Financial Times writer Patrick McGee reported recently that, “X, the experimental lab of Google’s parent company Alphabet, is looking beyond Silicon Valley for its next big idea, forming a collaboration with New Lab, a start-up incubator in Brooklyn.
“The heavily-lossmaking X, which describes itself as a ‘moonshots factory,’ is most famous for creating Waymo, the self-driving car project that is now a standalone Alphabet business. Its other bets include beaming the internet from hot air balloons, creating fuel from seawater and storing electricity in molten salt.
“Alphabet’s ‘other bets,’ which include X, racked up a $4.8bn operating loss in 2019, prompting executives to promise a ‘sharper focus‘ in the future.”
The FT article noted that, “Now it has approached New Lab, founded in 2016 and home to 152 companies working on projects including vertical farming, space robotics and other ‘frontier technologies.'”
Mr. McGee added that, “X’s grandiose description of a ‘moonshot’ is a project aiming to ‘improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people.’ At New Lab, investors have already pledged more than $700m in venture capital for some wildly ambitious projects.”
