Welcome to The Deep Tech Newsletter, a weekly exploration of the business, science, and engineering behind the world’s most important frontier technologies.
The Big Picture
PAPERS AND PATENTS ARE BECOMING LESS DISRUPTIVE OVER TIME
“The number of science and technology research papers published has skyrocketed over the past few decades — but the ‘disruptiveness’ of those papers has dropped. Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with the mid-twentieth century, research done in the 2000s was much more likely to incrementally push science forward than to veer off in a new direction and render previous work obsolete. Analysis of patents from 1976 to 2010 showed the same trend. (Nature)
L3HARRIS BUYS AEROJET ROCKETDYNE IN $4.7B DEAL
“Based in El Segundo, California, Aerojet makes a range of rockets, including hypersonic engines and electric power systems…Aerojet agreed in December 2020 to be bought by Lockheed Martin Corp. [but] that deal was terminated after the Federal Trade Commission moved to block it on antitrust grounds. The deal would follow L3Harris’s agreement in October to buy Viasat Inc.’s tactical data links division, which was seen as helping compete with larger Pentagon suppliers such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.” (Bloomberg)
CRYPTOSAT LAUNCHES 2ND SATELLITE IN LOW EARTH ORBIT
“Cryposat has launched the second of its isolated computational environments, a CubeSat named Crypto2, into low Earth orbit. The small satellite is no larger than a mug, but boasts 30 times more computational power than the company’s first satellite that launched in May 2022. Cryptosat aims to improve cryptographic security for sensitive operations by isolating computational environments in orbit where they cannot be so easily targeted.” (The Block)
CHINESE RESEARCHERS CLAIM TO FIND WAY TO BREAK ENCRYPTION USING QUANTUM COMPUTERS
“The method, outlined in a scientific paper published in late December, could be used to break the RSA algorithm that underpins most online encryption using a quantum machine with only 372 qubits — or quantum bits. “As far as I can tell, the paper isn’t wrong,” said Peter Shor. He added, however, that the Chinese researchers had “failed to address how fast the algorithm will run”, and said that it was possible it “will still take millions of years.” (Financial Times)
Deep Tech News
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Stellantis to Help Manufacture Archer Aviation’s Air Taxi (Bloomberg)
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Impulse Space will hitch a ride on SpaceX’s Transporter-9 for first mission later this year (TechCrunch)
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Caltech to Launch Space Solar Power Demonstrator into Orbit in January (Caltech)
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NuScale Submits Design Approval Application to Nuclear Regulatory Council for Its Small Modular Reactor (POWER Magazine)
Crypto News
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NFT sales in 2022 nearly matched the 2021 boom, despite market crash (Decrypt)
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“Only” $3.9B in crypto was lost to hacks and fraud in 2022, down 50% from 2021 (Immunefi)
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NY Attorney General Sues Former CEO of Celsius for Defrauding Investors (NY Office of the Attorney General)
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Three Arrows Capital founders subpoenaed by tweet (The Block)
Peer Review
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Airborne Fungi are Eating CD-ROMs (Heritage Science, Oct 2021)
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EEG Recording of Dying Brain Shows Activity Similar to Dreaming (Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, Feb 2022)
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Sun-powered water splitter produces unprecedented levels of green energy (Nature, Jan 2023)
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Agile and versatile climbing on ferromagnetic surfaces with a quadrupedal robot (Science Robotics, Dec 2022)
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Machine learning for flow-informed aerodynamic control in turbulent wind conditions (Communications Engineering, Dec 2022)
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Chaperonin containing TCP1 as a marker for identification of circulating tumor cells in blood (PLOS ONE, June 2022)
Funding x M&A
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Profet AI, which makes ML solutions for the manufacturing sector, raised a $5.6M Series A (VentureBeat)
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SpaceX raises $750M at a $137B valuation in round led by a16z (CNBC)
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Quris prepares to raise up to a $100M Series A for its organ-on-a-chip drug testing technology (Axios)
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Gene editing company Metagenomi raises an additional $100M, bringing total Series B funding to $275M (BioSpace)
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Climate-tech startup Arcadia raises $125M led by Magnetar Capital (Canary Media)
Miscellanea
Types of barcodes and their usage / AI and the limits of language / Hacking photosynthesis / Pornhub and the value of Bitcoin / Cargo cult in quantum factoring / Control and correlation / How to slow down scientific progress / Ant colony optimization
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