Thoughts about the markets, automated trading algorithms, artificial intelligence, and lots of other stuff

  • The End of Sora and the Future of OpenAI

    This week, OpenAI announced it would be shutting down Sora, its popular AI video app. This is not just about killing a video toy; it signals a strategic pivot at OpenAI.

    You probably weren’t Sora’s target user, but watching this montage of its top clips is a great way to see how far this impressive tech has come.

    Top Sora Clips Video via YouTube.

    It’s both fun and scary to think about how fast technologies like this have evolved … and what they will make possible.

    It’s easy to think Sora’s shutdown isn’t a big deal … but it’s a signal of OpenAI’s new playbook on infrastructure, partnerships, and profit.

    And with that new playbook, OpenAI announced several other important changes this week. Here are a few of the highlights.

    The End of Their Disney Partnership

    Shutting down Sora also forced the termination of a major $1 billion investment deal between OpenAI and Disney, as well as licensing agreements that allowed the use of Disney-owned characters in AI-generated video content.

    It’s a reminder that when OpenAI prunes products like Sora, it’s also pruning capital-intensive bets and risky content partnerships.

    Pushing Pause on “Adult Mode”

    Last October, Sam Altman announced plans for an erotica mode. However, the tension between boldness and caution shows up in the gap between OpenAI’s ‘not the morality police’ rhetoric and its quiet slowdown on controversial features.

    The Financial Times later reported that the pause is “indefinite,” with Cristina Criddle citing “sexual datasets and eliminating illegal content” as challenges for OpenAI. This reflects the growing regulatory and reputational risk around generative sexual content.

    ChatGPT Just Got More Reliable

    OpenAI updated ChatGPT with a 33% reduction in factual errors, plus a significantly expanded memory for longer conversations.

    Changes like these hint at where OpenAI wants to focus: scalable, everyday systems that drive recurring revenue.

    And it doesn’t stop there …

    The Great DRAM Over-Buy

    Originally, it was reported that OpenAI had secured forward commitments for up to 40% of the world’s DRAM supply. This was to help their future data center growth as AI demand increases.

    In plain English, DRAM is the short-term memory that lets these models think; if you want bigger, smarter models, you need a lot of it.

    As these announcements roll in, many are also scrutinizing how much RAM OpenAI locked up in advance.

    With this, I think the memory bull run (which began over 2 years ago) is coming to an end. Many of the large AI labs have secured more DRAM via forward contracts than what they will realistically need. This has created the sense of an artificial shortage supported by essentially FOMO on DRAM supply. Like in previous cycles, this will unwind.
    – Seeking Alpha

    With Google’s new TurboQuant AI compression algorithm, and OpenAI switching focus, many see the drop in RAM prices as more than a blip — potentially a real change in the cycle.

    Where OpenAI Goes Next …

    From Owning to Orchestrating Infrastructure

    After initially pursuing massive, vertically integrated infrastructure through its multi-hundred-billion-dollar Stargate initiative, OpenAI has begun shifting toward a more flexible, capital-efficient model.

    If labs over-bought memory during the AI gold rush, then shifting from owning massive data centers to orchestrating capacity from partners starts to look less like backtracking and more like smart risk management.

    Instead of owning and operating the bulk of its global compute footprint, OpenAI is increasingly leaning on partnerships and leased capacity from cloud providers. Internally, this has been reflected in a restructuring that separates infrastructure design, partner management, and operations — signaling a shift from a “build everything” strategy to a “coordinate and optimize” approach (e.g., using multiple cloud providers, negotiating for power in different regions, etc.).

    At the same time, the company is clearly narrowing its product focus.

    Video apps like Sora are entertaining for users, but they’re also brutally compute-intensive for the providers. As you look at Anthropic’s revenue and those of other competitors, it’s clear that chat, code, and enterprise use are where the immediate growth and low-hanging fruit lie.

    How This Fits the Longer-Term Plan

    AI has already consumed massive funding to get here — and it will require even more to reach the next plateau.

