Silicon

Within Meta there is a race to see which employee consumes the most AI tokens. It’s the ‘Tokenmaxxing’ of Silicon Valley

by

There is a battle within Meta: see who spends the most AI tokens. This is the basic unit that AI uses to understand the language with which we order actions. It is like the “bridge” between our words and the numbers that the machine can process and, therefore, when ChatGPT either Google They present a model, they brag about the millions of tokens they can process. But tokens are also becoming a ‘spending’ unit in AI companies. Silicon Valleyso much so that they may be generating a toxic work culture. And Meta is an example of a company where employees compete to see how many tokens they can consume to become a Token Legend. Tokenmaxxing. It is not the first time that we talked about this. A few days ago, Jensen Huang -CEO of NVIDIA and one of the main instigators of this phenomenon- commented that he would be worried if an engineer who earns $500,000 did not spend at least $250,000 a year on tokens. Because tokens cost money and NVIDIA is already considering offering tokens as part of the signing bonuses for its artificial intelligence engineers. Goals. As it could not be otherwise, Meta does not want to miss this party. The company, which changed its name when the metaverse was going to be the big thing and, after the swerveis defined as a “native AI company”, is one of those that promotes its artificial intelligence engineers to keep a count of the tokens spent during their day. There is no official data, but there are reports revealed to media such as Business Insider and The Information which point out that some of these teams have very specific objectives related to the use of tokens. For example, the company expects 65% of its engineers to write more than 75% of code using AI tools by the middle of this year. The Scalable Machine Learning division has another objective, and so on in each of the code-related departments within Meta. Legend Token. In The Information, they directly point out that there is an internal classification table created by the employees themselves to gamify the work. It shows the 250 most intensive AI users in their tasks with an easy premise: the more tokens you spend, the more you climb in the ranking. The winner of this particular competition takes the title of ‘Token Legend’, or ‘Legend of Tokens’. It is turning an expectation into a kind of internal sport. The first paragraph of this article converted to tokens crazy spending. If we put the first paragraph of 542 words in the tool ‘tokenizer‘ from OpenAI, we see that that simple phrase has already consumed 121 tokens. Well: according to The Information, in the last 30 days the total token panel usage of that internal table was more than 60 billion (of ours) tokens And even if they want to dress it for sports and competition, it is still obligatory. In late 2025, Meta launched the ‘Level Up’ program where employees who complete the most tasks using AI earn badges. And more important than this: it made the use of AI a central criterion in its employee performance evaluations. This, obviously, sets salary and promotion objectives. Doubts. But of course, beyond paying to work, there are other underlying issues. One of the criticisms of this tokenmaxxing system is that AI companies like Meta or NVIDIA encourage spending more on tokens because, in this way, their own employees become consumers of the product they are creating. An easy example that software engineering analyst Gergely Orosz exposed which is as if Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said that if one of his employees who earns $500,000 a year did not spend $50,000 on purchases in the App Store, he would be worried. Orosz continuous stating that productivity should not be measured in tokens spent, but in the results obtained. Industry issue. In any case, Meta and NVIDIA are not the only ones that measure their employees by their consumption of AI at work. It is something that is soaking in other AI majors, turning the tokens into an extra work benefit incorporated into the engineers’ remuneration wheel along with the base salary, performance bonuses and shares. HE esteem that an OpenAI engineer can process 210 billion tokens in a week and there are Claude Code engineers who accumulate more than $150,000 in tokens in one month. Basically it is merging part of your salary into the company that pays you. And… have they said anything from Meta? Yes, it’s not about volume, but about quality, pointing that performance rewards are based on the impact of the work and not the raw use of AI. Image | ‘Wolf of Wall Street’, Meta Logo. Edited In Xataka | Google Earth shows the world. The Spanish Xoople wants AI to understand it

