Contrary Research Rundown #77

The uphill battle for tech optimism, plus new memos on CoreWeave, Notion, and more

Research Rundown

Every week that goes by seems to present a new opportunity for people to under appreciate just how unique of a business SpaceX is.

This week, SpaceX conducted its third test flight of its Starship rocket. This rocket is special because is the model built to take humans to the moon, and ultimately to Mars. The craft completed a “nominal first [and] second stage burn, orbital insertion, and the first [and] second stage were discarded.” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson referred to the launch as a “successful test flight.”

However, the upper stage broke up on re-entry. One commentator put it this way:

“During hypersonic re-entry, the upper stage withstood howling plasma and hellish temperatures for several minutes before breaking apart at an altitude of 65 kilometers, instead of making a high-speed belly flop into the southern Indian Ocean as planned.”

Several media outlets chose to frame the launch with more focus on the failure of one aspect, rather than the success of a core stated mission goal, which was to get the largest, most powerful rocket ever built into orbit. Despite some common skepticism of SpaceX’s accomplishments, the reality is the company is generational in what its unlocked.

In a report last July, the New York Times stated that 53% of all active satellites were Starlink satellites. From defense, to networking, to telecom—Starlink represents a massive revolution in internet connectivity. A revolution that was made possible because of the drastic shift in the cost paradigm of getting payloads into space that SpaceX has made possible.

Increasingly, companies like SpaceX will continue to push the boundaries of technological progress. The question will be whether the majority of people choose to celebrate the accomplishments? Or focus more on negative concerns they have with that progress, the results of the progress, or even personal vendettas they have against people like Elon Musk.

Zipline operates a global instant logistics and delivery system predominantly for delivering medicines and fulfilling commercial deliveries via drones. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• Flight Software Engineer - San Francisco, CA

• Lead Embedded Software Engineer - San Francisco, CA

CoreWeave is a cloud infrastructure provider purpose-built for GPU workloads. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• Cloud Support Engineer - Remote

• Engineer, Cloud Operations - Remote

Notion became a top-rated productivity app amongst consumers during the pandemic due to its flexibility and user experience. Each Notion template is like a SaaS product of its own, helping users reach high productivity and collaboration. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• AI Product Engineer - San Francisco, California; New York, New York

• Software Engineer, Developer Infrastructure - San Francisco, California

Check out some standout roles from this week.

• Traba | NYC - Software Engineer, Staff Software Engineer (Backend), Staff Software Engineer (Frontend)

• Onehouse | Remote, Hybrid (CA), Hybrid (WA) - Data Infrastructure Engineer (US), Software Engineer (US)

• Cybersecurity, as a category, is on a tear. Wiz acquired Gem Security for $350 million, while Zscaler acquired Avalor for $310 million.

• Speaking of Wiz, the company is reportedly in talks to raise hundreds of millions in new funding at a valuation north of $10 billion.

• Cohere has joined the list of companies who have released models with open access to the weights used in training the model with the launch of Command-R.

• Speaking of open publication of weights, a recent government-commissioned report states that “the U.S. government must move ‘quickly and decisively’ to avert substantial national security risks stemming from artificial intelligence (AI) which could, in the worst case, cause an ‘extinction-level threat to the human species.’” The report went on to propose “outlawing the publication of the ‘weights,’ or inner workings, of powerful AI models… with violations possibly punishable by jail time.”

• As the AI revolution continues to stay white hot, Apple is getting deeper into the mix with the announcement that the company would be acquiring Canadian AI startup, DarwinAI. The startup specializes in “visually inspecting components during the manufacturing process.”

• Stripe published its 2023 annual letter, reporting that the company had passed $1 trillion in total payment volume, up 25% year over year.

• Kite is the latest in a long line of ecommerce roll up shutdowns following the recent bankruptcy of Thrasio. The Blackstone-backed aggregator managed to raise $200 million, but only acquired two brands, before shutting down.

• Florida’s recent ban of lab-grown meat is steeped in politics, both pitting liberals and conservatives against each other, but also taking steps to protect the beef lobby. Meanwhile, companies like Impossible Foods in the lurch.

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