In the record-setting housing market of 2021, homeownership has become the dividing line for a fractured economy that’s racing toward extremes. Real estate values have surged by almost 25 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, creating more than $1 trillion in new wealth for existing homeowners.

The driver stared for a moment and considered the house. It was a two-story craftsman in a subdivision of mass-produced homes, where identical mailboxes aligned the sidewalk and some of the cul-de-sacs backed up to cornfields. “Honestly?” he said. “At this point we’re looking for pretty much anything.”

The new “For Sale” sign had been posted in the yard for less than 10 minutes when the first visitors started driving by the house, slowing down and stopping to take pictures. Trevor Descisciolo watched from his front lawn, trying to understand how the home he referred to as “a basic little starter” had suddenly become a destination in the far exurbs of Boise.

The new real estate normalIn the fracturing American economy, any house can inspire a bidding war.

“Every single Amazon seller comes to this pivotal moment,” said Abel, of Suffern, New York. “‘I love this brand. Can I keep growing it alone or do I need a team to continue?’ It made sense to grow it with a team.”

Sales of her posters, including U.S. and world maps, took off during the pandemic as parents scrambled for instructional aides to help their children learn from home. Now Abel is working for Foundry in product development and is no longer sidetracked with logistical issues and other headaches that became constant distractions when she ran the business on her own. She had several buyers to pick from and chose Foundry for its extensive Amazon expertise.

“Amazon is the point of departure, not the point of arrival,” said Vaid, who most recently was Pizza Hut’s chief customer officer and is now Foundry’s CEO.

Many aggregators are trying to bypass brokers and deal with promising Amazon brands directly to pitch more of a long-term partnership than a once-and-done deal. That’s how Foundry approached former school teacher Lisa Abel when it purchased her educational poster business Motivation Without Borders.

Mark Daoust, whose Quiet Light brokerage expects to close more than 100 deals this year, says Amazon brands that sold for $3 million last year now fetch as much as $5 million -- and even more if there’s a bidding war. Typical deals overseen by his firm attract about five offers.

Aggregators typically look for businesses launched by one or two people that have reached more than $1 million in sales on Amazon. But finding suitable candidates is getting harder all the time. Though some two million independent merchants ply their trade on Amazon -- accounting for more than half of goods sold on the site -- few meet the criteria and many would rather hang on to what they built. The ones that do want to sell are getting more expensive.

New this year will be exhibition booths and penthouse parties hosted by aggregators eager to stand out in an increasingly crowded market. Those that have raised the most money, including Thrasio and Perch, are each hosting private events. Another aggregator, Boosted Commerce, plans to have branded shuttles driving people from the event to the downtown casino strip.

The competition to snap up online brands will be on full display this week at the Prosper Show, an annual gathering in Las Vegas where Amazon sellers swap tricks of their trade. The show usually attracts software companies and advertising firms that help online merchants boost their sales.

Foundry is promising to help merchants expand beyond Amazon onto other popular online marketplaces around the world and ultimately get on shelves in physical stores, where most shopping still happens.

One of the newest entrants, Foundry, on Monday announced $100 million in funding from private-equity firms LightBay Capital and Monogram Capital Partners, both based in Los Angeles. The company hopes its team, which includes former Amazon executive Stefan Haney and former Walmart e-commerce executive Helen Vaid, stands out when online brands look for partners to grow their businesses.

Since April of 2020 more than 60 of these aggregators have raised almost $6 billion, according to Marketplace Pulse, a New York firm that monitors the site. As the market heats up, their challenge is to find up-and-coming brands with staying power and avoid overpaying for them.

The frenzy’s focus: the bevy of small businesses that have sprung up in recent years to sell their wares on Amazon’s vast marketplace. They’re being snapped up by Wall Street-backed startups known as aggregators, which are betting that their teams of e-commerce veterans can transform products into global brands.

Investors on the hunt for promising brands sold on Amazon.com Inc. are sparking bidding wars as competition intensifies to find the next hit product.

