Gareth Keane

I find it hard to believe that with millions of EVs entering the market and the proliferation of AI compute that PGE is actually going to have excess capacity in 2040 without any additional generation from 3rd parties. I am also curious if there are enough transmission lines and if PGE views that as someone else’s problem. Maybe they are planning on AI and ACTUAL figuring it all out! https://lnkd.in/gybsMmaw

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I've been thinking a lot about how Tesla's vehicle infrastructure can leverage inference compute, distributing computational load and reducing data center energy usage. Dr. John Gibb does a nice job of summarizing these concepts in his video (Starting around 8:10). Inference Arbitrage: A Game Changer for AI Compute As AI continues to evolve, the demand for computational power is skyrocketing. Giants like OpenAI, Meta, and Google are pouring billions into training and inference compute, facing looming shortages of transformers and electricity. Here's where inference arbitrage, a novel concept leveraging Tesla's infrastructure, comes into play. The Challenge: Soaring AI Compute Costs Leading AI companies are investing billions to power their AI programs. However, the energy and computational needs are outpacing infrastructure capabilities. This bottleneck isn't just financial; it's physical. The growing demand for AI services could soon exceed available power and hardware. The Solution: Inference on the Edge xAI, in collaboration with Tesla, offers a groundbreaking solution: using Tesla vehicles for AI inference tasks. Tesla's fleet, equipped with powerful hardware and large batteries, can perform AI inference during idle times (about 90% of the time), reducing strain on central data centers How Inference Arbitrage Works Distributed Computing: Instead of relying solely on massive, centralized compute farms, inference requests (e.g., generating an email or image) are processed by idle Tesla vehicles. This distributed approach taps into the existing infrastructure efficiently. Energy Optimization: Tesla vehicles can perform inference tasks using their batteries during peak electricity demand times, avoiding high energy costs. At off-peak times, they recharge at lower costs, ensuring energy-efficient operations. Commercial Benefits: This model allows Tesla owners to earn money by utilizing their vehicle's idle time for AI computations. Tesla benefits from additional revenue streams with minimal overhead, and xAI gains a scalable, cost-effective solution for AI service delivery. Impact on the AI Industry By integrating AI inference with Tesla's distributed compute network, xAI can deliver services faster and more economically than competitors. This innovative use of existing resources not only addresses the infrastructure bottleneck but also offers a sustainable path forward for AI growth. Conclusion Inference arbitrage provides a strategic edge for xAI and Tesla, combining AI innovation with smart energy use. As the demand for AI compute continues to rise, this approach could redefine the landscape, positioning xAI and Tesla as leaders in efficient, scalable AI service delivery. Stay tuned as this exciting development unfolds and reshapes the future of AI. #ElectricVehicles #InferenceCompute #DataCenters #Electrification #AI #FrontierTechnology #FutureFrontier

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Some more insight into what we are building at Aerodome 📈🚀

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SAFE rounds are on the rise as bridge rounds proliferate. And less & less investors want to lead early-stage rounds. This means that startups may have to contend with multiple SAFEs that are "stacked", making dilution projections complicated and potentially unfavorable to founders. Stepan Khzrtian navigates us through this complexity with the following article exceptionally well.

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The joining of Google Next Renew and OhmConnect signals some validation of an effort started some eight years ago. Championed by Dave Wechsler, Curtis Snyder and Jon Kaplowitz, we worked to develop a virtual power-plant by giving away XFINITY HOME connected thermostats in exchange for demand response agreements. With enough concentration this would prove to reduce consumption on demand. Unfortunately, initial success gave way to larger competing priorities. We must continue to invest in the nation's infrastructure in a way that benefits and rewards customers, improves reliability and reduces human impact on the environment. I'm eager to see how this partnership will deliver a substantial impact in energy efficiency, demand response, grid optimization, and customer engagement. It's a promising step. How do you think the merger of Google Nest Renew and OHMConnect will impact residential energy management? https://lnkd.in/ev_z2Wbz

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The most impactful technology augments human capability. Take assembly line work as an example: Robots enhance speed and precision but still require human oversight. This dynamic mirrors our evolving relationship with AI, especially within the service-as-software paradigm shift. As Jaya and I wrote in our recent blog post, AI's evolution from a basic tool into an autonomous agent isn't about replacing jobs. It's about reshaping them. This shift is part of a $4.6 trillion opportunity where AI not only boosts efficiency but also creates new roles, blending tech with human insights. AI doesn’t just replace—it reinvents how we work, creating more value than ever.

