Infrastructure Week has finally arrived. On Monday, President Biden signed into law the long-anticipated $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which made it through Congress after extensive negotiations.

Zoom in: Nestled within the broader bill is the establishment and allocation of $500 million to the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) grant program.

• For the next five years, the bill will help cities pay for smart-city projects ranging from building out autonomous and connected vehicles infrastructure, smart traffic sensors, smart grids, and commerce delivery and logistics.

“There has been a lot of talk about doing things, but cities are not well-funded. They don’t have a lot of money to spare. This is going to be huge,” Andres Carvallo, CEO and cofounder of smart-grids and smart-cities consulting firm CMG Consulting, told Emerging Tech Brew.

“The question will become how are the cities going to be divided. How much money is going to go to Nebraska, Oklahoma, or Texas? How much money is going to go to the big cities versus the little cities? That’s where the devil is going to be in the details,” he said.

History lesson

While this program is new, it’s not the first time the US government will try to encourage smart-city projects: In 2015, the Department of Transportation (DOT) administered a one-off Smart City challenge, which Columbus, Ohio ultimately won.

• The grand prize was $50 million, with most of the money ($40 million) coming from the DOT, and $10 million coming from the Vulcan Foundation, a climate-focused nonprofit.

Columbus won thanks to a proposal that envisioned the city connecting its infrastructure with mobile apps that gave better traffic schedules, allowed scheduling of medical appointments, and offered payment services and free public wi-fi. It’s had mixed success in delivering on that vision so far.

Back to the bill...

The infrastructure bill sketches out some details on how the new money can be spent. Every year the Transportation Secretary will have $100 million at their disposal, 40% of which can go to large communities, while midsize and rural communities get 30% respectively.

• Those funds can be used on a litany of smart-city projects, like installing connected street lights or EV charging ports, but there are some restrictions.

Looking ahead…The grant program has a lot of potential to help cities big and small to achieve their smart-city goals, but success may be dependent on their own initiative, Nick Maynard, CEO of US Ignite, a nonprofit helping underserved communities develop smart-city initiatives, told Emerging Tech Brew.

Click here to read the full piece.—JM

If the Guinness World Records book covered quantum computing, IBM’s latest breakthrough would win big.

This week, the company announced its new quantum processor, Eagle, which it hails as a key component of the world’s largest—and potentially most powerful—superconductor-based quantum computer.

• At 127 qubits, Eagle has finally broken the quantum world’s “100-qubit barrier,” which scientists have been working to beat for years.
• A qubit is the basic unit in quantum measuring, the quantum version of a bit in classical computing—the former takes on both a 0 and 1 value at once, whereas a bit can only be one or the other.

Why this is big: Quantum computing is all about taking computing as we know it to the next (exponential) level—doing math problems, modeling, and workloads that classical computing can’t handle.

• And, essentially, the more qubits, the more computing power—and the more possibilities. Think: applying machine learning to drug discovery, predicting materials for better batteries, and more.

“Quantum computing obviously promises a lot—our goal is to achieve something that we call quantum [advantage], which is doing something that’s cheaper, faster, and more accurate than what can be done classical,” Jay Gambetta, VP at IBM Quantum, told Emerging Tech Brew.

Big picture: IBM says the new processor allows for nearly 2x as much computing power as the previous record-holder, IBM’s 65-qubit Hummingbird. But despite the milestone, the commercialization of quantum computing is still a ways away—10 years at least, according to RAND research.

Click here to read the full piece.—HF

Frankly, we don’t talk often enough about the versatility of 3D printers: They can produce mechanical parts, figurines, housing developments, and...also…steak.

Yes, steak: Yesterday, Israeli startup Redefine Meat, which 3D-prints plant-based steaks, expanded into Europe, with 30+ restaurants in London, Berlin, and Amsterdam. Fake steak is notoriously trickier to produce than imitation ground beef or sausage because it’s hard to nail the texture.

• Redefine Meat aims to be in “thousands” of restaurants across Europe by the end of next year, and eventually to sell to grocery stores too. It’s raised at least $35 million since its 2018 founding.
• Another Israeli startup, Aleph Farms, is also focused on 3D-printing synthetic steaks, albeit using lab-grown meat. It’s raised $131 million since its inception in 2017.

How it works: Redefine feeds an amalgam of soy and pea protein, chickpeas, beets, coconut fat, and nutritional yeast into its 3D printers, which use layering to replicate the fat and flesh of real meat. The 3D printer does this layering in accordance with the company’s proprietary software models of different cuts of steak.

Looking ahead: In 2019, the alternative meat industry already did $14 billion in sales worldwide, and Barclays estimated it could grow to $140 billion by 2029. The success of companies looking to re-create more textured meats, like steak—or fish filets, or pork chops, and so on—will play a key role in if the market will ultimately expand as fast as predicted.

View this story on-site.—DM

Stat: Nigeria’s central-bank-backed digital currency, the eNaira, rolled out three weeks ago, and since then, nearly 500,000 people have downloaded the wallet required to use it. For reference, there are about 109 million internet users in the country.

Quote: “We are responsible for the extinction and the coming extinction of many species, so I think we should be responsible—if they go—to bringing them back.”—Erich Jarvis, chair of the Vertebrate Genomes Project, to Emerging Tech Brew

Read: The perils of corporate-captured AI research, by incoming FTC AI advisor Meredith Whittaker.

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The Xbox turned 20 on Monday, which means that for kids these days, the console that brought us all Halo is now akin to what an Atari was to 90s kids. The best-selling iteration of the console was the second-gen console, the Xbox 360, which was released in 2005 and has sold ~86 million units to date.

In an interview with GQ, Microsoft’s head of gaming Phil Spencer goes deeper on what’s to come for the now 20-year-old gaming behemoth.

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Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Meet the group trying to build a Noah’s Ark for threatened species’ DNA
• Soon, your car may be able to power your house—here’s why that matters
• Post-acquisition, smart thermostat maker Ecobee wants to create a “net-zero” home