Chamath Muthukuda

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Esports August Scorecard: A couple of historic deals involving crypto exchanges

Helping restaurants become more safe, more profitable, and more interesting.

Restaurant Industry Robotics

<div>
  <p>
    This report looks at the adoption of robots, machines, and softwares to automate tasks and streamline operations. Covers full automation, which include container restaurants and non-container restaurants (i.e. similar to traditional restaurants but the majority of operations are automated), and partial automation (focusing on preparation of food and beverages, serving, and cleaning) solutions.
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <ol>
    <li>
      <p>
        <b>Partial Automation Easier to Integrate into Existing Restaurants, while Full Automation Better Suits New Restaurants
        </b>
        Partial automation is easier to integrate into existing restaurants, helping address labor shortages. Full automation, requiring more investment and renovation, is better suited for new restaurants, especially fast-food establishments, offering consistent results, speed, and a unique customer experience.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        <b>Restaurants Face Labour Shortages, with Unappealing Working Conditions and Insufficient Wage Growth
        </b>
        Labor shortages, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, and increased dining demand have driven restaurant automation, especially in the US, China, Japan, and Canada. Despite wage increases, the restaurant industry struggles to attract workers, leading to more reliance on automation.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        <b>Developments in Grippers, Sensors, and AI Expand the Application and Accuracy of Automation, with Adoption Supported by Higher Affordability
        </b>
        Advancements in grippers, sensors, and AI have improved the accuracy and affordability of restaurant automation, enabling partial automation that integrates easily into workflows. Automation-as-a-service further reduces costs, though full automation remains relatively expensive for many restaurants.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        <b>Potential Total Addressable Market for Server and Cooking Robots Worth Roughly USD 28 Billion in the US
        </b>
        The US leads the global food automation market, driven by rising labor and raw material costs. In 2022, 76% of US restaurants adopted multiple automated solutions. The potential market for server and cooking robots is estimated at nearly USD 28 billion.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        <b>Players Partner with Upstream Firms to Source Hardware for the Final Product, and with Downstream Players for Customisation
        </b>
        Restaurants can develop in-house automation, adopt third-party solutions, or use both. Automation providers often partner with upstream players for technical support and downstream players (like Chipotle and Sweetgreen) to customize and implement solutions, leading to innovations like fully automated restaurants.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        <b>Along with Performance, Public Approval Remains Key for Long-Term Survival
        </b>
        Restaurant automation can enhance efficiency and address labor shortages but risks failure if benchmarks aren't met. Public approval and robust funding are crucial, as seen with Chowbotics and Pazzi's closures.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        <b>Further R&amp;D Seeks to Enable Robots to Produce Meals Based on Individual Preference
        </b>
        Companies are investing in further innovations in the restaurant automation space such as integrating advanced tech like the Metaverse, or using salinity sensors for real-time taste assessment, for customized food preparation.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ol>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


Automated Restaurants

Data Infrastructure & Analytics

<div>
  <p>
    A deep dive into Dataiku's financials, product, competitive environment, and market opportunities...
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        At the end of 2023, Dataiku had roughly 500 customers for an average ARR per customer of USD 500K.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Dataiku&rsquo;s Data Science Studio (DSS), serves as a centralized hub where data scientists and engineers from across ﻿the organization﻿ can collaborate on preparing data, building and training machine learning models.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Dataiku operates on a subscription-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model. ﻿Customers﻿ pay an annual subscription fee for access to the Dataiku Data Science Studio (DSS) platform.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Dataiku's competitors includes Databricks, Alteryx, DataRobot and Hyper-scaler platforms like AWS Sagemaker and Azure ML.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Dataiku is at the revenue scale to be credible IPO candidate within the next few years, but it is also possible that it will become the target of an acquisition for a large tech platforms.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


Dataiku: An all-in-one, AI/ML-ready, managed data science solution for enterprises