    Rather than a retreat, this shift aligns with a longer-term strategy: preserving capital, accelerating deployment, and keeping options open in a rapidly evolving compute landscape. Leveraging partners allows OpenAI to scale faster while avoiding bottlenecks tied to financing, power availability, and hardware cycles.

    In that context, “Stargate” appears to be evolving—from a fixed set of owned assets into a broader, more modular strategy for bringing compute online wherever it is most efficient.

    The end goal hasn’t changed: securing enough compute to train and deploy increasingly powerful AI systems. What has changed is the path — shifting from infrastructure ownership to infrastructure orchestration, and from experimental breadth to commercial depth.

    This aligns with their move from non-profit to IPO. They’re clearly focused on profitability in the near term, not just the long term.

    But these shifts could also signal changes that open opportunities for more players to enter the space and carve out their little slice of the digital landscape.

    I’ll continue to watch how OpenAI manages the delicate balance between rapid innovation, financial pressures, and the broader public good. The story is still unfolding, and what happens next will shape the technological future we all live in.

    How It Shows Up in Everyday Use

    All of this might sound abstract, but you can feel these shifts in everyday usage too. If you’re curious, I use a paid version of ChatGPT throughout the day. I’ve gotten used to it; I understand when to listen and when to ignore it. With that said, I’ve also been happy to pay for Perplexity (but I use it in much more limited circumstances). It gives me access to different models, and I feel like it’s been a good value. However, today I finally decided to pay for Anthropic as well because the quality of the responses I’ve been getting has led me to change my usage behavior.

    Interestingly, if I ask different models a question and then show their answers to ChatGPT, ChatGPT often favors Claude’s responses as well.

    I know all of that is subject to change, and tools are leapfrogging one another with increasing frequency. With that said, I thought it was worth sharing.

    Let me know which tools you use and rely on most.

    Onwards!

  • A Look at Global Happiness Levels in 2026 (and Over the Past 10 Years)

    Are you Happy?

    Asking whether someone is happy seems like a simple question. But what does the question really ask, and what does ‘happy’ really mean?

    Once you define happiness (for you), how, when, and for how long do you measure it?

    These are some reasons why measuring happiness is harder and more complex than it might seem at first glance.

    What Does Happiness Really Measure?

    At its core, happiness means experiencing more positive emotions than negative ones. With a bit of reflection, you see that happiness is reinforced by comfort, freedom, financial security, and other things people aspire to. 

    Regardless of how hard it is to describe (let alone quantify) … humans strive for happiness.

    Likewise, it is hard to imagine a well-balanced and objective “Happiness Report” because much of the data needed to compile it is subjective and relies on self-reporting. 

    Nonetheless, the World Happiness Report takes an annual look at quantifiable factors (such as health, wealth, GDP, and life expectancy) and more intangible factors (such as social support, generosity, emotions, and perceptions of local government and businesses). Below is an infographic highlighting the World Happiness Report data for 2026.

    World Happiness Report via visualcapitalist

    Despite the news, global happiness hasn’t collapsed – but it has become more uneven.

    Click here to see a dashboard with the raw worldwide data.

    In 2022, when I shared this, we were seeing the immediate ramifications of COVID-19 on happiness levels. There was a significant increase in negative emotions reported – specifically, worry and sadness. And yet, happiness scores are relatively resilient and stable, and humanity persevered in the face of economic insecurity, anxiety, and more.

    In the 2025 report, one of the key focuses was the increase in pessimism about others’ benevolence. There seems to be a rise in distrust that doesn’t match the actual statistics on acts of goodwill. For example, when researchers dropped wallets on the street, the proportion of wallets returned was far higher than people expected. 

    Unfortunately, our well-being depends on both our perception of others’ benevolence and their actual benevolence. 

    The World’s Happiest Countries in 2026

    Before we dive into the global trends, a surface-level view shows that Nordic nations (e.g., Finland and Denmark) boast the happiest people. Unfortunately, those represent a small fraction of the world’s population.

    All of the top 10 nations have populations under 20 million. Interestingly, Mexico is a significant outlier, ranking #12 with a population of 131.9 million.

