AVS

ATG Hails a New Ride

Shortly after Dara Khosrowshahi accepted his CEO role at Uber, he wrote in a letter to staff that “our true north will be determined over the long term.” 

As its ride-hailing business limps and its deliveries soar, Uber is reportedly reconsidering whether its more exploratory projects—like self-driving vehicles—are part of that "true north." 

Let’s make a deal 

Uber has put Advanced Technologies Group, its autonomous driving division, on the chopping block, reports TechCrunch. After being shopped around, ATG’s top suitor is also a key competitor: Aurora Innovation. 

The 4-1-1: Aurora was co-founded by Chris Urmson, a former lead engineer for Google’s own self-driving project. Since its 2017 launch, it’s focused largely on self-driving truck technology. 

• It’s also a high roller: As of June 2019, it had a reported post-money valuation of ~$2.5 billion.

The talks are reportedly late stage, after beginning in October. 

Goodnight, moonshot 

As recently as two years ago, Uber’s strategy was more typical of a high-flying startup—ripe with moonshots and internal experimentation. ATG functioned as a skunkworks, testing AVs on the streets of Phoenix, Toronto, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. 

But, but, but: ATG eats up a lot of money—around $500 million a year. It’s slated to run out of cash by the end of 2021, reports Bloomberg. Over the years, Uber’s self-driving unit has also been plagued by infighting, lawsuits, and losses. 

Last year, Khosrowshahi tried to add time to the clock by spinning out ATG into an ~$8 billion subsidiary, bankrolled by its own investors. And in September, Uber’s two largest shareholders, SoftBank and Benchmark, urged Khosrowshahi to raise more outside funding for ATG. 

Looking ahead: The Aurora-ATG acquisition would be the latest in a wave of industry consolidation, layoffs, and shutdowns amid Covid-19. Since March, Zoox, Cruise, Ike, and Kodiak Robotics have all announced layoffs, while Starsky Robotics shuttered completely. 

In a May interview foreshadowing the potential sale, Urmson told Business Insider: “Consolidation is going to happen [in the autonomous-mobility business]....Some companies are going to be winners, but some are going to succumb, and the crisis could accelerate it." 

AI

Can’t Spell Vaccine Without ‘AI’

One week ago, Pfizer and BioNTech announced a stat heard ‘round the world: Their vaccine may be more than 90% effective in preventing Covid-19. And this morning, Moderna announced one with a 94.5% success rate. 

Both sets of preliminary results, which even Dr. Fauci is getting (cautiously) excited about, are based on trials with 30,000-to-43,000 participants.

The unfamiliar angle: The star of the show for both vaccines is the genetic material they're made of—mRNA—which helps the body produce and then fight off the virus’s main spike protein. 

• These may end up being the first gene-based vaccines ever cleared by the FDA for human use. 

The familiar angle: AI generally helps with earlier stages of vaccine development—especially analyzing large swaths of data. 

ML can use existing data sets to identify potential active compounds that could help fight the virus, according to an article in the journal AI Open. Plus, deep learning algorithms can come up with thousands of molecules that could potentially handicap the virus’s main proteins. 

Zoom out: Although we don’t know the extent to which AI factored into the development of these specific vaccines, we know Pfizer and Moderna typically lean on the technology—especially in the data analysis and predictive modeling stages. 

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TECH POLICY

The European Commission’s New Groove

When it comes to tech giants, the European Commission’s got new rules. 

The two drafts—the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act—will be unveiled on Dec. 2. Once finalized, any company that breaks the rules could face being banned from the European market in extreme cases, according to EU industry chief Thierry Breton. 

What we know: The Digital Services Act is expected not only to bar tech giants from unfairly promoting their own services, but also to make them share data with rivals and regulatory bodies, reports Reuters. 

What we don’t: No word yet on how extensive that data-sharing part of the rule may be. Would TikTok, for example, have to finally unveil the training data underpinning its “For You” algorithm? If so, how helpful would that information be for competing social media platforms—and recommendation algorithms of all kinds? 

Tech giants, predictably, are not happy. Last month, a leaked internal Google document outlined a 60-day plan for lobbying against the EU’s new rules. 

• In a dramatic twist, Breton reportedly surprised Google CEO Sundar Pichai with the document on an already-scheduled video call. (Pichai apologized.) 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Last month in Norway, 8 in 10 vehicles sold were plug-in EVs—led by Volkswagen’s ID.3. 

Quote: “For the first time in history, there is a commercial capability from a private sector entity to safely and reliably transport people to space.” —Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA, in a call with reporters Thursday. 

Read: VentureBeat dove into how a concentration of compute power at elite universities could accelerate inequality in deep learning. 

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• SpaceX became the first private company to launch astronauts to the International Space Station. 
• Qualcomm can still sell 4G chips to Huawei, in an exception to U.S. trade restrictions. 
• Microsoft reported that hackers in Russia and North Korea attacked Covid-19 vaccine makers. 
• Didi, the Chinese ride-hailing company, and automaker BYD will deliver their first EVs to drivers within months. 
• DoorDash revealed some of its financials ahead of its intended IPO.
• Google updated its Covid-19 forecast models with a longer time horizon. 

WHAT'S BREWING THIS WEEK

Monday: CB Insights Future of Fintech conference begins; Baidu earnings. 

Tuesday: Deep breath...Another Congressional tech hearing; Hong Kong Blockchain Week begins; NYT DealBook Summit begins. 

Wednesday: Nvidia earnings. 

Thursday: A special Emerging Tech Brew x Retail Brew collab.

Friday: National Absurdity Day. 

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For holiday cheer: An AR app from John Lewis and Partners, a British department store chain, makes it possible to try out the looks of different Christmas trees in your home. 

For catching ‘em all: Matthew Rayfield, a NYC-based programmer, used a combination of OpenAI’s GPT-2 and his own code to generate more than 3,000 new Pokémon-style characters. 

ICYMI

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

• Walmart and Cruise team up 
• Inside Apple’s first-ever chip for Mac
• Healthcare AI’s data problem