About this episode Start your day informed with 'US Tech Wake-Up,' a quick yet comprehensive morning briefing that highlights the biggest developments shaping the tech landscape. Each episode cuts through the noise to deliver clear insights on market-moving news, breakthrough innovations, and industry shifts that matter most. Perfect for busy professionals, you'll walk away with sharp, actionable knowledge to stay ahead in the fast-paced world of US technology.
0:00 Etched just raised three hundred million dollars at a valuation north of ten billion.0:05 That's for a Series C.0:06 And it's the highest valuation Sequoia has ever led for a round at that stage.0:11 In our last briefing, we talked about Meta and Microsoft cutting thousands of jobs, but it's clear the AI funding frenzy isn't just continuing—it’s hitting a new gear.0:21 And it's not the only place big money is moving.0:23 Today, July twenty-fourth, two different longevity-focused biotech companies are hitting the public markets.0:30 Scribe Therapeutics, a CRISPR company, priced its IPO at fifteen dollars a share and starts trading today on Nasdaq under the ticker SCTX.0:38 At the same time, Instinct Bio, a regenerative medicine platform out of Tokyo, also just debuted on the Nasdaq.0:45 Then you have the insurance startup Corgi.0:47 It just closed another funding round that doubled its valuation to FOUR billion dollars...0:53 in the last eight weeks.0:54 Even by today's standards, that is an incredible pace.0:57 On the other end of the market, EV maker Faraday Future just executed a one-for-one-hundred-fifty reverse stock split this morning, basically a move to keep its stock from getting delisted.1:09 And in a quieter, but still significant development, Syntec Optics officially joined the Russell 3000 index, cementing its place among key US public companies for its work in defense and space tech.1:21 Okay, so there's a lot happening.1:22 But let's go back to those first two themes, because they show you where the REAL money is concentrating right now.1:29 AI hardware and human longevity.1:31 First, Etched.1:32 What are they even building that's worth over ten billion dollars before they're a household name?1:38 They make something called "frontier inference hardware." So, you know how companies like Nvidia build these massive, power-hungry GPUs to TRAIN AI models?1:47 That's one half of the equation.1:49 But once the model is trained, you have to actually RUN it.1:53 That's called inference.1:54 Every single time you ask a chatbot a question or generate an image, that's an inference task.2:00 Etched is betting that as these AI models become astronomically complex, they'll need specialized chips just to run them efficiently.2:08 They're building a custom chip—an ASIC—designed to do one thing and one thing only: run a specific type of advanced AI model called a Transformer.2:16 It's a huge gamble.2:18 If that model architecture changes in the future, their chip could become a very expensive paperweight.2:24 But if they're right...2:25 they've just built the engine for the next generation of artificial intelligence.2:30 And Sequoia putting in a record-breaking valuation tells you they think Etched is VERY right.2:36 Now, the second huge bet we're seeing play out today is on rewriting human biology.2:40 It is not a coincidence that two longevity biotechs, Scribe and Instinct, went public on the exact same day.2:47 This is a signal.2:48 The market is starting to treat "extending healthy lifespan" as a serious, investable category—not just science fiction.2:55 Scribe Therapeutics is a CRISPR company.2:58 But here’s the key difference.2:59 They're focused on in vivo gene editing.3:02 That means editing genes directly INSIDE the body.3:05 No taking cells out, editing them in a lab, and putting them back in.3:09 Their goal is to create durable therapies...3:11 maybe even prevent diseases before they can ever start.3:15 Think of it as patching the source code of your DNA before the program can crash.3:20 Then you have Instinct Bio.3:21 They're coming at it from a different angle—regenerative medicine.3:25 This is about using the body's own systems to repair and regenerate tissues.3:30 They're already generating revenue, which is rare for a biotech at this stage.3:34 Having both of these companies hit the Nasdaq on the same morning shows you the capital markets are officially open for business for companies whose primary product is...3:45 more time.3:45 So when you pull back, what did we actually see today?3:48 It's a massive divergence.3:50 While some parts of the tech world are contracting, with buyouts and reverse stock splits, the venture capital isn't drying up.3:58 It's concentrating.3:59 It’s making enormous, almost philosophical bets.4:02 The money is flowing into two areas: the hardware to power artificial intelligence, and the biology to extend our own.4:09 The market isn't just looking for the next app.4:11 It's funding the companies that are trying to rewrite the rules of code, and the companies trying to rewrite the code in our own cells.
