Investment & Funding — Posts

59 posts on "Investment & Funding" by Shlomo Strauss — bilingual writing on technology, science, and business.

• The Technologies Turning Carbon Into a Profitable Industry — New technologies are turning carbon capture from a costly necessity into a profitable industry by using emissions to create resources like concrete.
• The Foxconn worker who built a $70 billion manufacturing giant — Founded by a former factory worker, Luxshare now assembles the Apple Vision Pro and is raising billions to expand into AI server infrastructure.
• The impending collapse of GoPro and its technological legacy — Facing financial struggles and fierce competition, GoPro nears the end of its path while leaving a lasting legacy in digital image stabilization.
• The structural flaws driving OpenAI toward collapse — Without its own infrastructure, OpenAI's growing user base deepens its debt, risking a collapse that could trigger a broader tech recession.
• Why rocket explosions on the launch pad keep happening — From cryogenic fuel physics to the New Glenn explosion, this piece explains the chain of failure modes that make every successful launch an engineering…
• Corning's evolution from Edison's lightbulb to AI optical fibers — Corning has sustained 175 years of relevance by adapting its glass technology for everything from Edison's lightbulbs to modern AI data centers.
• An AI-native game engine is taking aim at Epic and Unity's duopoly — Immense, a new game engine built by a former Epic director, uses parallel AI agents to handle physics, lighting, and audio — and could disrupt the…
• Taiwan Shipwreck Outage Highlights Need for LEO Satellites — After a shipwreck severed an undersea cable in Taiwan, microwave tech provided temporary relief, highlighting the strategic need for LEO satellites.
• How NASA's 1989 VIEW Project Laid the Foundation for Modern VR — Although NASA's 1989 VIEW project failed its space goals, its optical and tracking innovations laid the groundwork for Nintendo, Oculus, and modern VR.
• Harnessing Bacterial Self-Destruction to Target Cancer Cells — University of Utah researchers adapted a bacterial defense mechanism to selectively destroy cancer cells' DNA without harming healthy tissue.
• How Cerebras Built a Giant AI Chip and Why It Is Going Public — While Cerebras boasts revolutionary wafer-scale AI chips, its upcoming multi-billion dollar IPO faces risks from extreme customer concentration.
• How Quantum Tunneling Powers the Race for Nuclear Fusion — Driven by quantum tunneling and billions in investments, researchers are racing to achieve net energy gain from commercial nuclear fusion.
• Nvidia's $9 Million Server Threatens Traditional Hardware Makers — Nvidia's upcoming NVL144 server highlights the company's push to control the entire AI supply chain, threatening traditional hardware manufacturers.
• Google's TurboQuant Algorithm Cuts AI Memory Needs by 8x — Google's open-source TurboQuant algorithm uses polar coordinates to compress AI memory requirements by eightfold without losing accuracy.
• How bots tried to corner the RAM market with 10 million crafty — DataDome exposed a bot campaign that scraped RAM product pages over 10 million times, aiming to scalp inventory and deepen an AI-driven memory shortage.
• Why Musk's controversial xAI moves may follow a familiar playbook — The Tesla-to-xAI money flows look like investor betrayal, but Musk's Solar City precedent suggests a ruthless rebuild strategy rather than a bailout.
• MacBook nano and Windows RT: why Apple succeeded where Microsoft — Apple's $599 MacBook nano vindicates Microsoft's 2012 ARM laptop vision, but succeeds where Windows RT failed thanks to mature chips, Rosetta 2, and tight
• Anthropic vs. the Pentagon: a $200M contract and a question of who — After Anthropic refused to lift Claude's safety restrictions for the Pentagon, losing a $200M contract, the clash raises hard questions about corporate…
• A QR code smaller than a bacterium just broke a world record — Researchers from TU Wien and startup Cerabyte etched a 1.98 sq-micron QR code onto ceramic, demonstrating a storage method that could hold 2TB per A4…
• Why Nokia got Asus and Acer banned from selling PCs in Germany — A Nokia patent lawsuit over HEVC video decoding reveals the licensing chaos behind modern video codecs and why the industry is moving to AV1.
• Intel's ZAM memory aims to pack 512 GB where HBM tops out at 64 — Intel and SoftBank's ZAM technology uses diagonal drilling between memory layers to promise 512 GB per package — eight times the capacity of today's best…
• Building a low-latency cloud infrastructure for algorithmic trading — A hands-on account of architecting a high-security, GPU-capable cloud server with 0.3 ms latency and cross-continental database replication for a private…
• WD-40's trade secret is not much of a secret — and it doesn't matter — WD-40's formula is publicly listed and easily replicated, yet smart branding and consumer habit have built a company worth over $3 billion.
• Tower Semiconductor and Nvidia bet on silicon photonics for AI — A new deal between Tower Semiconductor and Nvidia will bring silicon-nitride optical interconnects inside AI servers, promising up to 70% energy savings…
• Musk's AI empire: custom chips, space servers, and a closed-loop — From Dojo 3 supercomputers in orbit to xAI merging with SpaceX, the piece maps how Musk is assembling a self-contained AI pipeline that no competitor…
• Google's AI game demo wiped billions off gaming stocks — but is the — Google's Project Genie demo triggered a sharp sell-off in major gaming stocks, but the real AI threat to the industry likely comes from code-generation…
• How Nvidia quietly sought pirated data from Anna's Archive to train — An internal Nvidia email revealed the company pursued access to Anna's Archive's illegal dataset for AI training, exposing the ethical compromises driving
• Why Nvidia's $20 billion Groq acquisition is a bet on the inference — As the AI industry shifts from model training to cost-efficient inference, Nvidia's Groq acquisition signals a strategic pivot to compete with Google's…
• Why Google may win the AI race — and it has little to do with its — An analysis of the four economic fundamentals — chips, cloud, data, and ecosystem — that will determine which AI companies survive, and why Google alone…
• Apple's N1 chip beats Broadcom with half the bandwidth — Apple's first in-house WiFi chip, the N1, uses a narrower 4nm design to outperform leading Broadcom chips in real-world use while cutting reliance on…
• Databricks: the $100 billion startup most people have never heard of — Valued at up to $130 billion, Databricks dominates enterprise AI and big data infrastructure while remaining almost invisible to the general public.
