Lifeboat Foundation

Petra emerged from stealth this week, announcing a $30 million Series A. The round, led by DCVC, brings the robotics company’s funding up to $33 million, with additional participation from ACME Capital Congruent Ventures, 8VC, Real Ventures, Elementum Ventures and Mac Venture Capital.

“We’ve invented a completely new way to excavate rock and this will have profound implications on the future of tunneling,” co-founder and CEO Kim Abrams said in release tied to the news. “By delivering a boring solution that affordably undergrounds utilities through high-grade rock, we can finally protect communities from exposure to wildfires and ensure the safety of critical infrastructure in disaster-prone areas, especially in places like the Sierra Nevada mountains, Rocky Mountains, and coastal regions.”

The news arrives as the company is announcing a successful pilot of its robot, Swifty. According to the firm, the robot successfully bored a 20-foot tunnel through Sioux Quartzite at a rate of one inch-per-minute. The metamorphic rock is notoriously hard, making it a popular choice for buildings in the upper Midwest region in which it is found. That strength, however, also makes it a formidable challenge from infrastructure and other projects that require tunneling.

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The disclosure is the strongest indication yet that the service is banking on autonomous weapon systems to give it an edge in the increasingly fierce military competition with China.

California-headquartered SunPower (Nasdaq: SPWR) announced today that it’s launched SunPower Financial, which means that customers working with SunPower to buy rooftop solar and storage no longer need a third-party lender to obtain and manage financing.

SunPower claims that it’s now the first and only solar provider to give US homeowners a one-stop shop for the purchase of solar and storage, including design, sales, installation, financing, and warranty.

A key aim of the launch of its financial arm is to expand access to residential solar for lower-income customers.

Bitcoin Vs Gold: Peter Schiff Vs Anthony Scaramucci.

Peter Shiff makes several points about gold:

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The idea of Web 3.0 has been disappointing for Elon Musk and he has referred to it as BS. The reasons are unclear but might be soon unveiled.

TL;DR Breakdown.

Web 2.0 has ensured that the informational needs are fulfilled and has also opened ways for education, finance, banking, health, and other domains. As all these are integrated into a new space, we have the opportunity to see the evolution of the web.

As part of its plan to go carbon-neutral by 2030, Microsoft is considering replacing its diesel backup generators with hydrogen battery storage. The company has successfully kept part of one of its datacenters online for 48 hours on hydrogen power alone.

Datacenters are massive facilities that are usually full of servers and any variety of other computer or telecoms equipment. They might house the daily or even hourly backups from financial institutions and other high-demand users, because the wrong kind of disaster could wipe out a bank’s entire internal network.

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Learn Artificial Intelligence with these online courses

#artificialintelligence … See more.

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Bridging Technology And Medicine For The Modern Healthcare Ecosystem — Dr. Mona G. Flores, MD, Global Head of Medical AI, NVIDIA.

Dr. Mona Flores M.D., is the Global Head of Medical AI, at NVIDIA (https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/author/monaflores/), the American multinational technology company, where she oversees the company’s AI initiatives in medicine and healthcare to bridge the chasm between technology and medicine.

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Expect the semiconductor shortage to last until early 2023, Deloitte said in a new report released Wednesday. By the end of 2022, customers will still be waiting 10 to 20 weeks for multiple kinds of chips, the consulting firm predicts.

While the shortage will continue, it will be less severe, Deloitte says in its Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) 2022 Predictions report. The shortage is also driving fresh investment in the industry, as demand continues to grow. Deloitte predicts that venture capital (VC) firms globally will invest more than US$6 billion in semiconductor companies in 2022. That’s more than 3x larger than VC investment in semiconductors every year between 2000 and 2016.

The ongoing shortage won’t hit the industry evenly, Deloitte notes. Chips made on the most advanced process nodes (3-, 5-, and 7-nanometer) will continue to be in short supply — they’re in high demand and the hardest to make. At the end of the day, Deloitte predicts the shortage will last 24 months before it recedes, similar to the duration of the 2008–2009 chip shortage.