Everyone in Silicon Valley has sided with the Trump administration. Everyone except Google DeepMind’s chief scientist

by

The big technology companies have changed their political color and the leaders who once boasted diversity and inclusiontoday they position themselves alongside Trump and they even have dinner with him. In Silicon Valley, almost no one talks about politics, much less to criticize the president, no one except one man. Jeff Dean. He is the chief scientist of Google DeepMind and one of the few voices in Silicon Valley that has a critical stance towards the Trump government and most importantly: he says it in public. As they say in the Wall Street JournalDean often shares messages critical of the current administration in your X accountwhere he has almost 430,000 followers, and has strongly condemned acts like the murder of Alex Pretti at the hands of ICe agents in the Minnesota protests. Support Anthropic. Jeff Dean was one of 30 Google and OpenAI employees who signed the letter of support towards Anthropicafter it sued the Pentagon for declaring them “a risk to national security”. The judge who agreed with Anthropic and blocked the decisioncited this letter of support as part of the context of the case. Other companies like Microsoft They also took a stand in favor of Anthropic, but they did so through a spokesperson. The rarity. Positions like that of Jeff Dean, who openly criticizes the government and also does so in a personal capacity, would not have stood out a few years ago. In 2018 technology companies turned to the #MeToo movement and also supported the mobilizations of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. This happened during Trump’s first term, but during his second, figures like Jeff Dean have become a rarity in Silicon Valley. The second mandate. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Tim Cook… the support of the technological leaders was noted from the investiture ceremony itself, which was not only attended but They donated a million dollars each and, as a reward, saved billions in taxes. Companies began to take measures immediately, such as remove from Meta’s anti-fake-news system either dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion departments. The delicate line. That Donald Trump is a fairly volatile leader is nothing new. Making him angry is as easy as contradicting him and his reaction can be excessive, And if not, tell Anthropic. In this sense, the fear of the possible consequences of a disagreement plays a role in this submission, because let us not forget that the government is the one who dictates export-import regulations and can make their business much easier. In the end, what is happening in Silicon Valley It is not so different from the situation in China that is so criticized from the American side. In Xataka | The war between Anthropic and the Pentagon points to something terrifying: a new “Oppenheimer Moment” Image | Wikipedia

China makes them almost as efficient as silicon ones

by

For years, polymer solar cells (popularly known as organic or “plastic” plates) have promised a real revolution in the renewable energy sector. Being light, flexible and even printable, their potential seemed limitless. However, in practice they had a big Achilles heel: they degraded quickly when exposed to air and their capacity to generate energy was far below that of the classic and heavy silicon panels. They were, in the eyes of the industry, almost a laboratory toy. But this narrative has just taken a historic turn. A team of scientists has managed to simultaneously overcome the barrier of performance and degradation, finally bringing these flexible plates closer to their long-awaited large-scale commercialization. A milestone that comes from China. Until today, manufacturing flexible solar panels meant taking a toll: either you lost efficiency or the material degraded quickly in the open air. Researchers at Wuhan University of Technology just broke that rule. Its new polymer cell reaches an efficiency of 19.1% – close on the heels of commercial silicon – and, above all, solves the problem of wear. As endorsed by the scientific journal matterthe device supports more than 2,000 hours of outdoor operation while retaining 97% of its initial capacity. In technical jargon, they have achieved a “T97 lifetime”, a metric that definitively takes this technology out of the experimental phase. The step definitive towards marketing. In statements to the magazine PV MagazineTao Wang, co-author of the research, highlights the magnitude of the finding: the stability demonstrated in these 2,000 hours allows us to extrapolate a useful life of the device that would exceed 100,000 hours of operation. Furthermore, this breakthrough puts an end to organic photovoltaics’ historic dilemma of the war between “efficiency vs. stability.” As the research indicatesUntil now, polymers (formed by long molecular chains) were very thermally stable and flexible, but inefficient; On the contrary, the “small molecules” were more efficient but too fragile and tended to crystallize over time, ruining the plate. This new development manages to combine the best of both worlds. The “invisible comb” at the microscopic level. Therein lies the secret of its success. Wei Li, another of the study’s lead authors, explains in PV Magazine that polymers have a mechanical problem: their long molecular chains tend to tangle, forming “disordered aggregates.” That disorder not only blocks the flow of electricity (reducing efficiency), but it exposes weak chemical bonds that accelerate the degradation of the board in sunlight. To solve this, the Wuhan team applied a strategy that was as elegant as it was effective: they introduced a small fraction of “small acceptor molecules” (SMA) into the polymer matrix. According to the studythis mixture acts as an invisible comb that “untangles” the long chains of the polymer, forcing them to pack together in a linear and orderly manner. This reduces empty spaces in the material, creating direct “highways” for electricity to flow without being lost, boosting efficiency and stopping photochemical deterioration in its tracks. A high-tech “sandwich”. For this chemical cocktail to work, the design of the plate was not left to chance. The cell was literally built like a sandwich on a microscopic scale. Instead of complicated heavy metal alloys, they used a transparent base on which they applied several ultrathin layers: one that captures light (the improved polymer), others that act as guides so that electrons do not escape and, finally, a very thin layer of silver to conduct electricity. The whole set results in a high precision, but extremely light device. And what does all this mean for the average user? According to the portal Interesting Engineeringthese findings pave the way to integrate highly efficient panels into tents, backpacks, clothing or covering the curved facades of buildings, without having to support the immense weight of silicon. This vision of the future is already taking its first commercial steps. As we saw a year ago at CESbrands like Anker Solix are already experimenting with prototypes of jackets that integrate solar panels and power banks to keep a mobile phone charged, or beach umbrellas capable of charging a portable refrigerator using continuous photovoltaic cells. The difference is that, thanks to the new molecular advances achieved in China, this “wearable” and portable self-consumption technology will take a brutal leap: it will be much more stable, durable and easier to mass produce. The future is already flexible. The absolute hegemony of silicon – rigid, heavy and with a high manufacturing energy cost – is beginning to have a real alternative on the horizon. Research from Wuhan University of Technology shows that understanding and manipulating how molecules behave and intertwine was the master key to getting organic technology out of the laboratory. The future of solar energy no longer only seeks to be efficient; Now it is ready to be flexible, ultralight and, finally, durable. Image | RawPixel Xataka | Solar panels have an invisible and very brief moment in which they do not work. And solving it is key to your future

