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Super Micro Computer (SMCI 7.72%), more commonly known as "Supermicro," has been one of the market's hottest artificial intelligence (AI) stocks. Its shares have soared nearly 400% over the past 12 months as it dazzled the bulls with its rapid growth.

But is it too late to hop aboard the bullish bandwagon after those massive gains? Let's review Supermicro's business model, its growth rates, and its valuations to decide.

Image source: Getty Images.

Supermicro sells high-end servers to more than 1,000 customers in over 100 countries. According to Enlyft, nearly two-thirds of its customers are small-to-medium sized businesses. It was founded three decades ago, but a recent partnership with Nvidiato produce pre-built AI servers lit a raging fire under its stock.

The market's soaring interest in AI technologies, which was driven by the rise of generative AI platforms like OpenAI's ChatGPT, caused Supermicro's server sales to skyrocket over the past two years. Its revenue only rose 7% in fiscal 2021 (which ended in June 2021), but jumped 46% in fiscal 2022 and 37% in fiscal 2023. Its adjusted net income dipped 9% in fiscal 2021, but surged 129% in fiscal 2022 and 116% in fiscal 2023.

For fiscal 2024, Supermicro expects its revenue to rise 33% to 47%, while analysts expect its adjusted earnings per share (EPS) to grow 42%. CEO Charles Liang said it was still seeing "unprecedented demand for AI and other advanced applications requiring optimized rack-scale solutions," and was in a "great position to continue our growth momentum given our record new design wins, customers, and backlog for our best-in-class rack-scale Total AI & IT Solutions."

The bulls believe Supermicro will continue to grow with the broader AI market, which Precedence Research estimates will expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19% from 2023 to 2032. If Supermicro merely matches that growth rate, its annual revenue could jump from $7.1 billion in fiscal 2023 to $34 billion in fiscal 2032.

The bulls also believe Supermicro will continue to expand its market share against its two larger rivals -- Dell Technologiesand Hewlett Packard Enterprise-- in the AI server market. Northland Capital Markets analyst Nehal Chokshi estimates that Supermicro more than doubled its share of AI server market sequentially from 7% in its fiscal third quarter to 17% in its fiscal fourth quarter. Charles Liang also said the company was "pretty confident" it could "continue to gain market share" during its fourth-quarter conference call in early August.

The bears will argue that Supermicro is really just a legacy server maker that grew its revenue at a less impressive CAGR of 10% from fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2021 and then hitched a ride on Nvidia's coattails over the past two years. Nvidia is also working with Dell, HPE, and other enterprise server makers, so Supermicro's growth could abruptly slow down once those tech giants roll out more pre-built AI servers. Supermicro's insiders have also sold about 24 times as many shares as they bought over the past 12 months, so its near-term growth potential might be limited.

With a stock price of about $290 and an enterprise value of $14.1 billion, Supermicro still looks surprisingly cheap at 17 times forward earnings and 1.4 times this year's sales. It's valued more richly than Dell or HPE, which trade at 10 and 8 times forward earnings, respectively, but it's also growing at a much faster rate than either tech giant. Supermicro still looks a lot cheaper than Nvidia, which is growing faster but trades at 28 times forward earnings and 19 times this year's sales.

Those reasonable valuations, along with the fact that this stock has already pulled back about 20% from its record high of $353.29 on Aug. 7, suggest it isn't too late for investors to buy Supermicro as a long-term bet on the secular growth of the AI market. Its moat certainly isn't as wide as Nvidia's, but it could still have plenty of room to run as more companies -- especially small-to-medium sized businesses -- install more dedicated servers to process complex AI tasks.

Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Super Micro Computer. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Is It Too Late to Buy Super Micro Computer Stock? - The Motley Fool

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Topics Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy

The Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy initiative explores the growing use of artificial intelligence in the business landscape. The exploration looks specifically at how AI is affecting the development and execution of strategy in organizations.

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Starting a career with the ambition of becoming a medical doctor and ending up a technical leader for a major automaker might seem an unlikely path, but for Anders Sjgren, who leads data and AI innovation projects for Volvo Cars, it was a perfect trajectory.

On this episode of the Me, Myself, and AI podcast, Anders joins hosts Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh to explain the ways the carmaker uses data and artificial intelligence to inform manufacturing ensuring that parts are made consistently and as efficiently as possible as well as driver experience and safety. He also outlines some specific ways smart technology keeps drivers alert and aware of conditions around them and describes Volvos approach to technology-driven innovation.

Anders Sjgren is senior technical leader for Volvo Cars. He focuses on strategy, research, innovation, and transformation, with the key objective of ensuring that the automaker understands and executes within the continuously emerging areas of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence. Application areas include creating AI-enabled intelligent customer functionality and using AI to reform Volvos operations and development activities. Sjgren has an academic background in mathematical statistics (large-scale and computational aspects) and an industrial background in data-centric methods development and software product development.

