🔥Demand Soars for AI Chips, 💊 Cancer Vaccine Breakthroughs, and 💻 the Chiplet Revolution
Thomas's Innovation Wrap #76
Greetings,
Here’s the best technology, innovation, and finance news from the past week.
☁️ Cloud Computing
After selling a stake valuing it at $7 billion just five months ago, Cloud GPU company CoreWeave has now raised $1.1 billion at a $19 billion valuation (+171%).
Meanwhile, Microsoft is on an Asian AI infrastructure spree, with Satya Nadella pledging $1.7 billion in Indonesia, $2.2bn in Malaysia, and building their first data centre in Thailand. He has also promised to train 2.5 million people across Southeast Asia.
💎 Artificial Intelligence
Apple has created a secretive AI lab in Zurich, known as the “Vision Lab”, where they’re working on “AI smartphones” that can run models locally. They’ve also quietly bought around two dozen AI startups in the last decade.
Amazon has launched a new AI assistant for business users called Q, which they claim can help “employees become more than 80 percent more productive at their jobs.”
Back in 2019, Microsoft's CTO Kevin Scott was "very, very worried" about being years behind Google in AI, according to new emails released as part of the DOJ’s antitrust case against Google. This concern likely led to Microsoft's multi-billion dollar OpenAI partnership. “We are multiple years behind the competition in terms of ML scale,” Scott wrote.
⚙️ Mobility
Tesla moved one step closer to offering a Full Self-Driving system in China after reaching a deal with Baidu to use their mapping and navigation functions. The stock rose 8% last week on the news.
Aurora Innovation will have 20 autonomous trucks on the road later this year as the company starts to haul freight between Dallas and Houston.
For years, it seemed as though the initial venture for autonomous vehicles would be ride hailing in large cities. But General Motors’ Cruise robotaxi unit is struggling in the aftermath of a serious crash. And Alphabet’s Waymo faces opposition to expanding its autonomous ride service in California. So self-driving trucks are poised to become the first computer-controlled vehicles deployed in widespread numbers on public roads.
Joby Aviation says it has completed four years of testing pre-production eVTOL prototypes and is now focused on achieving flight certification, the next step toward commercial airworthiness certification.
When commercial operations (hopefully) begin in the coming years, Joby’s eVTOL air taxis will be able to transport a pilot and four passengers at speeds of up to 200 mph and travel over 150 miles on a single charge—all with significantly lower noise pollution than helicopters and zero emissions.
💻 Chips and Computing
Handelsblatt provided a primer on chiplets: “How the Lego principle is revolutionizing chip production” (translated). Chiplets are a modular semiconductor design approach popularised by AMD in 2017 with their Ryzen processors.
(translated) Like Lego bricks in a child's room, a wide variety of electronic elements are put together. A simple idea, but technologically sophisticated. The process can be used to produce powerful and versatile chips with less effort. Peter Fintl, chip expert at the consulting company Capgemini, is convinced: “The trend in the entire industry is towards chiplets.”
Japan is also focused on the chiplet opportunity. The Japanese government aims to establish advanced packaging technologies in the second half of the 2020s. JOINT2, a Japanese consortium of 13 companies, is developing high-tech packaging materials like 2.5D and 3D interposers, aiming to have them ready by 2024.
JOINT2 has also received funding from the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), the Japanese government's research and development agency, for its post-5G information and communication system infrastructure enhancement program.
TSMC announced a new System-on-Wafer (SoW) process that will allow for 3D stacking of logic and memory directly on top of a 300mm wafer-sized chip. The company plans to combine its existing SoW design with its Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) technology by 2027.
TSMC says this future design could allow for a single wafer-sized chip to offer the performance of an entire server rack, or an entire server from a single wafer-scale chip.
SK Hynix, the world's second-largest memory chip maker, has sold out its entire 2024 production of high-end memory chips used for AI and most of its 2025 production is already allocated.
With growing demand, AI hardware components such as HBM chips are expected to account for 61 percent of the company's chip production, said Justin Kim, SK Hynix's head of AI infrastructure, up from just five percent in 2023.
