2020

Q3 in Review

The cat’s out of the bag. Years of tech adoption and digital transformation have happened in months, as the 2020 corporate cliché goes. 

Let’s revisit highlights and lowlights. 

July

India banned TikTok and 59 other apps, and the U.S. TikTok saga kicked off. Also in India: Jio capped a three-month, $15.7 billion fundraising haul. 

Nvidia overtook Intel in market cap and didn’t look back, thanks to Huang’s Law. Twitter suffered a sweeping security breach, with celebs’ accounts at the mercy of a bitcoin scammer. Once the blue checks returned, the talk of the tech Twitter town was GPT-3, OpenAI’s new language model. 

We ended July with fireworks when the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee summoned the four horsemen of Big Tech via Cisco WebEx. 

August

Tech tensions escalated (kinda an evergreen sentence at this point). The U.S. proposed the “clean network” plan, a not-so-subtle jab at China’s tech industry. The specter of a U.S. TikTok ban became more serious and a deadline was set. Microsoft emerged as the suitor.

On the consumer hardware side, Samsung unveiled a suite of flagship 5G devices and Google launched the $350 Pixel 4a. Out of nowhere, Amazon announced the supposedly mood-detecting Halo wearable. 

In a stroke of marketing genius, Fortnite parent Epic Games launched a carefully choreographed coup against Apple and Google. And in non-beef developments, Microsoft released the stunning new edition of Flight Simulator and SpaceX’s Starship took a hop.

September

We saw two big deals: the Nvidia-Arm tie-up...and however you want to describe what’s going on with TikTok and Oracle (Microsoft didn’t get the rose). There were plenty of SPACs to boot. 

It was a month full of new hardware, from the Apple Watch to Amazon’s indoor flying security drone. Microsoft and Sony unveiled their next-gen gaming consoles, just as new cloud gaming subscription services rained down. 

Tesla had Battery Day. Nikola...had problems. 

Looking ahead: Surely the next three months will be calmer. Not like there’s new iPhones, IPOs, or trade restrictions on the way. Surely not.

AUTOMATION

Work Nemesis

When efficiency is a company’s ultimate goal, pairing up robots and humans could make for a dangerous game. 

The Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal analyzed internal records from more than 150 Amazon warehouses and found that injury rates increased each of the past four years. Those injury rates were 50% higher at warehouses with robots. 

Are cobots dangerous? 

Not necessarily. The numbers here are correlational. Production quotas spiked because robots are fast workers—and, according to the investigation, humans couldn’t keep up without hurting themselves. 

• One common warehouse role previously involved scanning ~100 items/hour. Alongside robots, the expectation was ~400/hour. 

In response, Amazon disputed Reveal’s “serious injury” classification and said numbers were inflated by the recuperation time it grants. 

The flip side: Automation can boost safety in some warehouse settings. Robotics startups are working towards that goal. Two examples: 

• Sarcos Robotics, which specializes in wearable robotic exoskeletons, teamed up with Delta Air Lines in January to help employees lift heavy machinery, move freight, and more. 
• Veo Robotics’s software acts as the “eyes and ears” of robotic arms in factories, helping them detect and avoid humans. 

This tech won't necessarily make aggressive productivity goals safe, but it could help reduce any risk stemming from robots themselves.

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DRONES

Airborne Antiseptic

Disinfecting drones may be the future of spectator sports. 

The Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of the Atlanta Falcons NFL team, teamed up with Lucid Drone Technologies to become the first known professional sports venue to use disinfecting drones. 

• After the Falcons' stadium opens for limited capacity in mid-October, Lucid’s “D1 disinfecting drones” will use electrostatic spraying nozzles to disperse medical-grade cleaning solution. 

The drones can clean the stadium in about four hours, Lucid told us. For reference, it only takes the Falcons ~17 minutes to blow a 28-3 lead. (Ryan, a Pats fan, made me put that reference in.)

In other disin-tech-tant news: The Carolina Panthers may be the first NFL team to use a robot to clean locker rooms, offices, and more. Their custodian of choice: Xenex’s LightStrike robot, which wields broad-spectrum UV rays to kill Covid-19 with 99.99% efficacy.

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BITS & BYTES

Stat: Apple’s stock price dropped 10.3% in September. Alphabet was down 10%, Facebook 10.7%, Amazon 8.8%, and Microsoft 6.7%. FAMGA was playing “Wake Me Up When September Ends” on repeat. 

Quote: “If a dog can smell it, we can.” —Oshiorenoya Agabi, CEO of biotech startup Koniku, the creator of a Covid-sniffing “smell cyborg” that’s currently undergoing clinical trials 

Read: In an essay for Slate, a researcher digs into how OpenAI’s GPT-3—the most advanced language model ever created—could be used for ultra-personalized online harassment.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Google launched the 5G-compatible $699 Pixel 5 and the $499 Pixel 4a, as well as a new Chromecast device.
• CFIUS is probing Chinese investments in U.S. startups that stretch back years, WaPo reports. CFIUS = a key U.S. multi-agency national security panel. 
• The Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission have charged crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX with operating an unregistered trading platform and violating anti-money laundering and know-your-customer rules.
• Roblox is plotting a 2021 IPO, Reuters reports.  

GOING PHISHING

Three of the following news stories are true, and one...we made up. Can you spot the odd one out?

• Elon Musk said AI “does not need to hate us to destroy us.” 
• A Texas startup created a robotic longhorn used for farm protection and monitoring.
• A British aerial ambulance service is testing jetpack rescues.
• Cornell scientists created a microscopic robot, and ten of them can fit on a single period. 

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For thinking it into existence: University of Helsinki researchers created a brain-machine interface that converts thoughts into images. 

For “watch and learn”: The Open Data Science Conference (ODSC) released video of its April keynote on bias in AI, given by a scientist with Google’s Research & Machine Intelligence group. It’s available free here after creating an account.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• Google-Fitbit deal on track for EU approval 
• Machine learning’s impact on HR
• Industry update: EVs and AVs

** A Note From eToro

*  eToro USA LLC. Investments are subject to market risk, including the possible loss of principal. Offer subject to T&Cs.