If youre enjoying the Me, Myself, and AI podcast, continue the conversation with us on LinkedIn. Join the AI for Leaders group today.

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Shervin Khodabandeh: How does one carmaker use AI to bring together all of the complex systems required to engineer a safe and high-performing vehicle? Find out on todays episode.

Anders Sjgren: Im Anders Sjgren from Volvo Cars, and youre listening to Me, Myself, and AI.

Sam Ransbotham: Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast on artificial intelligence in business. Each episode, we introduce you to someone innovating with AI. Im Sam Ransbotham, professor of analytics at Boston College. Im also the AI and business strategy guest editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

Shervin Khodabandeh: And Im Shervin Khodabandeh, senior partner with BCG and one of the leaders of our AI business. Together, MIT SMR and BCG have been researching and publishing on AI since 2017, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and surveying thousands of companies on what it takes to build and to deploy and scale AI capabilities and really transform the way organizations operate.

Shervin Khodabandeh: Today, Sam and I are delighted to be joined by Anders Sjgren, senior technical leader, data, analytics, and AI-enabled engineering, at Volvo Cars. Lets get started. Anders, welcome to the show.

Anders Sjgren: Thank you.

Shervin Khodabandeh: So tell us a little bit about your role at Volvo Cars.

Anders Sjgren: Im a technical leader in data, analytics, and AI in the engineering part [of the organization], so thats the R&D. So, essentially, what comes in is a wish for a car, and what comes out is drawings and code. In that area, there are, of course, a lot of possibilities for data analytics and AI, both during the development process and also as part of the actual functions in the car so intelligent functions and personalized functions and so on.

So my purpose here is really to make sure that we get the value that we can through data, analytics, and AI.

Shervin Khodabandeh: Is [your focus] the AI and data analytics that go into the car like the sensors and all kinds of intelligent devices in the car that make driving safer and more interactive, and things like that? Or is it also customer acquisition and dealer networks and all kinds of data analytics to run a business of making and selling cars?

Anders Sjgren: Yes. So, I mean, all of those apply to Volvo Cars, but the part Im really active in is more in the part of the making of the car.

Sam Ransbotham: I think thats a great point because when most people think about cars and artificial intelligence, I think they immediately jump to this idea of fully self-driving cars. And what youre pointing out is how much other stuff that there is going on, even in the production of cars, that can benefit from artificial intelligence. You know, I think perhaps everyones frustrated that we dont have fully automated cars now, but theres so much going on behind the scenes that people dont get a chance to see. What are some of the examples of the ways that youre using artificial intelligence in the production process?

Anders Sjgren: If we take a little bit of a step back, the goal of Volvo Cars is really to give people the freedom to move in a personal and sustainable and a safe way.

If we start with personal, then its really critical that we understand you and make you feel special as a customer or as someone in the car. And there, of course, it has to do with starting with the sensors and then really interpreting those values. That can be cameras, different types of steering input

Another area is definitely sustainability. AI is being used there to make sure that we have as many lightweight parts as possible. So using AI, one can, for example, get mechanical parts with the same strength and those kind of properties, but with much lower weight and less material thats being used.

Shervin Khodabandeh: In the design process, youre talking about, right? As engineers consider all the different permutations of parts, yeah?

Anders Sjgren: In the design process yes, exactly. Thats really the essence of AI, I think, in lots of engineering activities, is that we go from manually deciding first what we want to do, but then actually performing all the different steps. Thats the current way of doing it, while in the AI era, its much more about deciding and describing what are the aspects I want to reach to? What are things I want optimized, and what are maybe the boundary conditions? And then the AI helps you get there.

So in the context of the mechanical parts, you might say, These are the attachment points. These are the strength and stiffness properties I want. Give me the part with those properties but [make it] as light as possible and also, of course, possible to produce.

That could be one area. And also, it is super important for sustainability that we use as little material as possible and also have as low a rate as possible.

And then, of course, the third point was about [safety]. And, of course, we have autonomous cars, but also, even before that, there are other types of functionality being used. For example, understanding the driver: Is the driver aware or not? Should we maybe nudge him to take a cup of coffee or something if he seems to be tired?

In the later versions of our cars, we understand if there are some pets or children left in the car, maybe on a hot day, and then preventing them [from getting] hurt in such a situation and so on.

Id say that those are some of the areas where AI can really be a core technology in bringing us toward our purpose.

Sam Ransbotham: Thats really interesting because lots of times organizations tell us they start with a problem theyre trying to solve and then find a technology to solve it, and that makes sense, because otherwise youre trying to find a problem to fit a solution, which seems backward. You mentioned that your cars can sense if a person or a pet is accidentally left in the car. How did Volvo make the decision to focus on that particular problem to solve?

