Lifeboat Foundation

Global payments giant Visa says it will invest $1 billion by 2027 to expand its investments in Africa amidst a digital payments boom on the continent.

Visa chief Al Kelly announced this pledge on Wednesday during the U.S.-Africa Business Forum, a sub-event in the broader U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, a three-day event where U.S. President Joe Biden invited heads of state and senior government officials from Africa to discuss several issues ranging from food security to climate change.

“Visa has been investing in Africa for several decades to grow a truly local business, and today our commitment to the continent remains as firm and unwavering as ever,” said the Visa CEO in a statement.

Less than two weeks ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a powerful new chatbot that can communicate in plain English using an updated version of its AI system. While versions of GPT have been around for a while, this model has crossed a threshold: It’s genuinely useful for a wide range of tasks, from creating software to generating business ideas to writing a wedding toast. While previous generations of the system could technically do these things, the quality of the outputs was much lower than that produced by an average human. The new model is much better, often startlingly so.

Put simply: This is a very big deal.

We’re hitting a tipping point for artificial intelligence: With ChatGPT and other AI models that can communicate in plain English, write and revise text, and write code, the technology is suddenly becoming more useful to a broader population of people. This has huge implications. The ability to produce text and code on command means people are capable of producing more work, faster than ever before. Its ability to do different kinds of writing means it’s useful for many different kinds of businesses. Its capacity to respond to notes and revise its own work means there’s significant potential for hybrid human/AI work. Finally, we don’t yet know the limits of these models. All of this could mean sweeping changes for how — and what — work is done in the near future.

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It’s been just over a month since Elon Musk moved ahead with a $44 billion-dollar deal to buy Twitter and take the company private. These have been eventful weeks: Layoffs and resignations roughly halved the headcount at the company. Major changes to the service (Twitter Blue) have been rolled out only to be almost immediately rolled back, and Musk has begun to outline a new vision for what the company might become. On top of that, thousands of banned accounts have been reinstated, advertising is way down, and users have speculated about the service’s impending collapse and searched out alternatives.

Changing the strategic direction of an existing company is among the hardest management challenges out there. Most attempts fail. In trying to remake Twitter, Elon Musk has a daunting task ahead of him. There’s precedent, however, for dramatically reimagining a major tech company: Steve Jobs’ transformation of Apple after he returned to the company in 1997. And it may have important lessons for how Musk — and other leaders — can navigate the period of painful misalignment that comes with strategic change. Namely, how this period requires managers to commit to tough decisions in three areas: product, organization, and stakeholders.

Page-utils class= article-utils—vertical hide-for-print data-js-target= page-utils data-id= tag: blogs.harvardbusiness.org, 2007/03/31:999.345768 data-title= What Elon Musk Can Learn from Steve Jobs’s Return to Apple data-url=/2022/12/what-elon-musk-can-learn-from-steve-jobss-return-to-apple data-topic= Strategy data-authors= Andy Wu; Goran Calic data-content-type= Digital Article data-content-image=/resources/images/article_assets/2022/12/Dec22_13_1245242394-383x215.jpg data-summary=

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Structuring, Financing & Growing Novel Longevity Ventures — Dr. Tobias Reichmuth Ph.D., Founding Partner, Maximon

Dr. Tobias Reichmuth, Ph.D. is Founding Partner at Maximon (https://www.maximon.com/), The Longevity Company Builder, which empowers entrepreneurs to build impactful, science-based and scalable companies providing healthy aging and rejuvenation solutions.

Continue reading “Dr. Tobias Reichmuth, Ph.D. — Maximon — Structuring, Financing & Growing Novel Longevity Ventures” »

MSM and Experts fail to see the logic in how Elon Musk is taking over Twitter. They think it’s chaos, a mess, he’s out of his depth. But Elon is just working AGILE, and AGILE always seems like a mess to onlookers used to traditional work!
The video describes Elon’s Agile Takeover of Twitter and shows the opportunity worth BILLION$ that Elon Musk has ALREADY unlocked.

