The technology industry is increasingly suffering from excessive attention to tech founders. Elon Musk continues to dominate the spotlight, whether he is reviving Twitter or tearing it down, depending on whom you ask. Still, the most significant news of the past week was the unveiling of Worldcoin. This project drew attention because of its shiny "orb," which scans the iris of new users, and because of the involvement of co-founder Sam Altman, also the CEO of OpenAI.
It was the week of Barbie and Oppenheimer, or Barbenheimer, and Worldcoin's Orb. Photo: created with Midjourney
Two months ago I wrote about Worldcoin and the company behind it called Tools for Humanity, which then presented itself on its 1-page website with the slogan "a technology company committed to a more just economic system" and raised as much as $115 million for the Worldcoin project.
The goal, the founders say, is to create a global identification system that will help reliably distinguish between humans and AI, in preparation for when intelligence is no longer a reliable indicator of being human. At Worldcoin, verification of humanity is ensured through the use of an Orb, a sphere: a biometric iris scanner.
Shiny happy orb people. Photo: Worldcoin
But according to Alex Blania, CEO and co-founder of Tools for Humanity and Worldcoin project leader, there is a bigger purpose than just identification as a human being:
'We seek universal access to the global economy, regardless of country or background, and accelerate the transition to an economic future where everyone on earth is welcome and benefits'
The definition of a pyramid scheme?
Who is not moved to tears by this noble endeavor? Who is against being welcome on earth? Coindesk visited Worldcoin's headquarters in Berlin and from this brilliant article, "Inside the Orb," the impression emerges that Altman and Blania possess a unique combination of talent, otherworldliness and opportunism.
So they talk about Worldcoin as a crucial step toward a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for the entire world population, because these men think big.
But they are particularly vague when the question is asked who should then pay for that universal basic income for our planet. Altman says of this:
"The hope is that when people want to buy this token, because they believe this is the future and there will be an influx into this economy. New token buyers is how it gets paid for, eventually."
Sam Altman, co-founder Worldcoin
Aha, so the influx of new buyers funds the system. That rings a bell, and I asked ChatGPT, the product of Sam Altman's other company, OpenAI, what the definition of a pyramid scheme is. Here it is:
'A pyramid scheme is a business model in which members are recruited through a promise of payments or services for enrolling others in the system, rather than providing investments or selling products. If recruiting multiplies, recruiting soon becomes impossible and most members cannot benefit; pyramid systems are therefore unsustainable and often illegal.'
I'm not saying Worldcoin is a pyramid scheme. Only that ChatGPT says it looks a lot like one.
Free coins for your iris
A cult of personality is emerging around Sam Altman reminiscent of the golden years of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Entire articles are devoted tothe 400(!) companies in which Altman has invested.
Partly for this reason, people lined up in several places around the world last week to have their eyes scanned by Worldcoin's orb. The media cheerfully helped make the hype as big as possible, with service journalism like this article in India, "Sam Altman's Worldcoin is here: how to get your free coin.
Because the system works stunningly simple: download the free Worldcoin app, scan your eyes at an orb, get a World ID and your Worldcoin app instantly receives 25 free Worldcoins; except in America, as Gizmodo experienced. But it's customer onboarding with a simplism and efficiency that would be the envy of a schoolyard drug dealer.
Critics have a point
Twitter would not be Twitter (oh no, it is also no longer Twitter but is now called X, but more on that later), if it were not for a number of astute critics who have analyzed Worldcoin well, such as here and here.
Ethereum founder and widely acclaimed ethicist within the blockchain industry Vitalik Buterin immediately warned of the possible, unintended, bad consequences of Worldcoin's approach:
'Risks include inevitable privacy breaches, further erosion of people's ability to surf the Internet anonymously, coercion by authoritarian governments and the potential impossibility of being simultaneously secure and decentralized.'
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder Ethereum
For now, let's believe Blania and Altman's promise that iris data will be immediately deleted from the orb and not stored. But how many fake orbs will be used by criminals to defraud consumers of their iris scan?
In any case, the question is justified whether a centrally run company should undertake this kind of initiative. World ID is effectively a universal passport, why should it be developed by a commercial company?
Remember, for all the fancy promises and goals, this is a commercial organization and the founders and backers own 25% of all Worldcoin. That's a higher tax rate than VAT. Even stranger: from Asia, I cannot see the pages in the white paper that deal with these tokenomics at all, because they are shielded. A problem more people faced. Why are they shielding information from the same people who are allowed to have their eyes scanned?