Supplements, medications and Silicon Valley vampires: the promise of living (well) over 100 years: Crossover 1×40

by

A few weeks ago we brought Dr. José Hernández, an expert in longevity and rejuvenation, who told us about what it really means to get older And what technologies allow us to stop this curse? biological. Well, the thing did not stop there, because in the pipeline we had this second installment of an interview that now goes even further. Thus, on this occasion we focus especially on the drugs and medications that try to extend our longevity and let’s also do it with quality of life. There are some here usual suspectsand there has long been talk about how certain supplements can contribute to human longevity. We took the opportunity to talk about Mounjaro and Ozempic and how these medications “reprogram” the brain and what impact that strategy can have. But in addition, Jaume de la Hoz —who is “deep inside” this segment, as he says— reviews many other drugs and supplements in addition to taking the conversation to another fascinating terrain: that of the vampires of Silicon Valley and that of millionaires like Brian Johnsonwhich has become famous for its unique methods of rejuvenation. Without a doubt, an exciting topic in which, of course, AI can also play a fundamental role. Platforms like AlphaFold and their implications when it comes to proposing a potential revolution in biology are certainly promising, but here we have to be cautious: There are many expectations and, at the moment, few certainties. On YouTube | Crossover

build a “military Silicon Valley” in the heart of Madrid

by

In recent years, security has become the new silent motor of European industrial policy. Wars and pressures between allies have modified plans. It is no longer just about manufacturing more, but about deciding where, how and under what control strategic capabilities of the future are built. Spain, in fact, is in search and capture of a node that amplifies its defense. The obstacle of the ground and an ambition. Spain wants to accelerate its military modernization and the centerpiece is to concentrate talent, engineering and technological development in a single large complex. Here appears Indra who, apparently, is looking for 77 hectares in the area of ​​Madrid to build a macrohub of up to 300,000 square meters dedicated to radars, electronic defense, communications and industrial digitalization, with a investment of 385 million backed by the European Investment Bank and the promise of thousands of skilled jobs (speaking of more than 3,000 new positions). The project, initially linked to Torrejón de Ardoz, has been slowed down by administrative slowness and is now considering other locations in the Henares Corridor, an area that the company considers strategic to reinforce a technological hub capable of responding to the new modernization programs of the Armed Forces. A military Silicon Valley. The ambition, on paper, goes beyond a simple corporate center. The idea is to create a complete ecosystem where laboratories, simulators, advanced manufacturing and auxiliary companies come together, turning the Madrid axis into a kind of Military Silicon Valley Spanish. The strategic plan Leading the Future aims to consolidate Indra as a driver of the defense and aerospace sector, attracting suppliers, research centers and technological startups that revolve around a strong industrial core. It is not, therefore, just about constructing buildings, but about articulate an innovation network that places Spain in a more autonomous and competitive position on the European board. Corporate engineering to avoid losing control. In parallel, the Government is moving to ensure that this national defense champion does not escape public control. As? Apparently, Moncloa is studying transferring Indra’s defense assets to a new subsidiary that allows the integration of Escribano Mechanical & Engineering and eventually other companies in the sector, all without diluting state participation through SEPI. counted the newspaper El Mundo There is a compelling reason behind this movement. The formula aims to avoid the conflict of interest derived from Ángel Escribano’s dual status as president of Indra and co-owner of EM&M, and to avoid a loss of control over an industry considered strategic. Industrial consolidation under pressure. The merger by absorption initially approved generated tensions due to shareholder balance and the risk of litigation, but undoing the path is not easy either. I remembered the media that Indra and EM&M have signed contracts under the heat of public credits linked to military programs and, in practice, they have operated as if integration were already underway. Added to this is the pressure of new international investors who see consolidation as a clear opportunity to create value. The result is a pulse between industrial ambition, state control and political times, one that will define whether Spain manages to articulate that “sovereignty mode” with a technological-military pole, or if societal complexity slows down the project that aspires to transform the heart of the country at the epicenter of its new defense industry. Image | RawPixel, Felipe Gabaldon In Xataka | Spain has been a weapons exporting power for decades. Now he has made a decision: keep them In Xataka | In the midst of rearmament, Spain has just surprised Europe: 5,000 million for 34 warships and four submarines

We just discovered that silicon has an invisible bottleneck, and that has a direct impact on our solar panels

by

You turn on a solar cell and wait for the electrons to flow. But there is a moment, invisible and very brief, in which a part of them simply stops. A new study published in Physical Review B just explained why. The discovery. Researchers from the Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies in Nanoscience (IMDEA Nanoscience) and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Germany (MPIP) have discovered that, in silicon, photoexcited electrons do not activate immediately when they receive light. For a few picoseconds (millionths of a millionth of a second) they become stuck in small traps of the material before they can circulate and generate current. The person responsible has a name: a phonon bottleneck. What are phonons and why do they matter? Silicon has a peculiarity compared to other materials: for an electron to be released when receiving light, photons are not enough. According to account IMDEA Nanoscience in its note also needs the collaboration of phonons, which are the vibrations of the crystalline lattice of the material itself. As has been discovered, when such timing vibrations are scarce, electrons become temporarily trapped in surface defects near the edge of the energy band. What no one expected to find. Enrique Cánovas himself, one of the authors of the study, recognize that the discovery was accidental. “What we observed was an accident. We expected an instantaneous response, but instead we saw the electrons take a breather,” he says. Until now, the phonon bottleneck was known in high-energy situations, when silicon was excited with very energetic electrons. This is the first experimental record of the phenomenon with low-energy excitations, which occur with near-infrared light, or even below, the absorption threshold of the material. Until now unexplored territory. Why it has practical relevance. Silicon is the heart of the vast majority of solar panels of the world. Any inefficiency in how your electrons respond to light has direct consequences on the performance of those photovoltaic cells. Understanding that this transient delay exists, and that it has an identifiable cause, opens the door to two possible paths: designing materials or structures that minimize this jam, or even taking advantage of it in a controlled way to improve the behavior of the device. It remains to be seen if the impact of this phenomenon is significant enough to justify redesigns in the manufacturing of solar cells and photovoltaic systems. Cover image | yue chan In Xataka | Imitating photosynthesis to transform CO2 into fuel was always a dream. One that has already come true

The US chip industry is being forged in Silicon Valley. Curiously, the hammer is held by South Korea

