Technology

1. Meta chief scientist exits
2. The next $1T (not Musk’s)
3. IBM’s new quantum move
4. ‘Chief quantum skeptic’
5. Can AI build a data center?
6. MAHA supports Elizabeth Holmes

Why the upside from AI seems endless, and how scientists are growing human brain tissue that can respond to electrical signals, like a computer.

The market punished AI stocks like Coreweave and Palantir this week. It seems like the world is convinced that the AI bubble is deflating, and nobody wants to be the last one out.

This isn’t just a Wall Street phenomenon. At every tech dinner I’ve been to lately, a good chunk of the conversation was spent on journalists peppering bullish tech executives about how long this can really last.

And yet, what the executives are saying makes sense. They are selling a product that customers can’t get enough of, and the total addressable market for this product is virtually every person and company on the planet.

And this week, we saw AI companies touting rosy numbers, from AMD CEO Lisa Su predicting the AI compute market will grow to $1 trillion to Anthropic getting profitable by 2028.

One can argue that companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are vulnerable to the commoditization of their AI models. But then, OpenAI has a massive consumer following and is getting into the chip market. Anthropic is building enterprise products that go well beyond the development of the core models.

And you can argue the hyperscalers are building massive data centers that will become obsolete before they turn a profit. On the other hand, as a tech executive mused at a recent event, you never really hear about AI processors being retired. There seems to always be a use for them.

The bottom line is that we’re in a moment of opportunity and uncertainty. The risks are everywhere. The upside is endless.

A note: We wrote last week that Google was planning to build a data center on Australia’s Christmas Island, citing a Reuters report. Google has since denied that report, saying it is “not constructing ‘a large artificial intelligence data centre’ on Christmas Island.” Rather, the project is a “continuation” of its subsea cable infrastructure buildout, it said.

AI pioneer Yann LeCun seeks next venture

The artificial intelligence pioneer Yann LeCun joined Facebook in 2013, and his departure seemed inevitable when Mark Zuckerberg blew up the company’s AI research organization and replaced it with a team of richly paid new researchers.

More surprising is that the 65-year-old is planning to raise money for a new startup. Silicon Valley is notoriously ageist and artificial intelligence research is, in particular, a young person’s game. But LeCun has what he believes is a clear vision of how to build better AI models and could argue that some of the best AI researchers would jump at the chance to work with a legend in the field. If he wants to build a new company, he’ll be able to do it.

AMD CEO sees chip market reaching $1 trillion

The market for chips is becoming “insatiable,” with AMD CEO Lisa Su predicting it will reach $1 trillion by 2030. That figure, at a 40% annual growth rate, includes the company’s CPUs, networking chips, and specialized AI processors — the latter of which is competing with market leader Nvidia, whose CEO Jensen Huang previously said the broader AI infrastructure market will reach up to $4 trillion in the same time frame.

AMD has worked in recent years to boost its offerings as AI companies shell out their fortunes for chips, though it has run up against Nvidia’s GPU head start and massive market share. Its most advanced AI chip is rolling out next year, sold with server racks that could compete more closely with Nvidia’s systems. The company also recently announced a partnership that will supply OpenAI with its chips, expected to bring $100 billion in revenue over four years.

“There’s no question, data center is the largest growth opportunity out there, and one that AMD is very, very well positioned for,” Su said Tuesday. The forecasts suggest chip leaders see no signs of slowing demand in the coming years, with room for smaller industry players to grow alongside the semiconductor whale that is Nvidia.

IBM’s big bet on new quantum processors

IBM is hoping that an investment in quantum tech can transform industries worldwide — and push the company back into the center of the tech conversation, Semafor’s Rachyl Jones reports.

Quantum computing aims to solve problems too complex for classical computers to handle by using quantum bits, or qubits. Unlike traditional computer bits, which can only be in one of two states, qubits exist in multiple states at once and can become linked, enabling more information to be processed in new ways. Companies are racing to build the first quantum computer that can reliably handle its own errors as its computations grow, called a “fault-tolerant” quantum computer.

IBM bets it will be able to make such a computer by 2029, through its method of cooling superconducting qubits and using microwave pulses to measure them. It says one of the processors, called Nighthawk, moves the field forward by handling tougher computations with the same level of accuracy as its predecessor. The other chip, Loon, is an experimental processor that demonstrates IBM can put all key hardware components into a device it will need to build in the future — a starting point to scale from.

Cutting through quantum hype

DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, which last week graduated 11 companies to stage B of the program, could be as pivotal to that technology as DARPA was to the internet, global positioning satellite, and autonomous vehicles. That’s according to a new column by Dr. Prineha Narang, a quantum researcher, and Joshua Levine, a research fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation.

While DARPA isn’t making a quantum computer, it has set itself up as the ultimate judge of whether quantum technology is hype or reality. In order to advance through the different stages of the benchmarking program, companies must prove their technology is feasible.

It’s run by Dr. Joe Altepeter, who calls himself the “chief quantum skeptic.” This scientific bootcamp is exactly what the industry needed, Narang and Levine write.

Narang told Semafor in an email that the program has been driving investor interest in quantum. “Some investors were waiting for this announcement to write term sheets,” she wrote.

AI’s building skills put to test in S. Korea data center

A $35 billion South Korean data center could be built and run by AI, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. AI would oversee the design, construction, and management of the facility, expected to be completed in 2028, acting as the primary decision-maker with human supervision. The project’s investor Stock Farm Road partnered with Palo Alto-based AI startup Voltai on the data center, which could operate with up to 3 gigawatts of power. The companies say it will be the first time AI is wholly integrated into a data center’s system, according to the Journal.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung last week called to triple government spending on AI projects in a bid to elevate the country’s status as a global tech leader. The data center initiative, dubbed “Project Concord,” would test AI’s effectiveness when put in real-world scenarios. A recent study found that the technology royally failed at completing digital freelance projects when compared to a human’s output. The ability to manage everything that goes into a data center — from power and water usage to various computing demands — is a tall order, but if successful, it could revolutionize construction and building operations.

Elizabeth Holmes’ MAHA moment

Politico published an interesting story Tuesday about how Theranos founder and convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes has become a hero to the “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

There was always a duality of the Holmes story. On the one hand, she committed fraud and relentlessly covered her tracks. On the other hand, her DNA is almost identical to some of the greatest entrepreneurs. Had her blood-drawing technology actually worked, we might be calling her a pioneer and ignoring the personality traits that led to an 11-year prison sentence.

You can see how the Holmes story would appeal to the MAHA crowd, which has legitimate gripes about the food industry and how it’s regulated. At the same time, it’s driven by conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and outright fraud in some cases.

Pointing out the connection is smart. The “establishment” is quick to fall back on conventional wisdom and initially dismiss almost any new idea as fake or crazy. That haze of blanket doubt gives charlatans and fraudsters cover. A more optimistic brand of skepticism could be a better way to encourage a healthier variety of technological and political disruption.

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A handful of university labs and companies are growing human brain tissue that can interpret and respond to electrical signals, much like a computer, and could eventually create a reliable supercomputer, according to Nature. Some of these brain blobs, about the size of a grain of sand, are taking tasks from researchers around the world and attempting to solve problems.

The most gung-ho researchers hope these biocomputers could rival the abilities of AI, using a fraction of the energy. Human brains operate on the equivalent of about 20 watts, able to perform quadrillions of operations per second. Supercomputers can match that number of computations and speed, but by using significantly more power. The technology is still nascent, with many hurdles to prove its potential. Among them is a whole new set of questions around machine consciousness that could prevent the biocomputers from reaching a point of practical use.