Bidding Wars Break Out in Sizzling Market for Amazon Brands

It's important to note that this technology is still in its nascent stages, and it is a long way from serving as a viable way to replace defunct human organs. But the work is, nonetheless, groundbreaking. 

The benefits are several: a bioprinted pancreas can be totally customized to match a patient's stem cells — removing the need to conduct animal testing. "What's more, patients won't have to try out an array of drugs, some of which may have unpleasant side effects, before finding the right one for them," said CEO Readily3D Damien Loterie in the report.

Bioprinting human organs could eventually lead to viable transplantsBioprinting technology from EPFL employs a biological gel with the patient's stem cells inside. Scientists and engineers use a laser to solidify the gel via polymerization — controlling the intensity and direction of the beam to selectively solidify portions of the gel needed to shape the necessary tissue. "One of the main advantages of our method is that it can create tissue in a single block, making it particularly useful for printing soft tissue like organs," said Readily3D's CTO, Paul Delrot, in a MedicalXpress report.

"Developing a system that can print 3D tissue at the cubic centimeter scale and faithfully replicate the functioning of a live pancreas is a huge challenge, which we hope to meet with this technology," explained Head of LAPD Christophe Moser. The institute's bioprinting technology might also build other types of human tissue — potentially accelerating cancer treatments. Eventually, it could even serve as a way to produce transplant organs, like a human heart. A heart!

the second-leading cause of amputation (from accidents), diabetes raises the risk of having a stroke or heart attack nine-fold. The disease is also the number-one cause of blindness among adults. But with bioprinted pancreases, scientists could rapidly accelerate the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes — an obvious boon to public health.

More than 450 million adults worldwide suffer from diabetes — 60 million of whom live in Europe. Roughly 4.4% of Switzerland's population self-reported being diagnosed with the illness. And this number is growing, both in Europe and beyond.

The pancreas is a crucial organ lying just behind your stomach. It does a lot of work, like producing bicarbonates and enzymes needed for digestion, and it also secretes a spectrum of hormones like insulin — a critical means of regulating blood sugar levels. This means that when pancreatic disease sets in, diabetes soon follows, since damaged cells are incapable of generating the insulin needed to regulate blood sugar levels.

This accomplishment was made possible via the employment of a new technology invented at EPFL's Laboratory of Applied Photonics Devices (LAPD) and then matured by Readily3D. This technology was recently chosen for the EU-funded Enlight initiative, whose goal involves building a reliable — and living — model of the human pancreas for testing diabetes medications.

The design flow of a 3D printed pancreas begins as a transparent shape on a computer screen — engendering a tiny digital replica of the human pancreas. But incredibly, it only takes 30 seconds to print the tissue out of a bioprinter, blood vessels and all. This is done using a small sample of stem cells.

In fact, the bioprinting technology might even provide a viable way to print transplant organs.

Called Readily3D, the company's technology has seen widespread use in a large-scale European project to build a living model of the human pancreas, which could also provide a safe alternative for testing new drugs.

A company recently developed a novel system capable of printing biological tissue in a blindingly fast 30 seconds. Ultimately, this new method could, one day, help bring an end to diabetes, according to a blog post shared on the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne's (EPFL's) official website.

This could also put an end to animal testing.

Meet The Bioprinted Pancreas That Could End Diabetes

“Unlike the exoskeletons built beforehand that could only be used for limited amounts of time due to the battery life, this could be a game changer,” Ekso says.

Exoskeletons for Construction Workers Are Marching On-Site

German carmaker Audi is also using the Chairless Chair on the production floor, though Mathias Keil, head of industrial engineering methods at Audi AG says the exoskeletons haven’t been in use long enough to assess results. Audi also expects the robotic suits will be used down the line by workers with physical disabilities even if they don’t work directly on the assembly line, he adds.