    And despite what you may think, the US is also among the few large nations in the top 50.

    Building a Case Against Social Media Usage

    Diving deeper into the results, young people are significantly less happy than they were 15 years ago. You might assume war, economic anxiety, politics, or family structure are to blame — but much of the decline appears tied to social media use. While that may seem like a safe scapegoat or a simple hypothesis, the research supports it. While no single factor explains everything, the researchers estimate that always-available social media is a statistically significant contributor to rising mental illness among adolescents in Western nations.

    Diving in a little deeper, the PISA study of 15-year-olds in 47 countries shows that those who use social media for over seven hours a day have much lower well-being than those who use it for less than one hour. In a sample of US college students, the majority wish that social media platforms did not exist.

    These numbers are significantly worse in Western countries than in Eastern and African countries.

    Based on their research, the Report argues that the rapid adoption of “always-available social media” by adolescents in the early 2010s is a statistically significant contributor to the population-level increases in mental illness in Western nations.

    Social media is so toxic that it’s affecting the population at large … not just the most at-risk.

    So, Why Do People Use It?

    Many empirical studies cast doubt on whether social media makes people happy, affecting how we value, choose, and consider well-being. The main takeaway is that many individuals use social media mainly because others do. They don’t want to be left out. If social media use were decreased or eliminated, many people would benefit, and they are aware of this.

    Last year, we talked about the importance of trust and social connections for well-being, but also how social media had created a very low-trust society, as evidenced by the political silos and online vitriol. Unsurprisingly, the estimated relationship between internet use and well-being differs significantly across generations, genders, and regions. It is highly negative for Gen Z, moderately negative for Millennials, near zero for Gen X, and slightly positive for Baby Boomers.

    Older adults enjoy the benefits of stable trust, growing attachment, enhanced safety, and moderate digital engagement. In contrast, younger adults often experience a decline in these foundations within highly saturated digital environments.

    Clearly, social media isn’t creating the healthy connections our younger generations need. Meanwhile, generations that grew up with less digital-centric relationships seem to be handling the changes more robustly.

    Longer-term Trends

    World Happiness Report via Visual Capitalist

    Over the last decade, the top of the world’s happiest countries list has remained remarkably consistent.

    So have global happiness levels as a whole. The relative balance demonstrated in the face of such adversity may point towards the existence of a hedonic treadmill – or a set-point of happiness.

    Large countries, like India, often bring down the averages, but even that has remained relatively consistent.

    Despite that, the distribution of happiness has changed significantly. While life satisfaction is stable, how people feel day to day has shifted downward. Stress, worry, and sadness have increased globally, and younger generations are impacted to a larger degree.

    Takeaways

    Happiness hasn’t collapsed globally—but it’s become more uneven and, in some ways, more fragile.

    In the US and a few other regions, the decline in happiness and social trust points to the rise in political polarisation and distrust of “the system”. As life satisfaction declines, anti-system votes rise.

    Worsening the situation is our growing dependence on social media instead of face-to-face relationships. Although most people realize it’s harmful and don’t want to use it, many can’t imagine missing out. As a result, they spend time and energy passively consuming content instead of being active in their own lives.

    As AI‑generated content and AI chatbot partners become more common, it will be interesting to see how they reshape this data.

    Regardless, humanity has always proved resilient and enduring. Regardless of the circumstances, people can focus on what they choose, define what it means to them, and act accordingly.

    Remember, throughout history, things have gotten better. There are dips here and there, but like the S&P 500 … we rally eventually.

    The data show that happiness is surprisingly resilient but not guaranteed.

    Younger generations are paying the price for a world built around screens, feeds, and algorithms — but they also have the most to gain from changing course.

    We may not control global trends, but we do control how we spend our attention, who we spend time with, and what we build together. Those choices compound, just like returns in the S&P 500. Over time, they can move both our personal and collective happiness charts in the right direction.

    Onwards!

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 29, 2026

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  • How Busted Is Your March Madness Bracket?

    March Madness is in full swing, and for a few weeks, it will dominate the sports world.

    Unsurprisingly, almost no one has a perfect bracket anymore.