Anders Sjgren: A lot of what we do is really created by real-world safety in that we actually see what are the actual causes of people getting injured. I mean, if we take the analogy with crashes and that type of safety, we have teams that go out to sites when there has been a crash to really see what actually happened in reality and not just on certification [from] that type of crash test and so on.

And, going back to this example, if we look here, pets and kids do get hurt hopefully not in a Volvo car, but thats reality, right?

But what you mentioned there is really super interesting because then it also goes the other way around: Like, now that we have these sensors, what are the other really valuable functionalities that we can provide our customers with through this, of course, taking privacy into account and so on?

Shervin Khodabandeh: This is quite intriguing because Volvo I remember as a child that my uncle used to say, You want a safe car, you get a Volvo. And its always been synonymous with safety, and its really amazing to step back and think about for a company who has put one of its main goals for safe experience, now, with the availability of this amount of data and all of this massive amount of processing, I could imagine there are so many use cases that, to Sams point, are being thought about. So thats really, really encouraging.

What [does] the road map here look like? I mean, is this a constant sort of innovation ideation approach going on to say, What else could we do in these three pillars of personal, safe, and sustainable? What is the process for coming up with these ideas and picking up the good ones and pursuing them or not?

Anders Sjgren: I think that those ideas can either come from the technology side and be really inspired by that, or it could come from the analytics side. And often its when the new technology and the really customer-centric needs where they meet, and also, of course, where we have the agility in the organization to execute on it. Thats really where we have something thats really fruitful. Its typically a mix of different sources of this: innovations and new directions, I would say.

Shervin Khodabandeh: And theres a mechanism to create this interdisciplinary inspiration in the company?

Anders Sjgren: Yeah, I would say so. I would say that there are both formal mechanisms but also informal mechanisms. [As] a car company, Volvo Cars is not super big. Of course there are also smaller ones, but I think its also an advantage that, I mean, pretty much all the different steps, from product strategy, design, the R&D, engineering, and then the later stages

The headquarters is in Gothenburg [in Sweden], within walking distance. The U.S. department is literally 50 meters from where Im sitting right now, while 50 meters in the other direction, there are the crash test facilities and the safety center.

So, what I want to say with that is that its more easy to get connections and to create this kind of how should I put it? informal innovation activities.

Shervin Khodabandeh: This is where relatively smaller size and colocation really, really helps. To have teams that close to each other.

Sam Ransbotham: Its funny to talk about it being small, because its certainly not a small company.

Shervin Khodabandeh: Everythings relative, yeah.

Sam Ransbotham: Everythings relative, I guess. As were chatting, Im thinking about some of the people weve talked to before, and one of the recurring themes that people have mentioned is, oh, this idea [of] starting with a business problem: You dont have AI and find a place to use it. You start with a business problem and then solve it. But this is kind of a nice mix on that that it sounds like theres a lot that starts with a business problem, but then, interestingly, once these processes are in place, and once these technologies are in place, then there becomes a grassroots innovation to say, All right; how can we use that? And thats an interesting perspective that, I think, hasnt come through strongly or maybe Im forgetting something but it seems like that hasnt come through as strongly. This is a nice mix of that, that maybe works in this size organization this colocated organization.

Anders Sjgren: Yeah, and not least in the prototyping and ideation stages. But, then, of course, before it actually goes into the product, it needs to go through a more thorough review and so on.

Shervin Khodabandeh: Theres been quite a few investments and acquisitions of smaller AI startups and firms by Volvo. Tell us a bit about the overall ecosystem of internal and vendor and partner companies that come together to bring to life some of these AI-enabled ideas that youre talking about. Is it internal? Is it external? Is it a mix? How do you think about the ecosystem?

Anders Sjgren: I would definitely say that its a mix. Some of the things we need to do it ourselves to get the full understanding or where we really want to be in the forefront, and [in] some other areas, we definitely want to partner with other companies that are strong in those areas. Traditionally speaking, a car is a super complex product. It has hundreds or thousands of different parts that all need to come together. And, of course, it is a space where there is traditionally a lot of suppliers supplying different parts.

Lately, we are moving more toward bringing software implementation in-house to increase the speed and agility in the development process.

Sam Ransbotham: That seems particularly complicated in auto manufacturing because if I think about how cars got started, they were independent systems. There was a braking system, and a power train system, and an air conditioner, and an infotainment system, and all these were separate. And thats kind of nice because then we have a certain, different standard than we would have for the infotainment system than we would have for the braking system or at least I hope that there would be. But what youre pointing out is, each one of these may be using sensors that come from a different area, and how the whole car has become more complicated independently, but its also become more complicated cohesively, trying to connect all these parts and have them work together.

And that seems, on the one hand, an opportunity for artificial intelligence but, at the same time, a challenge.

