Google search is dead, AI meets Bumble, Stephanie Zhan and Fei-
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The day Google Search diedWe search a lot for our work, and while Google Search was our default, we never liked the experience and have been shocked at how little the service has evolved and improved since its 1998 debut. We further loathe how Google has never innovated beyond its sell-its-customer's-data for a living business model—a scheme that still appallingly generates over 80% of Google’s revenues. We will all remember our ‘ChatGPT moment’ three years ago, but for us, the real day that Google Search died was a year later when Perplexity’s AI-powered search engine launched in August 2022. With Perplexity.ai, you can effectively search with several questions at a time, and the result is generally an articulate CliffsNotes-style summary that showcases and links to the primary documents used and suggestions for further prompts. There are no sponsors, no ads, and no preachy OpenAI written paragraph at the end to stomach. Perplexity delivers a result that saves you the further time it takes if you start with a Google search. The Fausitian pact—Free InternetPeople forget, but back at the beginning of Web1, entrepreneurs like Yahoo founder Jerry Yang and Internet browser pioneer Marc Andreessen had to cut a Faustian bargain with their fellow academics who were then using the Internet as their private network. The ask to the 3 million largely pony-tailed Libertarian anarchist types that controlled the Internet was if they allowed Silicon Valley to commercialize the Internet, we would promise to keep everything on the Internet free! The result has been, of course, the democratization of information for 5.5 billion people (67.1%) out of 8.1 global inhabitants. Most knowledge today is accessible and free. To all that, we say job very well done, mates!
However, nothing comes without a cost. When you look at the math, we all underwrote the rise of the Google Goliath by allowing the company to trade our private data like commodities on the attention-span exchange. And the worst of it: Due to a string of mischievous acts and security breaches, Google, Facebook, and Big Tech have lost the trust of 74% of their customers, yet they still control much of our data. A central editorial theme at Cryptonite is that the era of selling people’s private data and cloud computing-based Wall Gardens, in general, is coming to a close. Entrepreneurs win by solving Big Problems. Our lack of trust in institutions is a Big Problem that’s getting worse. Web3 entrepreneurs are busy leveraging blockchain, crypto, and AI to fix it, and they will. Soon, we will turn the tables on Big Tech, and the Goliaths will have to pay us to participate in their marketing schemes if we so allow. Part of this transition means users will have to start paying more for their web services. Perplexity.ai uses a freemium model as an example, offering a free GPT-3.5 search and a paid ‘Pro’ version ($20/month or $200/year) offering GPT-4, Claude 3, and other large language models ideal for longer answers to complex questions. We can attest that $20 for the hundreds of searches we perform each month saves us dozens of hours and delivers far superior results. The bottom line is that we are not cynical about where we came from because it got us to where we are today. However, we are committed to championing all Web3 entrepreneurs who are working hard to realize the original vision of the Internet of a fully decentralized platform that allows us to sidestep big institutions and operate in a peer-to-peer, fully encrypted, private, and secure way.
Web3 innovation is especially significant, as it counters the global centralized control efforts of the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP has created a tracible digital Yuan, it controls all of TikTok’s data, its citizens are subject to social scoring systems, and it is systematically abusing the Uyghurs, amongst many other dramatic violations of human life and rights. Our best defense against the Mighty Dragon is to offer a clear alternative to the world that leverages Web3 innovation to preserve and protect our civil liberties. The day Corporate Media died
While we are on the topic of Google—the queen of all manipulation networks—the company has found itself in the bull's eye of Corporate Media with its new Perplexity-wanna-be AI search, Gemini. When Google announced that 'Google will do the Googling for you,' the original news outlets went epileptic. Traffic to the media giants has already been on the steep decline, and AI-powered search will be the final arrow in the back of the beasts. 'This will be catastrophic to our traffic, leaving even less incentive to click through so that we can monetize our content,' moaned Danielle Coffey, the CEO of the News/Media Alliance on CNN. 'The little traffic we get today will be further diminished with a product that directly competes with our content, yet using our content to fuel it.'
Some newsrooms, such as Fox News, Finanical Times and AP have chosen to cut deals with folks like OpenAI to license their deep archives of content, which only further commoditizes what they produce. The New York Times has decided to file a scorched Earth lawsuit against the ChatGPT creator. The deeper problem is Corporate Media has completely lost the trust of their readers/viewers. The mistrust rate of television news @ 89% and Newspapers @ 84% is even higher than that of Big Tech @ 74%. There ain't no force in nature that can alter these winds of change.