    As I write the first draft of this on Saturday night, reports indicate that only 26 perfect brackets remain. How does that happen so fast? The NCAA Tournament reminds odds makers to expect the unexpected. For example, top-seed Duke almost lost to bottom-seeded Siena to open March Madness. Meanwhile, High Point beat Wisconsin and Nebraska made a miracle happen, breaking their 0-8 March Madness streak. Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

    Before 24/7 sports channels and social media, people watched the weekly show “The Wide World of Sports.” Its opening theme promised “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat!” and “The human drama of athletic competition.” That defines March Madness. So do the confounding variables, like health (mind, body, and spirit), matchup, coaching, officiating, and luck.

    The Odds Are Stacked Against You

    The holy grail is mighty elusive in March Madness (as in most things). For example, the odds of getting the perfect bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (that is 1 in 9.223 quintillion if that was too many zeros to count). If you want better odds, then you can have a 1 in 2.4 trillion chance based on a Duke Mathematician’s formula that takes into account ranks. It’s easier to win back-to-back lotteries than to pick a perfect bracket.

    Even knowing the odds, I bet you felt pretty good when you filled out your bracket.

    via Duke University

    Here are some more crazy March Madness Stats: 

    Feeding the Madness

    “Not only is there more to life than basketball, there’s a lot more to basketball than basketball.” – Phil Jackson

    In 2017, I highlighted three people who were (semi) successful at predicting March Madness: a 13-year-old who used a mix of guesswork and preferences, a 47-year-old English woman who used algorithms and data science (despite not knowing the game), and a 70-year-old bookie who had his finger on the pulse of the betting world. None of them had the same success even a year later.

    Finding an edge is hard – Maintaining an edge is even harder.

    Human nature tempts us to overweight recent performance, fall in love with narratives, and underestimate how little of the future we can actually see.

    That’s not to say there aren’t edges to be found. 

    Bracket-choosing mimics the way investors pick trades or allocate assets. Some people use gut feelings, some base their decisions on current and historical performance, and some use predictive models. You’ve got different inputs, weights, and miscellaneous factors influencing your decision. That makes you feel powerful. But knowing the history, their ranks, etc., can help make an educated guess, and they can also lead you astray. 

    The allure of March Madness is the same as the allure of gambling or trading. As sports fans, it’s easy to believe we know something the casual observer doesn’t. We want the bragging rights for the sleeper pick that goes deeper than expected, our alma mater’s unlikely run, and the big upset we called before anyone else. 

    You’d think an NCAA analyst might have a better shot at a perfect bracket than your grandma or musical-loving co-worker.

    In reality, several of the highest-ranked brackets every year are guesses. 

    The commonality in all decisions is that we are biased. Bias is inherent to the process because there isn’t a clear-cut answer. We don’t know who will win or what makes a perfect prediction. 

    Think about it from a market efficiency standpoint. People make decisions based on many factors — sometimes irrational ones — which can create inefficiencies and complexities. It can be hard to find those inefficiencies and capitalize on them, but they’re there to be found. 

    In trading, AI and advanced math help remove biases and identify inefficiencies humans miss.

    Can Machine Learning Help?

    “The greater the uncertainty, the bigger the gap between what you can measure and what matters, the more you should watch out for overfitting – that is, the more you should prefer simplicity” – Tom Griffiths

    The data is there. Over 100,000 NCAA regular-season games were played over the last 25+ years, and we generally have plenty of statistics about the teams for each season. There are plenty of questions to be asked about that data that may add an extra edge. 

    In markets, that’s the backtest that looks perfect on paper and fails in live trading; in March Madness, it’s the model that nails last year’s pattern and misses this year’s upset.

    That said, people have tried before with mediocre success. It’s hard to overcome the intangibles of sports — hustle, the crowd, momentum — and it’s hard to overcome the odds of 1 in 9.2 quintillion. 

    Two lessons can be learned from this:

    1. People aren’t as good at prediction as they predict they are.
    2. Machine Learning isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to all your problems.

    That matters if you’re picking brackets, trading portfolios, or making strategic business bets.