Eleven lower-body exoskeletons are already also in use across several BMW Group automotive production plants in Germany. The exoskeleton consists of movable splints affixed to the legs or torso and locked in different positions. The leg support structure can transform prolonged standing into sitting to improve the comfort and flexibility of working conditions, says Christian Dunckern, Head of BMW Group production system, planning, toolmaking, and plant engineering.

Because the exoskeletons are relatively new to the construction and manufacturing industry, builders are looking to see how they fare at the manufacturing plants that are testing them. The two industries have a great deal of overlap when it comes to standing, crouching, lifting and moving heavy objects, and making repetitive motions.

Full-body powered suits provide support and extra strength.When workers wearing an exoskeleton from SuitX bend forward, for example, compressed-air springs in the back of the suit take some of the lifting load off the wearer. A shoulder unit uses a similar assist-mechanism for lifting or working overhead, says Homayoon Kazerooni, chief executive officer at SuitX of Berkeley, Calif., which makes exoskeleton systems for the legs, back and shoulders as well as a full-body version

Crouching and Standing Support Chairless chairs are lightweight exoskeletons worn that lock in place and support users as they crouch or stand in the same position for long periods of time. They’re called chairless chairs because they can support users in the same way chairs do. They too cut down on repetitive-stress and muscular injuries.

Types of exoskeletons for construction workersIn recent years, developers have focused on smaller, more specialized exoskeleton projects that target a particular body part, though full body suit are also in use.With that in mind, today’s exoskeletons fall into varied categories.

And construction workers rack up more than their fair share of overexertion injuries. In fact, they have some of the highest rates of musculoskeletal disorders per capita, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those type of injuries reduce the number of years construction workers can do their jobs and may even cause permanent injury.

Those wearing the exosuits will also be less prone to severe injuries from accidents or overwork. Worker overexertion costs U.S. employers around $15 billion annually in compensation, Kara adds.

Fewer InjuriesIn construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and other industries that are adopting the robotic structures, the exo-suits augment human motion to allow for more lifting strength and for improved production on repetitive tasks like squatting, bending, or walking, Kara says.

This Ekso Works Industrial Exoskeleton, for example, has an unpowered frame, meaning it’s a passive suit without actuators or motors. It can be used all day, according to Ekso.

Typically for use in the construction and manufacturing industries, passive systems are popular, as these suits are less expensive and actuators are not necessary to relieve the exoskeleton user of a payload or bodyweight.

For example, Ekso Bionics announced an expansion into the construction industry and other industries alike with the Ekso Works Industrial Exoskeleton. The suit allows the user to be able to lift power tools as if they don’t weigh anything at all, according to Ekso.

But around 2000, exoskeleton robotic suits became increasingly accessible to users in the healthcare. One of the first applications, Lokomat, is used for gait rehabilitation in stroke and spinal cord injured patients, who wear the suit while walking on a treadmill.

The machine’s heavy weight as well as issues putting it on and taking it off caused exosuit development to stall for a while.

Around 1965, General Electric started to develop the Hardiman, a large full-body exoskeleton designed to augment the users’ strength by a factor of 25 to help them lift heavy objects. The project, sponsored by the U.S. Army and Navy sought a machine that could help move cargo or equipment. The exoskeleton weighed 1,500 pounds and was made up of two suits, one attached to the operator and an external one that carried objects.

From U.S. military project to healthcare and beyondFirst developed by the military, the exoskeletons have been making the move from healthcare into the manufacturing and agriculture industries, where employees also carry and transfer heavy loads and move in a repetitive manner. In healthcare, the suits help stroke victims regain limb strength or even help those who are paralyzed walk or use their arms.

One reason the robotic suits are ripe for adoption by builders is their falling prices, Kara says. To take an example, two types of suits, the Chairless Chair and the EksoWorks Vest, sell for about $5,000 each, far less than the type of full-body suits that help those who are paralyzed walk.

The suit makes lifted objects feel much lighter, and sometimes even weightless, reducing injuries and improving compliance.