I recall sitting around YouTube's first office in 2005 above a coffee shop in downtown San Mateo with cofounder Chad Hurley talking about how citizen journalism will ultimately crush Corporate Media. We gleefully imagined a world full of Joe Rogans and people with authentic ideas and specific expertise filling the Internet video waves and the imminent death of TV. It was power to the people time all over again. Well, happily, all those dreams came true. Yet it has been a slower death for corporate talking point messaging than we anticipated, which has been amped up and delivered more hysterically as they twirl down the toilet into the sewage tank of deceit.
Apple’s in-house iPad ad was a smashing success, with over 100 million views Apple’s new iPad Pro—‘the thinnest Apple product yet’—hit the shelves May 15th. To boost the hype, Apple’s in-house team produced the above-minute-long ad called Crush, accompanied by the Sonny and Cher 1971 hit tune All I Ever Need Are You. The ad consists of a gigantic hydraulic press comprehensively smushing a trumpet, an arcade cabinet, a record player, paint cans, a guitar, a piano, a TV, sculptures, a bunch of emoji, and plenty of other artistic tools of the trade—and set off a wave of insecurity amongst the Hollywood set.
Many of the hecklers postulate that the Crush's apparent affront to authentic artistry would have offended Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. We think the opposite. Steve Jobs' marketing legacy is crafting concise, easy-to-understand marketing messages that focus on one core value proposition that resonated emotionally with customers. One can not watch Crush without being left transfixed by the very thin and elegant new iPad that is created in front of us and imagining it as our sleek window to a world full of creative expression. We say SJ's marketing mission was accomplished with Crush. Good work, team!
Apple may be back-tracking and apologizing for Crush, but the iPad promo is still on Apple’s YouTube page (over 2.5 million views in 6 days), and Tim Cook’s reference to Crush is still up on his X account with 59.6 million views—and counting. The Crush ad ‘backlash,’ driven by corporate media and hysterical celebrities, has driven over 100 million views, hits, and mentions by now. By all marketing measures, the Crush ad crushed it. As we say at Crypronite when our readers get a little pissy—‘F*uck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.’ —Anthony Perkins, founder & editor Cryptonite Did you know?(Overheard on the streets of the global Silicon Valley. Got any hot insider tips? Email us editor@cryptoniteventures.com) Dating in Web3Bumble founder and former CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd sees a world where our personal AI ‘dating concierge’ converses with hundreds of other AI assistants to vet, sort, and find us our love match.
Austin, Texas-based Bumble's target customers are primarily millennial and Gen Z women seeking dating, friendship, or professional connections within the global community of 270 million dating app users. A Statista survey last year found that 61% of dating app users in the US were ages 30 to 49, while just 26% were 18-—to 29-year-olds. As a next AI step, Bumble created an ‘Opening Move’ feature that uses AI to start initial conversations to get the ball rolling. Can AI bots help you sift and sort through potential mates? Sure. Can they decipher the possibilities for true love? We are not so sure. VC WhispersRising star🌟VC Stephanie Zhan, an early investor in GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT, says, ‘Incumbents with scale, data, capital, and distribution have a natural advantage, but new startups still have a shot.’ And her VC firm, the venerable Sequoia Capital, is putting its money where its mouth is with ten new AI startup investments so far in 2024, while other VCs are petrified by ‘AI shake out’ fears. We say keep an eye on Ms. Zhan; she’s got that old-school Sequoia Capital swag going on.
Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed last March after a run on the bank, is selling its VC arm, SVB Capital, for $340 million in cash to Pinegrove Capital Partners, an investment group seeking depressed startup stakes that is backed by Brookfield Asset Management and Sequoia Heritage, Sequoia Capital’s private wealth management firm. North Carolina-based First Citizens Bank bought SVB’s corporate banking and wealth management business last year. Court records showed that SVB Capital has $10 billion in assets under management—including Limited Partnership investments in top VC funds such as Sequoia and dozens of startups, including Stripe, Xoom, Fireblocks, and Chainalysis. Looks like a great deal for the buyers to us!
In a strategic move, the State-backed Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) launched the country's first Fund-of-Funds in February. This initiative aims to invest over $1 billion in international and regional VC funds, along with targeted co-investments. As part of this strategy, QIA recently announced its investment in Ardian Semiconductor, a VC fund established by French private equity firm Ardian. The fund is focused on the semiconductor industry across Europe, reflecting QIA's keen interest in this sector.
QIA's CEO Mansoor Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud says the sovereign-wealth fund's move reflects its 'belief in the pervasiveness of semiconductors in the world economy and their impact on digital and green transformations across key sectors such as artificial intelligence, mobility or consumer technology.' AI TrackerThe ‘godmother of AI’ is getting into the startup game. According to Reuters, Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford University professor of computer science and the co-director of its Human-Centered AI Institute, has founded a new startup that uses human-like processing of visual data to make AI capable of advanced reasoning. Fei-Fei proposed in a recent Ted Talk that AI’s ability to understand spatial intelligence—the ability to derive predictions and insight from objects’ relationships to one another—is catalyzing robotic learning and the ability for AI to interact with the world around us.
