Lifeboat Foundation

Intuitive Machines reported revenue of $41.4 million in the second quarter, more than double the $18 million the company reported in the same quarter of 2023. It had an operating loss of $28.2 million in the quarter, also more than double the $13.2 million operating loss it reported in the same quarter a year ago.

The company attributed the increase in revenue to new work, such as a NASA engineering services contract that started late last year as well as initial work on a Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services contract the company received in April.

The increased losses came from what Steve Vontur, chief financial officer, described as “non-cash impacts” to modifications to its next two lunar lander missions, IM-2 and IM-3, both flying payloads for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

Defense technology startup Anduril Industries Inc. has raised $1.5 billion in a new funding round and plans to spend hundreds of millions on a new facility to manufacture its rockets, underwater vehicles and other autonomous weapons systems at greater scale and speed.

The deal, which values Anduril at $14 billion, is one of the largest venture capital financings of the year so far, and reflects the company’s success getting government contracts, as well as rising investor enthusiasm for defense technology companies.

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Sands Capital co-led the Series F funding round, which has been in the works for more than a month. The deal nearly doubles the startup’s valuation from its previous funding round in 2022, which raised $1.48 billion.

Mathematics application to a new understanding thd world and life and information.

Dr. David Spivak introduces himself as a keynote speaker at the 17th Annual Artificial General Intelligence Conference in Seattle and shares his lifelong passion for math. He discusses his journey from feeling insecure about the world as a child, to grounding his understanding in mathematics.

Continue reading “David Spivak: Pioneering Math for Understanding Reality | AGI-24 Keynote Preview” »

On Meta’s Wednesday earnings call, CFO Susan Li reiterated to investors that financial returns from its recent AI investments will “come in over a longer period of time.” Zuckerberg was direct about why Meta is spending billions on Nvidia hardware and the other infrastructure ahead of these future returns: “It’s hard to predict how this will trend multiple generations into the future, but at this point, I’d rather risk building capacity before it is needed rather than too late.”

He again telegraphed that the Meta AI assistant is on track to be the most used in the world before the end of the year. While he touted that generative AI features “are things that I think will increase engagement in our products,” he said the real revenue will come from business use cases, like AI creating ads from scratch and letting businesses operate their own AI agents in WhatsApp for customer service.

In a public interview, Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui said he is receiving offers of financial support from figures in the US.

A US Senate investigation is shedding light on just how often America’s big banks refuse to reimburse victims of fraud.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations says JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America collectively refused to reimburse $880 million in Zelle transactions that customers reported as fraud between 2021 and 2023.

Specifically, the banks refused to reimburse $320 million to customers who were hit by unauthorized transactions – and rejected an additional $560 million in reimbursement to customers who were tricked into authorizing an illicit transaction.

“The technological focus is on significant increases in range through advances in energy density and the reduction of charging times,” Mercedes explained, noting that the partnership cements a reliable EV battery cell supply chain while providing financial support for Farasis to build a factory in Germany.

How Sustainable Is A Million-Mile EV Battery?

Continue reading “Sustainable Million-Mile Battery Bet Pays Off For Mercedes-Benz” »

Learn more about neural networks and large language models on Brilliant! First 30 days are free and 20% off the annual premium subscription when you use our link ➜ https://brilliant.org/sabine.

A lot of big banks are banking on quantum computing because they think it’ll give them an edge in trading. Though I have on previous occasions noted my doubt that we’ll see any useful quantum computers within the next ten years, two new papers detailing new methods of scaling quantum computers have shifted my perspective. Let’s have a look.

Continue reading “Big News for Quantum Computing: First Scalable Platforms” »

The semiconductor industry has grown into a $500 billion global market over the last 60 years. However, it is grappling with dual challenges: a profound shortage of new chips and a surge of counterfeit chips, introducing substantial risks of malfunction and unwanted surveillance. In particular, the latter inadvertently gives rise to a $75 billion counterfeit chip market that jeopardizes safety and security across multiple sectors dependent on semiconductor technologies, such as aviation, communications, quantum, artificial intelligence, and personal finance.