Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
People who believe they are creating God have a motive most companies lack, and the most impactful things in history have usually been fueled by religion. On top of the belief, these labs must make a business work to survive, and that goes a very long way.
The other contenders run on something else. Google just needs search to not die too quickly, and it already has Google Cloud, TPUs, and years of research behind this. Meta has a huge advertising business, and in a world where it was run by anyone other than Mark Zuckerberg, it would not be on the bleeding edge. Hiring a completely new team and starting from scratch is one of the purest manifestations of founder energy.
How has religion driven huge building projects?
Religious belief has funded projects that outlast their builders. Cologne Cathedral was begun in 1248 and not completed until 1880. Workers and donors committed their lives to a result they would never see.
How does founder control shape a company's bets?
A dual-class share structure lets a founder keep majority voting power while owning a smaller share of the stock. Meta has such a structure, which gives Mark Zuckerberg majority voting control, according to the company's SEC filings. That lets him commit the company to long-term bets even when shareholders object.
How did Google come to build TPUs?
Google began developing its tensor processing units internally in 2013. Engineers had calculated that if people used voice search for a few minutes a day, Google would have to double its data center capacity. The TPU was announced publicly in 2016, according to a paper by Google engineers led by Norm Jouppi.