Anders Sjgren: Yeah. Its 100% true. Its both a really big opportunity, but that also means thats really one of the core challenges I mean, how to build the cohesive understanding of both the inside and the outside of the car.

We speak about the customer digital twin and vehicle digital twin and so on, and in some sense, those aspects can mean a lot of different things. But, of course, these different systems that you speak about, they are traditionally in different parts of the company, so that also means that there is a lot of cross-functional collaboration that is needed. But we really need to bridge those kind of organizational borders.

I think that thats really one of the key points that is, in order to get successful adoption of the analytics and AI, it really means that different parts of the company need to work together to make it happen. Because otherwise, it will just become a silo. Some people will not really have the benefits of it.

Shervin Khodabandeh: You know, its very true. Its a common theme, and in our work at BCG, we have this rule of thumb the 10:20:70 where we say 10% is the data and algorithms, and 20% is the technology and the digital platform, but 70% of it is the business integration and implementation and bringing different parts of the organization together. This, perhaps, is nowhere more true than at a car company, where you have, as you said, Sam, seemingly disparate systems that are coming together to create a bigger system, but each one of these units has been perfected individually, and now you want the collective perfection as well.

Sam Ransbotham: Anders, we talked a lot about Volvo. How did you personally get interested in artificial intelligence, in data, in technology and analytics? Whats your origin story?

Anders Sjgren: I think Ive always been interested in computers. My father was really an addict, so I kind of grew up with that.

I started out as an engineering student [and got a] masters in computer science. And then I started off as a research engineer in the medical area, at the university hospital in Gothenburg, then found out fairly quickly that in order to really make use of data conclusions and so on come from data so I then went into the area of mathematical statistics.

So I did a Ph.D. in that, then went back to software product development. After some time, I went back to academia for a couple of years, did a postdoc, and then was offered a good opportunity at Volvo Cars. So Ive essentially been here for seven years now. Thats a bit of my history.

Shervin Khodabandeh: Quite inspiring.

Sam Ransbotham: Anders, we also want to ask you a few rapid-fire questions, and the idea is just to answer it as quickly as you can. These are not particularly Volvo questions.

What have you been proudest of that youve done with artificial intelligence?

Anders Sjgren: The problem is that most of the things, I cant speak about.

Shervin Khodabandeh: Thats a great answer too.

Sam Ransbotham: You have to wait and see. OK, well, what worries you about artificial intelligence?

Anders Sjgren: The worries?

Sam Ransbotham: Mm-hmm.

Anders Sjgren: Oh, I think, of course, one is the longer term the kind of singularity things. But I think a bit closer to now, so to speak, we definitely see that this super-fast progression of large language [models] and what they can do, and also the kind of systems that dont just take one problem and give one answer but can really produce a series of steps, in sequence. And that is a super-powerful technology, but a super-powerful technology can be used both for good and for bad.

Thats both something that makes me super excited but also a little bit worried. What will the world look like in 20 years?

Sam Ransbotham: Whats your favorite activity that does not involve technology?

Anders Sjgren: Motorcycling, but obviously using technology. But its more of a yeah.

Sam Ransbotham: Technologys involved. Everythings involved in technology in some way.

Anders Sjgren: Yeah, pretty much.

Sam Ransbotham: Whats the first career you wanted when you were a kid? What did you want to be when you grew up?

Anders Sjgren: Medical doctor.

Sam Ransbotham: Well, that ties with your first career in working in the medical company, then.

Anders Sjgren: Yeah, I think so, but then I found mathematics and those things to be super exciting, so I went into that area.

Sam Ransbotham: Whats your greatest wish for artificial intelligence in the future? What do you hope that we can gain from the advent of these technologies?

Anders Sjgren: If we say the greatest wish, I think it is that we find a way to use it in a way for our common good. We need to find a way to integrate it into society, and I think that that is really my biggest wish for it.

Shervin Khodabandeh: In a relatively short time, we learned so much about various uses of data, AI, and technology, in just what it takes to build a car in new ways, and all the different ways that AI and tech are helping and serving the people who are driving them. Its been really enlightening, Anders. Thank you for joining.

Anders Sjgren: Thanks for having me.

Shervin Khodabandeh: Thanks for listening. On our next episode, Sam and I speak with Shilpa Prasad, entrepreneur in residence at LG Nova. Please join us.

Allison Ryder: Thanks for listening to Me, Myself, and AI. We believe, like you, that the conversation about AI implementation doesnt start and stop with this podcast. Thats why weve created a group on LinkedIn specifically for listeners like you. Its called AI for Leaders, and if you join us, you can chat with show creators and hosts, ask your own questions, share your insights, and gain access to valuable resources about AI implementation from MIT SMR and BCG. You can access it by visiting mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders. Well put that link in the show notes, and we hope to see you there.

