January

️Our theme of the month: The year ahead

Headline speedrun:

• A human gets a (gene-edited) pig heart for the first time.
• The James Webb telescope unfurls.
• Bill Gates’s climate group announces a $1.5 billion “catalyst fund.”
• A disease-reversal startup raises $3 billion.

Your favorite story? This list of emerging tech predictions for 2022

VCs invest: $61 billion.

🗣 Quotation of the month: “I think that there is a real genuine, existential risk associated with how that gets done.”—Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, on tech giants creating the metaverse. After 11 years, he’s returned to working on Second Life, a pioneer of digital worlds

February

️Our theme of the month: Digital health

Headline speedrun:

• Meta breaks out Reality Labs’ financials for the first time (it loses many billions of dollars).
• The IRS says it will use facial recognition, then says it won’t.
• Researchers announce a nuclear-fusion record.
• Russia invades Ukraine, shocking supply chains from semiconductors to EV batteries and prompting an ongoing wave of tech company reactions.

Your favorite story? Our primer on vertical farming, which is growing like a weed

VCs invest: $52 billion

🗣 Quotation of the month: “It’s like being born again”—Jimi Olaghere, one of the first seven patients to receive a CRISPR-based gene-editing treatment for sickle cell, as part of a medical trial

March

️Our theme of the month: Smart cities

Headline speedrun:

• Wing makes its 200,000th drone delivery.
• MIT and Harvard get the CRISPR patent.
• London halts trading of nickel, a key EV battery-making material, as the price skyrockets.
• Facebook removes a Zelenskyy deepfake.

Your favorite story? Our reporting on Looker workers unknowingly training their replacements

VCs invest: $52 billion, again.

🗣 Quotation of the month: “The most important, and one of the most vulnerable, supply chains the American semiconductor industry is facing today is the supply chain of human talents.”—Mung Chiang, Purdue University’s dean of the College of Engineering, to Axios

April

️Our theme of the month: Battery tech, for EVs and beyond

Headline speedrun:

• The IPCC declares carbon-removal tech “essential,” and the tech has a banner…fortnight.
• Google releases PaLM, which it says is its most advanced AI…even more than LaMDA. No, it’s not sentient either.
• Project Kuiper secures launch plans.
• Lithium-ion battery prices rise for the first time in a decade, and Rivian founder RJ Scaringe says, “We ain’t seen nothing yet,” basically.

Your favorite story? Now, a Reddit-trained AI can tell you if you…r/…the asshole

VCs invest: $47 billion, a 12-month low.

🗣 Quotation of the month: “The cheapest form of carbon removal is mitigation today. It’s always going to be cheaper to cut the tonne of carbon today—that we can—than it will be to suck that carbon out of the atmosphere later in the century.”—Zeke Hausfather, climate lead at Stripe, told us

May

️Our theme of the month: Space tech for humans

Headline speedrun:

• Safety-focused AI startup Anthropic raises half a billion.
• DOE formally announces its $3.5 billion carbon-removal plan.
• Argo.AI tests driverless robotaxis in Austin and Miami.
• Startup claims a $100 human-genome sequence.

Your favorite story? This profile of Jerry Chow, who is building the future of quantum for IBM

VCs invest: $39 billion, and sentiment starts to sour.

🗣 Quotation of the month: “The launch industry is at a point where the technology is so mature that it may not be necessary to have the US government invest in it. It may be we’re at a tipping point with this rocket.”—Dan Goldin, a former NASA administrator, to the Wall Street Journal

June

️Our theme of the month: The future of AI safety

Headline speedrun:

• Microsoft ends the sale of some facial-analysis tools, and its CTO tells us AI should be regulated.
• Meta says goodbye to Sheryl Sandberg and reorgs its AI team. Meanwhile, Zuck plays with some VR headsets.
• Google remains mum on responsible AI details. Also, an engineer on the team claims—very controversially—that Google’s LaMDA AI model is sentient.
• Tech layoffs mount.

Your favorite story? A day in the life of a vertical farmer

VCs invest: TBD, but probably not good.

🗣 Quotation of the month: “At the end of the day, the market is too big and the opportunity is too great to completely dissipate.”—Paul Mulé, senior vice president of finance at climate software startup Arcadia, to E&E News, re: the climate tech’s prospects in a potential recession

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Join us on September 29 in NYC for a full day of insights, networking, and (hopefully) some fun! Take advantage of our early-bird pricing—buy tickets now and save!

Stat: The White House said the US will increase its domestic EV-charger manufacturing capacity to more than 250,000 chargers per year, thanks, in part, to $700 million in private-sector investment.

Quote: “The most challenging topic is not ramping up the car plants. The most challenging topic will be ramping up the battery supply chain.”—VW Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz to Reuters

Read: AI hype is creating a chasm between public perception and technological reality.

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