Morning Brew - ☕ Extraterrestrial tractors

Why even John Deere is getting into the space race
February 08, 2023

Emerging Tech Brew

Revela

It’s Wednesday, and SoftBank continues to lose gobs of money as the halcyon days of the tech bull market have faded into a big ol’ bear.

The VC, which led the world in startup investing in 2021, just reported losses of $5.8 billion on its Vision Fund for last quarter, per the WSJ. The company also reported only ~$300 million in new investments, down a blistering 98% from its peak in 2021.

And on top of all of that, we don’t even get Masayoshi Son’s legendary slide decks during earnings calls anymore. Dark times indeed.

In today’s edition:

Why even John Deere is getting into the space race
Inside Starbucks’s Web3 loyalty program
Reader poll: De-extinction edition

Jordan McDonald, Maeve Allsup, Dan McCarthy

CONNECTIVITY

A Deere in satellites

A Deere in satellites Illustration: Dianna “Mick” McDougall, Photo: John Deere

From soil to sky, the agricultural industry has largely embraced the digital revolution.

Ag companies have integrated drones, machine learning, AI, and automation into their everyday operations, all with the aim of helping farmers save time, money, and labor.

Look up: Soon, you may be able to add satellites to the list. John Deere, which has previously debuted tech like self-driving tractors, crop-spraying drones, and weed-identifying sprayers, said in January that it was “finalizing a satellite partner” in an effort to create geospatial maps to help analyze crop growth and bring connectivity to remote and rural farmers.

  • The push to connect farmers comes as Deere looks to digitize its revenue sources—last year, it set a goal to get 10% of its revenue from software subscription fees by 2030.
  • The company currently offers its customers free connectivity services through its JDLink platform. Deere spokesperson Sara Fazli said in an email that it’s “still working through the details of what SatCom-enabled connectivity will look like.”

Look ahead: As farm equipment becomes smarter—decked out with sensors and layered with AI—connectivity will become more important to growing operations, Scott Duncan, partner and head of Americas Agribusiness practice at Bain & Company, told us.

In 2020, McKinsey estimated that only 25% of American farms had any sort of connected equipment or devices in their operations, and that was before the telcos shut down many of the networks such equipment ran on in late 2022. Keep reading about Deere’s connected-crop efforts.JM

        

TOGETHER WITH REVELA

The future of haircare is AI

Revela

That’s right, y’all. Like everything else these days, haircare is going smart.

Revela’s research team used AI to comb through over 7m molecules to bring you the best of the best. They discovered ProCelinyl™, the newest molecule in haircare that directly targets hair follicle health.

ProCelinyl™ works by stimulating dormant hair follicles and encouraging growth. And it gives fast results: 97% of users report improvement in their hair’s appearance in just 6 weeks. And if you don’t get the result you want, no worries. Revela’s money-back guarantee has you covered.

Get to the root of the problem with smart haircare. Shop now for 15% off.

RETAIL TECH

A Web3 odyssey

A Starbucks cup coming apart against an abstract background Illustration: Dianna “Mick” McDougall, Photo: Starbucks

Starbucks has long had a large and loyal fan base, from PSL enthusiasts to secret-menu insiders. In November 2022, the company told investors that the Starbucks Rewards loyalty program had grown 16% in the last quarter alone, ballooning to 28.7 million active members in the United States.

  • But the coffee giant is taking loyalty a step further: In December, it began ushering eager testers into the beta version of a Web3 rewards experience called Starbucks Odyssey, which will integrate NFTs into the brand’s loyalty offerings.

Zoom in: Starbucks, as one of the first big brands to make a decisive move toward leveraging blockchain for loyalty, faces the problem of winning over both Web3 experts and a public whose interest in NFTs is still quite low. And the Odyssey beta, which is serving as a testing ground for the brand, highlights both the challenges and opportunities of being a first mover.

Read the full story in Retail Brew here.MA

        

TOGETHER WITH DYMICRON

Dymicron

Diamonds in the spine. Meet Dymicron, creator of the first life-lasting disc replacement made of the hardest material on earth: polycrystalline diamond. With their patented technology, Dymicron is on a mission to replace disabling neck and arm pain, restore patients’ natural mobility, and revitalize lives. En route to FDA approval and set to disrupt a $1b industry, there’s no better time to invest in Dymicron.

FROM YOU

Reader poll: De-extinction edition

Dodo Education Images/Getty Images

Jurassic Park may be an undisputed classic of a movie, but there’s a little more controversy when it comes to bringing its premise to the real world.

Last week, we asked all of you to weigh in on de-extinction, a futuristic-sounding topic made much less theoretical by advancements in synthetic biology, well-preserved DNA, and a startup named Colossal.

Our question: Do you think species de-extinction is a good idea? Here’s what more than 2,600 of you had to say:

  • Almost half (48%) said thanks but no thanks to the idea of de-extinction.
  • Just over one-third (34%) of respondents said yes, it’s a good idea to try and bring back extinct species like the woolly mammoth.
  • The remaining 18% of respondents said they’re not sure where they stand on this issue.

Why we asked: Colossal, the same company that announced plans to bring back the woolly mammoth in 2021 and the thylacine in 2022 said last week that it’s now attempting to de-extinct the dodo bird as well. The company also said last week that it had raised another $150 million, officially making it a unicorn.

If you want to read more, we went deep on Colossal’s plans back when it first announced its woolly mammoth moonshot.

This week’s poll: Do you own any sort of electric micromobility vehicle (e.g., an electric scooter, an e-bike)?

Yes
No
No, but I’m thinking about buying one

BITS AND BYTES

An illustration of a tech CEO cutting an employee's computer in half Hannah Minn

Stat: Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft disclosed more than $10 billion in combined costs related to their recent layoff and restructuring announcements, per the Financial Times.

Quote: “It’s a new day in search, it’s a new paradigm for search, rapid innovation is going to come.”—Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at yesterday’s event announcing its new, OpenAI-powered Bing search engine

Read: Apple phones and watches with crash detection keep mistakenly calling 911.

Make money moves: Money Scoop is a 3x-a-week personal finance newsletter that makes you smarter about your money. You’ll learn how to better invest, budget, spend, manage your taxes, and much more, all for free.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

  • Meta received the legal greenlight to proceed with its acquisition of VR gaming studio Within. The FTC had moved to block the purchase due to “concerns the deal would reduce competition in a new market.”
  • Dell is the latest tech company to announce layoffs—it plans to cut about 5% of its workforce, or 6,650 jobs, as PC sales have declined.
  • Rivian is reportedly working on some sort of micromobility option, possibly an e-bike or an e-motorcycle.
  • Nissan struck a deal to buy up to 15% of Renault’s EV segment.
  • Getty Images is now suing Stability AI in the US, a few weeks after it “commenced legal proceedings” in the UK.
  • Google officially unveiled its own ChatGPT-like service: an AI feature called Bard. The search giant made the model available to a handful of “trusted testers,” with plans to roll it out more broadly in the next few weeks.

FROM THE CREW

Leveling up your data skills is a smarter move than when Steve Jobs created the iPhone. And learning how to turn that data into real-time dashboards? Priceless. Our Data Storytelling course can help you do just that. Click here to secure your seat now.

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Written by Jordan McDonald, Maeve Allsup, and Dan McCarthy

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