What are robotic exoskeleton suits? The exosuits are metal frameworks fitted with motorized muscles to multiply the wearer’s strength. Also called exoskeletons, the robotic suits’ metal framework somewhat mirrors the wearer’s internal skeletal structure.

While a number of companies make exoskeleton suits for construction and manufacturing use, they’ve made limited headway as of yet in the construction field and few, if any, construction companies have adopted them. Meanwhile, builders can keep tabs on manufacturers who are giving the robotic suits a test run to determine how they can translate to use within the construction industry.   

ABI Research predicts the robotic exoskeleton market alone will reach $1.8 billion in 2025, up from $68 million in 2014. This year, about 6,000 suits will be sold, mainly for rehabilitation. By 2025, ABI expects to see about 2.6 million on the market.

The exosuits, or exoskeletons used within the construction industry are ripe for growth, says Dan Kara, who until December led research focusing on robotics at ABI Research, a technology business research firm.

For construction workers of the not-so-distant future, the term “suit up” may refer to sporting a metal exosuit – an exoskeleton for construction workers – which provides robotic strength, even if it doesn’t quite bestow them with the powers of Iron Man.

The loans let Mr. Isaacman, 38 years old, tap his wealth without shrinking his stake—now worth nearly $3 billion. He retained more than 70% voting power as of April, after having invested most of his net worth in the company’s initial public offering.

Jared Isaacman cemented his billionaire status when his payment-processing company went public in June 2020. Three months later, he put up about half his stake in Shift4 Payments Inc. FOUR -1.42% as collateral for a loan from Citigroup Inc. C -1.52% He repaid that loan in March—and promptly took out a new one from Goldman Sachs.

“These instruments allow for participation in economic upside and do not require him to decrease his stake in the company,” said Nate Hirshberg, the company’s vice president for marketing. “These arrangements are to help fund several personal and charitable endeavors and are not the result of tax planning.”

The loans are particularly appealing to company founders who want to avoid losing voting control after taking their companies public.

Mr. Smith’s borrowings are an exception to FedEx policy, made in part because the company said he had demonstrated the capacity to pay them back if necessary without selling pledged shares. After the company’s stock price had declined, FedEx allowed him to pledge more shares in March 2020 as collateral, noting that he could have been forced to sell shares if the company hadn’t granted him this authority. A FedEx spokeswoman declined to comment.

Fred Smith, the founder, chairman and CEO of FedEx Corp. FDX -0.21% , had pledged $598 million worth of the company’s stock—about 23.4% of his holdings—for loans as of July 2020. Those loans gave him money for outside business ventures and past FedEx stock purchases, according to securities filings.

Banks don’t mind the low interest rates because they earn management fees on the assets that clients might otherwise sell. Banks typically will lend a borrower at least 50% of a diversified portfolio’s value, Mr. Anderson said. But when he was a financial adviser, Mr. Anderson cautioned clients to not tap more than 25% of their portfolio value to lessen the risk the bank would demand repayment if markets tanked.

In addition to the bespoke loans Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS -1.11% offers clients of its exclusive private bank, the Wall Street firm advertises securities-based loans of $75,000 to $25 million to clients of outside financial advisers with “no personal financial statements, tax returns, or paper applications.” Merrill Lynch recently quoted an interest rate of 3.2% to clients with at least $1 million in assets. Those with $100 million or more can get a rate as low as 0.87%.

Borrowers of securities-based loans face less red tape than someone looking for a mortgage or an auto loan. Paperwork is light and the debt often doesn’t show up on credit reports. While some clients opt to repay their loans quickly, many exercise the option to indefinitely accrue interest without making monthly payments.

Securities-based lending tends to follow the market. Wild swings in stock prices in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic raised the specter of margin calls—lenders’ demands for additional securities or repayment to avoid losses. But markets rebounded, and the wealthy borrowed even more.

