Midjourney bets on medical hardware for AI edge

Space (2)

• Planet is a public company operating the world's largest Earth-observing satellite fleet, with its stock increasing 450% over the last year. The company generates 25 terabytes of imagery daily from its 200 satellites.
• Will Marshall argues that while launch costs are important, the long-term competitive advantage in orbital compute will depend more on compute efficiency (flops per watt) than on raw launch capacity.

AI Infrastructure (2)

• Planet is placing Nvidia chips on its satellites for edge processing and satellite-to-satellite communication, significantly reducing data analysis time from hours to seconds for time-critical applications like disaster response.
• Project Suncatcher involves putting TPUs for Google into orbit, an early step towards orbital AI compute. A Google study suggests compute in orbit will be cheaper than terrestrial when launch costs reach $200-$300 per kilogram.

Climate (1)

• Will Marshall maintains Earth is by far the best planet, emphasizing the need to protect its unique biosphere. Space technology's primary role should be to help manage Earth intelligently, not solely for off-world colonization.

Models (1)

• Alex argues that Google DeepMind has fallen behind OpenAI and Anthropic in frontier AI models, influencing top researchers to seek raw access to cutting-edge models in smaller, more agile organizations.

Robotics (1)

• Will Marshall believes that AI needs to interact with the physical world through sensors and actuators to achieve true intelligence and consciousness, moving beyond current 'brains in a vat' large language models.

Other (14)

• Nick highlights that prediction markets are available in all 50 US states, providing an arbitrage opportunity for sports betting, which is restricted in large markets like California and Texas.
• The World Cup served as a significant tailwind for prediction markets; weekly notional volume surged 84% from $7.1 billion pre-event to $13.1 billion during the first full week.
• Kalshi emerged as a major beneficiary during the World Cup, with its volume up 117% on June 15th, recording $9 billion in notional volume in a single week.
• Polymarket's market share declined to about 25% from a previous near-monopoly of 98%, following a Wall Street Journal article alleging questionable marketing practices, including fake spending.
• Nick notes that crypto has become a significant growth driver for Kalshi, with its weekly crypto volume exceeding $1 billion for the first time recently.
• The long-term opportunity for prediction markets lies in institutional demand for KPI markets, such as predicting SpaceX Falcon 9 launches, offering pure risk expressions for hedging.
• Nick estimates prediction markets could capture 0.5-1% of the $750 trillion annual derivatives market, potentially generating trillions in volume as the market is projected to reach $900 trillion.
• Brett describes Midjourney Medical's ultrasonic CT scan, which uses Butterfly Networks' transistor-based sensors to produce high-definition body scans 10-100 times cheaper and faster than MRIs.
• The Midjourney device aims to provide frequent, inexpensive scans for $100, enabling longitudinal data collection for early detection of conditions like cancer, with a 2028 San Francisco launch target.
• Midjourney's move into hardware and medical imaging, after specializing in image generation, suggests a strategy to acquire proprietary data for training advanced AI models.
• Nick posits that the rise of generalist chatbots may diminish the need for single-purpose AI models, leading companies like Midjourney to explore hardware as a potential market moat.
• Sam suggests this medical technology will create a divide between fast-moving 'biohacker' approaches and slower traditional academia, which often critiques new methods as 'bad science'.
• Brett highlights the challenge of slow scientific publication processes keeping pace with rapid technological advancements, especially when studies require long-term human data in biology.
• The consumerization of healthcare allows individuals to fund experimental diagnostics like Grail's multi-cancer blood test, generating real-world evidence that insurers may not yet cover.