Sparks and surprises from last week...
China's GPS edge, Cybersecurity IPOs, the battle for black media, Spotify's billions, and how scientists are disrupting aging
📚 Key reads
The U.S. and China are racing to develop alternatives to vulnerable global positioning satellites, but while China heavily invests in backup systems, the U.S. lags behind. Experts warn a weeklong satellite outage could cost the U.S. economy $1 billion daily, urging the government to provide reliable public alternatives.
Revolt CEO Detavio Samuels says the company remains strong despite founder Sean "Diddy" Combs stepping down amid sexual assault allegations, with record-breaking revenue in Q4 2023. Samuels is calling on advertisers to invest more in Black-owned media, as Revolt expands its content offerings and events to reach its core audience of 18-34 year olds.
Rubrik, a cybersecurity and data protection company founded in 2014, has filed for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing reveals that Rubrik has more than 6,100 customers (a 22% year-over-year increase) and generate $784 million in subscription annual recurring revenue (ARR), up 47% year-over-year.
💡 Ideas
Former Nextdoor exec raises $25 million for PipeDreams, a startup that acquires mom and pop HVAC and plumbing companies and scales them using its software that helps with scheduling and marketing. PipeDreams allows business owners to retire, if they want, without losing their employees, name or brand, or just be part of a larger company with more resources
Apple recently released a paper on their new AI system ReALM, that uses large language models to perform reference resolution for conversational, on-screen, and background entities. ReALM outperforms previous approaches and achieves performance comparable to GPT-4 despite having significantly fewer parameters. By enabling Siri, Apple's virtual assistant, to better understand and resolve references to on-screen, conversational, and background entities, ReALM can provide a more natural and seamless user experience.
Scientists found a way to make the immune systems of old mice work better by using antibodies to remove problematic stem cells that increase with age. The treated mice had stronger responses to vaccines and viruses and lower inflammation than untreated old mice, showing that keeping a balance of different stem cells is important for a healthy immune system as we age. It will take 3-5 years before human testing can begin.
📊 Market data
Spotify paid out a record-breaking $9 billion to the music industry in 2023, nearly tripling the amount paid six years ago and bringing the total paid since its founding to over $48 billion. The number of artists generating revenue at every threshold, from $1,000 to $10 million per year, has nearly tripled since 2017, with Spotify royalties powering artists' careers at all stages and likely generating 4 times the revenue from all recorded music sources.
The International Energy Agency estimates that data centers, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence accounted for nearly 2% of global energy demand in 2022, and this demand could double by 2026, equaling the electricity consumption of Japan. Generative AI, such as large language models like GPT-3, requires significant energy for training and answering queries, with a single ChatGPT request using 2.9 watt-hours compared to 0.3 watt-hours for a Google search.
According to a February 2024 Pew Research Center survey, 23% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, up from 18% in July 2023, with usage highest among those under 30 (43%) and postgraduates (37%).