Connect with us

Published

on

Flight delays in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Truckers led down unsafe routes in Richmond, Vermont. And power grid disruptions throughout Ukraine. These troubles stem from a global communication system highly reliant on GPS satellites and the signals they transmit for essential functions.

To ensure that U.S. infrastructure won’t fall apart — even if the nation’s GPS satellites are disrupted by weather, warfare or age — a startup in Boulder, Colorado called Mesa Quantum is developing chip-sized alternative technology.

Specifically, Mesa Quantum is building “chip-scale atomic clocks” and other miniaturized quantum sensors, which can measure and detect changes in the environment around a device to signal where it is in the world, where it needs to go and to keep it in sync with other systems.

These sensors can ensure clear and steady video calls regardless of the users’ location, or enable robots, underwater drones and autonomous vehicles to maneuver deftly in dense populations or around obstacles where GPS signals are weak or unavailable.

Cofounded by Mesa Quantum CEO Sristy Agrawal and CTO Wale Lawal in 2023, the company has won a $1.9 million Space Force grant to demonstrate its alternative to GPS technology in military and civilian applications.

The company has also raised about $3.7 million in a seed stage round of funding led by J2 Ventures, the Boston-based health and defense tech fund, alongside hardware investors SOSV.

J2 Ventures cofounder and managing partner, Alex Harstrick, told CNBC his fund backed Mesa Quantum in part because of the founders’ extraordinary technical background.

Agrawal recently attained a doctorate from the University of Colorado, in an elite program affiliated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her research has focused on quantum information, computing and gravity.

Agrawal told CNBC that the lab below her office at the university is home to the world’s most precise clock. “Working here and interacting with all these different groups led me to appreciate what impact these technologies could have for real, not just theoretically in the future,” she said.

Her cofounder, Lawal, is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, attained his PhD at Rice University in materials science and nano-engineering, and an MBA at Harvard.

Before taking the entrepreneurial plunge, he spent years in military research organizations, developing systems for use in “GPS contested environments” such as precision-guided missiles, swarm drone technology, and the magnetic navigation systems used to guide military aircraft.

Lawal explained that military aircraft and other vehicles cannot afford to have their systems disrupted and jammed. Any disruptions could lead to “catastrophic events for warfighters” in the air and on the ground. “If unmanned aircraft lose GPS signals, which they rely on to surveil the environment and provide intelligence information to troops down range, the troops cannot complete critical missions like a search and rescue.”

Many of the GPS satellites operated by the U.S. are now aging beyond their intended lifespans.

When they met, the scientific duo quickly agreed on the burgeoning need for mass-manufacturable, and chip-scale, technology to alleviate the risks of GPS-related failures in military and commercial systems.

Harstrick said his fund hopes that Mesa Quantum will have its first demonstration of mass scale “atomic clocks” (quantum timing sensors) validated by a top-tier semiconductor manufacturing partner” in the next few years.

He’s also guessing Mesa Quantum’s sensor tech will be in demand among companies that build or operate their own data centers.

Lawal explained, “Data centers use GPS to synchronize their networks today, so that they can accurately exchange communications or share data across the cloud. Any form of disruption to that network synchronization can cause crashes — whether that’s to a financial system, a hospital system, or a social network.”

Technology to help data centers safeguard against such crashes could help them prevent data loss and improve cybersecurity, the CTO said.

No matter which private sector players eventually embrace the startup’s quantum sensors, CEO Sristy Agrawal said the U.S. government is likely to be among Mesa Quantum’s biggest early customers. “The U.S. government has established major initiatives to spur innovation in this area and is seeking to purchase a million quantum sensors each year — if they can simply be mass-produced,” she explained.

With its grant funding and seed round in place, Agrawal said, Mesa Quantum will look to grow its team in Boulder, especially hiring atomic molecular and optical physicists, engineers and manufacturing experts this year.

The longer-term vision, she said, is to “bring a suite of quantum sensors to the market that could do everything GPS-based systems are capable of today — without all of the risks and vulnerabilities.”

Continue Reading

Technology

Elon Musk’s X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

Published

on

By

Elon Musk's X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

Elon Musk looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

The Elon Musk-owned social media platform X experienced a brief outage on Saturday morning, with tens of thousands of users reportedly unable to use the site.

About 25,000 users reported issues with the platform, according to the analytics platform Downdetector, which gathers data from users to monitor issues with various platforms.

Roughly 21,000 users reported issues just after 8:30 a.m. ET, per the analytics platform.

The issues appeared to be largely resolved by around 9:55 a.m., when about 2,000 users were reporting issues with the platform.

Read more CNBC politics coverage

X did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Additional information on the outage was not available.

Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla, acquired X, formerly known as Twitter in 2022.

The site has had a number of widespread outages since the acquisition.

The site experienced another outage in March, which Musk attributed at the time to a “massive cyberattack.”

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk wrote in a post at the time.

This is breaking news. Check back for updates

Continue Reading

Technology

Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

Published

on

By

Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

Artificial intelligence robot looking at futuristic digital data display.

Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images

Businesses are turning to artificial intelligence tools to help them navigate real-world turbulence in global trade.