Sam Ransbotham (@ransbotham) is a professor in the information systems department at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, as well as guest editor for MIT Sloan Management Reviews Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy Big Ideas initiative. Shervin Khodabandeh is a senior partner and managing director at BCG and the coleader of BCG GAMMA (BCGs AI practice) in North America. He can be contacted at shervin@bcg.com.

Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rdinger.

The rest is here:

Fueling Interdisciplinary Innovation With AI: Volvo's Anders Sjgren - MIT Sloan Management Review

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Innovation and knowledge were on the menu Sunday as about 200 Science Writers 2023 participants attended a variety of talks during Lunch With a Scientist sessions. In small breakout groups, CU Anschutz researchers shared their expertise on a host of subjects, from psychedelics in medicine to AI in healthcare and concussions in youth sports to metabolism in super athletes.

Get a taste for the breadth of research taking place on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus in these stories from the lunch sessions:

Bone marrow transplants and chemotherapy can cure cancers of the blood such as acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) in about 40% of pediatric patients, but they are not without serious toxic side effects, including fatigue, bone damage and having the potential to develop into another cancer.

That is why scientists have long sought less-toxic therapies for treating leukemia and other blood cancers such as lymphoma. One new treatment that holds important promise is chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-Cell therapy. It involves genetically modifying patients T cells to target and kill cancer.

Were seeing unbelievable response rates in pediatric ALL, with 80% to 90% of patients going into complete remission, but that rate then flattens out to about 50% of patients after a year, said Terry Fry, MD, a professor of pediatrics, hematology and immunology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Were trying to identify factors that will predict which patients will relapse.

Fry is executive director of the Gates Institute, launched jointly by the Gates Frontier Fund and CU Anschutz Medical Campus in 2023 to focus on translating laboratory findings into regenerative, cellular and gene therapies for patients.

Most cancer treatments involve a combination of drugs and other therapies that take aim at a variety of targets in cancer cells, and Fry believes that process will ultimately improve the success of CAR T-Cell therapy. He also sees promise for CAR T-Cell therapy in treating solid tumors such as those of the brain.

A recent series of high profile concussions in professional sports has brought the issue to the forefront in youth sports.

The topic was discussed during a session led by Christine Baugh, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the CU School of Medicine and assistant professor in the Injury & Violence Prevention Center at the Colorado School of Public Health. Her recent survey research examines the interestingly complex relationship parents have around concussion risk with their children playing contact and collision sports.

Baugh detailed the important role social norms play in shaping attitudes around sports and concussion risk especially with the unique case of football. One of the bigger surprises in her research were the responses from children of former professional football players who witnessed firsthand the impacts of the sport: particularly neurodegenerative diseases and cognitive decline. These individuals now parents themselves had diverse and unique perspectives on the risks and benefits of football, she said.

They responded to us that football had enriched our family, and its hard to say no unilaterally to football, even seeing my dads decline, said Baugh.

Baugh added that adjusting the level of risk alongside the health and social benefits of youth sports will remain central to future research and public conversations around concussions.

Casey Greene, PhD, founding director of the University of Colorado School of Medicines Center for Health Artificial Intelligence and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics, led a discussion on the emerging role of artificial intelligence (AI) and ChatGPT in research and healthcare.

Greene recognized AI as a powerful tool. He introduced attendees to a workflow that he and others developed, called Manubot, which uses AI to help scientists write, edit and collaborate on manuscripts.

Casey Greene, PhD, talks about the implications of AI and Chat GPT in healthcare during a Lunch With a Scientist session.

According to Greene, AI also allows researchers to sort through large amounts of data, such as genomics, proteomics and transcriptomics, and identify patterns. Healthcare providers can then use that information to better treat patients. It puts data at the forefront of care, he said.

Greene acknowledged that AI, like many tools, can bring either health or harm.

The School of Medicine has thought a lot about how to implement data to guide care in a responsible, ethical way. Its going to be incumbent upon you all, as journalists and writers, and us, as folks who work in the field and build these systems, to keep ethics and human-centered elements at the forefront.

Emmy Betz, MD, MPH, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and co-founder of the Colorado Firearm Safety Coalition, discussed the rise in firearm suicides and gun violence across the U.S. along with the importance of creating safer options for firearm storage to help prevent injury and death.

Ninety percent of those who attempt suicide with a firearm die. Firearms are used in about 50 percent of suicides in the U.S. On the other end, 90 percent of people who attempt suicide and survive dont later die by suicide, Betz said. We are collaborating with public health professionals, clinicians, policymakers, the military and local communities to develop safer methods for storing firearms.

Talking to the group, Betz said her team is using a multi-pronged approach to tackle this issue through research, education, collaboration and economics. Some ideas for safer storage include free/low-cost safes, locks and firearm storage outside the home if an individual is going through a crisis.