Ms. Li reportedly received funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Radical Ventures, a Canadian venture capital firm she joined as a scientific partner last year.
The theme of this year’s Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition is ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion. While this year’s annual Spring Costume Institute show has a retro vibe, the producers evidently did not want to be caught without their own AI bot. Built using GPT-4 technology, the final garment exhibit: a dramatic, satin mermaid-esque wedding gown from the 1930s once worn by New York actor and socialite Natalie Potter—will take on the persona of Ms. Potter and answer visitors’ questions about her life and the dress.
Andrew Bolton, chief curator of the Met’s Costume Institute, helped the project by gathering data such as letters provided by Potter’s family, articles, and other historical documents to train the custom GPT bot. OnHollywoodOriginality and artistic risk are out of fashion at Disney. When you get to the point that your business is ‘mining the IP,’ you know there is no imagination left in the shop. This remarkk by Old Media Bob Iger at Disney the other day, foreshadows what we already know about the unMagical Kingdom. In practical terms, it means we must brace ourselves this year for Inside Out 2, Moana 2, Mufasa: The Lion King, then Zootopia 2 in 2025, and Toy Story 5 in 2026. We can also look forward to live-action remakes of Snow White and the first Moana. 
Meanwhile, Superhero overload isn’t helping Disney’s Marvel shop, which recently produced The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania flops. Bob solution? Downsize to two TV series a year instead of four.
While Mr. Iger concedes and Disney’s magic fades, David Ellison and his production company Skydance are on the ascent. David was formerly an actor and is a keen aerobatic plane and helicopter pilot. In 2010, his billionaire pops, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, seed-funded Skydance. Skydance has raised over $1 billion to date, including KKR led $400M investment in 2022 that valued the company at over $4 billion. Skydance has since grown into a major force in Hollywood, producing blockbuster films like Top Gun: Maverick and the Mission: Impossible franchise with Tom Cruise, as well as critically acclaimed TV shows like Reacher and Foundation.
David also boldly hired Pixar Animation Studios’s legendary computer animation pioneer and cofounder John Lasseter to head up Skydance’s animation studio just months after the former Disney chief creative officer resigned amid complaints about inappropriate workplace hugging. 😳 Since being on board, Mr. Lasseter has had three animation films in the pipeline and helped forge a relationship between Skydance and Apple that has ‘flourished.’
Today, David is engaged in exclusive takeover talks for Paramount, home to Top Gun and Mission: Impossible, and owner of Channel 5, MTV, Paramount+, and the CBS network. Ellison, Jr. has offered to buy out Paramount’s majority shareholder, Shari Redstone, by acquiring her company National Amusements—which owns 77 percent of Paramount’s voting stock—for $3 billion.
David’s bid is supported by Tom Cruise, his power agent Ari Emmanuel, and director James Cameron, but he is up against Sony, the venerable Hollywood studio. Sony and private equity firm Apollo Global Management's bid is to pay $26 billion to buy all the shares, not just Shari’s, which Hollywood insiders say is going to be tough for Skydance to beat. The Science of LifeNeuralink's first chip implant in a human skull faced its first glitch when it began detaching from the patient’s brain. Noland Arbaugh, who has quadriplegia, has to control digital devices with his thoughts since a robot surgically attached a small processor and battery in his brain tissue connected by 64 ultra-fine threads to transmit signals from the brain and interpret neural signals. Reportedly, these threads have started to retract from the brain, and functionality has declined as well. Despite the setback, Mr.Arbaugh is still able to play chess on a computer using his thoughts, and he continues to express that the implant has significantly transformed him for the better. Neuralink competitor Synchron is expanding its existing brain device beyond paralysis treatment to epilepsy and Parkinson’s. Synchron was founded by Thomas Oxley, a neurosurgeon, and Nicholas Opie, an electrical engineer with a background in developing brain-computer interfaces and neural implants. The company has hauled $70 million in funding this far from ARCH Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, NeuroTechnology Investors, December 23. Department of Defense. Mr. Oxley says that the brain technology industry was entering into a ‘large period of growth and that a lot of capital was now flowing into the sector.’ He also warns that ‘you have to be aware that this sector is going to take a long time to fully develop. We’ve been working on it for ten years and still have a long way to go, but it’s still exciting.’