<div>
  <p>
    This report highlights the policies of the Republican Party, examining their implications for key industries. 
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    The Republican National Platform's policies, particularly those concerning deregulation, enhanced US defense and security, and America First trade initiatives, are anticipated to significantly influence industries such as Generative AI, Oil and Gas, Cryptocurrencies, and manufacturing. 
  </p>
  <p>
    Conversely, the proposed rollback of sustainability initiatives is likely to adversely affect sectors focused on sustainability and climate technology, including current-generation renewables and the electric vehicle economy.
  </p>
  <p>
    The overall impact of the Republican Party's proposed policies is contingent upon a complex interplay of various factors, including the interrelations among these policies and the broader effects of social and cultural dynamics.
  </p>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


2024 US elections impact on emerging industries: Winners and losers of a Republican presidency

Empowering Tomorrow's Innovations with Generative AI Infrastructure

Generative AI Infrastructure

<div>
  <p>
    A deep dive into Groq's revenue, business model, product, competition and TAM expansion.
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Groq&rsquo;s key offering is its TSP, with market-leading inference performance of over 500&ndash;700 tokens/second on LLMs&mdash;a 5&ndash;10x improvement over NVIDIA&rsquo;s latest data center GPUs.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Groq has a notable cost advantage over NVIDIA in manufacturing its chips, with wafer costs estimated at less than USD 6,000 on 14nm technology compared to ~USD 16,000 for NVIDIA&rsquo;s H100 chips on 5nm. However, its total cost of ownership (TCO) advantage for latency-optimized inference narrows to ~40% compared to NVIDIA&rsquo;s solutions after accounting for higher system-level costs.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Apart from offering TSPs, the company follows a hybrid business model by combining elements such as semiconductors, cloud services, and on-premise enterprise deployments.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        GroqCloud is the highest contributor to Groq&rsquo;s revenue stream. Groq currently uses an aggressive pricing strategy to increase adoption of its TSP chips (USD 0.27 per million tokens generated).
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        The company faces competition from silicon incumbents (NVIDIA, AMD), hyperscaler clouds (Google, Microsoft), and other startups (Cereberas, Graphcore).&nbsp;
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        The size of the overall AI inference acceleration market was estimated at USD 12 billion in 2022 and has been projected to increase to USD 83 billion by 2027. Sacra estimates that Groq's immediately addressable inference acceleration TAM&mdash;focused on extremely low-latency requirements&mdash;is likely in the range of USD 3 billion to 5 billion, but is yet growing rapidly.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


Groq: Designing specialized processors and firmware for AI workloads

From counting steps to saving lives and beyond

Wearable Tech

<div>
  <p>
    This report covers exoskeletons which are external wearable frameworks that are placed on the user&rsquo;s body to augment or support natural physical ability. It is different from a mechanical prosthetic that replaces a lost human body part and a robot that completely replaces humans.
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Advances in technology are enhancing exoskeleton development, improving their functionality and usability through lighter components, machine learning for energy efficiency, and better brain-computer interfaces, while also addressing the needs of an aging workforce and rehabilitation demands, despite ongoing efforts to establish comprehensive regulations and standards.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        The global exoskeleton market is led by North America in terms of revenue, while Asia Pacific is expected to have the highest growth rate; passive exoskeletons are preferred over active exoskeletons for industrial repetitive tasks due to lower cost; and suppliers of active exoskeletons are considering offering the product as a service to make them more affordable, though the cost remains high.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Hospitals and rehabilitation providers are increasingly partnering with exoskeleton manufacturers to enhance rehabilitation efforts, while industries like automotive and logistics adopt commercial exoskeletons; however, the construction and agriculture sectors face slower adoption due to cost and practical challenges.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


Exoskeletons

<div>
  <p>
    Deep dive into Wiz's financials, product, business model, competitive environment and more...
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Wiz reached an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of USD 100 million in 18 months by selling its multi-cloud-native platform to identify vulnerable attack surfaces in large enterprises.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Wiz is a subscription-based SaaS company with a usage-based pricing model based on the number of cloud workloads a customer wants to protect across their compute, data, and runtime environments.&nbsp;
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Wiz faces competition from both established cybersecurity vendors and emerging startups in the cloud security space. This includes SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, Cisco, and Orca Security.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Wiz is in the midst of actively expanding its total addressable market (TAM) by evolving from a cloud security posture management (CSPM) tool (a USD 4 billion market) to a comprehensive cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP)&mdash;a category that Wiz brought into being but is growing increasingly crowded with competitors among both startups and cybersecurity incumbents.&nbsp;
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