Vitalik Buterin's schematic representation of the problem
'Proof of Personhood' is relevant, but not in this way
Cybercrime will only increase in the age of AI, so there is a need for proof that you are dealing with a human being and not a computer program. Just not in the way Worldcoin is tackling the problem. Michael Casey of Coindesk puts it this way:
'The risk is not with the technology per se - we have known for years that AI is capable of destroying us. It is that if we concentrate control of these technologies with a handful of overly powerful companies motivated to use them as proprietary "black box" systems for profit, they will quickly move into dangerous, humanity-harming territory, just as the Web2 platforms did.
Still, there is at least one positive aspect that can emerge from the Worldcoin project. It draws attention to the need for some sort of proof of humanity, which may give impetus to the many interesting projects that seek to give people more control over their identity in the Web3/AI era.
The answer to proving and elevating authentic humanity could lie in capturing the "social graph" of our online connections, relationships, interactions and authorized credentials through decentralized identity models (DID) or initiatives such as the decentralized social networking protocol (DSNP) that is part of Project Liberty.
Or it could still lie in a biometric solution like what Worldcoin is working on, but hopefully with a more decentralized, less corporate structure. What is clear is that we need to do something.
Portable identity and reputation
Casey's line of thinking leads to a system of identification and reputation, where you can use services anonymously, but share your identity and reputation if you wish. My Uber score, for example, is 4.96, but if I want to book a room through Airbnb, I do so as a completely unknown individual.
This is why a landlord is the first to ask for a passport copy, while it would also be valuable for Airbnb and the landlord to know that at least as a passenger in an Uber, I did not demolish or vomit under the cab. Such a system where you as a user carry your online reputation with you and decide for yourself to share at a time you deem appropriate would be extremely useful in the digital economy.
Universal basic income for the world's population is so far-reaching that it should be introduced through normal democratic processes. Let's not leave that kind of major social issue to a few men from Berlin; historically that has not proven to be a happy combination.
Twitter becomes X
It can't have escaped anyone's notice, Elon Musk is turning Twitter into X. What a romantic he is, isn't he, to name his company after his youngest son? He explains that in the coming months "your entire financial world can be orchestrated" from X. Because Musk wants to make Twitter a "super-app," an all-encompassing app that merges information, communication and transactions. Similar to China's highly successful WeChat. Musk wants to get rid of the hated ad model as soon as possible.
Musk will look eagerly at South Asian Grab and GoJek, which will allow users to not only order cabs (on cars or scooters), but also pay their bills and even hire personal shoppers to go to the store of your choice to do your shopping. Of course, with a margin for Grab and GoJek on each transaction.
Every second Musk spends on the overrated Twitter remains a waste of time and a waste of his talent. I still hope one day Musk gets angry about Alzheimer's, cancer and the mental health of humanity and uses his undeniable talents to solve those problems, for example with a biotech company. Musk has mastered development of software, hardware and mechanical innovations, how hard would biotech be for him?
The informative podcast More or Less, from the couples Morin and Lessin, discussed Musk's plans for Twitter in detail this week. It's the only podcast I know of, by the way, in which two couples discuss a specific industry, noting that ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin is the astute founder of the online trade magazine The Information and Dave Morin is an investor who previously started Path, the most beautiful app of a failed social network I've ever used.
Notable links this week
Bill Gates has a podcast
Speaking of notable podcasts: Bill Gates has started a podcast called Unconfuse Me, and the first edition featured actor Seth Rogen and his wife Lauren as guests. Apparently that's a trend, to appear as a married couple on a podcast. I can hear you thinking, "Bill Gates has a podcast with Seth Rogen, doesn't that sound like Kermit the Frog with Scooby Doo as a guest? It certainly sounds that way, but it turned into an unexpectedly candid conversation about Alzheimer's, home care and recreational drug use, among other topics. Playback at double speed is not recommended.
Barbenheimer does nearly $1.2 billion in a week, Oppenheimer breaks IMAX projectors
The box office success of Barbie and Oppenheimer is unexpectedly huge: Barbie is expected to end the weekend with sales of $750 million and Oppenheimer is approaching $400 million. Even more strikingly, I found that the 70 millimeter version of Oppenheimer in the IMAX is so complex that the film is sometimes out of sync with the sound and even literally breaks. So much for all the doomsday scenarios that "old-fashioned" cinemas would lose out in the streaming era. Good feature films are drawing more audiences to theaters than ever.
Barbenheimer, but made by AI
If Barbie and Oppenheimer were squeezed into one movie, this would be the trailer. I say it too often about AI applications, but it's incredible that this was created entirely by AI: image, sound, video. Above all, the speed at which these kinds of applications are developing is unparalleled. The last time I was so stunned by a technology on the Internet was over 25 years ago when George Michael presented video in a Web browser.
Spotlight 9: Party Q2 at Google and Facebook
Yes, I know they are actually called Alphabet and Meta these days, but admit it, who reads on when those names are in the headline? It was the week when the second quarter results were released so there was a lot of movement in the stock markets. This web page contains a short, handy overview of the results of the major tech companies.
