BMW sells 2.5 million cars and 194,000 motorcycles annually, almost all in a traditional car dealership. But the 100-year-old car brand wants to sell cars online, just like Tesla. Now BMW is embarking on a major project with Adobe to get "phygital" ... to be able to do business seamlessly across apps, websites, and physical car dealerships, however its clients prefer. That means data, insights, software, and a complete rethinking of how its thousands of car dealerships interact with customers. And, of course, how customers interact with BMW ... including before they buy, when they buy, and for years of owning their vehicles. In this TechFirst, we chat with BMW SVP Jens Theimer. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Will super-smart artificial intelligence be the ultimate cheat code for beating the market? Probably not ... but its could ensure you retire with 25% more than you otherwise would. In this TechFirst we chat with the CEO of Qraft USA, Robert Nestor. Qraft is an AI company focused on investing. The company has a billion USD "assets under AI" in Korea and is expanding to the US. While the AI is active in crafting the strategy and execution, humans still make the final decisions. The result, so far, is about a 1% improvement on what financial advisors would otherwise get. While that doesn't sound huge, that's significant over your earning and investing lifespan. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Digital retail giant Amazon has over 200,000 robots helping deliver more than 350 million different products in an unceasing flood of billions of deliveries. Its fulfillment machine with both free and fast shipping has become a key competitive moat against other retailers: free shipping and 1-day or 2-day shipping is why Amazon customers chose Amazon. So how can other retailers, whether giants like Walmart or smaller brands, compete? One way is by stealing a march on the e-commerce behemoth and automating themselves.  In this episode of TechFirst, we chat with Locus Robotics CMO Karen Leavitt. Locus Robotics robots-as-a-service will pick more than a billion items in warehouse, fulfilment centers, and logistics hubs ... and the company just added more. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

We have billions of smart things. How can we create a true internet of things with trillions? We won't ... unless we have a super-cheap, super-small, super-efficient chip that doesn't need a battery, has significant sensors and capability, and can be printed almost for free. That "almost" is still a problem, but the Wiliot Pixel 2 is a computer the size of a postage stamp. There's no batteries. You don't plug it in. And it powers itself by harvesting the energy from ambient radio waves. In this TechFirst, we chat with Wiliot exec Stephen Statler about the Pixel, about Wiliot's no-code applications in the cloud, and how he sees the future of IoT and IIoT. A big hint: expanding IoT at least 100X from where it is today to trillions of devices, not just billions. And that is when we'll really see the benefits of smart matter, a smart supply chain, smart cities, smart factories, smart stores, smart homes, and much more ... Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

COR is an infrared spectrometer that measures your blood health and how the food you eat and the exercise that you engage in impacts it. The first product of its kind, COR was created by a former Apple Health exec who wanted to know: is my diet good for me? Because everyone's response -- even to theoretically healthy foods -- is different. Even genetically identical twins don't have the same metabolic response to things, recent studies have shown. So the idea with COR is that you analyze your blood at home via infrared spectrometry about 4 times over a 3-week period, and you get specific data and recommendations back about what's good -- and what's bad -- for your health. The result, CEO Bob Messerschmidt says, is potentially the ability to have another 15 years of healthy, productive life. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

MIT scientists are building ElectroVoxels, small, smart, self-assembling robots designed for space.  It's programmable matter, infinitely recyclable large-scale 3D printing, if you will, and it could be the future of robotics and machinery in space. In this TechFirst, I chat with MIT PhD student Martin Nisser "Rather than building a robot or a structure in a top-down manner, we envision robots or structures as these modules of hundreds or thousands of small components or modules that can rearrange themselves with respect to their neighbors," Nisser says.  The mini-bots don't have actuators: they use "small, easily manufactured, inexpensive electromagnets into the edges of the cubes that repel and attract, allowing the robots to spin and move around each other and rapidly change shape." Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

Is neuromorphic computing the only way we can actually achieve general artificial intelligence?  Very likely yes, according to Gordon Wilson, CEO of Rain Neuromorphics, who is trying to recreate the human brain in hardware and "give machines all of the capabilities that we recognize in ourselves." Rain Neuromorphics has built a neuromorphic chip that is analog. In other words it does not simulate neural networks: it is a neural network in analog, not digital. It's a physical collection of neurons and synapses, as opposed to an abstraction of neurons and synapses. That means no ones and zeroes of traditional computing but voltages and currents that represent the mathematical operations you want to perform. Right now it's 1000X more energy efficient than existing neural networks, Wilson says, because it doesn't have to spend all those computing cycles simulating the brain. The circuit is the neural network, which leads to some extraordinary gains in both speed improvement and power reduction, according to Wilson. Links: Rain Neuromorphics: https://rain.ai Episode sponsor: SMRT1 https://smrt1.ca/ Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/ Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1 Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier

Will NFTs be a trillion-dollar market by 2030? Or will they vanish in a blazing explosion of hate from all the naysayers? (I might give even odds on each side, actually!) In this episode of TechFirst I chat with Rarible chief product officer Alex Salnikov. And yes, he’s aware that there’s way too many bored apes, yacht apes, space apes, technicolor apes, and all other kinds of crypto mishmash digital art that are vying for the stupid money that is out there chasing NFTs. But, he says, half of all digital commerce doesn’t need to have a physical component at all. And that would transform the future of commerce. Using, of course, the foundation built by today’s NFTs. But we’re early. In fact, we’re just now in the “Cambrian explosion,” Salnikov says, which will birth a massive amount of innovation and completely change the face of commerce, crypto, and how we buy, own, and share the things we want. Links: Rarible: https://rarible.com/ Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

So you got a great deal on your brand-new mutant ape yacht puppy NFT? But is it legit? DeviantArt is now scanning 5 million NFTs a week. Every month, it's finding  40,000 stolen, infringing, fraudulent NFTs. In other words, the people minting the NFTs don't actually own the images in the first place ... somewhat ironically since the whole idea of an NFT is prove ownership. NFTs are clearly the new gold rush (you have mine, right?) But where there’s gold, there’s thieves and opportunists, and apparently, that’s just as true of NFTs as crypto in general. DeviantArt is the world’s largest art community and has been around since 2000. It now has over 61 million members, and it's getting involved to ensure its members' art doesn't get stolen. In this TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with DeviantArt CMO Liat Karpel Gurwicz and COO Moti Levy. Sponsor: SMRT1, a Smart Vending Machine Platform that transforms traditional vending hardware into "Smarter, Better, Faster" automated retail kiosks, a convenience store without the store. Links: SMRT1: https://smrt1.ca/ DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/ Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier 

How soon will we have robot surgeons? Health care has gone remote lately, but in reality, most of it is fairly simple: video conferencing during Covid. But just recently for the first time ever a robot surgeon at Johns Hopkins University performed abdominal surgery on soft tissue. Granted … it was on a pig, not a human … but STAR, or Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot, was a success. And that means there's significant hope that robot surgeons are not only possible but a reality. Unfortunately, it might be a decade or two before this is normal. But technology does advance quickly ... and we need it to. Healthcare is unevenly and inequitably available both globally and nationally, and cheap, fast, effective surgeries would be a huge boost to health care outcomes. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Tamir Wolf, CEO and co-founder of surgical intelligence platform Theator. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst ... and support my work. TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/ Forbes columns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/  Full videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/johnkoetsier?sub_confirmation=1  Keep in touch: https://twitter.com/johnkoetsier