by

The United States has embarked on a journey of technological sovereignty. It has some of the largest and most cutting-edge technology companiesbut they depend on foreign companies. That’s why, Appield Materials has put 5 billion dollars on the table seeking US technological hegemony. And, in this ambitious project, it is not an American who has slipped in as founding partner of the EPIC Center. It’s Samsung. EPIC. It’s a “modest” name for a $5 billion facility that will be in the heart of Silicon Valley. The name comes from Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization and is the spearhead of American investment in research and development of advanced semiconductor equipment. Its objective is to accelerate the development of equipment and processes to create advanced memory chips, shortening traditional cycles when developing cutting-edge chips. The installation is imposingwith more than 16,700 m² of clean room and is expected to come into operation this spring. Samsung. And, in that ambitious objective, is the South Korean company. The alliance is to address one of the semiconductor industry’s most important challenges: the long time required to bring new chip technologies to market. from research to production. The EPIC Center is not a competition for the European ASMLbut something complementary to shorten those processes that can take between 10 and 15 years. And Samsung will be there as one of the founding partners. Samsung Electronics CEO Young Hyun Jun commented that the collaboration will allow “advance in cutting-edge semiconductor equipment technologies.” The EPIC Center Expansion. Samsung is one of the most important foundries in the world and, in the era of artificial intelligence, it is consolidating itself as a pillar by being the first that will supply NVIDIA of the new HBM4 memories. Its presence at the EPIC Center seems like a key strategic move, but it is not the only advance that the company has recently made on American soil. In that pursuit of creating high-bandwidth memory and advanced systems, Samsung has a facility in TaylorTexas, to advance the production of 2 nanometer chips. Foreign industrial fabric. One of Donald Trump’s goals was to recover the American industrial fabric with American companies and American labor. That’s why he ‘rescued’ Intel a few months ago with the aim that the company was his great foundry. And it is having its fruits: Intel has risen from the ashes with new advanced processors and is positioning itself to supply both NVIDIA and Apple. However, what is also arriving is foreign muscle like Samsung and something more serious: TSMC. The Taiwanese giant is the company on which the entire semiconductor and device industry pivots, and it is increasingly becoming making more land in the United States to manufacture in the country and continue with a diversification project which includes Europe. That is to say, the United States is reindustrializing and is taking steps to have an authoritative voice in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, but much of that muscle belongs to the same old foreign companies… that will simply now also produce in the United States. HBM4. Meanwhile, Samsung continues to do its thing. Not only are they at full production HBM4 memoriesbut also investigating the possible replacement for that technology: DRAM memories in which Intel and SoftBank are also taking steps. And in addition to their own Exynos for their mobiles, there are sources who claim that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, is developing its own chip for artificial intelligence and is in talks with Samsung for it to be manufactured. Images | Applied Materials (edited) In Xataka | China’s future in the chip industry is in the hands of a single, almost unknown company: SiCarrier

Mexico knows that the future lies in technological sovereignty and has already chosen its “Silicon Valley: Jalisco and Sonora

by