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Continue reading “Elon’s AGILE Takeover (of Twitter) | Experts don’t get Elon bc Experts don’t get AGILE!” »

Japan wants to get back into the leading-edge semiconductor business and very recently a new company was formed to reboot its semiconductor industry. The company is named Rapidus, referring to rapid production of new chips, a clear reference to how the company plans to differentiate its business from other foundries such as TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. The company has announced a partnership with IBM Research to develop IBM’s 2nm technology in fabs that Rapidus plans to build in Japan during the second part of this decade. Previously, Rapidus announced a collaboration with the Belgium-based microelectronics research hub IMEC on advanced semiconductor technologies. Imec is collaborative semiconductor research organization working the world’s major foundries, IDMs, fabless and fablite companies, material and tool suppliers, EDA companies and application developers.

The IBM process uses gate-all-around transistors — IBM refers to them as nano sheet FETs — which is the next generation of transistor design that enables device scaling beyond today’s FinFETs. The 2nm structures will require Rapidus to use ASML’s EUV manufacturing equipment. Business details with IBM were not disclosed, but there’s likely two parts to the deal: a cross-licensing agreement for the intellectual property necessary to build the product and a joint development agreement. While the announcement is nominally for IBM’s 2nm process, it likely includes a long-term commitment to build advanced semiconductor chips going beyond the 2nm process node.

Rapidus was formed by semiconductor veterans such as Rapidus President Atsuyoshi Koike, with backing by leading Japanese technology and financial firms, including Denso, Kioxia, Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, NEC, NTT, Softbank, Sony, and Toyota Motor. The Japanese government is also subsidizing Rapidus. The big change for Japan compared to prior national efforts is the collaboration with international organizations. It’s a recognition Japan cannot go it alone. This appears to be a fundamental change in Japanese attitudes. Building a fab in Japan will be helped by Japan’s strong manufacturing ecosystem of materials, equipment, and engineering talent.

The science of meteorology has taken tremendous strides in the past two decades thanks to a confluence of several inputs: improved computing power; better modeling of data; more observational data points ranging from the device in your hand to the satellites orbiting earth; and advanced data science applications. As recently as two decades ago, providing an accurate forecast three to four days out was considered innovative. Today a five-day forecast is accurate about 80 percent of the time. Most weather experts are predicting even more extended accuracy by 2030 with the application of artificial intelligence for numerical weather prediction output. But beyond improving accuracy, here are a few other forecasting trends to watch in 2023.

Hyper-relevant Forecasting

Just like other sets of analytics have become more tailored, or localized to the user, weather intelligence is bringing forecast relevancy to an individual organization or entity. A business can determine which risks are most significant to their operations, such as wind gusts, lightning, heavy rains, and ice accretion, and then be alerted when those risk thresholds are met. While there’s growing use among utilities, municipalities and other infrastructure decision makers, hyper-relevant forecasting is growing in other sectors. For example, by combining weather data with purchasing trends and consumer demand data, one grocery chain learned that even a small change in temperature can result in a significant shift in what people buy. The store improved its revenues by modeling this impact and managing inventory accordingly. Even sports teams are applying hyper-relevant forecasting for everything from daily stadium operations to food and beverage decisions and strategic game plays.

Launching your business with a premium name can be like opening a retail store in a busy shopping district.

Due to their short and memorable nature, many premium domains already receive significant type-in traffic. Your organization can utilize this established presence and existing traffic to attract customers, build your brand and gain recognition as an industry leader.

You need a name that will resonate with your customers. The intuitive, memorable nature of premium names makes them ideal. A memorable name can be easier to brand and helps increase the likelihood of customers finding you, over your competitor.

A close-door “design competition” with selected global construction companies is underway.

Saudi Arabia may be weighing in on plans for a 2-kilometer-tall, world’s tallest tower, for its 18-square-kilometer master-planned area in the capital city of Riyadh.

“Contractors that have priced megatall towers in the region say that depending on the final design, a 2km-tall structure could cost about $5bn to construct,” said the report.

Continue reading “Saudi Arabia ‘plans’ 2km long world’s tallest tower, more than double the size of Burj Khalifa” »