BIOTECH

A mammoth moonshot

While the Apollo program of the 1960s is typically remembered for being the first time a human landed on an alien surface (or for kickstarting the complicated and ridiculous conspiracy theory that the moon landing never happened), the original moonshot has also had a more direct, albeit lower-profile, impact on our daily lives. 

In order to make the Apollo missions happen, a whole bunch of foundational technologies had to be invented or improved upon. 

• Telecoms satellites, GPS, microchips—these technologies may not have developed as rapidly, or at all, if it hadn't been for the rallying cry of the space race. 

Alongside gene-editing pioneer and Harvard professor George Church, serial entrepreneur Ben Lamm is trying to architect his own version of a moonshot with a new company called Colossal, which aims to re-create and rewild the woolly mammoth. 

“Just like in the Apollo program, where a lot of the technologies that were created were able to be monetized over time,” Lamm told Emerging Tech Brew, Colossal is “very confident that there will be some pretty interesting breakthroughs in the world of genomics, multiplex editing [...], and in software databases for genetic reconciliation.”

Don’t say it…don’t say it: a mammoth undertaking

Colossal is using the gene-editing technology CRISPR to come up with a proxy of the shaggy-haired megafauna that vanished around 4,000 years ago. Colossal also intends to commercialize its biotech discoveries under a license agreement with Harvard, which excludes human applications.

• Colossal has 19 employees, spanning scientific and business roles, and $15 million in seed funding from the likes of billionaire Thomas Tull and venture firm Draper Associates, along with access to a growing team of post-doctoral researchers in Church’s Harvard lab.

The company also has a dizzying list of ancillary objectives. It wants to: inspire public interest in STEM; create technologies that can be used to rewild other species; combat climate change by restoring carbon-capturing biodiversity; prompt discussion in bioethics; advance the field of conservation. 

But right now, Colossal isn’t focused on those longer-term issues. It’s deep in the world of multiplex editing—a process that uses CRISPR to enact a high volume of genetic edits at once. The next step, Lamm said, is “getting to the point that we have viable embryos”—a milestone Church previously predicted we’d have already reached by now. 

Looking ahead: The global biotech industry is already worth $753 billion, according to Grand View Research, and projected to grow to over $2 trillion by 2028. Even capturing a small slice of an industry that large would help Colossal sustain itself, though Lamm told us the company “has runway for quite some time” with the money it’s raised so far. 

Click here to read the full story.—DM

AI

It’s 2021—do you know where your AI is?

Last week, the Brookings Institution published an examination of the “extent, location, and concentration” of AI activity in 400 US metro areas, hailing it as the “next great ‘general purpose technology,’” with the power to spur economic growth. 

Key takeaways: Although it already feels like AI is everywhere, the tech is still in its early days—and in the US, AI development and commercialization is mega-concentrated in a handful of mostly coastal locales.

• The Bay Area (including the SF and San Jose metro areas) got top billing as “the nation’s ‘superstar’ hub.” 
• The combined metro areas have ~4x the number of AI companies, job listings, and job profiles than the average of any one of the next group of “early adopters.” 

But, but, but: Brookings also identified 13 other metro areas with “above-average involvement” in AI, including hubs you may have seen coming—New York, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Diego, Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina—as well as smaller metro areas like Boulder, Colorado, Lincoln, Nebraska, Santa Cruz, California, Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

• These areas were singled out partly for above-average research centers, and for facilitating the journey from research → commercial applications → successful companies. Some are home (or HQ) to AI heavyweights like Oracle, IBM, and Amazon. 

Zoom out: The above 15 metro areas account for two-thirds of AI activity nationwide—and for that matter, more than 50% of the areas Brookings looked at make up just 5% of AI activity, Wired reported. That signals not just a major geographical concentration for AI development, but also for future economic progress.—HF

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You’re in Ohio. 

What are you doing in Ohio? Odds are you aren’t here for the state flower, although the carnations certainly are lovely. Nor are you here because you have a thing for cardinals, Ohio’s official state bird.

