Building sci-fi → sci-fact, imagination → implementation, blue-sky → brass tacks. Silicon Valley / Stanford → global. https://xitter.cf/t.co/9fdt8vFSP9
Global
Joined March 2008
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Orbital data centers have seemingly moved from scifi to scifact overnight.
euronews.com/next/2026/08/13…
Naysayers have been having a field day this summer.
spectrum.ieee.org/orbital-da…
While the visionaries are already imagining the world that's coming, asking "why not me?" and "what do I need to do to speed this reality"?
xitter.cf/PeterDiamandis/status/…
There is $10 trillion in AI data center capex that can't be built because the grid can't deliver the power, not for lack of money. GPU manufacturing through 2030 demands roughly 230 gigawatts. The US grid can deliver about 100. We brought in Ramez Naam to answer one question: how do we power the singularity?
-- Even Texas, the most aggressive grid in the country, can't deliver hundreds of megawatts before 2031.
-- The four paths to a terawatt of AI: deserts with solar and batteries, fission or fusion, the oceans, or space.
-- Southern Ocean data centers: wave-powered, free cooling, 2¢/kWh target, built in factories. Three in the water.
-- Battery costs have dropped 14x since 2010. Sodium-ion could drop them another 10x. A solar + battery plant in the UAE now costs $6/watt.
Rolling up your sleeves and owning your customers' success creates the luck teams need to win.
"Strategy isn’t written at 30,000 feet and handed down. Businesses don’t live in spreadsheets and slide decks. They live in uncertain workflows, messy human interactions and technology that keeps changing.”
-Nihad Rahman of ezCater
“We were young, but we had good advice,” said Bill Gates, about the early days of founding Microsoft with Paul Allen in the 1970s. He’s one of countless bosses who are fond of crediting, and then recounting, the guidance they’ve gotten over their careers. Sometimes it's helpful, but other times it's not.
Tap the link to read pieces of advice that top CEOs and founders have ignored — for better or for worse: bloom.bg/4iauPkb
📷️: Martin Bertrand/Getty Images
After binging the DARPA Lift Challenge videos, the most enlighting one is an official crash reel.
Lift Happens: Best of DARPA Lift Challenge Crashes
youtube.com/watch?v=2x2W3mwE…
Having used the NASA / DARPA 100 Year Starship RFI as a learning tool at Stanford and beyond, I'm excited to see how this tool can help young innovators turn imagination into testable inventions.
Engineers developed a tool for designing habitats in space and other extreme environments to help crews not just survive but thrive. news.mit.edu/2026/how-space-…
These forecasts boast a curious list of philsophers, academics, and builders. The first imagine, the second invent, while the third group does the hard work to implement and scale our future.
As @travisk explained on the @a16z podcast, one you share a future story that's all but inevitable, we should move to asking WHO and WHEN?
The earliest forecasts led to fascinating inventions (just look through work of Simon and Kurzweil) while the more recent ones are rapidly being tested in field.
"The Archive of Incorrect AI Predictions"
A useful timeline of failed phophecies. 👉
boyswhocriedai.lovable.app/a…
What's your Critical Path to delivering 'the impossible'?
Justin Styer at @SpaceX offers a masterclass on his Launch team's approach to shipping a new reality.
"We did we didn't know what we were doing because it was impossible to know what you were doing because no one had ever done something like this before."
"The Critical Path is the longest set if sequential events that are gated by each other that must be completed for a task to happen."
Over the years we've deployed multiple tools for teams to discover, develop, and implement their critical paths, from our earliest Change Paths (in our Stanford Playbook) to the recurring FAQ-from-the-future (only in the classroom atm, sorry).
In either case, it's ideal to work through the conversation at a whiteboard or on a napkin.
Curious to hear what other industry-proven decisionmaking tool your team is using.
Reading today's CNN coverage of 2023 companies that went bankrupt sent my mind immediately to a recent piece by Cory Doctorow. Have the companies in this CNN piece open as you read... edition.cnn.com/2023/12/25/b…
You can get a understanding of Dr. Carleton's work on DARPA's approach tovision formation -- and MUCH MORE about the organization's model -- in the free and open source book:
The DARPA Model for Transformative Technologies
Perspectives on the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, edited by Bonvillian (editor), Van Atta (editor), and Windham (editor)
openbookpublishers.com/books…
Travis Kalanick lays out his playbook to "Bend Reality"
"I start with a really easy question, 'In 20 years, will people be cooking food regularly?'"
[Kalanick walks us through the story for Atoms Food: Infrastructure for better food.]
"So 20 years is like the easy one. Then you go, 'Well what about what about 10? What about seven? What about five?' And so that's when you're bending reality. You're bending it towards NOW. So, everybody would agree that this is going to happen and now it's about when and who and then you say LFG."
Peek into "ending reality" as @travisk explains how he speeds vision-to-brass tacks for ATOMS in conversation with @bhorowitz for @a16z. youtu.be/z6gH_v0buUc?t=1724
William Cockayne retweeted
(1/3) Reaching the Moon isn’t just about distance, it’s about persistence, precision, and pushing technology into an entirely new frontier. 🌖
In this XPRIZE Alumni Spotlight, we're featuring @ispace_inc, a Google Lunar XPRIZE Finalist that began as Team HAKUTO with a bold vision for private lunar exploration.
William Cockayne retweeted
Anduril could pull off something epic...
William Cockayne retweeted
GLPs will be bigger than AI.
Healthier people. Lower healthcare costs. Increased wealth.
Confidence boost. Men and women absolutely crushing life at work, dating, taking risks.
Birthing boom. Just saw data that GLPs lead to higher birthrates. More chads.
Higher function. Reduce inflammation, excess weight. Clarity of thought, freedom from food.
Less divisiveness. Health plus confidence plus function leads to society flourishing.
We have been talking about the “obesity pandemic” for years.
Now we have the cure and it's actually pretty affordable.
Humanity is undefeated.
Societal upgrade.
(Btw, phase 2: widespread peptides.)
William Cockayne retweeted
The Future of Private Equity Is Permanent Capital
Serial acquirers with indefinite investment horizons will dominate.
"The world needs another private equity fund like a hole in the head."
That is the founder of private equity talking. Henry Kravis, at Columbia Business School, on why he would never start a PE fund today.
China alone has more than 5,000 PE funds. The model he invented is now saturated.
His alternative: the Berkshire route. Buy one company, install a great CEO, compound forever, keep 100% of profits instead of 20% carry.
When the man who built the model says it is second-best, LP capital concentrates at the survivors.
Why this is bullish for the mega-managers: podcastalpha.substack.com/p/…
Source: Columbia Business School - youtube.com/watch?v=SQEWoUzd…
William Cockayne retweeted
The future of health is on display at #BIO2026
Meet our Program Managers, experience ARPA-H Alive, and see —not just hear— how we're shaping the future of health.
Tell us what you’re building! @IAmBiotech