Follow the CryptoAt our core, we are NFT maximalists. We believe NFTs will be issued as unique and immutable ownership certificates for the entire breadth of real-world assets and will unlock all sorts of benefits and privileges for their holders. As our counselor Josh Lawler simply says, 'Tokens are the new paper.' The global NFT collectibles, gaming, and utilities market is projected to grow from $21.4B in 2023 to $212B by 2031, and tokenized real-world assets will reach the trillions of dollars in the same forecast period. While Ethereum has a significant first-mover advantage in the NFT space, with popular projects and established marketplaces, the Bitcoin blockchain is quickly gaining dominance in the NFT market as other blockchains, like Solana and Polygon, also move up in the game. The introduction of Ordinals protocol on the Bitcoin mainnet on January 20, 2023, and the more recent Bitcoin ETF boom on Wall Street definitely provided wind for this NFT blockchain movement.
"Bitcoin and its underlying technology breaks Orwell's dictum by providing proof of publishing.’ —Julian Assange, 2014 For the Bitcoin and free speech enthusiast, a new NFT ($ASNGE) collection on Bitcoin Stamps ($ASNGE) that honors Julian Assange and his legacy will be available to mint on May 22th, to commemorate the date of the first physical Bitcoin transaction on May 22, 2010. It is a 10k NFT collection showcasing 32 Quotes from Julian Assange in five languages (Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French, and English). Julian Assange is an Australian computer programmer and founder of WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization that got in hot water with the US government for publishing classified information from anonymous sources, such as Afghan and Iraq War Logs, confidential diplomatic cables, Guantanamo Bay files and revealing sensitive information about US foreign policy, civilian casualties and other controversial incidents in 2010-2011. Unfortunately for Mr. Assange, the US has charged him with violating the Espionage Act. He was arrested in the UK in 2019 after spending years in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations (which were later dropped) and remains in UK custody pending extradition to the US, where he could face up to 175 years in prison if convicted. The crypto poetry here is that the Stamps protocol on top of the Bitcoin blockchain is the solution to the original WikiLeaks dream of achieving an open and 'proof of publishing' canvas to preserve the truth about matters of both peace and war. Amazingly, Julian saw it back in 2014! The $ASNGE meme coin may not keep Mr. Assange out of the clinker, but it does immutably memorialize part of his legacy in a way that can survive any level of AI-driven digital censorship.
Keep the eyes of over 500,000 global innovators on your brand here. Straight outta Silicon ValleyWarren Buffett is an Apple believer. America’s favorite multi-billionaire investor gave Apple a big thumbs up at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting last week, saying it’s ‘extremely likely’ the $135 billion they own in Apple stock will remain Berkshire’s biggest investment position. Mr. Buffett says, ‘Apple remains an even better business than American Express and Coca-Cola,’ the two other significant Berkshire stock holdings.
FYI, the $3,499 Apple Vision Pro headset sales and interest are tapering off in the US as the company is gearing up to expand its mixed-reality headset sales outside the US, starting with China, France, and Germany. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has slashed its 2024 Vision Pro shipment forecast to an estimated 400,000-450,000 units, far below the initial market consensus of 700,000-800,000 units or more
Pura Vida (pure life)To truly thrive, our good Doctor Frank Lipman says we should understand that rest has many faces. Physical Rest: Give your muscles time to relax, repair, and renew with a bath, a massage, time in the steam room or infrared sauna, napping, or just curling up with a good book. You can also do some light stretching or gentle restorative yoga.
Mental Rest: Practice contemplative prayer and meditation, ideally in nature. By allowing our minds to rest, we enhance cognitive function, focus, and mental resilience while also reducing stress and anxiety. Emotional Rest: Cultivate relationships that lift you up and put a distance between you and those who drain your energy. From there, engage in activities that bring you joy and a sense of calm. Social Rest: Just say no, as in intentionally withdrawing from selected social engagements and 'obligations' to make time for yourself to recharge. The goal is to prioritize people who energize you and uplift your spirits. Sensory Rest: Intentionally unplug, spending time in a quiet, dimly lit room or quiet space, like a church or library; minimizing exposure to screens or going screen-free after certain hours or even one day a week; listening to ambient or calming classical music. Creative Rest: Step away from the canvas from time to time to get a fresh perspective and allow ideas to percolate, bubble up to the surface, and flow more naturally. Switch gears and go for a walk, listen to music, and read literature. Slowing your creative role will reignite your gifts, reconnect you with your innate creativity more effortlessly, and help prevent burnout and creative blocks. “Hence monastic prayer, especially meditation and contemplative prayer, is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him whom we have found, who loves us, who is near to us, who comes to us to draw us to himself.” —Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, from his epic autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain Finding the right balance for yourself involves recognizing your individual rest needs and cultivating the habits and practices that support them. This practice has great rewards—resilience, vitality, and ultimately longevity—so let's hear it for rest! Read more from Dr. Frank Lipman on getting the rest you need here. Cryptonite Partnership Opportunities
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