Several tech firms told CNBC say they’re deploying the nascent technology to visualize businesses’ global supply chains — from the materials that are used to form products, to where those goods are being shipped from — and understand how they’re affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

Last week, Salesforce said it had developed a new import specialist AI agent that can “instantly process changes for all 20,000 product categories in the U.S. customs system and then take action on them” as needed, to help navigate changes to tariff systems.

Engineers at the U.S. software giant used the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a 4,400-page document of tariffs on goods imported to the U.S., to inform answers generated by the agent.

“The sheer pace and complexity of global tariff changes make it nearly impossible for most businesses to keep up manually,” Eric Loeb, executive vice president of government affairs at Salesforce, told CNBC. “In the past, companies might have relied on small teams of in-house experts to keep pace.”

Firms say that AI systems are enabling them to take decisions on adjustments to their global supply chains much faster.

Andrew Bell, chief product officer of supply chain management software firm Kinaxis, said that manufacturers and distributors looking to inform their response to tariffs are using his firm’s machine learning technology to assess their products and the materials that go into them, as well as external signals like news articles and macroeconomic data.

“With that information, we can start doing some of those simulations of, here is a particular part that is in your build material that has a significant tariff. If you switched to using this other part instead, what would the impact be overall?” Bell told CNBC.

‘AI’s moment to shine’

Trump’s tariffs list — which covers dozens of countries — has forced companies to rethink their supply chains and pricing, with the likes of Walmart and Nike already raising prices on some products. The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion of goods in 2024, according to census data.

Uncertainty from the U.S. tariff measures “actually probably presents AI’s moment to shine,” Zack Kass, a futurist and former head of OpenAI’s go-to-market strategy, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy last month.

Read more CNBC tech news

“If you wonder how hard things could get without AI vis-a-vis automation, and what would happen in a world where you can’t just employ a bunch of people overnight, AI presents this alternative proposal,” he added.

Nagendra Bandaru, managing partner and global head of technology services at Indian IT giant Wipro, said clients are using the company’s agentic AI solutions “to pivot supplier strategies, adjust trade lanes, and manage duty exposure dynamically as policy landscapes evolve.”

Wipro says it uses a range of AI systems — both proprietary and supplied by third parties — from large language models to traditional machine learning and computer vision techniques to inspect physical assets in cross-border transit.

‘Not a silver bullet’

While it preferred to keep company names confidential, Wipro said that firms using its AI products to navigate Trump’s tariffs range from a Fortune 500 electronics manufacturer with factories in Asia to an automotive parts supplier exporting to Europe and North America.

“AI is a powerful enabler — but not a silver bullet,” Bandaru told CNBC. “It doesn’t replace trade policy strategy, it enhances it by transforming global trade from a reactive challenge into a proactive, data-driven advantage.”

AI was already a key investment priority for global firms prior to Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements on April. Nearly three-quarters of business leaders ranked AI and generative AI in their top three technologies for investment in 2025, according to a report by Capgemini published in January.

“There are a number of ways AI can assist companies dealing with the tariffs and resulting uncertainty.  But any AI solution’s success will be predicated on the quality of the data it has access to,” Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told CNBC.

The venture capitalist said that one of his portfolio companies, FourKites, uses supply chain network data with AI to help firms understand the logistics impacts of adjusting suppliers due to tariffs.

“They are working with a number of Fortune 500 companies to leverage their agents for freight and ocean to provide this level of visibility and intelligence,” Agarwal said.

“Switching suppliers may reduce tariffs costs, but might increase lead times and transportation costs,” he added. “In addition, the volatility of the tariffs [has] severely impacted the rates and capacity available in both the ocean and the domestic freight networks.”

WATCH: Former OpenAI exec says tariffs ‘present AI’s moment to shine’

Former OpenAI exec says tariffs 'present AI's moment to shine'

Continue Reading

Technology

Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

Published

on

By

Amazon's Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon‘s Zoox robotaxi unit issued a voluntary recall of its software for the second time in a month following a recent crash in San Francisco.

On May 8, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi was turning at low speed when it was struck by an electric scooter rider after braking to yield at an intersection. The person on the scooter declined medical attention after sustaining minor injuries as a result of the collision, Zoox said.

“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company said in a blog post. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”

Zoox said it submitted a voluntary software recall report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.

A Zoox spokesperson said the notice should be published on the NHTSA website early next week. The recall affected 270 vehicles, the spokesperson said.

The NHTSA said in a statement it had received the recall notice and that the agency “advises road users to be cautious in the vicinity of vehicles because drivers may incorrectly predict the travel path of a cyclist or scooter rider or come to an unexpected stop.”

If an autonomous vehicle continues to move after contact with any nearby vulnerable road user, it risks causing harm or further harm. In the AV industry, General Motors-backed Cruise exited the robotaxi business after a collision in which one of its vehicles injured a pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven car and was then rolled over by the Cruise AV.

Zoox’s May incident comes roughly two weeks after the company announced a separate voluntary software recall following a recent Las Vegas crash. In that incident, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, resulting in minor damage to both vehicles.

The company issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis in order to address a defect with its automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing the “risk of a crash.”

Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.”

While Zoox is in a testing and development stage with its AVs on public roads in the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and is ramping up in Atlanta.

Tesla is promising it will launch its long-delayed robotaxis in Austin next month, and, if all goes well, plans to expand after that to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

WATCH: Tesla’s decade-long journey to robotaxis

Tesla's decade-long journey to robotaxis

Continue Reading

Trending