What Makes a True Friend

Hey everyone,

Welcome to your Sunday Space, where I distil the best ideas, resources and principles on the internet for you to mull over.

If you find something thought-provoking, feel free to share it with a friend.

IDEAS
What Makes a True Friend

The mark of a true friendship is whether you can pick up right where you left off with them after not talking for weeks, months or even years.

RESOURCES
What I consumed this week…

…From around the web

Sora is an AI model that creates realistic and imaginative videos from text

Believe it or not, the still below was taken from a video that was 100% generated and created by AI.

Unfortunately for every other AI video startup (ahem, Runway and Pika), this strikingly beautiful video was created by Sora, OpenAI’s breakthrough text-to-video model.

With the ability to generate videos up to a minute in length, Sora maintains visual quality and adherence to the user’s prompt while showing an early aptitude for simulating real-world physics.

It’s frightening that we’re at version one of this model, given the demos.

Up to this point, we haven’t seen AI-generated video at this scale and quality. OpenAI is truly blazing the trail to the next frontier of media creation.

Things are about to get crazy.

Sam Altman seeks to raise $7 trillion to reshape the AI chip business

Yes, that’s a trillion, with a ‘t.’

Altman aims to use this exorbitant investment to expand the global production capacity for semiconductors (specifically, the specialised chips used in training AI systems) by an order of magnitude.

This is fascinating not just because of the unfathomable amount of money involved but because of the game theory at play.

Nvidia, just this week, became the fourth most valuable company in the world, profiting from the rush of AI companies trying to acquire its A100 & H100 chips to build and train their AI systems.

With Altman tapping chipmaker TSMC to operate the chip-fabrication plants he plans to help build over the next few years, he threatens to compete directly with Nvidia.

All while positioning himself to become the ultimate power broker in AI—CEO of the company with the most advanced foundational models and beneficiary of the next generation of hardware powering all other AI systems.

Drug manufacturing spacecraft cleared to return to Earth

Varda, the company launching and operating said drug-manufacturing spacecraft, is one of the most fascinating space companies.

They aim to exploit the benefits of microgravity for manufacturing materials like pharmaceuticals that can’t be made on Earth.

For me, there are few things as futuristic-sounding as this.

The eight months in orbit were spent battling regulators and producing pharmaceutical crystals for the drug Ritonavir, used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS.

The coolest thing about this mission, other than the whole manufacturing drugs in space thing, was that the spacecraft was launched last June on the SpaceX Transporter-8 rideshare mission.

It’s a real example of how SpaceX has been the (literal) launchpad for the fledgling space economy.

…From X

…From YouTube

TOOLS
The No-Code x AI Bootcamp

If you're a regular here, you’ll know I’ve been through the Bootcamp myself. I'm not big on courses, and I recommend even fewer.

That speaks volumes about this one. It was a game-changer.

I’ve always been 'almost there.’ Full of ideas, yet stuck at the starting line, watching others on Twitter launch their products and succeed.

Then, I joined the Bootcamp. It completely changed my perspective.

I discovered the true power of building with No-Code and launched my MVP in a weekend.

I’m no longer hampered by analysis paralysis and have a roadmap of ideas and products that I plan to build.

If you’re feeling stuck like I was, then this Bootcamp is the way to break free.

Sign up here for the May 2024 cohort and get $100 off.*

THOUGHTS
Piece of writing I’m reading over and over

I was sent this by a friend last week.

I cannot stop reading it.

Was this email forwarded to you? If you liked it, sign up here.

If you loved it, forward it along and share the love.

Thanks for reading,

— Luca

P.S. If you think your life is tough, read this story…