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| [THE X NEWSLETTER] |
Shifting sands and
“moonshot compost” |
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| The ideas that scaffold our lives evolve slowly and invisibly, until a tectonic phenomenon — like war, pandemic or natural disaster — exposes and explodes our assumptions. Forced to reconsider a future that had seemed stable, we remember, often painfully, that stability is an illusion and that our lives are built on constantly shifting sands. |
| For those of us trying to bring a better future here faster amidst so much uncertainty, it's never been more important to have a true north. At X, that’s the belief that technology is a powerful lever for improving billions of people’s lives, and that we should be taking big, risky swings to find 10X-better ideas rather than settling for incremental improvements. |
| All our projects steer by this star, as you’ll find in this edition. Xer Eugenie Rives shares how "moonshot compost" can grow your ideas — and nourish your inner innovator. Next, take a peek at Project Mineral’s un-bean-lievable new partnership to build a more food-secure world. In the What if? Files, see how X’s kill criteria helped the H2E team make a hard decision — and how their work can support other innovators working to improve access to safe drinking water. And, of course, you can catch up with all the latest news and open roles at X. |
As always, we want to hear from you — please share your thoughts at
x-newsletter-feedback@x.team. |
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| Courtney Hohne |
| Editor & Storyteller for Moonshots |
| Illustrations by Rune Fisker |
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| SECTION 1 |
| MOONSHOT COMPOST |
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| Xer Eugenie Rives, who helps to cultivate X's ecosystem and its potential moonshots, shares what she’s learned about keeping an innovation ecosystem healthy and balanced — and how killing your own idea may just help many more ideas bloom. |
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| SECTION 2 |
| MINERAL AND THE BEANSTALK |
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| Magic beans may not exist — but machine-learning-powered “magic vision” may just help. For the last year our sustainable agriculture project, Mineral, has been working with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT to study the world’s largest collection of beans at their newly-opened Future Seeds genebank in Palmira, Colombia. The seedbank’s collection, which totals over 36,000 varieties of beans, is so large that it has remained largely unstudied until now. CIAT’s researchers are using Mineral’s computational tools — including the plant rover, nicknamed “Don Roverto” by the local team — to accelerate their efforts to uncover hidden crop traits. It took CIAT nearly 30 years to find the last drought resistant bean variety. The hope is that Mineral’s tools will help researchers make discoveries like this faster in future. |
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| SECTION 3 |
| THE WHAT IF? FILES |
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| Project H2E |
| The reality of the innovation process is that most of X’s explorations don’t work out. Our archives are littered with ideas that lasted anywhere from a few hours to a few years. We want to share things we’ve learned in case they inspire someone else to come up with something even better. |
| Active |
| 2019 - 2021 |
| The moonshot |
| What if we could improve access to safe drinking water by harvesting water from the air? |
| Huge problem |
| 2.2 billion people, nearly 1 in 3 worldwide, don’t have reliable or affordable access to safe drinking water, a problem that’s exacerbated by climate-change related events. In some countries, people spend anywhere between 10-50% of their income just covering water costs; and women and children often spend hours collecting water for their families. Access to safe drinking water is hindered by complex structural challenges — which is why, in many places, piped water infrastructure could still be decades away. |
| Radical solution |
| Atmospheric water harvesters (AWHs) — devices which pull water from the air — have often been overlooked as a potential solution; yet they can be small, modular and renewably-powered — decoupling them from some of the more systemic barriers that prevent people from accessing safe drinking water. Everyone has access to the air and the sun, so the H2E (“Hydration to Everyone”) team began with a question: “What if you could put the power to generate daily drinking water into the hands of individuals, no matter where they live, by creating an affordable, easy-to-use device that harvests water from the air and is powered by the sun?" |
| Breakthrough technology |
| H2E’s prototype AWH device basically replicated the natural process of condensation, but on a much smaller scale. This was made possible through a variety of processes and components — namely, constantly recirculating air, solar energy and a desiccant (a material that absorbs moisture, like the silica gel packets you find in a new pair of shoes). The prototype device also ran on solar heat and was made from vacuum-formed parts — a manufacturing technique typically used to make small, disposable items, like takeaway food containers. |
| Cause of death |
| At the start of every project, we set ourselves ambitious targets as well as kill criteria: for the H2E team, these criteria included the ability to operate at high temperatures, affordability for people living on under $10/day, and a cost target of $0.01 per liter. Despite promising progress, it would have taken significant development work and iteration to prove feasibility at these criteria, and so the project was wound down. To support further research, the H2E team published a paper in the journal Nature which demonstrated that small, solar-powered AWH devices could be used to provide clean drinking water to around 1 billion people who currently do not have access to it. The team also shared their geospatial analysis tools, geospatial datasets, prototype designs, and a non-assertion patent pledge so that others can build upon their findings. |
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| SECTION 4 |
| NEWS FROM X |
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| What if every pallet, box and item had a voice? |
| From improving last-mile delivery with Wing drones, to reimagining how people get from A to B with Waymo, to reducing food waste with Project Delta: improving how we move goods around to reduce waste and inefficiency is something that we’ve been exploring at the Moonshot Factory for many years. Now Project Chorus is on a mission to radically improve our understanding of where physical goods are located, where they are needed, what state they are in and how they are used. The team is creating advanced sensor technologies and combining them with breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide unprecedented, real-time visibility into the physical stuff moving around our world. Learn more here. |
| Ringing in a new era for Black Women on Boards |
| Fifty years ago at IBM, Patricia Roberts Harris became the first Black woman to serve on a Fortune 500 corporate board. In honor of this trailblazer, Xer Asmau Ahmed joined 20 other women from Black Women on Boards (BWOB) to ring the NASDAQ opening bell. The milestone was featured on Good Morning America. |
| Accelerating Africa’s digital transformation |
| Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai shared Project Taara’s work with Econet at the 35th African Union Summit, where he emphasized the importance of partnerships and reiterated Alphabet’s commitment to Africa’s digital transformation. |
| X graduates in the world |
| Former Xer Mike Wiacek, who led cybersecurity project Chronicle, shared what he learned about leadership at X. Malta (formerly Project Malta) has been awarded a grant from the European Commission and the European Investment Bank to begin building a thermal energy storage facility in Spain — supporting the country’s ambitious clean power initiatives. X graduate Wing partnered with Walgreens to bring its services to Little Elm and Frisco in North Dallas: the first time ever that drone delivery will be available in a major U.S. metropolitan area. Meanwhile, X graduate Waymo announced its newest partnership with brokerage firm C.H. Robinson to test its autonomous trucks in Texas along a 240-mile route between Dallas and Houston. |
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| SECTION 5 |
| CAREER SPOTLIGHT |
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| Calling all moonshot-takers! |
| We’re looking for inventors, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who want to find radical solutions to the world’s most stubborn problems. |
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Rapid Evaluator, Early Investigations |
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Hardware Lead for Project Mineral |
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Recruiter, Early Stage Projects |
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| ABOUT X |
| X is a moonshot factory. We’re an eclectic group of inventors and entrepreneurs who build and launch breakthrough technologies that aim to improve the lives of millions, even billions, of people and create large, sustainable businesses along the way. Our goal: 10X impact on the world’s most intractable problems, not just 10% improvement. X is a division of Google parent company Alphabet. Visit us at x.company. |
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| X, a division of Google LLC. All rights reserved / X - 100 Mayfield Avenue, Mountain View, CA, 94043, United States / www.x.company |
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