Gm. I’m writing this during the Bills-Chiefs game. My nails are all gone.

— Stephen Flanders

🏠 AI

The Altman Lab

Everyone knows that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the end goal for OpenAI. Right now, AGI has two major headwinds:

• Nobody knows how to build it.

• There isn’t enough compute to build it.

Altman seems pretty confident that the first hurdle will eventually be cleared, so he is now locking in on the compute problem.

His solution?

Raising billions to build a network of chip-building factories. Basically, an American version of TSMC.

For those who don’t know, this is an absolutely herculean task. It takes billions of dollars and potentially years to build even one state-of-the-art facility. It’s why Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all design their own chips and farm out the manufacturing and Meta is hustling to stockpile Nvidia chips.

If OpenAI is able to succeed, however, the rewards would be immense. OpenAI’s the leader now, but they aren’t guaranteed to be the leader forever. Open source is coming, and the lack of hardware is concerning. If Apple is able to get in the game and throw their own model on all of their devices, OpenAI might be in some trouble.

But if Altman is able to build a vertically integrated AI powerhouse with chips and personal hardware devices?

That’s a company that might be able to stay the leader.

The Big Picture: Sam Altman is aware of OpenAI’s limitations. It’s hard to bet against his ability to address them.

🤝 THE LATEST IN…

TECH

• The Vision Pro is having a tough time attracting apps.

• TikTok is messing around with an AI song generator.

• “Google search is not all AI spam!” - Google.

• Apple’s going to be busy in the coming months.

AI

• Two DeepMind scientists are leaving to form a new startup, and they raised $218M to do so.

• The DOJ and FTC both want a piece of the Microsoft OpenAI partnership.

• Elon’s xAI has raised $500M.

• Stability AI unveiled a smaller, more efficient LLM.

SCIENCE

• A cancer vaccine is nearing stage 3 trials.

• Japan has joined the moon club.

• Let’s build some nuclear cargo ships.

• AlphaFold is out here finding thousands of psychedelics.

CRYPTO

• China is starting to lock-in on the Metaverse.

• Grayscale is absolutely dumping on our heads.

• BlackRock now wants to open up their ETF to spot options trading. 

• Hong Kong finance firm VSFG is looking to join the ETF party.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

Raise: Perovskite solar startup Tandem PV announced it has raised $27 million in venture capital and government support and will use the funds to advance R&D and build its first manufacturing facility.

Stat: 60,000: How many acres the tech-backed California Forever has bought to build a new California city.

Rabbit hole: The “errors” that mean you’re doing it right (A Smart Bear)

🤩 MONDAY MOTIVATION

Can you hear the music?

🧠 POLL

Surprising results on last week’s poll:

For this week:

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