Betz also discussed research that is being conducted to help veterans, aging adults and their families handle issues with post-traumatic stress disorder and dementia.

A trio of top doctors at the University of Colorado School of Medicine demonstrated the multidisciplinary collaboration in the OCD Program, one of the few centers in the country that offers deep brain stimulation (DBS) for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The doctors discussed their unique perspectives as neurosurgeon, clinician, patient and advocate.

Steven Ojemann, MD, professor of clinical practice, neurosurgery, spoke about his viewpoint as a neurosurgeon who performed this procedure on Moksha Patel, MD, assistant professor of hospital medicine, in 2021. During the brain surgery, electrodes are implanted in the deeper structures of the brain and connected to generators in the chest that deliver small currents of electricity to the brain.

Rachel Davis, MD, associate professor of psychiatry, then discussed her clinical experience working with patients with OCD, specifically her work with Patel, whom she recommended for the surgery and whom she has provided exposure therapy to both before and after his undergoing DBS.

Patel shared his experience living with OCD and how DBS has significantly improved his quality of life. DBS is not a cure for OCD, but he feels much more cognitive flexibility with his obsessions and unwanted, intrusive thoughts, he said.

When asked how the DBS has changed his life, Patel responded, I can make decisions based on what I value rather than what I fear.

Facing desperate patients whose depression defied any medication they tried, mental health providers were already searching for answers when psychedelic mushrooms began popping up in their conversations.

In response to that need, and to growing evidence in prestigious journals that the hallucinogenic was showing impressive results, a psychedelic program at the University of Colorado Department of Psychiatry was launched with Andrew Novick, MD, PhD, as principal investigator.

There are sick people out there who really want to feel better, Novick said. No one drug or combination of drugs works at all for at least 30% of patients, he said. And we need to stop banging our heads against the same mechanism of action.

Novick shared possible benefits of psychedelic therapy, including its potential rapid and long-term effect in one or two sessions as opposed to todays more common chronic medication regimens that can take weeks to have an effect.

As Colorado prepares to roll out newly legalized treatment programs, Novick and colleague Scott Thompson, PhD, are conducting promising research on a way to block the hallucinogenic effect of the drug in an effort to overcome access barriers by reducing the need for long therapy sessions.

Currently, lengthy and expensive therapy is required with the psychedelic treatment option, Novick said. The goal is to encourage more research and open scientific dialogue so that it does not become a therapy just for the ultrawealthy, he said.

With each study of elite athletes being pushed to physical extremes, CU Anschutz researchers get deeper insights into metabolic flexibility and what it means to general health and the potential to head off future disease.

Travis Nemkov, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the CU School of Medicine, gave a presentation about what super-athletes can teach us about disease treatment.

Nemkov explained how researchers shifted their study of professional cyclists metabolomics, previously confined to a training room, onto the road of a competitive race. While the cyclists competed, blood samples were non-invasively collected from a small device attached to their shoulder. The dried blood droplets were then analyzed in the lab.

The platform allows the research team to collect detailed molecular data on anyone, not just athletes. Were trying to come up with a better information panel than the typical lab test, which is a single snapshot in time. To transform healthcare we need to enhance the information that gets into these reports, Nemkov said.

He added that a lot of metabolic-signature research has been done on hospitalized patients and sedentary people, as well as high-performing athletes on the other end of the spectrum. Now the goal of our research is to fill this gap were trying to figure out what else, physiologically, is going on in this (middle) area.

While talking about obesity and evolution, Richard Johnson, MD, professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine specializing in renal disease and hypertension, said many animals are triggered at certain times of the year to gorge themselves to better survive the lean months of winter.

Bears can eat 10,000 grapes in 24 hours. Orangutans shovel down 100 pieces of fruit in one sitting. Hummingbirds guzzle so much nectar their livers turn pearly white with fat and they develop diabetes every day.

But its not permanent. Bears, birds and primates will become svelte again.

Humans were once the same. They evolved to overeat in times of plenty and burn it off in times of scarcity. Somewhere along the line the switch that turned this ancient impulse off got stuck, Johnson said. Now it's permanently on. Humans live in a time of relative abundance yet eat as if food will run out. And the biochemical mechanisms behind feeling full or satiated are often short-circuited.

Johnson, author of the book Nature Wants Us To Be Fat, discussed how sugar and fructose play key roles in obesity. He said glucose can be changed to fructose in humans. One easy way to avoid obesity, he said, is to drink water.

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Science Writers Treated to a Smorgasbord of Inventive Research - University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

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As a co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, Joe Lubins footprint is all over the world of crypto.

Some of the Canadians detractors argue that his footprint is perhaps a little too large, his reported influence on legislators and ties to centralized finance firms like JPMorgan Chase & Co. too pronounced for a longterm champion of the decentralization philosophy underpinning blockchain development.