Mexico has undertaken the adventure of technological sovereignty. With her arrival to the presidency, Claudia Sheinbaum set the modest goal of “continuing to make Mexico the best country in the world.” To this end, he presented the ‘Mexico Plan‘, a roadmap to attract investment and develop industries such as biotechnology, electric cars or that of semiconductors. And the foundations for that ambitious chip manufacturing plan are already being built with a single idea in mind. Technological sovereignty. Kutsari. Silicon is extracted from sand and this is precisely what ‘kutsari’ means in Purépecha. It is also the name of Kutsari Project that seeks to stop importing a large part of the semiconductors that Mexico needs for the products it already manufactures. Puebla, Jalisco and Sonora are the three locations chosen to develop a plan that only pursues one objective: to stop being a country that assembles chips to become one that designs, manufactures and sells them. Jalisco moves. Since the project was announced, steps have been taken to get it started, and as we read in MillenniumJalisco has not wasted time. One of the poles of Kutsari will be the Cinvestav -Center for Research and Advanced Studies-. The reason is that it is the only institution in the country that has an agreement with Intel to generate integrated circuits in 16 nanometer lithography. Jalisco was already a semiconductor manufacturing point at the end of the last century and the Intel Design Center is located in the same area. That is why Jalisco has already been nicknamed the ‘Silicon Valley of Latin America’, a ‘hub’ in which different technology companies are settling, especially those dedicated to semiconductors, and which is bringing foreign investment. According to Pablo Lemusgovernor of Jalisco, if Mexico’s economy grew by 0.5%, due to that investment Jalisco’s grew by 4%. Sonora winks at the US. Another of the axes in this objective of technological sovereignty is Sonora. Recently, it signed an agreement to locate the Semiconductor Research and Development Center at the University of Sonora. Apart from being another thinking mind in the semiconductor strategy, Sonora has an advantage: the Mexico-US Trade Corridor, which seeks greater investment and regional connectivity. In the end, Sonora and Jalisco are taking steps in the same direction: investment, consolidation of already established infrastructures, construction of new buildings and strengthening agreements to attract talent. Goal: 2028. As they say, things in the palace move slowly, and currently both states are in a phase that we could classify as pre-production. They are preparing the ground in parallel, making advances in design, but also in talent and the ecosystem to create the chip production chain. Let’s remember the importance of having all this tied up (and the closer, the better), since it is one of the secrets behind the leadership of the Taiwanese TSMC. Once everything is ready, the manufacturing phase will begin, and in this sense, we also have to talk about the state of Puebla. In the municipality of Cholula will locate one of Mexico’s semiconductor production plants, one that will take advantage of all that knowledge developed by Jalisco and Sonora and that, it is expected, will begin producing chips by 2028 with an eye toward commercialization by 2029. Competence. It seems like a long time, but it is really a very short period to shape an industry as complex as semiconductors. But, obviously, you have to start somewhere and the latest advances in the Kutsari project show that Mexico remains determined to achieve a certain sovereignty in the chip segment. Now, we will see how far Mexico’s aspirations go and if its production is sufficient to satisfy the global market or it has to “settle” for the domestic market. The reason is that the component crisis of 2020 and the current RAM crisis It is teaching us something: you cannot depend on one country or a handful of companies. And there, Vietnam, India and China are strengthening for break technological hegemony which is currently in the hands of a few. This implies greater competition, but if Mexico’s plans go well, it also represents an opportunity that should not be missed. Image | ASML (edited) In Xataka | There is a global race to gain hegemony of critical minerals. And Mexico has just taken a key step