Meta and Alphabet rise, Microsoft falls. Investing in the stock market thus seems like a sprint, not a marathon.
The short-sightedness in the stock markets was demonstrated for the umpteenth time this week. Alphabet and Meta made sharp price jumps, due to higher-than-expected sales while partly driven by currency differences. Granted, Alphabet made 28% more sales on cloud services and that will only increase in the AI era.
However, Meta lost a whopping $21 billion in 18 months on investments in Reality Labs, Meta's business unit that is doing something with all the buzzwords of the last two years, including Web3, Metaverse, AR, VR and anything with difficult glasses. Result: 10% share price gain. How is it possible?
Microsoft, which has taken a tremendously strong position in the field of AI by incorporating OpenAI into the Bing search engine *and* invested as much as $10 billion in OpenAI, a guaranteed hit, was not understood by investors because the investments in AI "do not lead to higher sales right away. Result: 2% decline.
The pink cloud is a schematic representation of my brain as I look at the stock market and see Meta rising, while Microsoft is falling. Photo: created with Midjourney
'The growth in AI has the potential to drive Microsoft's two largest businesses: the public cloud Azure and the more traditional and market-leading productivity software Office.'
CNBC
That is exactly how it is, but investors apparently had a horizon this week that ended with the Friday afternoon drinks.
This week a couple of human interest stories stood out. The richest Welshman, Sir Michael Moritz, who as a journalist at Time was once blacklisted by Steve Jobs, left Sequoia Capital after nearly 40 years. And while CEO Sam Altman traveled the earth meeting world leaders, OpenAI turned out to be led by Mira Murati, a virtually unknown 35-year-old Albanian woman.
Image: Midjourney. Prompt: man with gray hair walks away, San Francisco skyline in background.
The little kingdom
The first time I came across the name Michael Moritz was in 1992 when Frans Straver, with whom I would later found Planet Internet, and I were graduating together from the University of Amsterdam on the sexy subject of "success and failure factors of interactive media in the consumer market. At that time, only mustachioed accountants had computers and only the bigger drug dealers used cell phones.
If you were looking for a serious book about the computer industry, there was nowhere to turn but the American Book Center in Amsterdam. There we found the fantastic book, which by then was almost a decade old, by Moritz, entitled "The Little Kingdom," about how Steve Jobs developed the Mac at Apple in the early 1980s.
"So much of what has happened is connected to Apple and the story of this extraordinary company that I find that Apple's breadcrumbs have been strewn across my life's path," said Moritz, who regrets that he never settled his spat with Jobs before his death. The book planted the seed in Frans and me that it was possible for two young guys to set up a successful company in the technology world, something we had never considered until reading Moritz's book.
Of course, when I moved to America in the late 1990s for my next startup after Planet Internet, Moritz was the first investor on whose door I knocked. Tried to knock on the door actually, because I never got beyond the inbox of the intern of the assistant of the junior associate at Sequoia who kindly declined me. Later I understood that Sequoia, and Moritz in particular, received thousands of business plans a year during that dotcom boom but made only a few dozen investments.
From Airbnb to Zoom
Michael Moritz was born in Wales to Jewish parents who had fled the rise of the Nazis in Germany. He was stationed in San Francisco for many years as a Time journalist and wrote widely about the world of technology. Don Valentine, the founder of Sequoia and the man who invested in Apple, Atari, Cisco, Oracle and Electronic Arts, among others, saw something in the British journalist and offered him the chance to work as an investor.
Over the next 38 years Moritz worked for Sequoia, the investment company strung together successes. Under his reign, Sequoia invested in virtually every company whose apps we have on our phones or computers today, or which we use for work directly or indirectly, including Google, Dropbox, Linkedin, Yahoo, Airbnb, PayPal, Instagram, YouTube, Whatsapp, Nvidia, Zoom and OpenAI.
"One of the things that is undervalued in our industry is how much you can learn from someone decades younger than you. Those are the people who might go on to do unusual things; they understand something very well, are independent thinkers and obviously smart and gifted."
Early this century, Moritz also initiated Sequoia's lucrative expansion into China. He was chairman of Sequoia from the mid-1990s until 2012, when he relinquished day-to-day management of the company due to "a rare medical condition that is treatable but incurable." Still, he remained a partner of Sequoia until his announced departure this week.
In recent years, Moritz apparently focused more on e-commerce and led Sequoia's investments in Stripe (estimated valuation $50 billion), Klarna ($6.7 billion), Instacart ($12 billion) and Getir ($6.5 billion). He will gradually transfer positions on the supervisory boards of those companies.