Regardless, Lubin has played a foundational role in the crypto industry, leading or bankrolling some of the most well-known on-chain products. He said he sees developers increasingly incorporating artificial intelligence into those products, with blockchain too playing a growing role in AI as the nascent sector progresses.

The Princeton computing and electrical science graduate started his working life in the universitys robotics lab in the 1980s. He then moved into the world of financial technology (fintech) as vice president of technology at the investment giant Goldman Sachs before making a detour to Jamaica and a second career as a dancehall music producer.

Returning to fintech in the 2010s, he was there on the ground floor with programmer Vitalik Buterin, computer scientist Gavin Wood and others in setting up the Switzerland-based non-profit organization the Ethereum Foundation in 2014. He reportedly supplied a large chunk of the startup cash for the Ethereum network now the worlds second largest blockchain after Bitcoin before an acrimonious Buterin-led split saw the founders go their separate ways.

But Lubin was also at the time laying the foundations for what would become Consensys, a New York-based crypto development platform for applications based on the Ethereum blockchain. Lubin, as CEO, retains a supermajority stake in the company, valued by consulting firm PwC at US$46.4 million in June 2020. A separate valuation in May 2022 raised that figure considerably to over US$7 billion.

That was around the time of the Terra stablecoin project collapse and the onset of the ongoing period of crypto winter. Lubin spoke to Forkasts Will Fee at Token 2049 in Singapore (Sept. 13-14) about Consensys, decentralization and the AI-backed evolution of crypto beyond the current bear market. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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Will Fee: Youve seen your fair share of bear markets. Whats different about this one?

Joe Lubin: This bear market is partly the result of wave after wave of innovation which drove greater and greater excitement in our space. It was irrational exuberance similar to the dotcom boom and bust [in the late 1990s]. At that time, the whole tech and web space built toward this blow-off-the-top crescendo. It coincided with a global financial collapse. Thats very similar to what weve seen in our space.

Were not at an end-of-life moment for monetary systems yet. But were getting close to it. Geopolitically, financially, economically, there are massive challenges in the world. Rising interest rates, inflation, those factors have made the capital markets environment very difficult. We got to a point with [crypto industry] building where we hit a top at the same time that the 80-year supercycle of the global economy also hit a top.

Which is great news in my opinion. The dissolution of the previous system, based on top-down command and control via centralized institutions, makes it clear that we need a new trust foundation. We need a new approach to building better, more secure, sounder systems that benefit more people. That, essentially, will bring greater economic and political agency to lots more people and lots more small organizations.

Fee: How does the current period of regulatory scrutiny, particularly in the traditional crypto powerhouse of the U.S., prevent those systemic changes from taking place?

Lubin: The current period of regulatory scrutiny is a natural reaction at the end of the economic super cycle. Its a generational super cycle where youve got different age groups that interact with one another and repeat certain patterns. Then its a monetary system and debt super cycle. The people who are in control of the world have vested interests and want to perpetuate current systems. Rightly so, because a lot of people depend on those systems.

Its really hard to wrap your head around a fundamentally new technology. [Decentralization] is a paradigm shift to a world where trust is bottom-up based on a globally shared database. Thats versus the current top-down system where authorities imbue trust and other levels of authority through intermediaries all around the world.

The regulatory reaction to that is playing out differently in different places. In the United States, the executive branch wants to maintain total control over all its intermediaries in the world. So theyre resisting pretty significantly. They would like to slow-roll or kill our industry. The legislative branch is mixed, while the judicial branch is starting to speak up quite significantly. So theres some progress and some resistance.

When the internet and the web grew to prominence, the U.S. had the same sorts of struggles. But there are clear-thinking people out there working to protect little things like free speech and free market access, the proper functioning of markets and so on. There are these different forces at work in the U.S. Im convinced that, while it would be an exaggeration to say things are moving quickly, we are starting to move directly on a path toward clearing all this up. That will help us make what we do better understood and better accepted.

Fee: Do you see progress arriving at a faster pace in places outside the U.S.?

Lubin: There are other parts of the world Europe, Asia in particular where theres much more interest in supporting and benefiting from decentralized protocol technology and different kinds of decentralized assets. Thats partly because they see it as a leveling of the playing field with the U.S. This technology is so powerful. Its going to change everything. That means that the nation states and major companies that do well in the space will probably see pretty rapid growth.

If you look at the U.K., France, various Asian countries, the Middle East, theres a huge amount of activity and the conversations with regulators there are totally different. Theyre eager to understand and eager to figure out ways to assist by modifying their own frameworks. Every new revolutionary technology needs a new set of societal rules under which to operate. At Consensys, we pay a lot of attention to whats going on with the regulatory conversation in these other parts of the world.

Fee: In order to achieve those capabilities, how important is it for the blockchain industry to incorporate artificial intelligence and the analytical advances offered by that technology?