    Something to think about.

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 22, 2026

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  • What Are The Hardest Colleges to Get Into in 2026?

    While Duke continues to give me heart attacks during March Madness, I take solace in the fact that it’s still a fantastic school (and one of the hardest to get into)…

    Here is a list of the schools with the lowest acceptance rates. While Ivy League schools and top-tier technological institutions dominate the list, several names surprised me.

    Infographic of the most selective U.S. colleges
    via visualcapitalist

    Caltech leads with a 3% admit rate, while several top universities — including Harvard, Stanford, and Yale—accept about 4% of applicants. Duke is just a bit more welcoming, with a 6% acceptance rate.

    Caltech’s extreme selectivity, with an acceptance rate of only 3%, is partly due to its structural limitations. The university admits about 1,000 undergraduates, significantly fewer than many top-tier institutions. This limited capacity, along with its renowned status in STEM disciplines, naturally results in a low acceptance rate.

    When a small institution receives thousands of top-tier applications, admissions become extraordinarily competitive.

    Popularity breeds exclusivity. For many schools on the list, lower admission rates result from maintaining a relatively stable incoming class size, despite an increasing number of applications.

    How AI Changes Who Gets In

    In addition, I’m curious about how AI has affected these numbers and the composition of matriculating classes. For students, AI has certainly made it easier to apply to more schools and write different essays. For schools, imagine how much harder it is to discern what’s real versus what only seems real. Now imagine how they will use AI and automation to screen applications and to monitor and engage with applicants throughout the process. The net result is that the quality and composition of incoming classes are destined to change as both students and schools evolve. And this is a microcosm of what’s happening in the job market today as well. The same tools that help students game essays are already reshaping résumés and candidate screening … but that’s a topic for a different time.

    While there’s no reason to be proud of low admission rates (or to question whether your alma mater would still let you in), the schools can be proud of the quality of the education they provide and of how many students want to attend … but can any of the schools on that list be as proud of their basketball team as Duke?

  • Energym: AI Satire or Eventual Reality?

    A few weeks ago, I shared an AI music video. It seemed noteworthy at the time because even though the music and video were AI-generated, the result felt surprisingly human.

    Here’s a question for you …

    Once AI can convincingly create art, what meaningful work is left uniquely for humans?

    That’s the central tension in this mockumentary-style ad for Energym. Click below to watch. It was clever … and mildly unsettling in its plausibility.

    The Energym parody imagines a 2036 where humans have lost their sense of purpose. So what do they do? Exercise so hard that they generate the energy needed for the very AI that took their jobs. The video features cameos from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman (well, at least their 10-years-older personages).

    Energym is funny because it’s not as far from reality as we’d like — and it quietly says something important about our evolving relationship with AI.

    Ironically, there is a real Energym exercise bike designed for fitness and energy production (though I assume it’s unrelated). When a parody and a product look this similar … it’s hard to tell whether it’s a cautionary tale or a potential roadmap.

    Good humor is often rooted in truth. Perhaps healthy dystopian fears are, too.

    When Satire Starts To Feel Real

    Obviously, satire is tongue-in-cheek and often exaggerates real fears. Expect to see more content poking fun at our growing dependence on artificial intelligence.

    The Energym video was produced by Hans Buyse and Jan De Loore. De Loore, who authored the script, edited, and produced the video, is also a cofounder of Kitchhock, a solo AI creative studio based in Belgium. De Loore also applies his creative expertise and the latest generative video AI technology to produce real advertisements for Belgian companies through his AI video studio, AiCandy.

    AI as an Amplifier, Not a Replacement

    To me, this video shows where AI truly excels: helping you bring new, unusual ideas to life that would have been hard or expensive to produce before.

    I’ve seen an explosion of creative work built with new AI tools, and for the most part, that’s great. The danger is letting them automate away your own creativity and critical thinking instead of amplifying them.

    If you do decide to let it replace you, at least you might get ripped in the process.

    Onwards.

  • Feast on This: A Look at the Big Mac Index

    We Crave Simple Signals

    With bombs dropping and policies whipsawing, it’s tempting to look for shortcuts.