A hefty crank start
Forbes estimates Moritz's wealth at $5.2 billion, thanks largely to his holdings in Internet companies. Moritz and his wife donate most of it to charities, mainly through their own foundation, Crankstart. They are in quite a hurry to do so, judging by the report on the website:
"In 2022, we awarded $200 million in grants, 60 percent of which were to nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. The grants ranged in size from $1,000 to $18,500,000 and went to 363 organizations."
Other eye-catching donations included $20 million to the American civil rights movement ACLU, $50 million to his alma mater the University of Oxford, and no less than £75 million to the same university to spend on scholarships for children from low-income families. Moritz had not lost sight of the fact that he himself had once enjoyed a scholarship.
What I personally found remarkable was that Moritz is funding the famed literary Booker Prize through Crankstart for at least five years, after the previous sponsor pulled out. But unlike that sponsor, Moritz did not want to attach any name recognition to his donation because he and his wife believe that the Booker Prize is a prestigious award that should be associated with the name of the prize, not the name of the sponsor.
The similarities between Steve Jobs and Sir Alex Ferguson
In 2009, Moritz released a revised version of his book on Apple entitled "The Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs, the Creation of Apple and How It Changed the World. The book remains highly recommended for anyone interested in innovation and creativity.
To my surprise, Moritz, still a die-hard Manchester United fan despite having lived in San Francisco for nearly half a century, wrote a book on leadership with legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson in 2015.
In an interview about that book, Moritz shared some observations about the similarities between Steve Jobs and Sir Alex:
"When it comes to leadership, I think there are similarities. In their own way, they are both perfectionists. With Sir Alex, I was looking for a way to explain what I think are the basic principles of good leadership. I don't think they are very different between Silicon Valley and the soccer field, and they are universally applicable. The problem with the principles of leadership is that they are pretty easy to list, but very difficult to apply.
Sir Alex, Steve, they both had the energy to consistently push, urge, persuade others toward a goal that they themselves envisioned. I think the big difference between management and leadership is that the leader can persuade people to do the impossible."
Time for a new book?
Things get even more interesting when Moritz shares his own investment criteria. "When I want to invest I start with a market opportunity, because if a company starts in a market that looks unchanging and doesn't look like it's going to grow, it's not going to be a great company. Furthermore, we are looking for people who are completely obsessed. People who love nothing more than to work on the product or service they have come up with."
In the Netherlands, many investors employ the archaic cliché "it's about the guy, not the tent"; but Moritz cites as the first criterion precisely a large market, prone to change. That's an interesting angle. A top entrepreneur in a small market is not so interesting in this view.
And that begs the question of whether Moritz, time and health permitting, would like to write a book for the first time sharing his own views on entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership, rather than writing about people like Jobs and Ferguson.
My favorite book for tech entrepreneurs is "The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a business when there are no easy answers' by former entrepreneur Ben Horowitz, now best known as co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Horowitz is an exception, because just as many former top athletes turn out to be bad coaches, few successful entrepreneurs manage to develop into good investors. Let me stick to myself: when people ask me for advice on investing, I always reply that although I worked as an investor for many years, I never said I was good at it. That's why I became an entrepreneur again.
Moritz, now knighted Sir Michael, has no entrepreneurial experience whatsoever. Apparently, that was no impediment to achieving extreme success as an investor. It is high time someone with his amazing track record, huge network and sharp pen, shared his knowledge and experience in the form of a new book.
The driving force behind OpenAI is a 35-year-old Albanian woman
Founder and CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman visited as many as 22 countries in recent weeks including Israel, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, India, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and Australia. Altman met with students, venture capitalists and leaders including Indian Prime Minister Modi, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Israeli President Herzog. Earlier in his trip, Altman met with British Prime Minister Sunak, German Chancellor Scholz and French President Macron. (Remember, with dark brown shoes?)
The subject of all the conversations was the question: can AI be trusted, or are government measures needed? So it was instant news when Reuters saw Friday on the LinkedIn page of OpenAI's "Trust & Safety Leader" Dave Willner that he had left quietly after a year and a half. Willner talked about family reasons, which of course is possible.
But I also note that according to his LinkedIn profile, with 18 months of employment, Willner has already secured a sizable number of options in OpenAI, which at the estimated company valuation of $27 to $29 billion for OpenAI are worth enough that the Willner family's life would not be significantly improved if he stayed with the company for another year or so. After all, the difference in quality of life between earning 10,000 Euros or 20,000 Euros is far greater, than the difference between 10 million or 20 million in the bank.
Until a successor is found, Willner's team (apparently there is a Trust & Safety team at OpenAI) is managed by the CTO, Mira Murati. Who is this woman, who is still completely unknown on ChatGPT itself?
Mira Murati? Doesn't ring a bell, ChatGPT says of its own boss.
