Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: Living. Two flashy AI protein design startups launched this week: Xaira Therapeutics, backed by over $1 billion in funding, is led by Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the controversial former president of Stanford University. Meanwhile, Profluent announced it had genetically edited the DNA of human kidney cells using an AI-generated CRISPR-like protein for the first time.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Dying. BenevolentAI laid off 30% of its workforce and closed its US office to extend its cash runway to 2025. The British biotech company has struggled to stay afloat after efforts to overthrow its board and the failure of one of its small molecules, designed using its AI platform and used to treat eczema, during clinical trials last year.

Orbs wanted: Worldcoin hustles to meet demand

THE SCOOP

One of the most ambitious and mind bending startups of the crypto era has run into an unexpected problem: It’s running low on orbs.

The company behind the Worldcoin cryptocurrency project, backed by OpenAI chief Sam Altman, is facing a shortage of the devices that scan people’s irises in exchange for a token.

The challenge reflects the rapid adoption of Worldcoins, which launched last July with a goal of having every person on the planet become a part of its financial network. The World App, used to access Worldcoins, now has 10 million users in 160 countries and sees more than seven transactions per second, placing it among the most popular crypto wallets in the world. One Worldcoin is worth about $5.10 in Wednesday morning trading.

Alex Blania, CEO of Tools for Humanity, the startup behind Worldcoin, told Semafor in an interview that the company has ramped up production of the silver orbs to meet high demand. There are currently between 300 and 500 orbs in the field, he says.

The devices, which are manufactured in one factory in Germany (the company declined to provide additional details), look simple but are actually packed with sensors designed to outsmart attempts to create fake “World IDs,” ensuring that each digital identity issued is tied to a real person.

Worldcoin has open-sourced the design for the orbs and the software the company has built, which has garnered goodwill in the crypto industry. And last week, it announced it has built its own blockchain atop the Ethereum protocol, which allows it to offer free transactions to people who can authenticate their identity with their World IDs.

But Tools for Humanity won’t distribute them in some countries, including the U.S., where an uncertain regulatory environment creates risk. Americans can sign up for a World ID, but won’t receive the coins. The biometric data, which is used to create a unique string of numbers that corresponds to a real person, is erased and not retained by Tools for Humanity.

The company, which has raised funds from Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and others, hasn’t laid out a business model. But if its protocols gain widespread adoption, it could make money in several different ways, including on Worldcoin itself or transaction fees.

Blania initially expected the orbs to travel around the world capturing irises. Instead, people have traveled to the orbs, lining up for a chance to get their eyes scanned in exchange for an initial payment of 10 Worldcoins. They get three Worldcoins every two weeks thereafter.

The big crowds that have materialized around each orb have created logistical hurdles, Blania said. Now, the company must hire security teams and managers that have experience in crowd control. “It’s much easier in many ways and more complicated in others. I didn’t think we’d have to hire a strong team in every market in the early days,” Blania said. “I thought we’d have more time.”

The maximum amount of additional cubic feet per day of natural gas that could be needed to meet the rising energy demands of AI data centers in the second half of the decade, according to a report by Tudor Pickering Holt, an investment bank focusing on the oil and gas industry. Meanwhile, Salesforce is calling for policymakers to create rules around AI emissions disclosures.

TSMC is struggling to build its US semiconductor fabs on time, yet it seemed to avoid similar problems when launching its latest facility in Japan earlier this year. Construction for its Kumamoto factory started one year later than its first Arizona facility, but was completed faster. Why? The differences in work culture between the East and West.

Armed with homegrown expertise, about half of the 2,200 employees working at TSMC’s Arizona plant have been transplanted from Taiwan, while the other half are Americans. Trying to get both groups to work together has been difficult, Rest of World reported. Taiwanese engineers are used to working long shifts in a military-like environment, but American engineers value work-life balance and are less agreeable. The language barrier doesn’t help either.

The culture clash has led to a divisive workplace that slows progress. In one case, a female American engineer asked a Taiwanese colleague to remove the image of a bikini model from his computer wallpaper. One employee’s wife complained that the US was: “Great mountains, great rivers, and great boredom.”

TSMC is expected to make the most advanced chips that will power everything from smartphones to AI in its US factories. It’s not clear if and when it will succeed, but current working conditions don’t bode well for its future if its employees can’t get along. Maybe things will improve over time if the Taiwanese workers learn to relax a little (what’s there to do in the Arizona desert?), while Americans learn to adapt to a stricter work culture.

Whatever happens, the US government is giving TSMC more money to build more chip fabs in Arizona in a bid to strengthen supply chains and boost manufacturing. A second $40 billion facility has been delayed until 2027 or 2028 from 2026, and there are plans to construct a third one with $6.6 billion more funding from the CHIPS Act.

— Katyanna Quach

— Prabhakar Raghavan, Senior Vice President, Google. Employees have been told to work harder as the company faces rising competition that threatens its dominance in search and advertising.

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