I don't normally write about my own work, preferring to try to share background, tips and insights that I hope will be of use to you as a reader. But because it is often asked for, this time I like to tell you about two investments I am excited about. Of course, I also cover notable things in the tech world, such as the jubilant crypto world about Ripple, Elon Musk's new AI company, traffic jam dodging by drone and Lionel Messi's deal with Apple. But now first, iXora and Unveil.
Ede-based iXora has developed a form of liquid cooling technology(immersion cooling) that allows data centers to save more than 30% in energy and space, because it eliminates the need for fans as with the usual air cooling of computers. And the latest generation of chips gets so hot that air cooling becomes too inefficient and expensive, but also socially unacceptable given the CO2 emissions. That makes the market potential of iXora huge worldwide.
Amsterdam-based Unveil links top photographers to collectors through its own marketplace based on blockchain technology. Through a careful curation process, collectors worldwide find new high-quality work in a user-friendly way. Collectors can buy the physical work, a print, a digital version in the form of an NFT, or both. Unveil can play a crucial role in the explosion of AI-generated fakes; it guarantees authenticity.
I have previously worked with these entrepreneurs with great pleasure and success, their companies are forerunners in fast growing global markets and sustainability is an important part of their proposition. And not unimportantly, there is also an opportunity for you to participate as an investor even with a small amount, whereas this is usually reserved only for vc funds with very deep pockets.
Why does Warren Buffett store in the Veluwe?
Earlier this year at CES in Las Vegas, iXora signed a licensing deal with the American company Lubrizol, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company of the legendary Warren Buffett. Why would such a global player license technology from a Dutch startup?
The answer is that huge demand for energy-saving solutions has accelerated worldwide since de Russia's invasion of Ukraine the helmeted Russian neighbor visit. On top of that, energy consumption in data centers plays an extremely large role, because next to real estate and equipment, energy costs are the biggest expense. Data centers are still full of energy-guzzling fans, which will become obsolete with iXora's liquid cooling.
When using the iXora solution, a data center can accommodate more servers per square foot, with lower energy costs and therefore a reduced carbon footprint. Add to this the huge increase to cloud and streaming services in recent years and the current explosion of AI applications, making it irreversible that heavy server-intensive applications will dominate the market. Conclusion: immersion cooling is hot.
Own experience with data centers
My personal experience with data centers goes way back, for example, I was a very satisfied customer with Flabber and 925 for many years with the innovative hosting company True. (Jort Kelder and I even shot a lightly humorous movie in their data center 15 years ago.) So when True founder Vincent Houwert, after selling True and some wanderings in the Caribbean, couldn't resist getting back into business and started iXora, I was immediately interested.
With Planet Internet, I have been a customer and reseller of data center services for many years, and in the process I have experienced, through trial and error, how complex data centers operate. Although it is a multi-billion dollar business, it is one in which every dime is turned over. I always compare data centers to drinking water from the tap: everyone needs it and uses it, but every penny spent on it is a penny too much so the margins are thin.
Data center owners hate risks and opaque investments. This is precisely why I find iXora so interesting: it is the only party in the world that enables immersion cooling in the existing infrastructure of a data center.
In a billion-dollar market, of course, there are plenty of competitors, but they either only cool the chip, leaving the rest of the motherboard to give off heat and fans remain necessary, or their solutions require the installation of entire jacuzzis into which the servers are submerged.
But I know from experience that data center owners have a huge aversion to this kind of geekiness, because there is a chance of leaking fluids into their data centers where miles of cables run under the raised floors. And no one wants to use robotic arms to hoist a server out of such a bathtub, which is necessary just to replace a simple hard drive.
iXora's solution is deliberately designed for easy installation and maintenance. Nothing robotic arm or bathtub: an iXora chassis fits into the globally common 19-inch rack, and anyone who can lift a computer can slide a server into an iXora HRM.
The team knows the customer
That simplicity in the solution is rooted in the experience of the iXora team, which has literally and figuratively grown up in data centers. Besides inventor Vincent Houwert, who previously founded hosting company True, iXora's founders are CEO Job Witteman, previously founder and 17-year CEO of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange AMS-IX, and CCO Vincent Beek, who has decades of commercial experience in the international technology world. And Erwin Bleeker joined iXora in February as Compute Specialist after spending a few years at Dell explaining how a data center works ;-).
iXora webinar Thursday, June 20
More information about the opportunity to participate in iXora is in this two-page summary. Investing is possible from as little as €5,000 and depending on your contribution there is a bonus of up to 30%. If you want to know more about iXora, I recommend watching the webinar next Thursday, July 20 at 8 p.m. in which CEO Job Witteman explains what iXora does with immersion cooling. why it is important for the world and how you can contribute to .
