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Category: business – Page 228

So far, no one has commercialized nuclear fusion, but the race is on to be the first to figure it out. Whoever does will be able to bring power to the more than 1 billion who don’t have access to electricity, power cars and help companies operate businesses without having to create harmful emissions.

Jeff Bezos and others have sunk more than $127 million into General Fusion, a start-up trying to commercialize fusion energy. Microsoft is partnering with the company. The goal: to provide energy to 1 billion people that don’t have electricity.

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These days, it seems anyone wanting to launch rockets will inevitably be compared to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, especially if rocket launching isn’t the only business interest on the agenda. Musk has Tesla plus SpaceX, and Bezos has Amazon plus Blue Origin. Now, meet Mark Russell, a disciple of Bezos and rocket engineer who founded HyperSciences, a drilling company that uses aerospace technology to both quickly extract underground geothermal energy and put payloads into orbit at low cost.

The idea of leveraging Earth’s geothermal energy is not a new concept, but the expense and time required to reach the depth needed have been prohibitively expensive. That’s where HyperSciences comes in.

Russell and his team have developed a low-cost, multi-purpose projectile called the HyperDrone that can accelerate to velocities over five times the speed of sound and pulverize hard rock via their HyperDrill. This will enable tunneling speeds that are 5–10 times quicker than conventional methods, and more importantly, it opens up significant market viability in other industries that could benefit, namely when that acceleration is pointed skyward. NASA has already recognized this potential and is a current investor and major partner of HyperSciences.

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Artificial intelligence and its subset of disciplines—such as machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision —are seemingly becoming integrated into our daily lives whether we like it or not. What was once sci-fi is now ubiquitous research and development in company and university labs around the world.

Similarly, the startups working on many of these AI technologies have seen their proverbial stock rise. More than 30 of these companies are now valued at over a billion dollars, according to data research firm CB Insights, which itself employs algorithms to provide insights into the tech business world.

Private companies with a billion-dollar valuation were so uncommon not that long ago that they were dubbed unicorns. Now there are 325 of these once-rare creatures, with a combined valuation north of a trillion dollars, as CB Insights maintains a running count of this exclusive Unicorn Club.

The subset of AI startups accounts for about 10 percent of the total membership, growing rapidly in just 4 years from 0 to 32. Last year, an unprecedented 17 AI startups broke the billion-dollar barrier, with 2018 also a record year for venture capital into private US AI companies at $9.3 billion, CB Insights reported.

AI startup investments graph cbinsights Peter Rejcek AI

Continue reading “The World’s Most Valuable AI Companies, and What They’re Working On” | >

Join S-Booster 2019!

We will invite space-based business ideas from the Asia and Oceania regions!The Contest facilitates the realization of each business idea through open innovation with Japanese companies, and also provides financial support, business coaching and other assistances. Promoting Win-Win Business Cooperation Between Asia and Japan!

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Then the 2017 DoD disclosure occurred, directly contradicting the findings in the Condon Report. We realized we had not discovered all there was to discover — not by a long shot.

AATIP succeeded where others failed simply because our understanding of the physics finally caught up to our observations.

Today, much of our government’s business is conducted behind closed doors, and mostly for good reason.

There are numerous secret programs, secret agencies, secret committees of Congress, secret laws, and even a secret courtroom. Secrecy allows our government to collect and share information, and even make decisions that otherwise could fall into enemy hands or be exploited.

Ultimately, the purpose of keeping things secret in the government is to protect sources and methods and ensure the flow and integrity of information is maintained so decision-makers can make decisions with the very best data available. It’s no surprise that governments will go to great lengths to protect the information they consider sensitive. In fact, the more sensitive information is perceived, the more it is protected.

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A startup called CogitAI has developed a platform that lets companies use reinforcement learning, the technique that gave AlphaGo mastery of the board game Go.

Gaining experience: AlphaGo, an AI program developed by DeepMind, taught itself to play Go by practicing. It’s practically impossible for a programmer to manually code in the best strategies for winning. Instead, reinforcement learning let the program figure out how to defeat the world’s best human players on its own.

Drug delivery: Reinforcement learning is still an experimental technology, but it is gaining a foothold in industry. DeepMind has talked of using it to optimize the performance of data centers and wind turbines. Amazon recently launched a reinforcement-learning platform, but it is aimed more at researchers and academics. CogitAI’s first commercial customers include those working in robotics for drug manufacturing. Its platform lets the robot figure out the optimal way to process drug orders.

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Holograms. Emotive, life-like digital human beings. Washing machine repairs directed from miles away.

The rollout of 5G wireless networks that will continue throughout 2019 and beyond promises a slew of new smartphones that will hum along much faster than the models they’ll eventually replace. But while zippier handsets compatible with the next generation of wireless are surely welcome, 5G’s potential extends beyond them.

Verizon, and some of the entrepreneurial startups it is working with, recently demonstrated a few of the fresh consumer and business experiences made possible or enhanced by 5G, at its 5G Lab in New York City, one of five such labs around the country.

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FedEx is the latest company to join the delivery robot craze.

The company said Wednesday it will test a six-wheeled, autonomous robot called the SameDay Bot in Memphis, Tenn. this summer and plans to expand to more cities.

It’s partnering with major brands, including Walmart, Target, Pizza Hut and AutoZone, to understand how delivery robots could help other businesses.

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CAMBRIDGE, England—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Feb 27, 2019—Abcam, a global innovator in life science reagents and tools, is pleased to announce its move to new state-of-the-art global headquarters, Discovery Drive, on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC), UK, a leading hub of healthcare, science and medical research.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190227005291/en/

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This next wave of automation won’t just be sleek robotic arms on factory floors. It will be ordering kiosks, self-service apps and software smart enough to perfect schedules and cut down on the workers needed to cover a shift. Employers are already testing these systems. A recession will force them into the mainstream.

Robots’ infiltration of the workforce doesn’t happen gradually, at the pace of technology. It happens in surges, when companies are given strong incentives to tackle the difficult task of automation.

Typically, those incentives occur during recessions. Employers slash payrolls going into a downturn and, out of necessity, turn to software or machinery to take over the tasks once performed by their laid-off workers as business begins to recover.

As uncertainty soars, a shutdown drags on, and consumer confidence sputters, economists increasingly predict a recession this year or next. Whenever this long economic expansion ends, the robots will be ready. The human labor market is tight, with the unemployment rate at 3.9 percent, but there’s plenty of slack in the robot labor force.

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