    The complexity and noise of markets is overwhelming. As a result, human nature seeks simple signals that promise clarity.

    This is often an example of getting what you asked for, but not what you wanted.

    In the past, I’ve shared my thoughts on various market “indicators” that are silly or just don’t make sense — like the Super Bowl Indicator. They remind us how much we crave order and look for patterns that make markets feel more predictable — even when they aren’t. 

    Wall Street is inundated with theories that attempt to predict the stock market and the economy. Unfortunately, even the good ones are dangerous if you over-trust or over-use them.

    With that said, more people than you would hope (or guess) invest based on gut instinct, superstition, or even prayer.

    While hope and prayer are good things … they aren’t good trading strategies.

    What The Big Mac Index Really Measures

    Today, I want to look at an out-there indicator that is actually useful, from an economics standpoint.

    Remember, however, that the market ≠ the economy. So, while I do think it is useful, I don’t believe it should influence your trading decisions. 

    The Economist’s Big Mac Index seeks to make exchange-rate theory more digestible. They claim it is arguably the world’s most accurate financial indicator – based on a fast-food item.

    The Big Mac Index turns burger prices into a simple lens on currency valuation and purchasing-power parity (PPP). In simple terms, PPP says a dollar should buy you roughly the same goods and services everywhere (once you account for exchange rates). Supposedly, then, the price difference between Big Macs, adjusted for exchange rates, indicates whether a currency is over- or undervalued. 

    What the Charts Reveal

    Here’s a chart of Big Mac prices over the past 25 years by country, which highlights how far currencies can drift from ‘fair value’.

    Chart: Big Mac prices by country, 2000–2025
    via voronoi

    This chart shows just how far — and how long — currencies can drift from ‘fair value’.

    According to the Big Mac Index, the most overvalued major currency remains the Swiss franc. A Big Mac in Switzerland costs about $7.99, compared with about $5.79 in the United States. This implies a PPP exchange rate of roughly 1.19 francs per dollar, while the actual exchange rate is closer to 0.93 francs per dollar, suggesting the Swiss franc is about 38% overvalued relative to the dollar. Other starkly overvalued countries on this measure include Norway and Argentina.

    Big Mac Index by Country 2026
    via worldpopulationreview

    For contrast, several currencies remain sharply undervalued, based on this measure. In countries like India, Indonesia, and Japan, Big Mac prices imply currencies are 40–60% undervalued relative to purchasing power parity.

    Some Things Big Macs Can’t Tell You

    One of the main limitations of the index is that the price of a Big Mac reflects non-tradable elements, such as rent and labor, which vary widely across countries and can distort the index’s accuracy. This means that the index is most useful when comparing countries that are at roughly the same stage of development and have similar economic structures and cost of living. So while the index offers useful insight into exchange rates and currency values, it’s only a rough guide — especially when comparing very different economies.

    Another limitation of the index is that it does not consider factors such as taxes, trade barriers, and transportation costs, which can also affect the relative value of currencies. These factors can be especially important in countries highly dependent on imports or exports. They can lead to significant disparities in currency values that are not reflected in the Big Mac Index.

    How Investors Should Use It

    Despite its flaws, the Big Mac Index still sheds useful light on global economic trends and currency values. By using the index alongside other economic indicators and data sources, investors and economists can gain a more comprehensive understanding of the forces shaping the global economy and make more informed decisions about how to allocate capital.

    Use it to understand which currencies look stretched – not to time trades. There are clearly more forces at work if a currency can look over- or undervalued for years without obvious consequences. Remember that political risk, capital flows, and policy can outweigh PPP for years.

    It’s not meant to be precise, but it serves as a global yardstick because Big Macs are available everywhere and, for the most part, are made the same way. 

    You can read more about the Big Mac index here or read the methodology behind the index here.

    Pair fun indicators with hard data and robust systems. As traders, we pay attention to these distortions, but we don’t bet on them directly. Instead, we build systems that adapt as reality changes — no burger‑based strategies required.

