Requiem for a superconductor

Hi, its Sarah McBride in San Francisco. Maybe the real room-temperature superconductor was the friends we made along the way. But first...Th [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi, its Sarah McBride in San Francisco. Maybe the real room-temperature superconductor was the friends we made along the way. But first... Three things you need to know today: • WeWork has raised “substantial doubt” about [staying in business]( • Nvidia unveiled a faster chip aimed at [cementing its AI dominance]( • Lyft got clobbered in extended trading after reporting [3% sales growth]( LK-99, we hardly knew you The tech community just experienced a viral communal moment, its own wonky equivalent of a must-watch game or national political scandal. The plot revolved around an arcane concept in physics: a room-temperature superconductor, a holy grail material that could conduct electricity with no resistance, without requiring massive cooling. Physicists in South Korea claimed to have created the material, called LK-99. It would be a momentous discovery — if it was real. OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman [joked about it]( on social media, [along with]( Stripe Inc. Chief Executive Officer Patrick Collison. It became a [meme](. Flexport Inc. founder Ryan Petersen [mused](, maybe only half-ironically, “Were the Egyptians levitating those giant blocks with LK-99?!?” Meanwhile, legions of scientists and pseudo-scientists assembled to try to reproduce the superconductivity result the physicists claimed. If successful, the material would make easy work of magnetic levitation, nuclear fusion and other complicated technologies. It would also revolutionize transportation and energy, among other fields. As each set of results from other teams came in, so did more opinions, fakes, [jokes]( and attempts to [sell T-shirts](. And then by Tuesday, the fervor appeared to reach a [glum conclusion](: Multiple institutions had found that LK-99 did not possess the vaunted superconducting capabilities. But rather than lament the result, there’s still reason to celebrate the fleeting LK-99 hype cycle. “It’s absolutely blown up into probably the most wholesome trend on Twitter or X that we’ve seen in years,” said Andrew McCalip, an engineer at startup Varda Space Industries on “This Week in Startups,” a [podcast]( hosted by investor Jason Calacanis. McCalip had been among those trying to replicate the work, with the buy-in of his boss, Varda CEO Delian Asparouhov, who called the efforts an “incredible, Indiana Jones-for-nerds adventure.” As research refuting the claims came to light, many people heard the bad news from a coffee company product manager named Alex Kaplan. “The room temperature superconductivity revolution will have to wait until another day,” he [wrote]( Sunday. Kaplan, a 24-year-old with a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton, had about 250 followers on X when he started posting about LK-99 last month. He initially expected two or three reposts. Instead, he wrote a thread about the work that [got 30 million views]( and he now has 42,000 followers. Along the way, Kaplan said he took a few meetings with superconductivity-curious VCs, and noted that the publicity even helped his employer, Cometeer, sell more coffee. Where does the agony and the ecstasy of the LK-99 debate leave us? It felt a little like a niche version of other dramas that have captivated the masses: the World Cup, the last season of Succession, or the rescue of Thai children trapped in a watery cave. But it was a also a reminder, during a [time of acrimony]( in Silicon Valley, that technology has the potential to vastly propel human development. That’s even if, looking at the gig economy and social media landscapes, it often doesn’t feel like it. And with so many impromptu superconductivity research labs now up and running, maybe next time the breakthrough will be real. —[Sarah McBride](mailto:smcbride24@bloomberg.net) The big story What’s going on at Stability AI? The artificial intelligence unicorn has been at the center of tech’s AI fervor. But after the breakout success of Stable Diffusion, high-level departures at Stability and concerns around its CEO have put [the startup’s lead is at risk](. Get fully charged Rivian Automotive nudged up its production guidance for the year and narrowed its loss expectations, as the maker of plug-in vehicles works to reestablish itself as a rising player in the increasingly [crowded EV market](. French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi says a [corruption probe]( into executives central to his telecommunications empire Altice is having “no impact whatsoever” on the company’s operations. Take-Two Interactive Software, the company behind video games like Grand Theft Auto, rose in late trading after management predicted a [big 2024](. 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