Austin Hill

In early 2024 my friend and former cofounder of Blockstream @MarkFriedenbach approached me with the most fantastical, ambitious and meaningful idea I’d ever seen. What if we could rebuild our world atom by atom, end scarcity and achieve the sci-fi powered dreams of programmable nanotechnology?

Just fair warning. Been getting tons of air drop unsolicited marketing and mentions last few days. I report and mute all these unsolicited offers as illegal behavior under various countries securities laws.

JUPITER supercomputer has achieved the first full simulation of a 50-qubit quantum computer. This breaks the previous 48-qubit record, which doesn't sound crazy, until you understand how many more resources each qubit needs. What happened: - full simulation of a 50-qubit universal quantum computer - leverages over 16,000 GH200 Superchips on Europe's JUPITER exascale supercomputer - incorporates a byte-encoding compression technique, reducing memory needs eightfold - employs a dynamic optimization system for efficient data exchange across the superchips This is a critical testbed for developing and validating quantum algorithms like VQE and QAOA, exploring future quantum system behavior before physical hardware can execute such complex tasks. We will NEED to have efficient simulators of quantum systems, otherwise, how will we develop new algorithms.

Interesting to see the breakdown of energy costs for Rydberg atom quantum computing. A study found 0.662 mJ per run for an algorithm, with 99% of that energy consumed by optical traps rather than computation. Quantum energy advantage over classical begins around 39 qubits.

DAO crossover. Same as the double anti-parallel even (DAE) but now with an odd number of half-turns between crossovers. Got 10 crossovers to get though and then we'll put them together for more complex stuff. samson-connect.net/documents/28b7…

I use to hire trucks to drive around competitors running a billboard with a ad for a job site encouraging them to quit today and do something meaningful with their lives and skills. Worked beautifully till years later I tied to recruit the best engineering manager and operator in the city. Took me 2 years longer cause he wouldn’t return my phone calls cause I decimated her engineering team by poaching all his best engineers he spent years assembling. Lesson learned - no more poaching. Build a culture and mission that people flock too. Tell your story on your own platform about why you and your team matter to the world. The right people will come to you. ❤️ - poaching and recruiters are for people trying to sell you something who’s story can’t attract staff on their own. Mission over mercenaries, integrity and respect will bring you the people who who need.

@austinhill @claudeai Haha, totally feel that on the poaching policy, but good luck with the startup build!

I love @claudeai and what Anthropic has built but of he’s working at Dunder Mifflin Paper Company helping them transform I don’t do poaching anymore. I guess we will have to find another AI model to help us build our startup.

@xiaaweb3 @claudeai Thanks Xia

@austinhill @claudeai love the hustle no hard feelings here keep building

Neutral-atom quantum computers have the same dirty secret: it's all lasers. Racks of bulky, expensive visible/near-IR laser systems to trap and manipulate atoms. Elegant qubits but bulky engineering. A paper from @Harvard + @NIST + @CUBoulder puts the gain medium on a chip. 🧵

New MIT project, artificial muscles made from woven fibers powered a soft robotic arm. Key is tiny embedded pumps that move fluid using electric fields, eliminating noisy compressors. The result: smooth, compliant motion suitable for wearable devices.

@0xcaosheng_888 Love this

@austinhill orchestrator era

Anthropic’s extension of skills to build lawyers, financial analysts, designers is changing the game so quickly. A single user equipped with these tools and some mastery of their use can be a 100x performer in multiple category’s moving from an individual expert in one field, to an orchestration expert in multiple domains.

Yeah, his focus and morals of humanity’s safe and empowering use of AI over mundane use cases like more effective marketing is amazing. We are just beginning to see the downstream effects of alphafold but it literally is now saving lives with drug discovery from protein folding solutions hence to the world for free. Inspiring.

@austinhill @demishassabis His work feels genuinely historic

The contributions @demishassabis has been making to humanity with his lab are truly outstanding. Check out the documentary on you tube about his lab and the work they’ve done (with a very large focus on health applications)

I wrote a long-form piece for this print issue, painting a macro and monetary picture with a ten-year view:

Okay folks, this qualifies as BREAKING NEWS! Harold “Sonny” White, the warp drive pioneer behind NASA’s EagleWorks Lab, just stepped out of stealth with Casimir Inc. to unveil MicroSPARC: the first battery free chip to harvest continuous electrical power straight from the quantum vacuum via the Casimir force. The 5 mm × 5 mm device uses millions of custom microscale Casimir cavities fabricated on a substrate. Inside each cavity, two fixed conductive walls create a region of negative vacuum pressure (the well known Casimir effect). Stationary micropillars anchored in the middle act as antennas. Electrons from the cavity walls then quantum tunnel to the pillars because the interior is a lower energy “quieter” zone — and the probability of tunneling back is orders of magnitude lower. This one way “quantum ratchet” flow generates a measurable DC current with no external power source or moving parts. Prototypes already fabricated at university nanofab facilities (Texas A&M AggieFab, MIT.nano) have been tested in RF-shielded, low noise chambers for weeks. The team reports outputs ranging from millivolts to volts at picoamp to microamp levels using precision electrometers and Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy. Target performance for the first commercial chip: ~1.5 V at 25 µA (≈40 µW continuous). Stacking and scaling could reach milliwatts or even watts per device. Initial applications are ultra low power: always on IoT sensors, wearables, and medical implants. Longer term roadmap includes trickle charging phones, powering small electronics, and eventually grid independent homes or EVs. Commercialization is targeted for 2028, starting at ~$100/W before dropping toward $10/W. White ties the work directly to his earlier theoretical paper on emergent quantization from a dynamic vacuum and sees it as a practical power source for the deep-space missions he’s long championed. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and independent scientists have so far declined public comment. But if the engineering scales as hoped, MicroSPARC would represent a genuine paradigm shift: continuous, maintenance free power drawn from the fabric of spacetime itself. A bold leap from warp-drive theory into real hardware. Progress (and vacuum-powered chips) marches on. Photo: MicroSPARC | Casimir Inc. Source: thedebrief.org/free-energy-fr…

“We already have functioning prototype devices fabricated and tested in research nanofabrication environments.” - @DrSonnyWhite, Founder and CEO of Casimir in @Debriefmedia today. thedebrief.org/free-energy-fr…

Some of the best crypto and old school Cypherpunks. I’ve worked with @jwilkins and @JeremyKnoxHill since the late 90’s at ZeroKnowledge systems where we built TOR before TOR and fully encrypted zero knowledge nyms. @adam3us was one of our cryto Evil Genius team mates. (Search Freedom Network for design docs and threat models) Both Adam and I hired Wilkins to be CSO for Blockstream and we both invested in Cloaked. The world needs privacy enhancing tools based on math and zero knowledge principles and they are building those tools today. Before you rush to judgment study the history of the people involved.

@cloakedwireless Honeypot wireless name 🤣

Ghost SIM cloning rising. Cloaked crypto auth makes it useless. Stay ahead at Cloaked Wireless

Given you can’t see atoms with the naked eye as they are usually sub angstorm and smaller then the the visible wave length of light, if may be a little while. Firs use cases will be defect engineering, nano photonics where a small number of atoms placed intentionally can make all the difference in the world. Then we build parts (see work of @mooreeth42 ). This is simulated in AtomCAD github.com/atomCAD/atomCAD Then we verify using various atomic scale imaging techniques (SPM/STM; TEM; AFM and Single Atom NMRI (yet to be build) Hope that helps.

@austinhill @MachinePhaseSys soo... when do we see the atomic foundry in action?

I’ll be announcing more details in the coming month as we launch the company officially but I’m very excited to announce my return to startups. I’ve become the cofounder & executive instigator @MachinePhaseSys 🧵

@Seven_Nguyen666 💯

@austinhill family first, the real force behind it all

As we come to the closing of Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you) I'd like to encourage everyone to take moment to celebrate family. Take more pictures, record conversations with your parents about their dreams, regrets and greatest lessons. Spend time with your siblings. Be a great uncle, aunt, brother or sister. Be a better husband, wife or partner. Learn about your inlaws and the lessons they taught your partner. These are times and memories you will never be able to get back. Families are hard to get right. But they are the anchor that shape and power our lives. When family dynamics go wrong, sometimes entire Empires pay the price and it takes 9 films to sort out the consequences. #Maythe4thbewithyou

Every AI chip on Earth starts as a crystal pulled from a pool of molten silicon at 1 millimeter per minute. TSMC, Samsung, and Intel cannot make them without it. In the Czochralski process, a seed crystal the size of a pencil dips into a crucible at 1,414°C. As it is slowly pulled upward, silicon atoms lock into a single crystal lattice. The boule grows to 300 millimeters in diameter, 2 meters in length, and 265 kilograms. Purity: 99.999999999%. Nothing humans have ever made at industrial scale comes close. One atom of the wrong element per 100 billion can shift the electrical properties of every chip cut from that crystal. Two Japanese companies, Shin-Etsu and SUMCO, produce over 50% of the world's 300mm semiconductor wafers. A single wafer sells for $150 to $300. A finished AI chip cut from it sells for over $30,000. China's largest silicon wafer maker, Zhonghuan, serves the solar panel market at six nines of purity. Semiconductor grade requires eleven. Japan has held that gap for 40 years. You can melt silicon anywhere. But you cannot grow a perfect crystal without decades of process knowledge.