There is a Spaniard at the top of Silicon Valley. His name is Enrique Lores and he has just become CEO of PayPal

by

The Spanish manager Enrique Lores has become the new CEO of PayPal. The company has announced it in his digital press room indicating that he will take office on March 1. This is a unique appointment that consolidates Lores’ career and places him in that select group of CEOs of large technology companies. And that is precisely its mission: to make PayPal really great again. At PayPal they knew him well. In the announcement, PayPal officials highlight that Lores had already been on the board of directors for five years, which makes it clear that the appointment is not entirely a surprise. The Spanish manager replaces Alex Chriss in the position, and for the adaptation stage the company’s current CFO, Jamie Miller, will act as interim CEO. The reason. From PayPal they explain that the signing comes from an evaluation of the business and how the company is in relation to its competition. “While some progress has been made in several areas over the past two years, the pace of change and execution has not lived up to the Board’s expectations. The Board is confident that the appointment of Lores, an executive with more than three decades of experience in technology and commerce, will provide the leadership necessary to lead PayPal into its next stage.” A life at HP. Lores had been CEO of HP Inc. for more than six years, where he led a series of strategic projects. During his tenure the firm has gone beyond PC and printers to expand its services and subscriptions business, in addition to starting the commitment to integration of AI in various business areas in the signature. He was also the main leader of the split between HP and HPE. Lores has spent much of his professional life at HP, where he achieved a leading role as vice president of the imaging and printing division for EMEA in 2001. Since then he has not stopped rising positions, but his time at HP ends now. There he will be replaced as CEO by Bruce Broussard, a member of the board since 2021. Remembering the ‘PayPal mafia’. The story of the founding and early years of PayPal is fascinating and an example of disruption. Among its founders are Elon Musk and Peter Thielbut in that team there were people who have ended up being the germ of a good part of the “internet 2.0”. He famous ‘PayPal Mafia’ phenomenon tells how after the purchase by eBay several members of the original team left the company to create their own projects. And among those projects are YouTube, LinkedIn or Yelp. PayPal continued to grow, without a doubt, but for today’s Internet what happened to it before the eBay purchase was more relevant than what happened after. difficult times. After separating from eBay in July 2015, PayPal carried out some strategic operations such as (the controversy) Honey in 2020. The pandemic caused e-commerce to skyrocket, which benefited it, and in October 2020 the company took a historic turn by allowing the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies. The end of confinement and the rise in rates caused a stagnation and then a fall in its assets, and competition from Apple Pay or Shopify eroded its market share in the traditional payment button market. An increasingly fragmented market. Apple and Google have managed to impose their payment solutions thanks to their competitive advantage, but PayPal has also been overtaken by Strupe, which won over developers with a cleaner and more flexible API. In Spain, for example, the use of Bizum has cannibalized that of PayPal (the same with Mercado Pago in Latin America) for payments between individuals, and PayPal’s commission structure is complex and does not help to earn money and recover the relevance of the past. Quite a challenge for Enrique Lores. Thus, the Spanish manager faces a truly formidable challenge. PayPal is still a big tech company, but its current market capitalization (39,830 million dollars), even though it is greater than that of HP (17,750) is very far from the true “Big Tech”. In fact it is the company number 620 by market capitalization according to CompaniesMarketCap. It will be interesting to see what measures Lores takes to boost the business of one of Silicon Valley’s legendary companies. In Xataka | The highest paid Spanish manager in the world does not work in a large technology company: he sells “sugar water”