Borrowing has gotten less policy attention than capital gains at death. Limits on tax-free borrowing or shifting to taxes on consumption could yield government revenue from wealthy Americans faster than taxation at death, but there are some drawbacks. First, making loan proceeds taxable would mark a fundamental shift in income taxation. Second, although many people borrow, everyone dies, so the Biden proposal would affect a much wider swath of wealthy Americans.

may not advance through the closely divided Congress, where Republicans are dead-set against any tax increases and some Democrats have raised concerns about the potential effect on investment and family-owned businesses.

The president’s tax plan would raise top capital-gains tax rates to 43.4% from 23.8% and make unrealized gains subject to capital-gains taxes at death after a $1 million per-person exemption. The changes would make borrowing less attractive but wouldn’t remove all of the benefits of deferring taxes by taking loans against wealth.

“Ordinary people don’t think about debt the way billionaires think about debt,” said Edward McCaffery, a University of Southern California law professor who says he coined the buy-borrow-die phrase. “Once you’re already rich, it’s simple, it’s easy. It’s just buy, borrow, die. These are planks of the law that have been in place for 100 years.”

assets may be subject to estate taxes, but heirs pay capital-gains taxes only when they sell and only on gains since the prior owner’s death. The more they can borrow, the longer they can hold appreciating assets. And the longer they hold, the bigger the tax savings.

For borrowers, the calculation is clear: If an asset appreciates faster than the interest rate on the loan, they come out ahead. And under current law, investors and their heirs don’t pay income taxes unless their shares are sold.

“You could buy a boat, you could go to Disney World, you could buy a company,” said Mr. Anderson, who now consults with banks on how to manage the risks associated with these loans. “The tax benefits are stunning.”

The merely rich are also borrowing against their portfolios. When Tom Anderson started at Merrill Lynch & Co. in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 2002, many of his fellow advisers had just one or two securities-based loans in their book of business. Over the years, he encouraged more clients to borrow and noticed peers doing the same. Now it is common for advisers at big firms to have dozens of these loans outstanding, he said. Merrill Lynch is now a part of Bank of America.

The loans have special benefits beyond the flexible repayment terms and low interest rates on offer. They allow borrowers who need cash to avoid selling in a hot market. Startup founders can monetize their stakes without losing control of their companies. The super rich often use these loans as part of a “buy, borrow, die” strategy to avoid capital-gains taxes.

Banks say their wealthy clients are borrowing more than ever before, often using loans backed by their portfolios of stocks and bonds. Morgan Stanley MS +2.69% wealth-management clients have $68.1 billion worth of securities-based and other nonmortgage loans outstanding, more than double five years earlier. Bank of America Corp. BAC +1.32% said it has $62.4 billion in securities-based loans, dwarfing its book of home-equity lines of credit.

Banks say the wealthy are borrowing more than ever, using low-interest loans backed by their investments

Buy, Borrow, Die: How Rich Americans Live Off Their Paper Wealth

Rising stocks and rock-bottom interest rates have delivered a big perk to rich Americans: cheap loans that they can use to fund their lifestyles while minimizing their tax bills.

“The business model we seem to be following is we’re pushing toward automation and we’re not investing equally in the worker,” he said. “Today it’s, ‘We want to get these robots in here to replace you because we feel like you’re overpaid and we can get this kid in there and all he has to do is push this button.’”

Other companies in the industry are doing the same. Jennifer Brogan, a spokeswoman for Stop & Shop, a grocery chain based in New England, said that technology allowed the company to better serve customers — and that it was a competitive necessity.

roger in April opened a 375,000-square-foot warehouse with more than 1,000 robots that bag groceries for delivery customers. The company is even experimenting with delivering groceries by drone.

The grocery business has long been a source of steady, often unionized jobs for people without a college degree. But technology is changing the sector. Self-checkout lanes have reduced the number of cashiers; many stores have simple robots to patrol aisles for spills and check inventory; and warehouses have become increasingly automated.

