Interlune Secures $15M For Lunar Mining As Nvidia Preps Next-Gen AI Chip

Interlune, a Seattle-based startup, has secured $15 million in funding to pursue its ambitious goal of harvesting and selling natural resources from the Moon, starting with helium-3. The company, founded by Rob Meyerson, Gary Lai, and Harrison Schmitt, the only living member of Apollo 17's crew, plans to design its first robotic lander mission to verify helium-3 levels at their chosen site on the lunar surface. The Moon's surface has been exposed to solar wind carrying high-energy particles, including helium-3, which is a valuable resource for quantum computing and nuclear fusion reactors.

While the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015 states that any resource obtained in space is the property of the extracting entity, there are currently no regulations set for space resource extraction and mining. This lack of regulation raises concerns about the potential alteration of celestial objects' makeup. Despite these challenges, companies like Interlune and NASA are making strides towards lunar resource mining, with NASA planning to explore resource harvesting from the Moon within a decade as part of their Artemis mission.

In other news, Nvidia, the company behind the most sought-after hardware in the world, is expected to unveil the next generation of its chip, the B100, at the annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2024. The B100 is rumored to be Nvidia's first multi-die chip, potentially making it even more powerful than its predecessor, the H100. The high demand for Nvidia's H100 chips has raised concerns about potential shortages, prompting some competitors, such as Amazon and Google, to develop their own versions of the chips to stay competitive in the AI race.