Samsung expects strong demand for AI to drive memory chip sales in the second half of the year after posting a 10-fold increase in first-quarter operating profit. The company also reported that AI functions are driving sales of its flagship Galaxy S24 smartphones, with around 50% of customers saying they bought the phones for the AI capabilities.
Samsung said it began mass production this month of the latest HBM chips for use in generative AI chipsets, called 8-layer HBM3E. It is seeking to capitalize on the AI boom that has benefited SK Hynix, which had been the sole supplier of HBM3 chips to Nvidia.
China's three telecom giants - China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom - are in a race to acquire AI servers, with China Mobile recently announcing the largest procurement to date of 8,000 servers.
China Mobile's move to bolster its AI infrastructure aligns with its broader strategy of embracing advanced technologies. In the past two months alone, China Mobile has unveiled a procurement plan for new AI data centers spanning 12 bidding categories, intending to acquire 2,454 AI training servers by 2024.
💲 Finance
Taiwan's GDP rose a stronger-than-expected 6.5% in Q1 2023, the fastest expansion in nearly 3 years, driven largely by AI-related tech exports such as semiconductors.
According to data from Citi, Taiwan's TSMC produces 90% of the world's most advanced processor chips. The AI craze of the past year and a half has led to skyrocketing demand for these types of semiconductors and helped make TSMC the world's ninth most-valuable company worth almost $720 billion.
🌞 Renewables
Hydrostor, a leader in compressed air energy storage, is getting close to breaking ground on large plants in Australia and California. The company's technology is relatively mature and they've been one of the most successful in the space at raising money from investors. If their projects are successful, it could provide a showpiece to make the case for building many others.
Hydrostor’s first large project to go online is likely going to be Silver City Energy Storage Centre in Australia, which will have the ability to discharge at 200 megawatts for up to eight hours. Construction should begin around the end of 2024 and the plant should be running by mid-2027.
Tesla's Megapack battery system has been selected to power a massive new 1.3 GWh battery project in Western Australia. The project, developed by France's Neoen, is expected to be the largest battery system in Australia upon completion.
With 348 Megapack 2 XL units and a capacity of 1.3 GWh, it is expected to become the new largest battery system in Australia and one of the biggest in the world.
Despite rising competition in the battery storage space, Tesla continues to see strong demand for its Megapack product. The project represents over a quarter of Tesla's record-breaking quarterly Megapack deployment.
A new U.S. energy report explains how AI can help accelerate clean energy transformation to net-zero by 2050 (see the report).
The report identifies grand challenges across five areas of the U.S. energy infrastructure. These include nuclear power, the power grid, carbon management, energy storage and energy materials
⚛️ Quantum Computing
The Australian government is investing nearly A$1 billion into PsiQuantum, a quantum computing firm co-founded by Australian researchers, to build quantum computers in Brisbane. This makes PsiQuantum one of the world's largest dedicated quantum computing companies.
Australia has exported a generation of quantum researchers, including PsiQuantum co-founders Jeremy O’Brien and Terry Rudolph. The government investment may entice such scientists to begin returning and building careers in Australia, says Bartlett. “Australia is saying we are going to sit at the big table when it comes to quantum computing.”
💊 Health
Moderna and Merck have launched a large clinical trial in the UK for a personalised cancer vaccine that targets specific mutations in melanoma tumours. Promising results suggest cancer vaccines may finally be reaching a turning point after decades of disappointing performance.
The purpose of a cancer vaccine is to train the immune system to better recognize malignant cells, so it can destroy them. The immune system has the capacity to clear cancer cells if it can find them. But tumors are slippery. They can hide in plain sight and employ all sorts of tricks to evade our immune defenses.
The FDA approved the Apple Watch's atrial fibrillation feature for clinical trials, making it the first digital health tool to qualify.
Scientists in Switzerland and Australia have developed a new blood-thinning drug with a fast-acting antidote that can quickly stop its effect if needed (see the paper). The innovative mechanism could help improve the safety of CAR-T cancer immunotherapies.