Wiz: Israel's YC of cybersecurity

Novel therapies to reboot cells and organs

Cell & Gene Therapy

<div>
  <p>
    This report covers 
    Regenerative Medicine (RM) technologies that focus on treating the root causes of diseases by using engineered tissues, cells, and genes to repair or replace damaged organs. It highlights three main commercialised RM treatments&mdash;cell therapy, gene therapy, and tissue engineering&mdash;with cell therapy leading in market share and clinical trial activity, particularly in oncology.
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        RM is increasingly being applied to address non-communicable diseases, genetic disorders, and age-related conditions. Technological advancements such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), 3D bioprinting, and nanotechnology are driving progress in the field.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        The RM market is rapidly expanding, with significant investments in cell therapy and a projected market revenue increase from USD 24 billion in 2022 to USD 175 billion by 2032. RM therapies like gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) demonstrate substantial cost savings compared to traditional treatments.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Positive regulatory actions and strategic partnerships are accelerating RM developments. However, the sensitive nature of RM products necessitates robust supply chain management, including temperature-controlled distribution and active monitoring to maintain therapy viability. Additionally, healthcare insurance coverage for RM therapies remains a critical challenge for broader patient access.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


Regenerative Medicine

Providing a seamless consumer experience is one hope for bringing back brick and mortar retail, automated stores are being built to do just that.

Automated Stores

<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        Stricter regulations for self-checkout systems
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Funding shifts toward smart carts
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Incumbents lead product development partnerships
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Adoption of GenAI for virtual assistants and product visualization is on the rise
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


Retail Tech (1H 2024): Smart carts win confidence as self-checkouts face regulatory hurdle; GenAI embraced for immersive shopping

AI-based solutions for evolving digital threats

Next-gen Cybersecurity

<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        CrowdStrike's faulty update on July 19, caused widespread &quot;blue screen of death&quot; issues, affecting 8.5 million Windows devices globally.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        The incident paralyzed critical industries, impacting government agencies, stock exchanges, hospitals, and airlines, causing economic shockwaves.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        The report looks at a timeline of key events, CrowdStrike&rsquo;s response, and potential opportunities for its rivals.
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


<div>
  <p>
    A faulty update from cybersecurity giant 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/75532">
      <u>CrowdStrike</u>
    </a>
     drove the digital world to a halt on July 19, 2024. In a matter of hours, an estimated 8.5 million devices with Windows systems worldwide succumbed to the dreaded &ldquo;blue screen of death&rdquo; (BSOD), paralyzing critical industries and sending shockwaves through the global economy.
  </p>
  <p>
    From government agencies and stock exchanges to hospitals and airlines, the CrowdStrike Falcon platform's widespread adoption turned a routine update into a catastrophic event, leaving IT professionals scrambling to orchestrate what&rsquo;s going to be a very hands-on recovery process largely.
  </p>
  <p>
    As the dust settles, questions loom about the controls (or lack thereof) at CrowdStrike that led to this slip-up, and what&rsquo;s next for the company as it emerges from corporate losses that could exceed USD 5 billion. This report aims to answer those questions by delving into what exactly happened, a timeline of key events, CrowdStrike&rsquo;s response, and potential opportunities for its rivals.
  </p>
</div>


How a glitched CrowdStrike update caused the Blue Screen Friday

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

<div>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        AI avatars has seen adoption by salespeople who were early adopters, influencer marketing and social media advertising platforms, as well as areas like doctor-patient communication. High level of high usage in learning and development, sales, marketing.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        The research focus for Tavus includes capturing small nuances in the face, how a face moves naturally, gestures, and bringing that to life with the content the user wants to generate.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Tavus uses its own models for talking head generation and for lip-syncing and dubbing.
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Raza expects Tavus to eventually become the foundational platform for digital twin experiences across the ecosystem.
      </p>
      <p>
      </p>
      <p>
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
  </p>
</div>


EDGE Insights