Lubin: Its very important to bring AI into the blockchain space. Its even more important to bring decentralized protocols into the AI space. At Consensys, we have developers, we have end users and we are working to bring them closer together. We see a future in which our end users are increasingly going to be builders with low code. With no code tools, theyll be able to stand up DAOs, mint NFTs.

We think of these users as a broad spectrum of builders. If youve got a broad spectrum of builders who have economic and political agency, you probably want each of them to be able to learn stuff fast. For that theyll need tutors, mentors. AI represents that prospect in some really interesting ways. We need to level up humanity in a big way. Our AI allies are going to get better and better at that.

Blockchain is going to be essential for the development and evolution of the AI space, which is currently broken into two major camps. One is private and extremely well resourced. Some of the best talent, research and engineering. Tons of compute, tons of data, tons of bandwidth, tons of storage. That camp will build great things. Has already built great things. Then you have the open source camp, which is moving incredibly quickly. Open source is really hard to stop. Once it gets going, its likely to become as powerful or more powerful than the more centralized camp.

Fee: Where specifically can decentralized technologies fit into the evolving use of AI in society?

Lubin: The failure mode for humanity is if the centralized camp gets so powerful that it operates the most powerful and dangerous weapon that a small group of humans have ever had for centralizing control on the planet. We need to guard against that. Whether its from a regulatory or any other societal perspective, we need to make sure that the best systems are built by many different people with many different technologies for many different purposes. That building needs to be largely out in the open.

Decentralized protocols can be part of that because you can have decentralized compute, you can have decentralized sourcing of data, you can have decentralized cleaning up of data. You can have decentralized training, decentralized inference for running the networks and the queries. Weve got that technology. Its a case of marrying AI approaches to decentralized protocols.

I think the first billion users of decentralized protocol technology and cryptocurrencies are going to be human. But Im not sure whos going to get to 2 billion first, whether its intelligent or not-so-intelligent machines and devices or humans. Either way, AI is going to be tremendous for our ecosystem for a bunch of reasons. Mainly just because its going to represent a giant amount of activity.

Fee: Youve touched on some of AIs more dystopian outcomes. How do advocates of either AI or blockchain which, particularly since the FTX collapse in Nov. 2022, has taken a major beating in the mainstream press generate public trust in these technologies?

Lubin: Any technology can produce harm. Weve navigated a lot of difficult military, scientific, technological evolutions. Im very convinced that well do it this time too. Of course there will be challenges. Im not an AI doomer at all. I think this is great and Im a big fan of AI. I actually spent years, a long time ago, working in this space. Im incredibly excited for what I think of as the necessary complementarity between decentralized protocols and AI.

On the trust front, theres also a lack of trust in centralized finance. In addition, theres a lack of understanding about the decentralized protocol space and all the good aspects of Web3 [a new phase of the internet built around decentralized blockchain technologies, the metaverse, and non-fungible tokens]. And thats more of an educational issue rather than a case of saying I know about that thing and I dont trust it.

Some really smart people are saying that about AI. But people who understand decentralized protocol technology and cryptocurrencies, theyre excited about it. Once you really get it and youre not protecting some agenda, then its a pretty positive technology.

Fee: How do these technologies not then just become the preserve of the privileged few who do get it?

Lubin: By growing the corpus of the people who get it. Similar to the Web, youve probably seen famous snippets from talk shows from 1996 or 97 when people were saying silly things about this new technology. Its just a question of education. Its a question of younger generations who are crypto native growing older by a few more years and taking their positions in society. This will then just be the way the world works to them.

Fee: Finally, with investment in Web3 down significantly so far this fiscal year in the wake of various crypto scandals and collapses, how does the industry regain momentum?

Lubin: The situations similar to the post-dotcom boom and bust period. We had all this excitement and a lot of amazing evolutionary breakthroughs. Then something big happened. It was a big technological thing. A blow off. A big financial thing. And for the next ten years, all those people got busy. They took failed approaches and improved them. They took their expertise, formed a new company, joined a new company. All those people built e-commerce. They built the web and they transformed the way the planet works.

I think we [the Web3 industry] have that ahead of us for the next few years. Things move really fast in our ecosystem and there will be many astonishing new waves of innovation. But I dont think were going to see any more crazy irrational exuberance in the short-term. Not unless the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decides to green light a bunch of Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange traded funds (ETF) right at the same time.

Even then, I dont think its going to be that crazy. Theres a wave of institutions out there chomping at the bit to get into our space. Theyre chomping at the bit to get their customers into crypto ETFs. Its going to proceed in a little more orderly fashion than it has in the past. But I think there will be tremendous growth. That growth will be a slower exponential, but it will be exponential.

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Blockchains 2 billionth user could be an AI, says Joe Lubin - Forkast News

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