Musk sees Nvidia like a beautiful Thanksgiving Turkey, to be devoured
Advanced Computing, AI/ML, Chips, and Extended Reality
Good morning,
Welcome back to the land of the living from your tryptophan-induced coma. We hope you had a great chance to reflect on the things for which you’re grateful in this world. We’re grateful for you, our readers! You’re why we do this.
So, here we are in December, which means that VC activity will drop off dramatically through the holidays. But tech stops for no one; which means, we’ll be here still pumping out the most important news around the intersections of deep technology, finance, and national policy.
So, zip up your snowsuits, grab your hot cocoa and let’s dig in to the news around Quantum Tech, AI, and Nanotech before hitting the slopes!
News Headlines:
Stealth destroyer to be home for 1st hypersonic weapon on a U.S. warship (AP)
3 Americans return home as part of China-U.S. prisoner swap deal (AP)
High-ranking Chinese military official under investigation (AP)
Quantum Tech:
DoD looks to quantum for GPS without space (ASF)
Senate advances bill to boost QC research (QI)
Telefonica Germany tests quantum technologies in pilot with AWS (RT)
Scientists propose method to overcome ‘daylight noise’, paving way for scaling quantum communications (PH)
New architecture dramatically improves error correction efficiency in quantum computers (PM)
AI / ML
Trump eyes creation of AI ‘czar’ (AX)
OpenAI, while still dominant, appears to be losing its edge in the AI market (AX)
The AI war was never just about AI (TA)
Amazon develops video AI model, hedging its reliance on Anthropic (TI)
Microsoft denies training AI models on user data (RT)
Nanotech, Nanomaterials, Chips
Latest U.S. strike on China’s chips hits semiconductor toolmakers (RT)
Sweeping export controls make it way harder for China to build its own AI chips (WI)
U.S. finalizes reduced chips manufacturing award for Intel, at $7.86B (RT)
Elon Musk’s hunger for chips is taxing Nvidia’s capacity to make them (BI)
German government plans billions of euros in new chip subsidies (BBG)
XR / AR / VR
Virtual reality extends into taste with virtual flavor lollipop (AT)
Pimax introduces ‘world’s first’ redina-level VR headset (XRT)
Western components discovered in Russia’s rare Merlin-VR drone (IO)
Deal Flow:
VC
SoftBank is seeking to acquire $1.5B in OpenAI secondary shares (RT)
a16z is in talks to lead $200M round in Black Forest Labs, startup behind AI images on Grok (BBG)
Akhetonics raises a $6.33M seed round led by Matterwave Ventures for a contrarian bet on all-optical chips (TC)
Ultra low-power AI chip company Neuronova raised a $1.58M pre-seed round led by Antler VC (SB)
Opportunities:
Pentagon drafts large-scale government AI contract worth up to $15B over 10 years, designed to allow services to buy multiple capabilities (SAM)
The Air Force is looking for mixed reality simulation support (SAM)
Editor's Picks:
AI is promising a more exact prediction of the day you’ll die.
Lighter Side:
Keep Building,
BOF