👓 Meta's AR Leap, 💎 AI Agents Advance, and 🧠 The Brain's Hidden Microbiome
Thomas's Innovation Wrap #97
Greetings,
Here’s your weekly wrap of technology, innovation, and finance news.
👓 Virtual and Augmented Reality
Meta's Connect 2024 event unveiled Orion, a prototype for fully holographic AR glasses. Mark Zuckerberg touted them as "the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen," capable of overlaying holograms onto the real world. The prototype boasts a 70-degree field of view, weighs under 100 grams, and features a neural interface for brain signal interaction.
Described as "the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen," the Orion frames are genuinely very close to just being a normal pair of glasses, which is something even many of the current best smart glasses don't achieve.
This marks an exciting milestone as it's the first time an AR prototype seems poised for more seamless integration into daily life, potentially overcoming the clunky user experience that has limited widespread adoption of VR/AR technologies.
While Orion is still years from market (with current prototypes reportedly costing $10,000 to make), it offers a glimpse of a future where AR could be truly usable at scale. This push is strategically crucial for Meta, as Zuckerberg aims to secure a stronger position in the next platform shift after losing out in the transition from PC to mobile.
Meta also announced updates to its Ray-Ban smart glasses and introduced the Quest 3S, a $299 mixed-reality headset, further expanding its AR/VR ecosystem.
"If they manage to create an AI solution that actually works very well, then having glasses in that situation makes a lot of sense. You can see the road to mass adoption more clearly with glasses than with VR headsets."
Cleo Abram recently interviewed Mark Zuckerberg on the future he's trying to build (47-minute video).
(on AI) It's totally possible that at some point we just like hit a limit and, just like previous systems, there's an asymptote and it doesn't keep on growing. But it's also possible that that limit is not going to happen anytime soon and that we're going to be able to keep on just building more clusters and generating more synthetic data, train the systems, and that they're just going to keep on getting more and more useful for people for quite a while to come. And it's a really big and high-stakes question.
(That's also a good summary of the NVIDIA bull and bear case, h/t @RichardJarc.)
💎 Artificial Intelligence
I enjoyed this 9-minute video of a talk from Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke. In it, he discusses how he uses AI agents to help prepare talks and other tasks. Lütke's talk references two fascinating papers:
Generative Agents - Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior (Aug 2023)
Agent Hospital - A Simulacrum of Hospital with Evolvable Medical Agents (May 2024)
Building on this concept, Convergence, a London-based startup founded by ex-Shopify engineers, has raised a $12 million pre-seed round to develop personal AI agents with long-term memory capabilities.
"Our models have the ability to manage their own memories, decide to add things to their memories during inference time, and also delete things from their memory," Purtorab told TNW.
OpenAI is rolling out its Advanced Voice Mode to Plus and Team users. As the company prepares to transition into a for-profit corporation, it faces internal tensions with some high-profile departures, including its CTO, Mira Murati.
In Hollywood, an AI script editor called Callaia is analysing screenplays, Discovery Max is using Google's Gen AI to create closed captions, and James Cameron has joined the board of Stability AI.
"I was at the forefront of CGI over three decades ago, and I've stayed on the cutting edge since. Now, the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave."
Moveworks has achieved $100 million in annual recurring revenue by automating mundane workplace tasks. Their AI tool handles everything from IT troubleshooting to PTO requests, helping over 5 million employees across 350 companies, including GitHub and Toyota.
Harvard researchers have developed TxGNN, a free AI model that aims to improve drug repurposing and discovery (see the paper). The model can predict new uses for existing drugs and identify potential treatments for rare diseases, even those it hasn't been trained on.
TxGNN is the first AI model specifically developed to identify drug candidates for rare diseases and conditions with no treatments and represents the largest number of diseases that any single AI model can handle to date.
Duolingo is going all-in on AI. The company has launched new AI-powered features, including interactive "video calls" with AI characters and a mini-game called Adventures, as part of its $30/month Duolingo Max subscription tier. The stock recently reached all-time highs.
Chatting with Lily allows people to practice conversing in other languages as if FaceTiming with an AI friend, with dialogue generated by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model.
The race for AI talent is intensifying, with Google reportedly striking a $2.7 billion deal to bring back former employee Noam Shazeer. This deal involves licensing technology from Shazeer's startup, Character.ai, and bringing him back to lead work on Google's Gemini AI.
Meanwhile, AI startups are generating revenue faster than previous generations of tech companies, reaching millions in sales within a year.
📚 Regulation
Europe's stringent regulations might be putting it at risk of missing out on the AI revolution. A group of companies and researchers warn EU policymakers that fragmented regulation could leave Europe trailing behind in AI innovation, particularly in open models and multimodal AI systems. This concern is evident as Europeans are already being locked out of cutting-edge AI features, including OpenAI's new Advanced Voice mode and Meta's Llama 3.2 model with vision capabilities.
