Lifeboat Foundation

Elon Musk has made the argument that Tesla is more of an AI (artificial intelligence) and robotics company. This is another argument in the series of Musk’s insistence that Tesla is not an automotive company. He has been saying for some time now that investors should view Tesla as a group of startups. He says that Tesla’s service centres are a startup, Tesla’s insurance company is a startup, Tesla’s automation group is a startup, etc.

Musk said that eventually, Tesla is going to be as synonymous with AI and robotics as with vehicles and energy. The CEO mentioned this during a conference call about Tesla’s Q1 financial results.

Right now people think of Tesla as a car company or as an energy company. I think long term, people will think of Tesla as much as an AI robotics company as we are a car company or an energy company. I think we are developing one of the strongest hardware and software AI teams in the world.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have been billed as a major disruptor to finance. But digital currencies issued by governments might be even more radical—they may even threaten the future of traditional banking.

Read our special report, “The Future of Banking” : https://econ.st/3tuTT8y.

Continue reading “Could digital currencies put banks out of business? | The Economist” »

Deep-tech healthcare & energy investments for a sustainable future — dr. anil achyuta, investment director / founding member, TDK ventures.

Dr. Anil Achyuta is an Investment Director and a Founding Member at TDK Ventures, which is a deep-tech corporate venture fund of TDK Corporation, the Japanese multinational electronics company that manufactures electronic materials, electronic components, and recording and data-storage media.

Continue reading “Dr. Anil Achyuta — TDK Ventures — Founding Member — Deep-Tech Healthcare And Energy Investments” »

Cryptocurrency can help Africans access the global financial system, writes Akon, artist and founder of Akoin.

Saudi Arabia could save some $200 billion over the next ten years by switching from crude oil to natural gas and renewables for electricity production, Reuters reports, citing the Kingdom’s Finance Minister.

“Instead of buying fuel from the international markets at $60 and then selling it at $6 for Saudi utilities, or using some of our quota in OPEC to sell at $6, we’re going to actually displace at least 1 million barrels a day of oil equivalent in the next 10 years and replace it with gas and renewables,” Mohammed al-Jadaan said.

OPEC’s largest oil producer and world’s largest exporter of crude is on a desperate quest to reduce its dependence on oil revenues by diversifying its economy away from the flagship export stock. Earlier this year, Crown Prince Mohammed, who appears to be the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, announced yet another investment program with a view to this diversification that he said would “unlock new local investments valued at SAR 5 Trillion through the end of 2030.”

In this nearly 4-hour SPECIAL EPISODE, Rob Reid delivers a 100-minute monologue (broken up into 4 segments, and interleaved with discussions with Sam) about the looming danger of a man-made pandemic, caused by an artificially-modified pathogen. The risk of this occurring is far higher and nearer-term than almost anyone realizes.

Rob explains the science and motivations that could produce such a catastrophe and explores the steps that society must start taking today to prevent it. These measures are concrete, affordable, and scientifically fascinating—and almost all of them are applicable to future, natural pandemics as well. So if we take most of them, the odds of a future Covid-like outbreak would plummet—a priceless collateral benefit.

Rob Reid is a podcaster, author, and tech investor, and was a long-time tech entrepreneur. His After On podcast features conversations with world-class thinkers, founders, and scientists on topics including synthetic biology, super-AI risk, Fermi’s paradox, robotics, archaeology, and lone-wolf terrorism. Science fiction novels that Rob has written for Random House include The New York Times bestseller Year Zero, and the AI thriller After On. As an investor, Rob is Managing Director at Resilience Reserve, a multi-phase venture capital fund. He co-founded Resilience with Chris Anderson, who runs the TED Conference and has a long track record as both an entrepreneur and an investor. In his own entrepreneurial career, Rob founded and ran Listen.com, the company that created the Rhapsody music service. Earlier, Rob studied Arabic and geopolitics at both undergraduate and graduate levels at Stanford, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Cairo. You can find him at www.after-on.

Rejuvenate Bio’s treatment is a gene therapy that dials up expression of the genes sTGFbetaR2 and FGF21 to reduce levels of the cytokine TGF-beta1 and boost levels of the hormone FGF21, respectively. Both genes are associated with longevity.

“What we have seen from using a combination of two genes is the ability to affect multiple age-related diseases at once,” Oliver said.

Rejuvenate Bio published data in November 2019 showing that targeting these two genes in mice reduced kidney atrophy and reversed weight gain and Type 2 diabetes. The company had given extra copies of those genes, alone and in combination with each other and another gene called alpha-Klotho to see if they could boost the mice’s health and life spans. It found out that more isn’t necessarily better, as mice that were given all three genes together fared worse than the other animals did.

Interesting initiative (US Smart Cities) that could be applied to space cities.

Jeffrey Berns, CEO of Nevada-based Blockchains LLC, envisions a city where people not only purchase goods and services with digital currency but also log their entire online footprint — financial statements, medical records and personal data — on blockchain. Blockchain is a digital ledger known mostly for recording cryptocurrency transactions but also has been adopted by some local governments for everything from documenting marriage licenses to facilitating elections.

The company wants to break ground by 2022 in rural Storey County, 12 miles (19 kilometers) east of Reno. It’s proposing to build 15000 homes and 33 million square feet (3 million square meters) of commercial and industrial space within 75 years. Berns, whose idea is the basis for draft legislation that some lawmakers saw behind closed doors last week, said traditional government doesn’t offer enough flexibility to create a community where people can invent new uses for this technology.

Continue reading “In Nevada desert, Blockchains LLC aims to be its own municipal government” »

January 25, 2021

CAMBRIDGE, England, Jan. 25, 2021 — Riverlane, a quantum software company, today announces that it has raised $20m in Series A funding to build Deltaflow, its operating system for quantum computers. Over the past year, Riverlane has signed up 20% of the world’s quantum hardware manufacturers to use Deltaflow and will use the funding to expand internationally to the US, Europe and beyond.

The round was led by European technology venture capital fund Draper Esprit, and supported by existing investors, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, and the University of Cambridge.

Continue reading “Quantum Computing Software Specialist Riverlane Secures $20M in Series A Funding” »