Unveil cures what is real, in the age of fake
I write a lot about AI because it is the market in which the most progress is currently being made, with the largest potential market, which is virtually every earthling. At the same time, I worry about how AI will make it possible to manipulate all forms of sight and sound.
As you may know, I have a great love for photography, a passion that unfortunately comes with a commensurate lack of talent. My former colleague Alexander Sporre with whom I worked at business site 925, though, is a talented photographer. But Alexander is also a talented entrepreneur, and he and a number of partners have jumped into a big hole in the market with Unveil.
I believe in Unveil's proposition, in the explosion of AI-generated photos, to act as a beacon and marketplace of originality and authenticity.
What makes Unveil unique?
The developments in the field of AI are so rapid that there is a huge need worldwide for an independent party to guarantee the authenticity of digital work. Without such an independent party as Unveil, it is already no longer possible to tell whether a photo is real, or generated with AI.
Third generation marketplace
I see Unveil as a third-generation marketplace. In the first form, marketplaces were generic, think Marktplaats in the Netherlands and Craigslist in America, with a large unfiltered supply. (Both, by the way, bought by eBay for hundreds of millions.) The second generation marketplaces were a curated part of a large generic offering, think Uber Black and Airbnb Plus, or the Dutch Catawiki, effectively a curated version of eBay.
In the latest generation of marketplaces, of which Unveil is a forerunner, you will only see a carefully curated, high-level offering with a select small group of providers, who are often exclusively affiliated with a platform. Unveil has already attracted over 1,500 photographers, including a large number of top international photographers such as Bastiaan Woudt and Paul Cupido.
Global market, always traceable
Unveil connects digital art with physical prints on the blockchain, making art photography traceable as a globally tradable product, with the goal of providing royalties to the creator on the one hand and guaranteeing to the collector that the work purchased is authentic, with guarantees about the number produced. This solves a huge problem worldwide.
Proven business model: marketplace
From a financial perspective, it is crucial that the business model of a marketplace is proven and highly profitable, especially in this market, based on a 12.5% commission. Such a solid commission combined with the prices that renowned photographers receive for their work offers very good prospects for Unveil.
The team
Besides Chief Product Officer Alexander Sporre (ex-Richemont, co-founder Stories, art photographer), Unveil's founders are also Chief Commercial Officer Titus de Jong (ex-Salesforce, ex-HP) and Chief Creative Officer Julian Mollema (award winning designer, Ex-Build in Amsterdam). All entrepreneurs with a solid track record in their respective fields. Crucially, there is also a lot of interest in Unveil from the art world. For example, the Head of Photography at Sotheby's EMEA has joined Unveil's Advisory Board.
Participating in Unveil
More information about the opportunity to invest in Unveil is in this two-page summary. If you would like to learn more about Unveil, I would be happy to put you in touch with the founders.
Spotlight 9: Judge finds XRP is, oh no it's not, an investment
Every week in this column, I go over the highs and lows of the most important assets in technology. Never before has the financial world been so dominated by crypto news as it was Thursday, when an early global happy hour erupted in the cryptoscene following a U.S. judge's incomprehensible ruling in the case brought by the SEC against Ripple Labs.
The judge ruled that Ripple Labs' sale of the XRP cryptocurrency to institutional investors violated securities laws. But, the judge said, there was nothing illegal about the sale of XRP by Ripple Labs to individual traders on crypto exchanges. As if professional investors need information, transparency and protection but consumers don't?
This schizophrenic statement was not understood outside the crypto world. "Securities laws are designed specifically to protect individual investors, based on the idea that they cannot stand up for themselves," James Carlson, an adjunct professor of securities regulation at New York University, told The Information. "Large institutional investors don't need the protection of securities laws. This ruling effectively turns that philosophy on its head," Carlson said.
"Securities laws are designed specifically to protect individual investors, based on the idea that they cannot advocate for themselves. Large institutional investors don't need the protection of securities laws. This ruling effectively turns that philosophy on its head."
