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How to Predict a Technology’s Future: Follow the Rate of Change
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By Steven Rosenbush, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Evaluating a rising technology is often a binary operation, stuck in time. Does it work well? Yes or no?
Has adoption lived up to expectations? Are the products and services built on the tech meeting revenue forecasts? Or not?
All perfectly reasonable questions. Except that many of today’s foundational technologies would at one point or another have gotten a categorical “no.” The transformational impacts of the printing press, electrification and the telephone were hardly obvious in the very early going.
Now the world is deep into a new era, and everyone is trying to call the future of AI, electric vehicles, self-driving cars, robotics, bitcoin, nuclear fusion and quantum computing.
Luckily, it’s possible to get better answers about the future of technology. But we need to start with better questions.
In 2019, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla invested $50 million in OpenAI, twice the biggest initial investment he had ever made. It was a year before OpenAI released GPT-3, the generative AI model that provided the foundation for the conversational ChatGPT app in 2022. And Khosla had begun the investment process in 2018, at a time when he judged that the performance of AI-based products like virtual assistants could be poor, even laughable, relative to humans.
Yet he invested in OpenAI anyway. I wondered how he knew.
“It was the rate of change,” Khosla told me when I asked.
Read the full column here.
—Steven Rosenbush is WSJ Pro’s bureau chief for enterprise technology. He is based in New York.
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And now on to the news...
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PHOTO: NATHAN FRANDINO/REUTERS
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Intel to separate VC arm into standalone fund. Intel said it is planning to separate its global venture capital arm, Intel Capital, to turn it into a standalone investment fund, The Wall Street Journal reports. The chip maker on Tuesday said it will remain an investor in Intel Capital, founded in 1991 with over $5 billion in assets under management. The separation is expected to enable greater autonomy and provide flexibility to attract external capital. The current Intel Capital team will move to the new company, and business operations will continue as normal throughout the transition.
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350 Million
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The U.S. population estimate for 2025, up from the previous estimate of 346 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
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Commercial-Property Firm Goes All In on Co-Working With New Deal
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Real estate-services firm CBRE Group is taking control of the co-working firm Industrious, a sign of the property market’s renewed interest in shared workspace as more employees return to the office, WSJ reports. CBRE announced Tuesday that it has agreed to purchase the 60% stake that it didn’t already own in Industrious, a deal that values the co-working company at about $800 million. Industrious has more than 200 locations in over 65 cities globally that make office space available to businesses on flexible terms.
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Macquarie to Invest Up to $5 Billion in Applied Digital AI Data Centers
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Macquarie will invest up to $5 billion in data centers being built by artificial-intelligence infrastructure company Applied Digital, adding to the Australian bank’s substantial AI-related investments, WSJ reports. Macquarie’s asset-management arm agreed to invest up to $900 million in a data-center campus that Applied Digital is developing in North Dakota. Macquarie also has a right of first refusal to invest an additional $4.1 billion in future Applied Digital data centers for 30 months, aligning with the company’s expansion plans.
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Applied Digital’s origins were in cryptocurrency mining and, like others in that field, it has pivoted to supplying computing power to the artificial-intelligence boom.
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People
IVP appointed Kevin Egan as the firm’s newest partner. He was most recently chief sales officer at Atlassian.
Climatetech incubator Greentown Labs named Naheed Malik as chief financial officer. She was previously at American Tower and Wolters Kluwer Health.
Employee benefits platform Nayya appointed George Michaels as chief revenue officer and Rabia Qari as chief consumer officer. Michaels joined Nayyya from ADP. Qari was previously at BetterUp.
Exits
Digital identity company Prove acquired Portabl, a startup specializing in reusable ID verification and networks, for an undisclosed amount.
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Harbinger, a Garden Grove, Calif.-based commercial electric vehicle platform, scored $100 million in Series B funding co-led by Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund and Leitmotif.
Amogy, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-headquartered developer of technology enabling the use of ammonia as a carbon-free fuel, grabbed a $56 million investment co-led by Aramco Ventures and SV Investment.
Orchid Security, a New York-based identity security startup, was seeded with a $36 million investment co-led by Team8 and Intel Capital.
Seeqc, an Elmsford, N.Y.-based quantum computing startup, picked up a $30 million investment led by NordicNinja and Booz Allen Ventures.
Maki, provider of a conversational AI agent for human resources operations, completed a $28.6 million Series A round led by Blossom Capital.
Nsave, a provider of financial services to people from countries with high inflation, raised an $18 million Series A round led by TQ Ventures. The company is based in London and Geneva.
Dfns, a Paris-headquartered crypto wallet infrastructure provider, closed a $16 million Series A round led by Further Ventures.
The Snow League, a New York-based professional winter sports league dedicated to snowboarding and freeskiing, secured a $15 million investment led by Left Lane Capital.
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Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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