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Nice article on AI chips in space "We have launch vehicles, launch towers, spacecraft, onboard propulsion and antennas, and in the end, it comes down to the damn semiconductor" Thanks to Jason Cerundolo for sending this article

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In 2020, Karan Talati predicted what many of us take for granted today: we are in a revolution in hardware innovation that is revitalizing American manufacturing. Karan was part of this movement at SpaceX, where both hardware and software played key roles in making it the generational company it has become today. Having seen what software can do at SpaceX and noticing a glaring need to bring better hardware engineering and manufacturing software to the broader hardware innovation ecosystem, Karan set out to build a solution. The aerospace, defense, and other hardware manufacturing industries are rapidly shifting to a more dynamic and efficient production methodology. First Resonance exists to help them achieve their goals with better software.

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🚀 Excited to announce our investment in Satellites on Fire. Their cutting-edge technology is making a significant impact in preventing fires and addressing climate change. What excites me: 🌟 Product: I'm particularly impressed by how they use various technologies to solve a very specific problem – wildfire detection and prevention. Their use of satellites and #AI allows for real-time wildfire detection, outperforming traditional methods and providing early alerts to protect communities and ecosystems. 🔥 Traction: already monitoring 34M hectares across 11 countries in Latin America, helping over 400 organizations with real-time alerts. Their rapid adoption by large-scale public and private institutions speaks volumes about their impact. 💪 Amazing Team: Franco Rodriguez Viau, Joaquin Chamo and Ulises L. have shown incredible passion, grit, and growth mindsets. Exactly what you look for in founders. Can't wait to see how they grow the business. Forests are crucial for climate stability, water regulation, biodiversity, and livelihoods. We need to protect them! Satellites on Fire is here to help us protect our forests and neighboring communities. 🌎 Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/eMRai9UA #ClimateTech #WildfirePrevention #SustainableFuture #Innovation #SatellitesOnFire #MCV

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Key takeaways from VC Goat - Vinod Khosla podcast. - The firm cares more about working on interesting problems with large technical solutions rather than just maximizing IRR. The team is there because they believe in the mission. - Khosla assumes they've lost the money the day they invest, and then maximizes for the upside opportunity. He calls it "option value investing" rather than IRR investing. - Khosla has contrarian bets in AI (neuro-symbolic computing, probabilistic approaches), biotech, robotics, crypto, and more. - He believes aviation fuels, fusion energy, new transit systems, and other contrarian areas ignored by most investors will be huge opportunities. - Most large innovations come from outsiders, not industry insiders. Khosla looks for founders who can learn a business rapidly rather than have deep domain expertise. The Future Impact of AI - AI will be deflationary and increase productivity growth to 4% annually vs the typical 2% forecast. This will cause great abundance but also increasing income inequality. - Bipedal robots will take over most manufacturing and manual labor jobs within 20-25 years. This will free humans to be more creative and pursue their passions. - Education will shift from job training to creativity. Uniquely human elements like taste and curation will be most valued in an AI-enabled world. https://lnkd.in/gqBsmbks

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🚨Boom! 8090 Industries portfolio company Armada led by Dan Wright and Jon Runyan lands another $40M led by Microsoft marking $100M raised to date after announcing its Series A and coming out of stealth in 2023 just 7 months ago and shares new customer partnerships with Haliburton and Skydio. 🌪 “Extreme situations like hurricanes reinforce the need for “edge” computing, the practice of processing data locally rather than sending it back to the cloud. “Lots of oil and gas companies are really very concerned about these types of disasters. You can’t have any latency. You have to be able to respond in real time.” Dan Wright, cofounder and CEO of Armada, While disaster response is the obvious application, Armada’s edge technology also has a big role to play in all sorts of remote environments where uninterrupted data access is critical. Think real-time safety monitoring at high-risk worksites, real-time emissions tracking for oil rigs, and automated operations for mines. In regards to the newly inked partnership with Microsoft: It’s a natural fit, says Pradeep Nair Armada’s founding CTO and a 10-year veteran of Microsoft’s Azure business. “If you look at all of these customers we’re hitting—oil, gas, and mining—these guys are legacy, traditional customers and Microsoft is their biggest vendor,” he says. The partnership with Microsoft “opens up the whole pipeline, without us needing to go through the whole procurement process.” Cc Kerem Ozmen Garuth A. Wes Mendenhall Filip Vurdelja Haluk Sabanci Dincer Grant Brown Ishan Meswani Andrew Irwin Shilpa Patel

