stimulate innovation in digital journalism’ over the next three years, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai said at an event in Paris last week. This batch of project endowments is the first from a €150 million ($167 million) fund the company announced last year.

Another recipient of project funding is the German startup Spectrm. It will use the funds to build an artificial intelligence engine to help publishers communicate directly with readers via instant messaging apps.

The first round of contributions is distributed across startups in 23 different European countries, with the largest project investments made in Germany, the UK, Spain, France and Belgium.