Editor’s Note: Most Americans fail to recognize we’ve already entered into a new epoch of human existence. The technological projects underway today make Star Wars feel like a silent movie.
In today’s Daily, PBRG friend (and 25-year tech insider) Jeff Brown talks about the companies helping to turn everything from asteroid mining to artificial intelligence (AI) into multitrillion-dollar industries…
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From Jeff Brown, editor, Exponential Tech Investor: The asteroid-mining business just got very interesting…
In November 2015, the U.S. government signed into law the SPACE Act of 2015. As a result, Washington provided a major boon for two revolutionary companies I’m passionate about.
Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries are building the technology and infrastructure to mine metals and water from asteroids. The new law means they get to keep whatever they mine.
Before we get there, though, billions of dollars of investment will be required. That’s why the new act is so important.
Before its passage, it was not clear that companies would own whatever materials they mined. But now that that’s cleared up, the payoff could be unimaginable.
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Consider this: A single 500-meter asteroid can contain more platinum-group metals than what has ever been mined in human history.
Imagine one “space rock” being worth more than $1 trillion. Now you see why there is so much interest in building this new industry.
Asteroid mining will become a multitrillion-dollar industry… and many billionaires will be made as a result.
An artist’s rendering of Deep Space Industries’ mining operation.
Source: Deep Space Industries
Recent discoveries from unmanned space exploration in our solar system have also stimulated new interest in manned missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
One of the biggest obstacles to manned space travel is water. It is heavy. So it is extremely expensive to transport from Earth into orbit.
Water is necessary for human life. But it can also be processed into hydrogen for rocket fuel.
“C-type” asteroids are rich in water and will be targeted for water “mining.” This will dramatically lower the cost of getting spaceships into Earth’s orbit.
Due to the massive amounts of capital required to build the kind of equipment needed to mine in space, these fledgling companies will almost certainly access the public markets via stock offerings to raise capital.
Not only will this create incredible investment opportunities for tech investors, it will also allow us all to take part in the future of space exploration.
This changes everything
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We have reached a turning point in history…
Most people don’t know it, but our lives are about to radically change. Artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced to the point where computers can start learning from their own experiences.
Now, this might not sound like much, but it is extraordinary. Let me explain…
As humans, we often repeat our mistakes. AI never makes the same mistake twice. It corrects, and then it never happens again.
But it’s even better than that. You see, anytime an AI recognizes a mistake, or learns from experience, every other AI in the network learns from that experience… and they ALL never forget.
The learning process is exponentially fast. Every experience is captured and leveraged by the network of AIs. And this will bring profound changes faster than you can imagine.
Take electric carmaker Tesla (TSLA). It recently launched an early version of a self-driving car. In Tesla’s system, a driver acts as a “trainer” for the AI system, and the AI learns what to do and how to do it… and it learns very quickly.
Already, owners are impressed with the system’s ability to self-improve.
Every 10 hours, Tesla collects more than 1 million miles of self-driving data from its network of cars on the road. To date, it has collected more than 100 million miles of data… and it uses this data to improve the autonomous features every day. No other company in the world has even a hundredth of this amount of information on self-driving technology.
Social network company Facebook (FB) is also working on an AI product called “M.” This is Facebook’s new personal AI assistant. At the moment, it is being beta tested. But very soon, it will be launched widely.
For now, Facebook is using humans to check all of M’s communications with users. If M’s proposed response isn’t correct, the Facebook employee will adjust to a more appropriate response, teaching the system in the same way human drivers train Tesla’s self-driving system.
As a result, M is learning in real time with the assistance of human direction.
There are a number of other big AI assistant initiatives in the works: Apple (AAPL) with Siri, Microsoft (MSFT) with Cortana, and Amazon (AMZN) with Alexa. (We use Alexa in our Delray Beach office.)
It’s not just the big tech companies that are focusing on this space. AI-related venture capital investments exceeded $600 million in the last 12 months.
One of the lesser-known companies that I’m tracking is called Viv. It was established by many of the same people who built Apple’s Siri… and they are developing a more versatile AI for a variety of other uses.
Viv’s motto is “Radically simplify the world by providing an intelligent interface to everything.” I am sure it is onto something. Samsung announced on October 5 that it was acquiring Viv for an untold amount. It is expected that the agreed price was well in excess of $100 million.
The market for AI-enabled digital assistants will approach $10 billion in less than 10 years. Needless to say, fortunes will be made in this space, and this technology will literally transform—and improve—how we live our daily lives.
Reeves’ Note: Jeff has put together a handpicked list of 21 technology companies he believes are likely to go public within the next 12–18 months. Any one of the companies on this list could return you 10 to 20 times your money once they IPO. And in some cases, 100 times your money or more over time.