While Silicon Valley dreams of servers in orbit, Russia prepares a nuclear reactor on lunar soil

by

Until recently, the space race was about seeing who could get there first. Today, the question is different: who will be able to turn on the light on the Moon? While companies like Google or Nvidia imagine satellites loaded with computers for their Artificial Intelligence, Russia has hit the table with a much more earthly (or lunar) plan: installing a small nuclear power plant on the surface of our satellite. A reactor by 2036. The Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, has signed a state contract with the aerospace company NPO Lavochkin to develop a lunar nuclear power plant. According to Reutersthe deadline marked in the contract is 2036. However, the political times are much more aggressive: Yury Borisov, head of Roscosmos, has placed the real operational window between 2033 and 2035. Although official statements sometimes avoid the word “nuclear” directly, project participants dispel any doubts, the Kurchatov Institute (a leader in nuclear research in Russia) and Rosatom (the state atomic flagship company) are in charge. As the Interfax media points outthe objective is to power the infrastructure of the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a joint project with China that seeks to move from “round trip” missions to a permanent human presence. But why what nuclear? A colony on the Moon faces nights that last 14 Earth days. During that time, the frigid temperatures and lack of light make the solar panels useless to keep astronauts alive or power life support systems. Mikhail Kovalchuk, head of the Kurchatov Institute, he explained in an interview with the Russian agency TASS that Russia must “run forward.” According to this medium, the country seeks to consolidate its leadership through the “Atomic Project 2.0”, which includes new generation reactors and closed cycle systems. It’s not just about science; Russia admits that partners like China and India have learned a lot from them and are now direct competitors. Eyes in the sky: preparing the ground. For the Russian reactor to reach the Moon, Moscow is already preparing the logistics. According to another TASS statementRussia plans to launch 52 satellites from the Vostochny cosmodrome. Among them, the Aist-2T stands out, capable of creating 3D models of the lunar terrain and monitoring emergency situations. It is the necessary infrastructure so that the “lunar atom” does not suffer the same fate as the failed Luna-25 probe in 2023. The Moscow-Beijing axis: a long-range alliance. This deployment is not a solitary effort. As Interfax detailsRussia and China formalized their ambition in May 2024 with a memorandum of cooperation for the joint construction of this nuclear plant. They are not starting from scratch: both countries presented a roadmap in 2021 that includes five joint missions to deploy modules in lunar orbit and surface. While Russia brings its historical advantage in space nuclear facilities, China provides the scientific capacity and resources for the ILRS Station to be permanently inhabited from 2030. The board of the new Cold War. Washington has not stood idly by in the face of the Russian-Chinese alliance. NASA has received a clear directive from the current administration, in which they state that They need a reactor on the Moon by 2030. “We are in a race with China,” said Sean Duffy, Secretary of Transportation and who has led this directive. The background of this urgency is not only prestige, but the control of strategic resources. The Moon is the great deposit of Helium-3, an extremely rare isotope that is emerging as the “fuel of the future” for nuclear fusion. The White House’s fear is that if the alliance between Russia and China comes sooner, they will be able to declare “exclusion zones,” blocking access to this isotope and other essential metals for the technology industry. Faced with this threat, the US has increased the power of its nuclear project from the original 40 kW to a minimum power of 100 kW. Infrastructure over prestige. The space race of the 21st century has ceased to be a question of prestige and has become a question of infrastructure. While Big Tech tries to solve its energy limits with promises of servers in orbitRussia and China have opted for the pragmatism of the reactor on solid, but lunar, soil. Image| freepik Xataka | The race to bring data centers to space promises a lot. Physics says otherwise

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.