Source item

What I read this week... 1) OpenAI and NVIDIA announced a strategic partnership to deploy 10 gigawatts of NVIDIA AI systems over the next several years, with NVIDIA committing up to $100 billion in phased investment. This ties OpenAI to NVIDIA’s roadmap of the Vera Rubin architecture which is also launching in late 2026. The Vera Rubin is a superchip designed by NVIDIA and is broken into two major parts: Vera: NVIDIA’s first custom CPU, built to work in lockstep with the GPU Rubin: The successor to NVIDIA Blackwell GPU Together, they form a platform built to collapse simulation, data and AI into a single, high-bandwidth, low-latency engine. This is another marker of how the AI race is doubling down on industrial capacity. A 10 GW footprint rivals the energy draw of massive cities like NYC. For NVIDIA, the deal is an opportunity to leverage their cash into a sector they have deep knowledge in to accelerate their own flywheel. While for OpenAI it provides the exponential scale and speed needed for next-gen models and products. 2) On Friday Sept. 19, President Donald Trump announced a new $100,000 annual fee for H-1B visas. The intent is to curb abuses of the system and protect American workers by discouraging reliance on foreign technical labor. In further steps to reform the H-1B program, the Department of Labor will revise and raise the prevailing wage levels in order to up-skill the program and ensure that it is used to hire only the best of the best temporary foreign workers. Additionally the Department of Homeland Security will prioritize high-skilled, high-paid aliens in the H-1B lottery over those at lower wage levels and has the discretion to exempt individuals whose hiring is “in the national interest”. Back in 2023, three of the top 10 H-1B employers were either headquartered in India or originated in India and are now headquartered in the U.S. The median annual compensation for all approved H-1B beneficiaries is $120,000. The new price tag will squeeze companies to focus on the higher end of the talent pool and give up space for other companies to have a higher chance of winning the lottery. Hear more of mine and the Besties take on H-1B on this week’s All-In episode. 3) In a milestone for neurology, uniQure’s experimental gene therapy, AMT-130, demonstrated a statistically significant slowing of disease progression in a Phase I/II clinical trial. The trial suggested that high-dose patients had up to 75% slower decline than matched controls over three years, with improvements across clinical and biomarker endpoints. Huntington’s disease is caused by a faulty huntingtin gene (HTT) that leads to the production of an abnormal, toxic protein which progressively damages brain cells. The build up leads to symptoms showing up typically between 30 and 50 years old. The core idea behind AMT-130 is to reduce the amount of the huntingtin protein that cells produce. If replicated in larger trials, this could shift Huntington’s treatment from symptom management to disease modification. For biotech, it reinforces the momentum of gene therapies as a platform technology with potential to help cure ALS, Parkinson’s, and other monogenic neurodegenerative diseases. UniQure plans to submit a Biologics License Application (BLA) to the FDA in the first quarter of 2026, with an anticipated U.S. launch later that year, pending approval. Further reading on my substack: https://t.co/FfFmU3tvOc