🎧Listen to the deep-dive radio (15–20 min) for this storyRio × マクル・ドーキン in conversation, offline playback, and full scripts — in the app
Listen in the app →
Quantum Computing's Convergence Point: 2030 — Required Qubits Drop 99% While Hardware Reaches 6,000
Featuring
Jason Calacanis (This Week in Startups host) × Kazu Nakashogi (CEO/Founder, Yakumo quantum computing hardware startup)
Bottom line
Quantum computing has been "10 years away" for 30 years because of a massive gap between required qubits and achievable physical qubits, but these two curves are expected to intersect for the first time around 2030.
3-Line Summary
Kazu Nakashogi, CEO of Kyoto University spin-out Yakumo, explains why quantum computing commercialization has been delayed and why this time is different. Required qubits have dropped 99% from 1 million five years ago to 10,000 today through software improvements, while demonstrated physical qubits have grown from 1-10 a decade ago to 6,000. These curves are projected to meet around 2030, with the US government targeting useful quantum computers by 2028.
3 Key Points
1. Neutral atoms offer 100-1000x cost advantage: While superconducting qubits (used by Google and IBM) cost approximately $1 million per physical qubit, Yakumo's neutral atom approach is "100 times cheaper or 1,000 times more affordable." This manufacturing cost differential could determine the winning quantum approach, similar to how cost advantages determined computing platform winners historically.
2. "Harvest now, decrypt later" is already happening: Nation-states are collecting RSA-encrypted data today, storing it, and waiting for quantum computers to crack it retroactively. Communications from 2025 could be compromised in 2030-2035, creating an invisible but urgent security crisis.
3. AI is the quantum enabler: LLMs and Transformers are being applied to quantum error correction, allowing identification and correction of quantum calculation errors. This is a non-obvious example of how the AI boom is accelerating adjacent deep tech fields — tools built for one paradigm shift enable the next.
Editorial Perspective
Quantum computing's history exemplifies a "promised land visible but unreachable" state where required technology and realized technology remained perpetually separated. If this convergence is real, it results not from a single breakthrough but from multiple variables simultaneously crossing thresholds: software (99% reduction in required qubits), hardware (6,000-qubit demonstrations), AI (error correction applications), and manufacturing cost (100-1000x advantage of neutral atoms). This demonstrates how technological transitions arrive as "moments of convergence" rather than "moments of invention."
Source: This Week in Startups "Why quantum has been '10 years away' for 30 years | E2316" (2026-07-24)
https://4a885955-6823-4b22-a3e1-a526c25516a5.libsyn.com/why-quantum-has-been-10-years-away-for-30-years-e2316
AI Disclosure: Produced with AI assistance; facts and analysis reviewed by our editorial team.
# Quantum Computing# Quantum Error Correction# Yakumo# Neutral Atom Quantum Computing
🎧Listen to the deep-dive radio (15–20 min) for this storyRio × マクル・ドーキン in conversation, offline playback, and full scripts — in the app
Listen in the app →
Why a French founder chose Tokyo over Silicon Valley for his longevity biotech startup
Speakers
Jason Calacanis (founder of Launch Fund and Founder University) × Bilal Karony (founder/CEO of eKey Labs)
Bottom line
Japan offers a unique trifecta of regulatory advantage, research infrastructure, and capital efficiency that makes it a viable global hub for longevity biotech.
Three-line summary
French entrepreneur Bilal Karony founded eKey Labs—an epigenetics data generation company—in Tokyo and Okinawa rather than Silicon Valley. His rationale: Japan's 2013 Regenerative Medicine Law creates regulatory fast-tracks unavailable in the US, the scientific foundation built around Shinya Yamanaka's Nobel Prize-winning iPSC research, and capital efficiency that allows startups to achieve comparable milestones on one-fifth the funding. Japan's regional banks also offer government-backed startup loans that can match equity raises dollar-for-dollar, a non-dilutive capital source absent in most markets.
Three key takeaways
1. Unique funding infrastructure: Regional banks in Japan provide low-interest, long-term startup loans with government institutions as guarantors, enabling founders to "get a bank dollar for every equity dollar raised." US biotech VCs visiting Japan are "amazed at what a Japanese startup that raised $200K was able to accomplish" due to dramatically lower operating costs.
2. Regulatory arbitrage: Japan enacted its Regenerative Medicine Law in 2013—one year after Yamanaka's Nobel Prize—fast-tracking cell and gene therapies unavailable in the US. This creates both a natural customer base and testing ground for longevity therapeutics that face higher FDA barriers, with access to "really high quality medical care."
3. Data moats in AI biology: "In AI for biology, the moat is in data generation. If you use public data, it wasn't built for your phenotype." eKey Labs generates proprietary epigenetic datasets that don't exist in public repositories, then builds models on top. The first AI-designed drug reached Phase 3 trials in 2026, but Karony predicts "virtual cell" models are the next breakthrough that will produce "absolutely groundbreaking" new drugs.