“If a whole sector of labor is hit, then where do those workers go?” Professor Warman said. Women, and to a lesser degree people of color, are likely to be disproportionately affected, he added.

Such changes, multiplied across thousands of businesses in dozens of industries, could significantly change workers’ prospects. Professor Warman, the Canadian economist, said technologies developed for one purpose tend to spread to similar tasks, which could make it hard for workers harmed by automation to shift to another occupation or industry.

“You can pull a less-skilled worker in and have them adapt to our system much easier,” said Ryan Hillis, a Meltwich vice president. “It certainly widens the scope of who you can have behind that grill.”

At some businesses, automation is already affecting the number and type of jobs available. Meltwich, a restaurant chain that started in Canada and is expanding into the United States, has embraced a range of technologies to cut back on labor costs. Its grills no longer require someone to flip burgers — they grill both sides at once, and need little more than the press of a button.

But technology doesn’t have to take over all aspects of a job to leave workers worse off. If automation allows a restaurant that used to require 10 employees a shift to operate with eight or nine, that will mean fewer jobs in the long run. And even in the short term, the technology could erode workers’ bargaining power.

“We’re not talking about automating an entire position,” he said. “It’s just one task within the restaurant, and it’s gnarly, one of the least desirable tasks.”

Rob Carpenter, Valyant’s chief executive, noted that at most restaurants, taking drive-through orders is only part of an employee’s responsibilities. Automating that task doesn’t eliminate a job; it makes the job more manageable.

Ms. Gonzales acknowledged she could fully staff her restaurants if she offered $14 to $15 an hour to attract workers. But doing so, she said, would force her to raise prices so much that she would lose sales — and automation allows her to take another course.

“Our approach is, this is an assistant for you,” she said. “This allows our employee to really focus” on customers.

Ms. Gonzales, the Checkers franchisee, isn’t looking to cut jobs. She said she would hire 30 people if she could find them. And she has raised hourly pay to about $10 for entry-level workers, from about $9 before the pandemic. Technology, she said, is easing pressure on workers and speeding up service when restaurants are chronically understaffed.

In a recent working paper, Professor Acemoglu and a colleague concluded that “a significant portion of the rise in U.S. wage inequality over the last four decades has been driven by automation” — and he said that trend had almost certainly accelerated in the pandemic.

Other economists are less sanguine. Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that many of the technological investments had just replaced human labor without adding much to overall productivity.

“For the first time, we’re seeing that these technologies are both increasing productivity, lowering cost, but they’re also increasing flexibility,” she said. “We’re starting to see real momentum building, which is great news for the world, frankly.”

Some economists see the increased investment as encouraging. For much of the past two decades, the U.S. economy has struggled with weak productivity growth, leaving workers and stockholders to compete over their share of the income — a game that workers tended to lose. Automation may harm specific workers, but if it makes the economy more productive, that could be good for workers as a whole, said Katy George, a senior partner at McKinsey, the consulting firm.

The push toward automation goes far beyond the restaurant sector. Hotels, retailers, manufacturers and other businesses have all accelerated technological investments. In a survey of nearly 300 global companies by the World Economic Forum last year, 43 percent of businesses said they expected to reduce their work forces through new uses of technology.

ow customers are greeted by an automated voice designed to understand their orders — including modifications and special requests — suggest add-ons like fries or a shake, and feed the information directly to the kitchen and the cashier.

So Ms. Gonzales contacted Valyant AI, a Colorado-based start-up that makes voice recognition systems for restaurants. In December, after weeks of setup and testing, Valyant’s technology began taking orders at one of Ms. Gonzales’s drive-through lanes.

“We really felt like there has to be another solution,” she said.

Checkers, like many fast-food restaurants, experienced a jump in sales when the pandemic shut down most in-person dining. But finding workers to meet that demand proved difficult — so much so that Shana Gonzales, a Checkers franchisee in the Atlanta area, found herself back behind the cash register three decades after she started working part time at Taco Bell while in high school.