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another great piece by Jennifer Hiller regarding AI's seemingly insatiable demand for energy. Where does this take us? I predict a growing demand for "net new" clean baseload from Big Tech (and regulators). They want more power, but they would also prefer to get it the right way. Not taking it from today's pre-existing baseload, but instead finding net new sources like new-build nukes, geothermal, and more wind/solar + storage. Let's build! Carl Hoiland Joel Edwards Jonathan Webb Patrick Maloney Shayle Kann Jigar Shah Jennifer Granholm Daniel Shugar Chris Anderson Rebecca Kujawa Obvious Ventures

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During yesterday's LibreQoS APNIC webinar, I posed the question: won't more bandwidth solve these problems? As Herbert Wolverson said, yes, more bandwidth is good, but, still these problems remain if queueing is done incorrectly. Here's my take on why bandwidth alone is not as good as bandwidth + good queueing policies: Generally it was believed that 'data is important, so don't throw it away; hang on to it and send it later'. In practice, this has proven to be suboptimal as two issues may emerge: 1) latency increases for some flows due to heavy demand from other flows using the same bottleneck link, 2) even a single flow can have excessive latency due to aspects of typical TCP behavior (referred to bufferbloat) when the buffers grew large enough that the data being buffered was retransmitted anyway. It turns out that not all data is equally important. Active Queue Management is the art of deciding priorities, both in deciding what data to throw away, but also in allowing some later arriving data to be transmitted ahead of data in another connection that arrived before it. These problems have been studied, and good solutions have been found by using certain queueing policies in routers and switches, referred to as “fq_codel’ and “cake”. These track the different flows not by classifying the data, but by watching the behavior. Flows that send relatively little data (DNS lookups), or at a measured pace (video chat) have priority over flows that send a lot of data as quickly as possible (App and System updates, Video and ISO downloads).

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Who doesn't love chatting about the frontier of Space?! Loved getting this insiders look from Epsilon3 CEO Laura Crabtree (ex-SpaceX, Northrop Grumman) as the industry reshapes into a lightening fast startup ecosystem for us to marvel. Small teams are lowering the cost to access space. Homegrown automation software is dramatically reducing team size -- as Laura puts it: "You won’t see 50 people in a control room for launch…you’ll see 5 controlling 50 different assets and a couple of 100 assets that are mostly operating on their own." Personally i'm keeping a close eye on the new interconnectedness between space and the broader economy will spark a flywheel of innovation. 🎙️ Listen in to our discussion (link in comments) as we release today -- 5YF#16: Space command reimagined, automating mission control, new deep tech hubs, interstellar missions, and the future of space operations w/ Epsilon3 CEO Laura Crabtree To infinity!

