One of the biggest moments to date in the evolution of artificial intelligence came in November 2022 when OpenAI, an AI research organization co-founded by Elon Musk to stop the machine apocalypse, released a conversational chatbot that many believe will start the machine apocalypse. ChatGPT is probably the closest we’ve come to the holy grail […]
An important part of the mythology of startups in the United States is the origin story. For instance, some of the biggest tech companies in the world, like Amazon and Microsoft, originally launched out of the founder’s garage. In Norway, it’s barns. That’s how AutoStore (AUTO.OL), a pure-play stock in warehouse automation, got its start. […]
One of the cool things about an investment research firm like Nanalyze is our longevity. We’ve been around for nearly 20 years now, and so we benefit from being able to draw on more than 2,200 research pieces. In effect, we have a unique dataset across a dozen emerging technology sectors. In that span of […]
Spending time in the corporate world helps investors understand more intuitively how businesses operate. Performance improvement plans are large collections of documentation used to exit people. Promotions are rarely predictable. And when two businesses interact, one is always the alpha. Vendors who provide services to large companies are always on the lowest rungs of the […]
The historic victory by union organizers in New York against Amazon brought two things to mind. First, you can pretty much convince anyone to vote for anything if you offer them free weed. Second, the move to unionize workers at an Amazon warehouse may actually accelerate the trend toward warehouse automation. Think about it: Robots […]
History is full of great rivalries. Coke versus Pepsi. Star Trek versus Star Wars. Ali versus Frazier. Good versus Evil. The list goes on. One of the epic battles of our lifetime is Walmart (WMT) versus Amazon (AMZN). The two retail behemoths have been on a collision course for years, as they increasingly compete on […]
After Edward Snowden leaked that the National Security Agency (NSA) used backdoor channels to gain access to smartphones, webcams, and traffic cameras, people have become paranoid that the government is watching through our devices. The rise of sticky notes and cover slides attached to webcams is a testament to that fact. (Never mind the hackers […]
Every time your items are rung up at the grocery store, a technology is used that was first patented 48 years ago. Several decades after the first barcode patent was issued, it began its use in stores and hasn’t evolved much since. Your bog-standard one-dimensional barcode (1D barcode) consists of vertical lines that contain 20-25 […]
For the last few years, we’ve been hearing about the retail apocalypse, though we would characterize it more as a retail extinction event. The difference being that until a couple of months ago, the demise of many brick-and-mortar businesses was a long, drawn-out affair. No more. COVID-19 has caused a true retail apocalypse – goodbye, […]
One of the most famous bonehead quotes from a chief executive who brushed off technological disruption came from Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes in 2008. He said, “Neither Redbox nor Netflix are even on the radar screen in terms of competition.” Two years later, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy and Keyes got a job stocking DVDs in […]