Although Murati is unknown on her own ChatGPT, the competitor, Google Bard, does have some information about her:
"Mira Murati is the Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI. She is a brilliant engineer who has worked on several AI projects, including ChatGPT, Dall-E and Codex. She is also an advocate for the regulation of AI because she believes it is important to take precautions to prevent the misuse of AI.
Murati was born in Albania and studied mechanical engineering at Dartmouth College. She then worked as an intern at Goldman Sachs and Zodiac Aerospace before joining Tesla as Senior Product Manager of the Model X. In 2016, she joined Leap Motion. In 2018, she joined OpenAI and was promoted to CTO in 2021."
There are several things remarkable about this. First, Murati's description on Bard is almost literally identical to the one in the CEO Magazine article. That raises the question of which source had the original information and which source clumsily copied it? It's fodder for lawyers in the AI world, where real and fake or original and copy seem completely interchangeable.
Second, Murati must be something of a prodigy, because it is rare for someone with the study of mechanical engineering to make a career in software so quickly. One study is about how, for example, the Tesla X is put together, the other about the software that makes the car self-driving.
Third, it appears that Murati moved to Canada from Albania at the age of 16. I asked Bard if Murati moved alone, or with her parents. Bard replied that 'Murati and her husband Sokol fled to Canada with their two children in 1993.' But in 1993, Mira Murati was five years old, which is also on the early side in Albania to have already started a family. In short; there is still a lot to improve on Google's AI activities.
Murati and Moritz: America first
There is a striking parallel in the lives of Mira Murati and Michael Moritz. Both came to America from a small European country, where they had the opportunity to expand their knowledge at excellent universities and then to exploit their potential in top companies.
I am not saying that every Ethiopian is a potential top entrepreneur or that there is a brain surgeon hiding in every refugee from Aleppo, but in the month when a cabinet falls in the Netherlands over a few thousand additional immigrants a year, I do argue for a rational immigration policy. Europe is old, so is Asia; several continents are aging rapidly. At the same time, there are people in previously unexpected places who can contribute much to the world, if only they are given the chance.
Of course, my perspective is colored, because I too once came through an exchange and scholarship from Amsterdam to a university in San Francisco, where I first saw the Internet. Moritz and Murati came to the San Francisco Bay Area from Wales and Albania. But where in Europe or Asia would they have been as welcome as there? And where would their origins play such a minor role? What European or Asian venture capitalist would give a journalist a chance as an investor, or a young Albanian woman the technical leadership of a billion-dollar company like OpenAI? That should make entrepreneurs, voters and policymakers think.
Spotlight 9: Ripple continues to amaze, but for how long?
The chart is not upside down; there were only declines among the leading investments in the tech sector except for Ripple.
It was a week full of sadness and gloom in the tech corner of the stock markets. But where I expected a correction to Ripple's huge price jump after last week's court ruling, XRP remained fairly stable while the other major crypto currencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, both fell.
So I downloaded from Coinmarketcap the XRP price data for the last 30 days and asked OpenAI's Code Interpreter to plot the price against trading volume. From there, this interesting graph rolled out:
The red line indicates the trading volume, the blue line the price.
Trading volume in XRP has declined dramatically over the last week, following a huge spike in the days immediately following the court ruling. The falling blue line representing the price now parallels the red line of falling trading volume.
That means the price can no longer be driven by increasing demand. Investors who believe in XRP are holding on. But not enough new buyers are entering the market at the current price to offset the number of sell orders. A further correction of XRP seems inevitable.
And bad news for crypto enthusiasts: anyone who bought XRP a year ago should certainly be happy with a 105% rise. But that's still a lot less than the 160% price jump Nvidia made in the last year, driven by the AI hype that requires strong processors.
The White House on Friday invited representatives of seven leading companies in the AI field and announced a covenant of sorts with them, in which the companies pledged, among other things, to add digital watermarks to their systems. (So if all goes well, we'll soon know who had copied the text from whom about Mira Murati: Bard or CEO Magazine?)
The participating companies have been regular topics in this spot in recent weeks, namely Microsoft (with Bing), Google(Bard), OpenAI(ChatGPT), Anthropic(Claude), Inflection(Pi), Amazon and Meta(LLaMA).
In effect, Meta is thereby acknowledging OpenAI's lead and, by making its technology open source, hopes to attract so many developers from outside the company that it can still catch up with LLaMA 2. A smart strategy by Meta, which is distinctive from the closed AI platforms of OpenAI and Google.
It continues to be amazing how quickly AI applications are improving. After text and photos, now it's video's turn, and Twitter user Nathan Lands shared a nice overview.
Two weeks ago, I described my doubts about Mark Zuckerberg's jubilation about his new app Threads, the AliExpress version of Twitter. Granted, because of Instagram's installed base, hundreds of millions of people will try Threads. But the app is too sloppy, boring and predictable to generate much repeated use unless improvements are made to the app quickly.
