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📰 The Cusp of the Quantum Age

📰 The Cusp of the Quantum Age

Microsoft’s major breakthrough, the US military’s autonomous appetite, asteroid mining, Vision-Language-Action humanoids, Garmin's record earnings report and more.

Riley Rosebee
February 22, 2025

✨ Welcome

Welcome to The Godspeed Weekly!

Today we’ll cover Microsoft’s major breakthrough, the US military’s autonomous appetite, asteroid mining, household humanoids, GPS technology and more.

Onward…

🤌 The Cusp Of The Quantum Age

Microsoft unveiled a major breakthrough…

For the last 17 years, the tech giant has research the feasibility of quantum computing. This week, Microsoft announced its Majorna 1 processor.

The Majorna 1 leverages the world’s first topoconductor, a revolutionary material used to build quantum computers. The company writes,

In the same way that the invention of semiconductors made today’s smartphones, computers and electronics possible, topoconductors and the new type of chip they enable offer a path to developing quantum systems that can scale to a million qubits and are capable of tackling the most complex industrial and societal problems.

If you’re like me and struggle to understand the complexities of quantum computing, Microsoft shared an excellent short video explaining the new technology. Check it out.

🇺🇸 The US Military Wants Autonomy

The US Military is hungry for autonomy.

In light of the Federal budget cuts, the US Navy will expand funding for “experimental autonomous aircraft meant to provide logistics support to ships at sea.”

On February 18th, PteroDynamics was awarded $4.6M to develop autonomous trans-wing vertical take-off and landing vehicles. Here’s a great gif of Transwing’s P5 design,

Drones are not exclusively for flight… Saronic, an autonomous boat builder with multiple military contracts, recently raised $600M at a $4B valuation.

🪨 Mining Asteroids

Karman+ raised $20M to seed its asteroid mining ambitions. Yes - you read that right…

The company’s first target is to build a spacecraft to travel to an asteroid, mine said asteroid, extract water from the mined material before returning to Earth’s orbit.

It’s ambitious and we love to see it! Karman+ expects to launch its first vessel in 2027.

Read Karman+’s Master Plan here.

🤖 Meet Helix

The AI robotics company, Figure introduced Helix, the first Humanoid Vision-Language-Action model.

The company displayed the new tech with a clip of one Helix neural network running 2 Figure robots simultaneously.

Figure writes,

Our robots equipped with Helix can now pick up virtually any household object without any code or prior training. Helix uses a single set of neural network weights to learn all behaviors.

📈 Garmin’s Record Earnings Report

Last Wednesday, Garmin reported full-year record revenue, profit and proposed a 20% dividend increase.

The GPS-enabled technology company cited 20% YoY revenue growth and a 46% increase in operating income.

Here are the stats that stand out to me as we enter a new age of mobility…

Garmin ranked No. 1 for the 21st consecutive year in Professional Pilot’s Avionics Manufacturers Product Support Survey
Runway Occupancy Awareness technology honored with a prestigious Laureate Award from Aviation Week Network
Launched the Descent^™ X50i, our first large-format dive computer

$GRMN gapped up 12% on the news as the stock closed at an all-time weekly high.

📖 The Technological Republic

Here’s a book to add to your cart…

Palantir co-founder, Alex Karp published The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief and the Future of the West.

Legendary trader, Stanley Druckenmiller shared,

This is an extremely important book and a gift to every American interested in the future path of our nation. Alex Karp is a brilliant out-of-consensus visionary who has built one of the most consequential companies in America. His insight into how he did so and how we should allocate future defense spending and what role our leading technology companies should play in helping defend our nation against hostile adversaries is both provocative and invaluable.

The title is 25% off for a limited time.