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 15th, 2026

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  • Visualizing Humanity’s Future in Space Exploration

    While space and space travel aren’t our usual topics of conversation, they do come up frequently.

    When you think about the future of technology, it‘s not just AI, automation, and Ozempic. Two emerging frontiers we don’t talk about enough are healthcare (longevity, regenerative medicine, and other breakthroughs) — and, you guessed it, Space.

    Space Still Feels Like the Final Frontier

    Growing up in the 60s and 70s, Space was a bastion of technological advancement, and it captured the collective minds of America and the World.

    I still remember watching the lunar landing and thinking how cool it was (and it still is)! And as a strange coincidence, over the past week, I’ve had three separate people comment that it was staged and fake (but that’s a totally different story, and I’m not going to write about it).

    Then, for decades, space exploration faded into the background. The zeitgeist moved on. It wasn’t until Elon Musk and SpaceX brought it back into the limelight with grandiose claims that we started to see meaningful momentum.

    Don’t get me wrong, the wheels were still turning behind the scenes, but it’s amazing what focused attention can do for an industry.

    We’ve evolved from government showpieces to a commercial ecosystem

    Humanity’s Future in Space

    I love spaceflight for many of the same reasons I love AI. 

    It’s a global initiative heralding innovation and improvements that promise to transform the world (or worlds). It is a catalyst for many exponential technologies. And in many respects, it is the path to our inevitable future.

    Many astronauts, even from the Apollo era, talk about the incredible feeling they experience after a few days in Space. As they look at Earth from above, they lose their sense of borders and nationality. They call it the “Overview Effect”. The Saudi astronaut Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, who flew on the Space Shuttle in 1985, commented on this, saying, “The first day or so, we all pointed to our countries. On the third or fourth day, we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.”

    On some level, space changes how we see borders, conflict, and collaboration.

    The infographic below comes from the Global 50 Future Opportunities Report from the Dubai Future Foundation. It introduces the breadth of programs and capabilities enabling humanity’s expansion into Space.

    An infographic highlighting space programs, space stations, and the future of space travel

    via visualcapitalist

    While only three countries currently have the capabilities of independent human spaceflight (China, Russia, and the United States), eight countries now have interplanetary probe capabilities.

    Today, commercial firms conduct about 70% of all spacecraft launches, and launch costs are 40 times lower than in the 1980s.

    What Comes Next?

    As the ISS nears retirement, the future is far more commercial, with several private stations planned for launch from America, such as Axiom Station and Haven-1.

    What excites me most now are the innovations enabling the next wave of exploration — and it’s not just cheaper space travel.

    • Space Flex – biohacking at the next level offers personalized supplements to prevent bone and muscle loss, supporting longer space missions and eventually planetary settlement.
    • Breakthrough Energy Sources and Storage – Breakthroughs in areas like cold fusion, energy storage, and dark energy are vital to powering advanced spacecraft and sustaining long-term settlements.
    • Network of Networks – advanced AI, automation, and communication networks will reduce disruptions and enable intelligent transitions between satellite and cellular networks. This is important for resilient connectivity in autonomous systems and disaster response.

    For investors and innovators, Space is less about rockets and more about a platform for new industries: in‑orbit manufacturing, earth observation data, resilient communications, and even biomedical breakthroughs unlocked by microgravity.

    When you zoom out, the “space age” is really an extension of the digital and AI revolutions into a new domain — one that will reshape risk, opportunity, and how we think about growth timelines.

    The Power of the Space Race

    For the first time, it feels like we are not just visiting Space; we are building there.

    Stations, networks, and new technologies are laying the groundwork for a permanent presence beyond Earth.

    Humans are wired to think linearly and locally, but I am grateful that some people see farther. While the universe is vast beyond comprehension, so is human curiosity. And as technology grows, so does our reach … and the questions we can afford to ask.

    Every new step outward expands what we believe is possible.

    We are only beginning to build the infrastructure of the space age, and the most exciting chapters are still ahead.

    In an era of intense global political strife, it gives me hope to see an initiative that links and aligns so many powerful minds.

    Onwards!