This journalist explains in great detail all the shortcomings of Threads. A good point: why is there only an app for cell phones and Threads cannot be used on a computer, if the platform is about text messages? I wonder how long it will be before the first significant updates are released by Meta, because it would be good if a serious competitor to Twitter emerges.
Christopher Nolan and Hoyte van Hoytema literally and figuratively make great films
In all the digital opulence, film writer and director Christopher Nolan is a blessing. He filmed the masterpiece Oppenheimer on 70 millimeter IMAX film and does not use Computer Generated Images (CGI) in his films. This video shows how the film is literally pasted together from fifty-three rolls of film of three minutes and twenty-four seconds each. In total, the film, which has a duration of three hours and nine seconds, is 17.7 kilometers long and weighs 272 kilograms. That's another entertainment experience than watching Love Island on your iPhone.
Nolan finds CGI "too safe, the image does not seem to contain the threat of, say, a real explosion, however small.' He shoots on film because it most closely resembles the image the human eye perceives. That and more can be seen in this video in which Robert Downey Jr and Christopher Nolan answer the most frequently asked questions on the web about them.
For those of you who are going to see Oppenheimer in theaters next week; go to the IMAX and I'd love to hear how you liked it.
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.
Please note that this is not an advertisement for investing in these companies. I explain what my considerations were for investing, but I want to emphasize that investing in startups has the very highest form of risk. Simply put, my advice is: only do it with money you could lose. And above all, do it because you support the companies' goals.
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?
Hypotherm Rack Management (HRM) from iXora. Server in and done. Crucial: fits into a standard 19-inch rack, the standard in data centers worldwide.
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 .
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.
Imagine if XRP had won the case outright....
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 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!
Code Interpreter from ChatGPT generated these graphs from a .csv file I had uploaded. Saves a lot of time and effort!
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.
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.
I can't resist playing with MidJourney. This image is a combination of a photo I had uploaded, with an image generated by MidJourney.Result of the prompt in MidJourney to put an iXora HRM in a room like the final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Looks more like a Transformer on steroids.
Threads, the intended Twitter-killer from Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, is out and I spent all of Saturday morning trying to figure out what's special about it. The answer is: nothing. With virtually unlimited resources, Mark Zuckerberg has managed to develop an extremely limited product.
Investor Fred Wilson rightly notes the importance of Twitter getting competition, and that it is positive that Threads has announced that it will support the open source protocol ActivityPub. That would mean that if a Threads user leaves Threads, it would be fairly easy to switch to another server that also supports ActivityPub, such as Mastodon - or hopefully another, more user-friendly variant than that app, which they would have been better off calling Masochist.
So in theory, a Threads user has "account portability" and is not forever stuck in the endlessly branched rabbit holes that Zuckerberg is trying to dig from Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Threads. Only ... there is no support at all for ActivityPub in Threads yet. That's like a car manufacturer proudly announcing at the introduction of a new car that safety is paramount, but brakes won't be installed until the next model.
How fun, good or useful is Threads?
To use Threads, you must have an Instagram account. Yet every Threads user gets a number under their Instagram account with a link to the Threads account. Why? You already have a name for your Instagram account, so why do you get a number on Threads? (Leaving aside the fact that for people with any sense of history, the ostentatious display of a personal registration number evokes unpleasant associations.)
Zuckerberg likes to make human products, according to user eighty million four hundred and forty-four thousand two hundred and forty-nine
Of course, there is only one reason for this and that is that Zuckerberg wants to shout from the rooftops that you are not alone on Threads, that there are over 80 million people who have already created an account. When I created an Instagram account a week after Instagram launched in October 2010, I was already happy to see a few cute pictures made by other people. It took almost three months for Instagram to grow to one million users. For that time, that was tremendously fast.
Threads, through the roughly two billion Instagrammers, is going to get hundreds of millions of users very quickly who, like me, are going to take a look at what it is and how it works. But the question is how often and how intensively Threads will be used. The reason I am hardly active on Twitter anymore is the bickering of predictable people. Under the reign of Elon Musk, that trend only seems to be encouraged, and that leaves room for Meta to launch Threads successfully.
So, what is the experience of spending a morning on Threads?
Although I have already accepted my followers on Instagram, I have to do this again on Threads and then one by one. My Instagram account has been on 'open' for a while now and anyone who would like can follow me. But on Threads I have to scroll and tap my way through a blood blister because the application is only available as an app on your phone, and I even have to confirm that my own brother is allowed to follow me. Although we have confirmed each other as brothers on Facebook.
So what is the point of the Instagram link and the fact that Threads is part of the Meta Empire? As a user, I get little benefit from it. The integration of all data within Meta is solely to feed Meta's ad engine with additional data about users, not for better usability for average brothers.