🌞 Energy
In nuclear news, a recent US Department of Energy study identified 269GW of potential new nuclear capacity at former coal and nuclear sites. Tech giants are increasingly turning to nuclear power for their data centres, while Apple has broadened its clean energy definition to include nuclear, signalling a shift in industry perception.
"It's only recently that people have come to appreciate the importance of [nuclear power] from a reliability perspective," Kathleen Barrón, executive vice president and chief strategy officer for Constellation, told Semafor during an event at Climate Week in New York City.
In solar, First Solar has launched a $1.1 billion solar factory in Alabama, while innovative tandem solar cells have achieved a record-breaking 33.89% efficiency. These cutting-edge cells could capture 60% more solar energy than current commercial panels, potentially reducing installation costs and land requirements.
The new record-breaking tandem cells can capture an additional 60 percent of solar energy. This means fewer panels are needed to produce the same energy, reducing installation costs and the land (or roof area) required for solar farms.
💊 Health
The FDA has approved Cobenfy, the first new schizophrenia drug in 70 years, targeting acetylcholine instead of dopamine.
Researchers have discovered that our brains have their own microbiome, potentially reshaping our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases. This unexpected microbial community may play a crucial role in conditions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
"The past 20 years has seen a switch from thinking that the human body is some kind of sterile entity to realising that microbes are everywhere," says Richard Lathe at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Harvard scientists have developed a $25 nasal spray that is 99% effective against respiratory infections (in mice; see the paper).
"the nasal spray reduced the load of viruses and bacteria — including Influenza A and B, SARS-CoV-2, RSV, adenovirus and a bacterial form of pneumonia — by over 99.99% and persisted in the nose for eight hours," Harvard's Jeffrey Karp tells MarketWatch.
Stem cell treatments are showing promise in preventing disease and slowing aging.
🛰️ Space
Scientists have simulated a nuclear explosion near an asteroid using Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine, the world's most powerful X-ray generator. This experiment demonstrated a potential method to deflect city-killer sized space rocks.
Complementing this, two next-gen telescopes promise to improve asteroid detection. NASA's NEO Surveyor and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory aim to identify 90% of city-killer asteroids within a decade of launch.
There are roughly 14,000 near-Earth asteroids with city-flattening potential still out there to be found.
Deep Blue Aerospace, a Chinese space startup, conducted an impressive high-altitude test of its Nebula-1 rocket. While not entirely successful, the company showed considerable transparency by releasing a detailed statement about the test flight, its objectives, a preliminary review of what went wrong, along with footage shot from nearby drones.
This is some of the most incredible rocket footage I've ever seen and a welcome new trend toward transparency from Chinese space companies.
🧱 Advanced Materials
Chemists at the University of Tokyo have observed a new type of chemical bond, involving just one electron instead of the usual two or more. This discovery could lead to new families of materials and reshape our understanding of molecular structures.
In a blend of biology and engineering, University of Washington scientists have created 3D-printed pipes inspired by shark intestines. These biomimetic pipes outperform existing designs in controlling fluid flow, with potential applications ranging from microfluidics to large-scale industrial processes. Interestingly, pipes made from soft, deformable polymers yielded even better results, highlighting the importance of material choice in biomimetic design.
💻 Chips and Computing
Micron Technology reported strong financial results, with revenue increasing 93% year-on-year to US$7.75 billion, driven by demand for AI products. NVIDIA is preparing for mass deployment of its Blackwell GB200 AI servers in December, with tech giants like Microsoft and Meta as early customers.
India's semiconductor industry is gaining momentum, with PSMC and Tata Electronics investing $11 billion in India's first 12-inch wafer factory. The US Space Force is partnering with India on a next-gen microchip factory, while Tokyo Electron plans to train engineers in the country.
The investment in India's first 12-inch wafer fab is expected to reach $11 billion, with a monthly production capacity of 50,000 wafers, creating over 20,000 local high-tech jobs.
Samsung faces challenges in chip manufacturing, with yield issues causing key component exodus. Its 3nm process achieved only a 20% yield rate in Q3 2024, far below the 60% needed for large-scale production. The company has also split from Naver on an AI accelerator project, opting for independent development.
⚛️ Quantum Mechanics and Computing
Scientists at CERN have observed quantum entanglement between quarks for the first time using the Large Hadron Collider. This groundbreaking observation opens new avenues for studying quantum information in high-energy particle physics.
"It is really interesting because it's the first time you can study entanglement at the highest possible energies obtained with the LHC," says Giulia Negro, a particle physicist at Purdue University.
Meanwhile, in quantum computing, researchers have proposed a scalable, modular approach to building quantum processors. This method links qubits over long distances without matching their original frequencies, potentially solving a major hurdle in scaling up quantum computers.
"Each qubit in a quantum computer operates at a specific frequency. Realizing the capabilities unique to a quantum computer relies on being able to control each qubit individually via a distinct frequency, as well as to link pairs of qubits by matching their frequencies," said Srinivasa, director of URI's Quantum Information Science program and an assistant professor of physics.