James Carlson, New York University
Chance of 'boiler room' fraud
The implications of this part of the ruling are troubling. As Carlson said, "The potential for 'bucket shop' or 'boiler room' fraud is alarming." Think of the Wolf of Wall Street in a black crypto t-shirt. Carlson outlined a scenario in which a crypto company issues tokens to large institutional investors, who are given detailed information required by securities laws, but then resells them through crypto exchanges to individual traders, who are not given this information. The decision is likely to be appealed, so this may not be the end of the story.
XRP rose nearly 80% within a day, gave back some of the gains over the weekend but still rose nearly 50% in the last week.
It remains a madhouse in AI
It had been coming for a while: Elon Musk has entered the AI battlefield with x.AI and has become CEO of his third company, in addition to Tesla and SpaceX, Musk's space company that was valued at a whopping $150 billion in a private sale last week. The man may have driven on a few blocks past the "eccentric" exit, but it's still mind-boggling how he combines it all. The goal of x.AI is "to understand the true nature of the universe." Musk talked more on Twitter about the goals and possible collaboration with Tesla, shared few details. To be continued, no doubt.
That doesn't head nicely, but with Code Interpreter, ChatGPT can analyze data, create graphs, solve math problems and edit files, among other things. It also supports file uploading and downloading, which previously was not possible in ChatGPT. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick, author of an excellent newsletter by the way, says Code Interpreter can do things he used to spend an unimaginable amount of time on.
I did a little test by downloading a .csv file of XRP price data on Friday and asking Code Interpreter to display the key information from it in a graph. I found the result amazing, especially since Chat GPT is text-based and until recently the output was also limited to text. So not anymore because Code Interpreter spit out three relevant graphs within seconds!
Anthropic, which raised just under half a billion dollars from investors in May, launched a new version of their Chat GPT competitor Claude.ai. Decrypt makes a good comparison between Claude.AI, ChatGPT and Google Bard. Officially, Claude is only available in the US and UK, but with a good VPN it works fine. I'd love to hear who experiences major differences between ChatGPT and Claude, personally I see little difference in quality.
In conclusion
My favorite guru Gary Vaynerchuk doesn't think Threads is a Twitter-killer either, but points out that it could attract a new audience. Just try it, he advises. For now, my feed on Threads is still filled with second-hand posts from Instagram.
In 2014, I got to know Taco Carlier of VanMoof when we spent a week together walking around SXSW. Apart from being an incredibly nice guy with whom I have a pleasant contact to this day, I find the news about a possible bankruptcy of VanMoof very sad because the company was the big booster of the e-bike as a replacement for the car.
In my experience, integration of all components into a hardware product is extremely complex, Taco and I talked about that several times. He mentioned Tesla as an example of almost complete vertical integration. But crucially, what do you do at the moment when a product continuously fails and you experience quality problems to such an extent that customers become dissatisfied and the service department is overwhelmed. I won't bore you with stories from the old box about the woes called ISDN that I had to contend with, in the transition era between modems and broadband, but sometimes you have to dare to kill a product to survive as a company. Hopefully Vanmoof will survive the current malaise.
In other electric transport news, it was noticed that Lee Soo Man, founder of Korean K-pop institution SM Entertainment, invested $23 million with partners in passenger transport via drones. The EH216 can carry two passengers and flies without a pilot, leading to extraordinary videos. Just too bad about that bombastic music, therefore here, from SM Entertainment's stable, Red Velvet with Future, theme song from the popular Korean series Start-Up - yes, about Internet startups.
The high-quality sports site The Athletic (acquired last year by the New York Times, which last week dissolved its entire sports editorial staff) produced a nice long read about Lionel Messi's transfer to Miami, made possible by Apple. It remains extraordinary that Messi is the only player to benefit from the growth of subscribers to Apple TV+'s MLS subscription. The question looms as to when Apple will move more seriously into sports entertainment and move to acquire more sports rights, such as the Premier League, the NFL and the Olympics. And whether there will be more athletes then who will directly share in subscriptions to streaming services, separate of their clubs or leagues.
I want to reiterate that investing in startups carries the very highest form of risk. However, I did want to share my considerations for investing in iXora and Unveil. But simply put, my advice is: always do it only with money you can afford to lose and only in companies whose mission you support, then you will enjoy it the most. Profits remain uncertain.