There is no chronological timeline so I can get a "live" sense of what people are talking about, which is precisely Twitter's strength. On all of these crucial aspects of a good user experience, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri, also responsible for Threads, says it is being worked on. By the way, he says that on Twitter, not on Threads.
I haven't noticed it myself, but it's been widely complained that Threads posts in your timeline from accounts you don't follow at all. It could be that these misery 'feature' will first be tested in the U.S. before being unleashed on the world. Of course, Meta is trying to use this to keep the user hooked for longer in a way copied from TikTok.
Most of the posts in my timeline on Threads consist of photos. Often the same photos that the account owner has previously posted on Instagram, and since I have added everyone I follow on Instagram on Threads as well, I feel like I am watching a repeat. Not a pleasant experience.
Threads is currently a muddled product in which text and images are mixed in an unnatural way. This is to be expected since the vast majority of users come via Instagram, which is not a conversation or discussion platform like Twitter was in its best days.
Unlike Instagram, where filters can be laid over photos that smooth out wrinkles so well that even miss Piggy can look like Jessica Rabbit, there are no filters that make text messages on Twitter or Threads smarter or more fun. So it quickly becomes chatter or complaining.
The upside for Meta is that Instagram has a huge installed base and hundreds of millions of people will try Threads. The downside is that turning image-sensitive Instagram users into text-producing Threads people will be about as natural as making a shot putter run.
For now, Threads will not be a threat to Twitter in terms of usage, audience and form of communication. The number of accounts will be huge, but usage relatively infrequent. It simply adds too little.
The social media hierarchy in which there is no room for Threads
Threads chief Mosseri, by the way, claims that Threads' goal is not to replace Twitter, either. No, the noble goal, according to Mosseri, is to "create a public square for communities on Instagram that have never embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter and other platforms that are interested in a less angry place for conversations but not all of Twitter.
Apologies, there I am again, I was away for a while; I was sitting barefoot with self-picked buttercups in my hair, connecting with the earth, while already tree-hugging, reciting a sonnet to the universe. That is how much I liked this description of "a public square" on Threads.
but... 'the average price per ad decreased by 16% year-over-year'
And there we are at the core. Because the total number of users of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram is still growing only a few percent per year, and revenue per ad is falling many times more sharply.
With Threads, Zuckerberg has two goals: first, to create a new platform through which to sell more ad space, even though the estimated revenue of, say, Twitter this year at $3 billion is a decimal rounding for Meta. No doubt Zuckerberg thinks he can get a much higher revenue per user on Threads, than Musk does on Twitter. Advertisers are not eager to advertise next to a discussions about politics. It just doesn't sell well.
But with the wealth of new data that large scale use of Threads could provide about its users, Zuckerberg hopes to make his real move and charge higher ad rates; because with the heightened privacy requirements that Meta is facing, especially in Europe, unscrupulous selling of user privacy as in Meta's current business model is becoming increasingly difficult.
This is also the same reason why Zuckerberg is trying to pressure the EU to adjust the regulations for Meta. And one way he is doing that is by not yet releasing Threads in EU countries, referring to the "unclear regulations on the use of data across multiple platforms.' Because that's what Zuckerberg is all about; he wants to fill each user's social and interest graph as richly as possible for his advertisers. But Europeans can rest assured: you really aren't missing anything from Threads.
Threads doesn't want discussions about news, because advertisers don't like that, so here is our puppy Nala.
$40 billion in the bank and Zuck makes the AliExpress version of Twitter
It's intensely sad. Zuckerberg still has nearly 80,000 employees after all the rounds of layoffs, including an army of talented programmers. Combine that talent with that $40 billion in the bank and there are every opportunity to develop a new, beautiful product. But what is the result of its first self-developed product in nearly two decades?
No more than a slapdash version of Twitter, which in itself is a waste of Elon Musk's talents. I still hope for once that man gets angry about Alzheimer's, cancer and mental health of humanity and uses his talents to solve those problems, for example with a biotech company. Musk has mastered development of software, hardware and mechanical innovations, how difficult would biotech be for him? That would be really fascinating to follow.
Zuckerberg stable borrowed the idea for Facebook from his friends co-founders, bought Instagram for $1 billion, Oculus for $2 billion and Whatsapp for $19 billion. Nice detail: Ukrainian Jan Koum, founder of Whatsapp, who emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 16, signed that sales deal from which he himself made just under $7 billion, for the office where he once got his food stamps received.
Zuckerberg has grown from a creative programmer to an experienced CEO. Only not from a technology company that develops its own valuable solutions, but from a private equity fund that copies or buys other people's ideas. Then all the talent from the acquired companies leaves, though that voluntary departure cost Whatsapp's Brian Acton no less than $850 million. Surely Zuckerberg must ask himself at times why such talent is so eager to leave Meta?
