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Quick Hits
AI goes to school: New Jersey’s largest school system pilots Khan Academy’s automated teaching aid Khanmigo.
Too young for LI: Elon Musk’s youngest SpaceX employee is 14, too young for LinkedIn.
Generative medicine: A drug discovered using generative AI enters human trials in the U.S. and China.
London calling: OpenAI opens first overseas office—in London—and U.S. tech giant SalesForce invests $4B in the U.K.
This land is mine land: A court battle brews over plans for open pit mining near the Nevada-Oregon border to extract lithium.
Microsoft calls for ‘Duty’: Executives for Microsoft and “Call of Duty” maker Activision Blizzard want Congress to accept a $69B merger.
Big Tech seeks generative AI talent
In a sign of the times, Microsoft launched an AI “skills initiative” to help level-up people’s AI skills throughout the tech industry. The program includes a global grant challenge, free online courses, and a training toolkit for teachers. Microsoft and other Big Tech firms are hungry for up-and-coming AI talent, looking to capitalize on growing bonanza. That spells o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y for Gen Z’s entering the workforce.
AI, demand boost car production
The company that introduced the world “lean manufacturing” reports record production, thanks to a combination of efficiency gains from AI and red-hot demand for electric vehicles. Toyota’s output last month soared 35% from a year earlier to a May record of 947,874 vehicles. Two years ago, Toyota announced a partnership with Texas,-based Invisible AI to boost productivity in more than a dozen U.S. factories. Honda, too, is reporting record production as it expands EV production in the U.S.
AI is a ‘mega force’
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, calls AI a “mega force” with the potential to unlock productivity across industries and for companies of all types. It’s investing aggressively in the arena. “New AI tools could analyze and unlock the value of the data gold mine some companies may be sitting on,” the company concludes in a report. Other structural shifts capturing the company’s attention and investment include decarbonization and private direct lending.
‘Writing was always on the wall’ for crypto
Venture capitalist Peter Thiel still bets big on crypto despite a tumultuous past couple of years for an industry upended by the FTX implosion and economic crosswinds. Valar Ventures recently led a $33M round for a company trying to bring spot trading in cryptocurrencies to Europe. “It’s about how you bridge the gap between traditional finance and crypto,” said One Trading CEO Josh Barraclough, a former JPMorgan executive. “The writing was always on the wall that crypto would become more regulated.”
Battery pioneer powered past 100
John Goodenough, who shared the 2019 Nobel prize in Chemistry for pioneering the lithium-ion battery, died at 100, according to the University of Texas, where he was still conducting research. In recent years, Goodenough and his university team were exploring new directions for energy storage, including a “glass” battery with solid-state electrolyte and lithium or sodium metal electrodes.
Documenting the digital divide
Studies by the Pew Research Center conclude that Black and Hispanic adults in the U.S. have far less access to high-speed Internet than white adults. The Undivide Project, a nonprofit launched last year, is conducting research pro bono for communities to help them document evidence of the digital divide. The group finds that neighborhoods with the least infrastructure investment face “cascading risks” that include things like limited Internet access and disproportionate impacts of climate change.
The future is disabled
A new book with the provocative title “The Future Is Disabled” makes the case that it’s crucial to make space for disabled populations and tap into their wisdom. “Opening ourselves up to all-access thinking and disabled expertise will mean a more livable world—one that we all can inhabit,” a Virginia Tech prof wrote in MIT Technology Review. “We ask for people to bend themselves in time and space to fit a vision of worthiness, of goodness, of productivity and moral and physical uprightness, that is absolutely the opposite of inclusive, inventive, and open.”
The Weekly Pulse
Zooming to an AI future
Gen Z is entering the workforce as the first digital native generation. “Zoomers” are exceptionally prepared to champion and employ generative AI at work, making the timing of the current AI boom quite fortunate. Gen Z makes up just 13% of the U.S. workforce today and the youngest among them haven’t even graduated yet.
Poll of the Week
Podcasts of the Week
Morning Brew Daily: Cities Charging for Traffic & Wall Street Loves Weight Loss
What We’re Reading
- AI Startup Typeface Valued at $1 Billion After Salesforce-Led Fundraise (Reuters)
- How Databricks CEO Justifies Paying $1.3 Billion for a Young AI Startup (The Information)
- Tesla Quietly Launches New Tesla AI Twitter Account: Here's Its First Thread (Benzinga)
- The Lex Newsletter: every start-up is now an AI start-up (Financial Times)
- True believers, profiteers, and curious creators: Meet the 5 schools of thought that dominate the A.I. debate (Fortune)
- Meet Morphobot: Reimagining search and rescue with repurposable limbs (Interesting Engineering)
- From idea to IPO to IBM: How Apptio defied the skeptics on its 16-year journey to a $4.6B deal (GeekWire)
Startups Hiring Now
- Hank: Social connection for people 55+ | 1 open role
- Bold Magazine: Keeping it bold, keeping it real! | 3 open roles
- Continua: Reinventing how people interact | 4 open roles