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New Tesla Patent Reveals Clues to an Exciting Future of Humanoid Robots and AI Integration In a interesting discussion, Herbert Ong and Scott Walter dive deep into Tesla's recently published patent application WO2024072984A1 (link in comments). Entitled "Actuator and actuator design methodology," the patent primarily focuses on controlling robot movement through strategic actuator placement. However, the document also unveils important clues about the potential for end-to-end neural net training of humanoid robots, reminiscent of Tesla's approach to training its vehicles with FSD. Ong and Walter explore the concept of personalized humanoid skills. Imagine purchasing a bot with built-in capabilities, then having the option to augment and customize those skills through a "Skills Store" akin to Apple's App Store. This opens up a world of possibilities for tailoring robots to specific tasks and preferences. The discussion also touches on the potential for various robot form factors, each designed to excel at particular skills. Picture a tennis-playing robot that comes pre-trained with basic volleying instructions, but requires a "Skills Upgrade" to perform at a master level. This raises questions about the need to manufacture and train a diverse range of robot body types and sizes, mirroring how humans possess ideal physiological characteristics for different activities. Later, Ong and Walter discuss a scenario in which Tesla builds the hardware – including automobiles, humanoids, and other bot form factors – while xAI develops the brains. This arrangement opens up opportunities for licensing agreements between the two companies, that may help the companies navigate future antitrust concerns as these technologies are deployed at scale. The convergence of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence holds the potential to catalyze a profound societal transformation. As Tesla and xAI continue to push the boundaries of what's possible, I can envision a future where intelligent, adaptable robots become integral to various aspects of our lives – from manufacturing and transportation to healthcare, recreation, and beyond. The seamless integration of cutting-edge hardware and software will revolutionize the way we live and work, ushering in an era of unprecedented efficiency, productivity, and innovation. While there are still challenges to overcome and ethical considerations to address, the prospect of these combined technologies driving positive change on a global scale is awe-inspiring. #FrontierFrontier #Humanoids #AI #Robots

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Interesting piece from Marc Andreessen on how startups are not getting the regulatory support they need to sustain America's technological leadership. "Regulatory agencies have been green lit to use brute force investigations, prosecutions, intimidation, and threats to hobble new industries, such as Blockchain. Regulatory agencies are being green lit in real time to do the same to Artificial Intelligence." While many investors themselves (both in the US and Europe) are worried how AI will change our lives, our jobs and social interactions, the top VC opinion leader thinks regulation is already too restrictive. #techstartups #techleadership #strategicgrowth

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I am excited to share that Seraphim Space has reached first close on our new early stage fund to support SpaceTech’s brightest stars 💫 With the space sector now entering the next phase of its transformation, the Fund will focus on investing at Seed and Series A stages in the next generation of visionary entrepreneurs looking to transform science fiction into science fact. Through this innovative model of supporting SpaceTech’s brightest stars from their inception through to helping them achieve escape velocity, Seraphim Space has gone on to establish itself as the most prolific SpaceTech investor globally, having supported more than 120 SpaceTech companies in 27 countries worldwide that collectively have raised more than $3 billion in funding🚀 Key themes the Fund anticipates investing in include: 👾 The application of artificial intelligence to the treasure trove of satellite data to unlock near real time insights about the world to help combat challenges posed by climate change and global security 🛰 The merging of terrestrial and space-based communications networks to enable ‘always on’ ubiquitous connectivity for both people and machines 👨‍🚀 Utilising the unique microgravity environment of space to drive the next wave of scientific breakthrough in areas such as biotech and material science 🌍 The creation of space-based networks for on-orbit edge compute, internet/ communications and data relay to power the developing in-orbit economy The Fund has already made nine investments aligned with some of these key themes into these world changing companies: -Hubble Network – Internet of Things satellite constellation for connecting directly to billions of Bluetooth enabled devices -Delos Insurance Solutions – Space data powered wildfire home insurance provider -ATMOS Space Cargo cargo return service for life sciences -Auriga Space – Novel electro-magnetic launch system Thanks to the entire team for their hard work and dedication into finding and supporting the most exciting SpaceTech companies globally. https://lnkd.in/e5At5aR2 #VC #Fundingnews #SpaceTech #Investinspace

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#hiring If anyone knows an awesome engineer that would be interested in joining an emerging #AI company doing important work in #healthcare, please drop me a line! Andy AI is backed by General Catalyst, YCombinator, Greater Ventures, and others, and they’re looking to hire a full stack engineer (US based) who's excited about using AI to improve healthcare and reduce nurse burnout. Andy is AI software that automates clinical documentation for nurses who do home visits. A nurse makes an audio recording of the visit and Andy automatically generates a form that usually takes nurses 90 minutes to complete. Nurses love the product because it potentially saves them 15 hours of charting a week! The founders previously built healthcare AI at Google Health and Apple, and are now building their vision to transform home health. More about Andy AI: https://with-andy.com/ Nurses love it: https://lnkd.in/g9XqZrUq #GenAI #digitalhealth #hiring #engineers #healthtech

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