🔗 Blockchain and Crypto
Major financial institutions are exploring blockchain technology for certain transactions. Siemens AG issued €100,000 of digital commercial paper using JPMorgan's Onyx platform, completing the process in 93 seconds. Guggenheim Treasury Services tokenised $20 million on Ethereum, partnering with Zeconomy. These actions reflect the growing $12 billion market for tokenising real-world assets (RWA).
"As clearly demonstrated by the ETFs approval and the growth of the tokenization space, there is a massive demand for these digital assets, and we want to enable our partners so they can be at the forefront of what could be a transformative moment in the financial industry," he said.
In the stablecoin market, Robinhood and Revolut are considering launching their own versions. As the EU prepares to implement new crypto rules, the $170 billion sector currently dominated by Tether's USDT may see changes.
"Many businesses have looked at the likes of Circle and Tether and the figures they've posted," said Thomas Eichenberger, chief product officer at Swiss crypto bank Sygnum, in an interview. "It sounded like a beautiful business model, and there are many out there that might want to replicate that."
▶️ Streaming
YouTube's DIY content creators are challenging traditional media giants, now accounting for 10% of American TV viewing. Turns out, in-depth discussions about rocket engine turbopumps can rival the latest Netflix drama in popularity.
YouTube accounts for a tenth of all the television that Americans watch, more than any other streamer or channel. And much of that audience is young, building viewing habits that may last for decades.
TikTok is expanding subscriptions to non-Live creators, offering tiered options with perks like exclusive content and private communication channels.
⚙️ Mobility
Chinese EV makers are investing heavily in advanced driver assistance systems to compete with Tesla, with an estimated 1 million Level 3 autonomous vehicles expected on Chinese roads by 2026. Meanwhile, Uber is partnering with WeRide to launch robotaxis in Abu Dhabi.
Shimano's AI-powered gear shifting system aims to optimise cycling without the weight of e-bike batteries.
Spain is pioneering high-speed hydrogen-powered trains, offering a zero-carbon alternative to traditional electric trains without the need for expensive overhead catenary infrastructure. This innovation could make high-speed rail more accessible in less densely populated areas.
The future of air travel includes plans for over 1,000 eVTOL vertiports by 2028 and radical new aircraft designs for improved fuel efficiency. These designs include longer, thinner wings, blended wing-body configurations, and open-fan engines, potentially reducing fuel consumption by up to 30% compared to current models.
🤩 Advertising
TikTok is expanding its advertising options with "TikTok Search Ads Campaign", allowing brands to target its search results page through TikTok Ads Manager.
TikTok's own research shows that more and more people are using its app as a search engine, as the company says that 57% of its users utilize its search functionality and that 23% of users search for something within 30 seconds of opening up the app.
🎮 Gaming
Indie game developers are embracing generative AI to create more lifelike NPCs and responsive game worlds. For example, Jam & Tea Studios' game "Retail Mage" uses AI to power NPCs that can engage in improvisational dialogue and react dynamically to player choices. In this magical furniture store simulation, AI enables characters to examine items, deconstruct objects, and even flirt with customers, creating a more immersive experience.
"It is truly going to feel like the world's alive and like everything really reacts to exactly what's happening," he said. "That's going to add tremendous realism."
Ubisoft issued a profit warning and delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows, drawing harsh criticism from analysts and sending shares to a decade-low. One investor is pushing for the company's sale.
⚡ Other Snippets
ING Groep NV is using AI to price currencies, outperforming human traders and freeing up an entire person's workload. Simon Bevan, ING's global head of electronic trading, says:
"This model completely takes care of that and has performed way beyond our expectations, it has definitely outperformed a human."
A study reveals that AI-manipulated media can significantly distort human memories, with false memory rates reaching 40%. Researcher Samantha Chan warns:
In the future it might be automatic," she says. "I think the worst part here, that we need to be aware or concerned about, is when the user isn't aware of it. We definitely have to be aware and work together with these companies, or have a way to mitigate these effects.
Scientists have developed artificial spider silk for wound healing, showing promise in treating joint injuries and diabetic skin lesions in mice.
In agriculture, the world's first large-scale indoor vertical strawberry farm has opened in Virginia, producing 4 million pounds of strawberries annually on less than an acre. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin commented:
"Plenty's farm will boost local agriculture production and drive economic development, all while diversifying against risks and protecting the environment," said Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. "We look forward to supporting their innovative approaches to revolutionising the industry."
Andreessen Horowitz writes about how anime is becoming a global entertainment powerhouse:
We’re excited about how anime is shaping the future of interactivity through its embrace of new technologies and business models: from AI agents to UGC platforms, from artistry tools to novel game mechanics, from interactive VTubing to new anime platforms. It’s clear that the best is yet to come for current and future anime fans.
Have a great week,
Thomas
About Thomas Rice
Thomas Rice co-founded Minotaur Capital, a technology-driven, AI-led global equities fund, and is based in Sydney, Australia. He can be found on the X at @thomasrice_au.