Editorial perspective
In the platform transition cycles we've tracked at this publication, this represents "geopolitical arbitrage of regulation and infrastructure." Just as the early internet era favored countries with low telecommunications costs, the AI era of biotech favors combinations of regulatory flexibility, research depth, and capital efficiency. Japan's 2013 decision to enact regenerative medicine legislation was a national strategy to commercialize Yamanaka's discovery, but a decade later, it has positioned the country as a potential global hub for the longevity industry. The Silicon Valley monopoly may be ending as founders optimize across the three dimensions of regulation, science, and capital—not just access to venture funding.
Source: TWiST Tokyo "Why this longevity startup raised in Japan, not Silicon Valley" (2026-07-22)
https://4a885955-6823-4b22-a3e1-a526c25516a5.libsyn.com/why-this-longevity-startup-raised-in-japan-not-silicon-valley-twist-tokyo-e2315
AI Disclosure: Produced with AI assistance; facts and analysis reviewed by our editorial team.
# eKey Labs# Longevity Medicine# Epigenetics# Cell Therapy
🎧Listen to the deep-dive radio (15–20 min) for this storyRio × マクル・ドーキン in conversation, offline playback, and full scripts — in the app
Listen in the app →
How a founder faked AI in 2015 to validate demand, then built three businesses at the intersection of Japan's demographic collapse
Featuring
Jason Calacanis (Host, This Week in Startups) × Akemi Tsunagawa (Founder & CEO, Bespoke)
Bottom line
As Japan loses 700,000-800,000 people annually, only entrepreneurs who can solve both labor shortages and cultural integration will capture the monopoly opportunity at this structural crisis point.
Three-line summary
Akemi Tsunagawa of Bespoke manually impersonated a chatbot in 2015 (eight years before ChatGPT) to validate tourist demand, then built three businesses: multilingual chatbot (BeeBot) for 60 million annual tourists, vocational training (BeTrained) for foreign workers using smart glasses, and inspection robots for shipyards. Japan's population loss approaching 1 million per year forces simultaneous acceptance of immigration and automation, creating massive markets at their intersection.
Three key points
1. Faking AI in 2015 predicted 2023's boom: When investors said chatbots were "technically and culturally impossible," Akemi manually played the bot to validate demand. Narita Airport signed in 2017 because information counter staff were quitting from stress — yelled at in Russian, Korean, Chinese — and needed automation.
2. Profitable factories shut down due to succession crisis, creating M&A opportunity: Many profitable Japanese companies go bankrupt not from losses but from having no heirs — owners have no children, young people don't want to be factory owners. Akemi: "We want to be factory owners." Acquisition pricing can be below 1x revenue with owner financing. Plan: Buy factories, automate with robots, scale the kaizen model globally.
3. Scaffold inspection legally required daily but "almost 100% skipped," causing deaths: Labor shortage forces companies to skip inspections, resulting in fatal accidents. Bespoke's robot autonomously climbs scaffolds, grabs joints, shakes them, records safety status. Paint thickness inspection takes 1,000+ human hours per ship (~$20,000); robots can do it "10 times a day for free" after initial investment.
Editorial perspective
Japan's demographic crisis functions as a "forced execution device" for technological transition. Just as the constraint of commuter trains forced Japan to implement mobile internet ahead of the world in the dot-com era, population decline now forces simultaneous implementation of immigrant integration technology (multilingual training) and labor-saving technology (inspection robots). Akemi's 2015 "fake AI" validation spotted market inevitability before the technology caught up — a textbook case of founder conviction. However, the tension between cultural friction (locals angry at foreign workers who can't follow garbage rules) and economic dependence (factories can't operate without those workers) cannot be solved by technology alone. Whether the emerging "division of labor model" (Japanese workers for critical tasks, foreign workers for basic tasks) takes root will determine Japan's next decade. The factory roll-up strategy is particularly compelling: buy profitable businesses shutting down due to succession crisis, automate with robots, and export the model. This is not just a Japan story — any aging economy with immigration resistance faces the same structural opportunity.
AI Disclosure: Produced with AI assistance; facts and analysis reviewed by our editorial team.
Source: This Week in Startups "How Bespoke faked AI until it actually worked (w/ Akemi Tsunagawa) | E2320" (2026-08-03)
https://4a885955-6823-4b22-a3e1-a526c25516a5.libsyn.com/how-bespoke-faked-ai-until-it-actually-worked-w-akemi-tsunagawa-e2320
# Bespoke# BeeBot# Demographic Collapse# BeTrained
The world's intelligence, in 15 minutes every morning.
Audio, deep-dive analysis, and your own knowledge graph — in the app. Free today.
Get the app →