Instagram Stories was a total imitation of Snapchat but at least it worked fine. Threads, on the other hand, looks like a loveless, hastily made product. I hold out hope that one day Zuckerberg will rediscover himself as the leader of a team of talented developers and develop a beautiful, meaningful, original product. Threads is certainly not that; it is currently the AliExpress version of Twitter.
Talented YouTubers push boundaries
Speaking of meaningful, original products, two of my favorite YouTubers, Cleo Abram and Marques Brownlee, visited ZeroSpace in New York, a cross between a laboratory and a studio where the most extraordinary special effects are created where real and fake cannot be distinguished. What I found most extraordinary was the technique where up to six scenes can be shot simultaneously with different camera images(at 6 minute 11).
Cleo and Marques discuss a sensitive issue after Marques takes the guise of Cleo: what happens when every actor can be simulated by a computer and soon you won't know whether you are watching a real scene with fantastic acting, or a complete simulation? Will the Oscar for best actress soon go not to Meryl Streep, as it should, but to the programmer who generates the digital Meryl Streep from bits, pixels and audio clips?
Cleo's report is here and this is Marques' report. The wait is for a full movie with fake actors in a fake environment, but hopefully one with a good script because they remain difficult to write, even with AI.
Also check out this tour of Marques' $1 million studio, in which each room is set up to solve a specific video-making problem. If you have the idea that YouTubers are still making videos with a cap on backwards in their parents' attic in pajamas, be sure to check out the quarter-million-dollar robotic arm for making quick camera movements.
Midjourney update is impressive
Crunchbase summed up the bizarre first six months in terms of funding for AI companies well.Despite the billions invested in AI, the total amount invested in technology companies dropped a whopping 51% compared to 2022.
With the investment money in AI companies, extraordinary achievements are being made. Two weeks back, I wrote briefly about Photoshop's amazing "generative fill," which uses AI to add complete sections of an image in a way that is indistinguishable from the real thing.
Manu.Vision created this phenomenal combination of art and technology
As if Midjourney were not already stunning enough, that company has released an incredibly good "Zoom Out" update that enables such extraordinary images that designer Kalson Kalu has compiled a brilliant top 10 of them. This top 10 is also impressive. Here's a detailed description of how the Midjourney v5.2 update works and what else we can expect in the near future.
All Sequoia companies are working on AI
Investment firm Sequoia (Apple, Atari, Google, Instagram, Whatsapp etc) asked 33 of the portfolio companies about their developments in AI. The findings are very worth reading. As many as 65% of the companies have AI applications in production and 94% use a "foundation model API" such as Chat GPT from OpenAI to do so.
Character.ai's chatbots even lead to adventure games
Bloomberg came out Friday with this excellent article about character.ai, the maker of chatbots that was recently valued at $1 billion but whose usefulness escapes me for now. It doesn't help when the CEO then blurts out texts like "I joke that we're not going to replace Google. We're going to replace your mother".
The founders are AI experts who did very clever things at Google, so I still struck up conversations with various characters on character.ai including Einstein, a banana and Darth Vader. Copyright and other intellectual property infringement aside, one psychologist already pointed out the danger of allowing any willful leip with lots of free time to pose as a psychologist, like this chatbot.
Things got surprisingly funny after all when I struck up a conversation with SM64 Mario, the chatbot based on the Nintendo 64 Super Mario. The creator of this bot does more than chat, he asks you along on an adventure.
In my case, Super Mario said, 'help me save Princess Peach, defeat Bowser, and bring Peach back safely to her castle. We will also visit many different worlds, each with their own unique challenge.' Then the text appeared: Mario walks over to a painting, and enters the painting portal, inviting Michiel to come with him.
This implementation of a chatbot reminded me of a textual adventure, like the first MUDs thirty years ago when I was just getting into the Internet. Try it for yourself, Super Mario is waiting for you here.
Spotlight 9: Nvidia holds its own
After my longer analysis last week on the first half of what can be called a jubilant year so far for tech stocks, in crypto equally, this week was downright soporific. Everyone knows by now that Apple is worth $3 trillion and it seems like investors are banking on that exact market value.
It was a soporific week of technology trade shows
Yet the old adage "sell in May and go away, but remember to come back in September" does not hold true for the "chipmaker for the AI stars": Nvidia. Over the past month, NVDA shares rose more than 10% and its market value has increased to more than $1 trillion, to be precise, to $1,050 billion.
Right now, Amazon ($1.3 trillion) and Alphabet (Google's parent company, $1.5 trillion) are still worth a few hundred billion more than Nvidia, but if things continue like this, Nvidia could end the year as the third most valuable technology company in the world, behind Apple and Microsoft. No one could have foreseen that at the beginning of the year.