"This breakthrough goes beyond the development of a new anticoagulant and its associated antidote. The supramolecular approach proposed is remarkably flexible and can be easily adapted to other therapeutic targets. It is particularly promising in the field of immunotherapy," explains Winssinger, who directed the research.
Researchers at the University of Sydney have created a pill that lets diabetics take insulin orally instead of through injections. The pill uses a nanomaterial coating to protect insulin from stomach acid and only releases it when blood sugar is high (see the paper). Human trials are set to start in 2025, and if successful, this could replace injections for many of the 75 million people worldwide who rely on them daily.
"Our oral insulin has the added benefit of greatly reducing the risk of hypoglycemic episodes. For the first time we have developed an oral insulin that overcomes this major hurdle," said Dr. Hunt.
Pfizer plans to launch a direct-to-consumer platform for Covid and migraine treatments later this year, following Eli Lilly’s similar launch.
The website, which is expected to launch later this year, would connect customers in the US with independent telehealth consultants to prescribe the medications, while a drug-dispensing partner would fill and ship the prescriptions, the people said.
🛰️ Space
China has launched Chang'e-6, a spacecraft aiming to collect samples from the moon's far side and return them to Earth.
“First-hand, direct samples from the moon’s far side are essential to giving us a deeper understanding of the characteristics and differences of the two sides of the moon, and to revealing the secrets of the moon,” said Zeng Xingguo, a scientist at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
SpaceX and Blue Origin are in a lunar race to see who can get humans back on the moon first.
“SpaceX has sold things, and Blue Origin has spent money,” says Carissa Christensen, founder and chief executive officer of BryceTech, a space research and analysis consultant. “SpaceX’s company culture has been about taking over market after market, finding customer after customer. Blue Origin’s culture has been about executing on a very demanding R&D strategy.”
After some lobbying, NASA secured funding for a second lunar lander contract worth $3.4 billion, which went to Blue Origin. SpaceX had previously won a $2.9 billion contract.
SpaceX’s plan is to conduct an uncrewed test landing on the moon as early as next year and then a first human landing in 2026, though Musk and NASA habitually miss deadlines.
🔗 Blockchain and Crypto
Hong Kong launched Asia's first spot bitcoin and ether ETFs on its stock exchange, allowing investors to trade the funds in HKD, USD, and CNY. The city is looking to become a regional hub for virtual assets.
"These are the first spot ETF products of virtual assets in (the) Asia market, which has proven Hong Kong's leading status in virtual asset development in the region," Joseph Chan, the city's undersecretary for financial services, said at the bell tolling ceremony in the morning.
Australia is set to approve its first spot-Bitcoin ETFs on the ASX by the end of 2024.
Tether Holdings invested $200 million in brain-computer interface company Blackrock Neurotech.
Brain-computer interface technology has been popularized by Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp., which last month live-streamed an update to its implant that showed a quadriplegic man playing video cames using his mind.
⚡ Other Snippets
Personal plug: The Minotaur Global Opportunities Fund launches this Friday! 🎉
TikTok's e-commerce platform is booming, with over 500,000 US merchants and 15 million global sellers as of December 2023. The company is working hard to keep shoppers safe as it expands.
“We want people to feel that their shopping experience is tailored and relevant to them, in the same way that they feel their ‘For You Feed’ is.
Startmate showcased 10 promising new startups at its Demo Day event as part of Blackbird's Sunrise festival. The accelerator has an impressive track record, with 50% of its 230+ alumni going on to raise further capital.
“Behind the scenes of a Demo Day are nerves, sweat and tears,” says Batko. “I have immense respect for the founders who are giving their all to solve a real customer problem.”
Applications for Startmate's next round are open until May 26. If you’re an Australian founder, apply here.
Have a great week,
Thomas
About Thomas Rice
Thomas Rice co-founded Minotaur Capital, and is based in Sydney, Australia. He can be found on the platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter at @thomasrice_au.