Emerging Opportunities
Edition 27.0
[Tesla’s Power Play]
With Tesla operating 6 out of every 10 EV superchargers in the U.S. and Canada (for a grand total of 45k), it is rapidly becoming the standard. Car manufactures Ford and GM have made commitments to adopting Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS), with Hyundai considering to make its EVs more readily compatible with Tesla
- Ford, GM, and Tesla combined, currently hold 70% of the U.S. EV market
- The U.S. government only offers its $7.5B charging subsidy for the Combined Charging System (CCS), but given the support for a system that is “half the size and twice as powerful”, they may reconsider
[USDA Approves Lab-Grown Meat]
↳ Upside Foods and Good Meat receive USDA approval to offer lab-grown meat in restaurants. Following FDA safety approval, the two companies will debut in Bar Crenn, a Japanese-style bar in San Francisco, and The Bazaar, a Spanish-restaurant in D.C., respectively
- The U.S. is the second country to approve the sale of lab-grown meat, after Singapore: lending momentum to a cultivated meat/seafood industry that has already raised $3B and is projected to grow to $25B by 2030
- As studies put to question how healthy plant-derived alternatives are, companies like Beyond Meat continue to lose ground with sales plummeting
- However, lab-grown meat can be a hard pill to swallow for some consumers: making adoption difficult
[Psychedelics for FDA Approval]
↳ Psychedelic Science is hosting “the largest psychedelics conference” in Denver, CO, following a state vote last year that decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms. Among the 10k attendees will be 2-time MVP Aaron Rodgers, co-founder of Whole Foods John Mackey, and NIMH director Joshua Gordon
- While the substance is legally decriminalized in only Oregon and Colorado, the Rocky Mountain state only supports supervised-use until more scientific studies are conducted to test its safety
- Along with psilocybin mushrooms, other psychedelics like MDMA and ketamine have reached pharmacology “darling status” for yielding evidence of treating mental-health conditions
- With investors estimating that psychedelics could become an $8B industry by 2028, Toms founder Blake Mycoskie pledged $100M to support research, and NY Mets owner Steve Cohen pledged $5M
|[The Rundown]|
[Heart-Warming]
- Spider-verse filmmakers hire a 14-year-old after he recreated the trailer using Lego animation
[Culture]
- Archaeologist discover an ancient Mayan city in the Yucatán Peninsula
- “Stonehenge of the Netherlands”discovered: a 4,000-year-old religious site
[Science & Tech]
- Scientists successfully unfroze a vitrified rat organ, paving a promising path for transplants
- Microsoft shares plans to build its own quantum computer (quantum computing use-cases)
- Gut samples from hunter-gatherers show evidence of thriving gut microbiomes
[Economy & Investing]
- Intel expands its international presence with a $33B investment in Berlin, following a $4.6B plant in Poland and a $25B factory in Israel
- Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown has led to an average of 73,000 new subscribers per day over the past two months
- New-home construction jumped to an annualized 22%, the highest rate since 2016
- Hiring teams get creative, as Schneider National trucking company advertises employment website on a video game
- While BlackRock files application with the SEC to launch bitcoin ETFs, an NYC bathhouse generates heat using crypto ming rigs