Lifeboat Foundation

Impressive value.

According to data, bitcoin’s market cap is currently over $1 trillion. The digital coin went from zero to $1 trillion in network value 3.6 times faster than Microsoft.

Bitcoin also achieved a higher valuation than the world’s three biggest banks combined, when it hit an all-time high of $61700 last week, as its market cap approached roughly $1.15 trillion. The combined market cap of JPMorgan, Bank of America and The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is $1.08 trillion.

GUANGZHOU, China — Baidu has raised money for its artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor business at a valuation of $2 billion, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.

It comes as the Chinese search giant looks to diversify its revenue streams.

The funding round was led by CPE, a Chinese asset management and private equity firm, the person said. Venture capital companies IDG and Legend Capital were also involved. A fund under Chinese investment company Oriza Holdings also participated in the round.

By the middle of the decade, the team from PsiQuantum will have a commercial quantum computer, according to the Financial Times. The founders are also indicating they are ready to emerge from stealth.

PsiQuantum has been mostly silent about its quantum computer development but with its scientific bench composed of leading UK physicists and nearly $300 million in venture capital funding, according to The Quantum Insider, that silence has been deafening.

Check out “How Watson Works here.”

Is it possible to live forever by using narrow AI that can perform faster and smarter than humans? Having a doctor give you the correct diagnosis and treatment plan only happens on average, 54% of the time, as the New England Journal of Medicine has pointed out. Having Watson instantly diagnose you with the correct diagnosis and treatment plan 95% of the time will become the new standard. Our crop of new personal medicine products such as continual internal diagnostics, synthetic immune systems, virtual assistants, and regenerative medicine will diagnose and stop sickness from ever occurring while constantly rebuilding and improving body and mind capabilities.

IBM has made a series of Watson computer systems so that any company can raise their industries products and services far beyond our human capability. IBM’s Watson was first featured to the public with its historic Jeopardy win over Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter the best human Jeopardy players. At the time, Watson contained 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content in a ninety server computing system with an analytical software IBM designed called DeepQA. Now, the financial markets, medicine, insurance companies, government, engineering, and customer service call centers are employing (buying) Watson is an artificial intelligence system, that can be specifically tailored to any digitized industry and quickly evolve their industries potential.

Creating 200 billion-plus brand-new red blood cells a day can take a toll on a body. The capacity to replace components charged with the life-sustaining task of carrying oxygen eventually wears out with aging, resulting in health problems, from anemia to blood cancers.

What if we could halt the aging process and maintain young blood cells for life? With blood cells making up a whopping 90% of the body’s cells, it makes sense that keeping them abundant and fit could boost vitality into our golden years.

Now, a group of researchers, including experts at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, has discovered ways to do just that – keep the blood manufacturing process flowing. The work, recently published in the journal Nature, could open doors to everything from disease-preventive therapies to better blood banks.

Advocates contend central bank digital currencies can make cross-border transactions easier, promote financial inclusion and provide payment system stability. There are also privacy and surveillance risks with government-issued digital currencies. And in times of economic uncertainty, people may be more likely to pull their funds from commercial banks, accelerating a bank run.

Intense interest in cryptocurrencies and the Covid-19 pandemic have sparked debate among central banks on whether they should issue digital currencies of their own.

China has been in the lead in developing its own digital currency. It’s been working on the initiative since 2014. Chinese central bank officials have already conducted massive trials in major cities including Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou.

Continue reading “Central banks around the world want to get into digital currencies—here’s why” »

Archer Aviation, the electric aircraft startup that recently announced a deal to go public via a merger with a blank-check company, plans to launch a network of its urban air taxis in Los Angeles by 2024.

The announcement comes two months after the formation of the Urban Air Mobility Partnership, a one-year initiative between Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and Urban Movement Labs to develop a plan for how to integrate urban aircraft into existing transportation networks and land use policies. Urban Movement Labs, launched in November 2019, is a public-private partnership involving local government and companies to develop, test and deploy transportation technologies. Urban Movement Labs and the city of Los Angeles are working on the design and access of “vertiports,” where people can go to fly on an “urban air mobility” aircraft. Urban air mobility, or UAM, is industry-speak for a highly automated aircraft that can operate and transport passengers or cargo at lower altitudes within urban and suburban areas.

Archer Aviation’s announcement comes two weeks since it landed United Airlines as a customer and an investor in its bid to become a publicly traded company via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Archer Aviation reached an agreement in early February to merge with special purpose acquisition company Atlas Crest Investment Corp., an increasingly common financial path that allows the startup to eschew the once traditional IPO process. The combined company, which will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange with ticker symbol “ACHR,” will have an equity valuation of $3.8 billion.

Recogni, a startup developing a perception system for autonomous vehicles, has raised $48.9 million in venture capital.

TOKYO — SoftBank Group has urged some of its high-profile portfolio companies to accelerate plans for stock market listings, telling them they should capitalize on strong investor appetite for the booming tech sector.

The Japanese tech investment group led by Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son hopes many of the businesses in its nearly $100 billion Vision Fund will tap the bullish sentiment for tech companies after the coronavirus pandemic, sources familiar with SoftBank’s strategy say.