You moved to Ohio because you decided to go where business is booming, and you know it’s a state with low taxes and top-rated affordability. In fact, Ohio was ranked the No.1 Most Affordable State in 2020 by US News Rankings.

Not to mention that the biggest names in tech can’t resist the charms of Ohio, like its generous statewide programs and burgeoning STEM community. Facebook, Google, IBM, Amazon Web Services, and other tech leaders recognize the benefits of doing business in the Buckeye State.

Whether you specialize in state of the art software, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, or data science, JobsOhio can help you grow your business at a fraction of the cost.

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FROM THE CREW

The crypto world continues to have a lot happening.

I mean, in the last week alone: El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender; Coinbase started a Twitter beef with the SEC, which might sue the crypto exchange; SoftBank helped mint a new crypto unicorn named, uh, “Blockdaemon”; and a collection of 101 Bored Ape NFTs, which...picture bored apes…, fetched ~$24.4 million at a Sotheby’s auction.  

Thankfully…We published a bunch of explainers on crypto across August, which can help you make some sense of the deluge of digital currency news:

• Crypto’s cross-border promise
• The ABCs of crypto wallets
• How governments are exploring digital currencies
• The 9 words that could determine crypto’s future

Oh, and it wasn’t just us. The team over at the flagship newsletter wrote a bunch of stories about crypto, too—you can find it all at this hub.—DM

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BITS & BYTES

Stat: Among Android users, TikTok overtook YouTube in viewing time per user.

Quote: “The whole cooperation system relies on a few key [data protection agencies] moving cases along, and so far this is barely happening.”—Estelle Massé, senior policy analyst at Access Now, regarding Ireland’s GDPR enforcement  

Read: Early challenges with El Salvador’s bitcoin experiment. 

Car insurance has taken a wrong turn: That’s why Root is redefining the industry by offering rates based primarily on how you drive, not who you are (i.e., your credit score). Good drivers could save up to $900/year—get started with Root today.*

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• US regulators are considering a review of Tether and other stablecoins. 
• Salesforce offered to relocate its Texas employees in the wake of the state’s draconian new abortion law. 
• Chinese regulators want to break up Ant Group’s Alipay, the Jack Ma–founded, 1+ billion users strong fintech giant. The intra-China techlash continues.
• Facebook has created a language model based on pure audio, rather than labeled text. 

THREE THINGS WE’RE WATCHING

Today: The AI hardware summit kicks off in Mountain View and runs until Wednesday. While the software component of AI gets much of the mainstream focus, hardware advances (e.g., more efficient, made-for-ML semiconductors) are crucial to deploying those powerful lines of code at scale. 

Tuesday: Apple’s “California Streaming” event. All eyes are on the new iPhone 13 and Watch Series 7, both of which are expected to get some design and processor upgrades, but not necessarily any earth-shattering new features. Hanging over it all: The Apple–Epic trial came to a close on Friday—more on this in a sec. 

Wednesday: Procept, a surgical robotics company founded in 2009, will reportedly go public Wednesday. It’s mainly focused on urology, but we’re curious to see if that changes as the company and its tech mature. 

TECHS AND BALANCES

The Theranos trial dominated headlines for most of last week, but a different tech-and-the-courts story has overshadowed it since Friday afternoon: We got a verdict on the Apple–Epic trial.

The short of it: Apple is not considered a monopolist, but it also can’t continue blocking developers from directing users to payment options outside of the App Store.  

Apple made about $6.3 billion in App Store revenue last year, and while it’s unlikely to lose all of that due to the ruling, it will probably lose a couple billion annually. The extent of its losses depends on the extent to which app developers feel it’s worthwhile to lean on outside payment options. 

Looking ahead: Epic already appealed the ruling to a higher court. Oh, and as a reminder, Google is fighting a similar battle with Epic over its Play store.

For more: 

• A close read of the court’s order that Apple allow outside payments
• The App Store was not dismantled, but the court left it on shaky ground

ICYMI

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

• How a cannabis-focused AI platform helps growers predict yield
• The US Open’s new toy: AI-powered power rankings
• The decentralized, bidirectional power of smart grids