Contrary

The world is losing about half a percent of arable land per year. If nothing changes, lower crop yields and crop failures may become increasingly common. As one climate investor put it, agriculture will be infeasible in 80 years because of a lack of good soil. Today's Foundations & Frontiers essay evaluates the causes of soil erosion and what's to be done about it.

Wind energy today supplies over 2,000 TWh of electricity, accounting for 7.8% of global energy production. However, wind power continues posing challenges to grid operators as the share of electricity generated by the intermittent resource grows. Wind power has traditionally been a boom-and-bust business — booming in times when energy prices soar, and going bust they fall. As alternatives like solar experience plummeting production costs, it’s an open question as to what its role will be in the global production of energy over the long term. Today's Foundation & Frontiers essay examines the role wind energy may play in the energy mix of the future.

In our latest deep dive, we dig into the story of the company that may be coming for Nvidia's crown. Here's the story of Cerebras Systems's attempt to enable bigger and better AI... This 12K+ word profile of Cerebras unpacks some key characteristics of the company's attempt to build hardware in an AI-centric way: 🧠 Cerebras' AI chips are 56x larger in size & contain 50x more transistors than an Nvidia GPU. 🕔 Cerebras' systems can train a Llama2-70B model from scratch in < 1 day. 🖥️ A Cerebras cluster of 48 CS-3s exceeds the performance of the U.S. Frontier (the world's fastest supercomputer). ⚡ Cerebras' inference is the fastest in the industry, running Llama3.1 8B at 1,800+ tokens! Across 800+ references and 40+ hours of research, Maxx Yung dives into the bull and bear case of Cerebras' business as they tackle the semiconductor space with AI at the core. https://lnkd.in/d_A597Ub

After 41 hours of researching & writing my 1st memo for Contrary Research on Cerebras Systems, it is now officially published! At 12,000+ words with 800+ reference links, it is the most detailed memo EVER published by Contrary 🤯 As a semiconductor researcher, I chose to write about Cerebras – an AI chip company that's gunning for NVIDIA. Here's some INSANE feats accomplished by Cerebras that blew my mind: 🧠 Cerebras' AI chips are 56x larger in size & contain 50x more transistors than an Nvidia GPU. 🕔 Cerebras' systems can train a Llama2-70B model from scratch in < 1 day. 🖥️ A Cerebras cluster of 48 CS-3s exceeds the performance of the U.S. Frontier (the world's fastest supercomputer). ⚡ Cerebras' inference is the fastest in the industry, running Llama3.1 8B at 1,800+ tokens/s! If that sounds insane, here's the full memo that dives into the narrative around Andrew Feldman and his company: https://lnkd.in/e5QRH6hs Thanks to the Contrary Research team (especially Sachin Maini and Kyle Harrison) for giving me this incredible opportunity to write and publish this memo and to Patrick Hulce for helping me understand ML better as a non-ML scrub. #MachineLearning #AI #Supercomputing

For decades, while some researchers have been working on making circuits smaller and more efficient, others have concentrated on building the fastest and biggest computers physically possible. The bigger the computer is, the more complicated the codes it can break, and the bigger the problems it can solve. Today, everything from performing nuclear test simulations to brute force code breaking requires the use of a supercomputer.

We’re thrilled to be hosting our first NYC Tech Talk of the year featuring eng leads and founders from Ramp, Warp, Railway, & Moment. An evening built by engineers for engineers — each company will live demo their latest product innovations for leading builders in NYC. Register for the chance to join: https://lu.ma/NYCTechTalk

Contrary is the best place to build your career in tech. Join our info session tonight: https://lnkd.in/geB8Awxm

Contrary Venture Partner applications are now open! If you're a builder on campus, interested in investing in exceptional startups, and want to be part of one of the most selective communities in tech, apply now. Contrary invests up to $5M and works directly alongside exceptional founders to build enduring companies, from seed to scale. With this approach, we’ve been fortunate to back iconic companies like Ramp, Anduril, Zepto, Hallow, Memora Health, and many others. Our Venture Partners are great builders and future founders who become the go-to resource for others on campus. As a VP, you’ll learn first-hand what it takes to build and invest in exceptional companies, from taking part in investment decisions to sitting in on fireside chats with seasoned founders and investors. Best of all, you’ll be joining and learning from the best community in tech. Most VPs go on to become venture-backed founders, early engineers/operators, or investors, and enjoy the support of Contrary’s network for life. Read more and apply here by Sept 15th: https://lnkd.in/g7stbKuf If you're looking for more information or want an opportunity to ask questions, we're hosting our National Info Session on the evening of Tuesday, September 3rd. See you there! RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/geB8Awxm

Critical minerals are to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th: a key resource that will become an increasing economic and geopolitical priority.

Contrary Research's deep dive on Hadrian, including an interview with CEO Chris Power, is now live. Links to the full interview and research memo are in the comments below.