• GTA 6's staggering budget and what it reveals about the games — With an estimated $2 billion development budget and forecasts of $7 billion in profit within two months of launch, GTA 6 is a case study in betting…
• Jevons Paradox and Baumol's Effect: what AI will do to the economy — As AI cuts the cost per token, Jevons Paradox predicts demand will surge far beyond current levels, while Baumol's Effect explains why your plumber's…
• Credo Technology: the cable maker quietly powering AI data centers — Credo's active electrical cables — each carrying onboard chips that clean and amplify signals — have made it a near-$25 billion company fueling the…
• Building an automated Telegram news channel in under two hours — Using RSS feeds, a self-hosted N8N server, and a lightweight AI model, the author automated the translation and publishing of tech and finance headlines…
• 10 principles behind a consistent LinkedIn content presence — A technology consultant ranked among LinkedIn's top content creators shares the ten practical principles — consistency, no AI, no selling — that shaped…
• Behind U.S. moves on Intel: intelligence, not economics — A new opinion column argues that U.S. government actions regarding Intel are likely driven by intelligence-gathering motives rather than purely economic…
• How a fusion reactor could turn mercury into gold — A US startup claims that bombarding mercury-198 with neutrons inside a fusion reactor can produce gold as a byproduct — here is the science and the…
• The U.S. government has a donation page for the national debt, and it — Since 1996, the U.S. Treasury has accepted voluntary donations toward the national debt; nearly 30 years of giving yielded $67.3 million — roughly 20…
• The full story of Israeli self-employment: from 6,971 shekels to 20 — A freelancer closes a deal, then watches taxes, national insurance, and accounting fees reduce the profit to a single 20-shekel coin.
• Why Nike lost tens of millions trying to automate shoe manufacturing — Nike's multimillion-dollar bet on robotic shoe production collapsed because flexible materials and constant new designs made automation practically…
• Colossal Biosciences raises $200 million to bring back the woolly — The Texas startup is editing African elephant DNA with CRISPR to resurrect extinct species, drawing both excitement about reproductive medicine and…
• The OpenAI model built to add a decade to human lifespan — OpenAI partnered with Retro Biosciences to build a protein-simulation model that could improve cellular reprogramming success rates 50-fold, advancing a…
• A 276 kg bluefin tuna just sold for $1.3 million at Tokyo's Toyosu — Sushi Onodera, a Michelin-starred chain, won the first bluefin tuna auction of the year at Toyosu for the fifth consecutive time, paying $1.3 million for…
• The real advantage is efficiency, not more resources — Using the LED vs. incandescent bulb as a lens, this post argues that smarter allocation of limited time and money beats simply acquiring more of either.
• How Gen Z is quietly reshaping the alcohol industry — Declining alcohol consumption among young adults since the early 2000s is set to pressure traditional beverage companies while opening the market to…
• NeXT: the computer Steve Jobs built after Apple forced him out — After being ousted from Apple in 1986, Jobs built the ambitious NeXT workstation — a $10,000 machine that flopped commercially yet hosted the birth of the
• Peter Thiel: the tech billionaire behind PayPal, Palantir, and much — A profile of Peter Thiel's career spanning PayPal, Palantir, the first outside investment in Facebook, and a fellowship that helped launch Ethereum and…
• Why the candy store closed within a year — A neighborhood candy store that spent heavily on branding before earning a single shekel illustrates why most new businesses fail before they ever find…
• Gold rush 2025: why investors are filling giant vaults — Geopolitical instability and deglobalization are driving record demand for gold and silver, pushing a newly opened 16,700-square-meter Singapore vault…
• Cathie Wood and the limits of hype-driven investing — A critical look at Cathie Wood's ARK fund after $2.2 billion in withdrawals, arguing that logic and patience consistently outperform market hype.
• Roblox is bringing ads to its virtual world, with an age restriction — Roblox plans to place in-world billboard ads restricted to users 13 and older, opening a new revenue stream for brands targeting the next generation of…
• Why Apple is paying Shutterstock $50 million for AI training data — Apple's deal with Shutterstock is the latest sign that data ownership has become a defining economic advantage in the AI era, reshaping the value of…
• Retail Risks and the Hidden AI Value in Reddit's Unusual IPO — Reddit bypassed institutional investors to offer shares directly to users, but the company's true long-term value may lie in its AI training data.
• How Canva grew from a quiet underdog to a $25 billion design giant — A look at Canva's cloud-first approach, ease of use, and pricing that explain how it reached 135 million monthly users and 85% of Fortune 500 companies.
• Why Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI may have real strategic logic — Beyond the public spectacle, Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI may be aimed at securing historical credit, source code access, or compensation for his…
• Apple's canceled car and the human cost of a decade-long project — Apple shut down its autonomous car project after a decade and $10 billion, prompting a reflection on what it means for 2,000 engineers who watched years…
• Why your AI startup idea is already obsolete — Data concentration among giants like Google and OpenAI makes most AI startups unviable, and the real opportunity lies in adopting the technology rather…
• What Sam Altman was really after with his $7 trillion ask — Altman's outlandish $7 trillion fundraising figure may be a calculated negotiation tactic that makes $100 billion seem reasonable while keeping his name…