“Six months ago, all these workers were essential,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers. “Everyone was calling them heroes. Now, they’re trying to figure out how to get rid of them.”

Automation threatens to tip the advantage back toward employers, potentially eroding those gains. A working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United States but around the world.

t the same time, government benefits have allowed many people to be selective in the jobs they take. Together, those forces have given low-wage workers a rare moment of leverage, leading to higher pay, more generous benefits and other perks.

The trend toward automation predates the pandemic, but it has accelerated at what is proving to be a critical moment. The rapid reopening of the economy has led to a surge in demand for waiters, hotel maids, retail sales clerks and other workers in service industries that had cut their staffs.

“Once a job is automated, it’s pretty hard to turn back,” said Casey Warman, an economist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has studied automation in the pandemic.

Technological investments that were made in response to the crisis may contribute to a post-pandemic productivity boom, allowing for higher wages and faster growth. But some economists say the latest wave of automation could eliminate jobs and erode bargaining power, particularly for the lowest-paid workers, in a lasting way.

ow the outbreak is ebbing in the United States, but the difficulty in hiring workers — at least at the wages that employers are used to paying — is providing new momentum for automation.

And in the drive-through lane at Checkers near Atlanta, requests for Big Buford burgers and Mother Cruncher chicken sandwiches may be fielded not by a cashier in a headset, but by a voice-recognition algorithm.

An increase in automation, especially in service industries, may prove to be an economic legacy of the pandemic. Businesses from factories to fast-food outlets to hotels turned to technology last year to keep operations running amid social distancing requirements and contagion fears.

Gamers at Dave & Buster’s in Dallas who want pretzel dogs can order and pay from their phones — no need to flag down a waiter.

When Kroger customers in Cincinnati shop online these days, their groceries may be picked out not by a worker in their local supermarket but by a robot in a nearby warehouse.

The need for social distancing led restaurants and grocery stores to seek technological help. That may improve productivity, but could also cost jobs.As a Times subscriber, you now get 10 gift articles to share each month. Anyone can read them, even if they’re not a Times subscriber.Introducing a new way to share articlesAs a Times subscriber, you now get 10 gift articles to share each month. Anyone can read them, even if they’re not a Times subscriber.

Pandemic Wave of Automation May Be Bad News for Workers

National data estimates that 50% of traffic deaths occur at night, despite spending only quarter of our time driving at night. Additionally, an estimated 38,800 people were involved in fatal accidents. These stats underscore that when driving at night you should take a few precautions with your vehicle.

Some of the start-ups have already hit growing pains. Chime, a banking start-up, had a series of outages in 2019, leaving millions of customers with no access to their money for hours. Some Coinbase customers have said they were locked out of their accounts or experienced thefts of their money. And Robinhood faces nearly 50 lawsuits and multiple regulatory investigations after it halted trading for some stocks during a frenzy in “meme” stocks in January.

“I think it’s a little irrational,” Mr. Le said. “Over the long haul, some of these companies will have to come down.”

Robert Le, an analyst at PitchBook, pointed to the valuation of Affirm, which has a market capitalization of $20 billion, or roughly 40 times its annual revenue. That’s significantly higher than the value that investors typically assign to blue-chip financial services companies. American Express, for example, trades at just three times its annual revenue.

In December, Step raised $50 million in funding. The company was not looking for more money, Mr. MacDonald said. But investors started calling as soon as the app joined the top-downloaded finance app list shortly after it was released. The money came together in a matter of weeks, he said.

Some caution that the excitement has gotten far ahead of reality.

Sheel Mohnot, an investor at Better Tomorrow Ventures, said Plaid’s sale price to Visa was viewed as “so amazing” at the time. But now, with multiple fintech companies approaching $100 billion valuations, it looks low.

Investors are even clamoring to buy into broken deals. Plaid, which had agreed to sell itself to Visa for $5.6 billion last year, saw the deal unravel in January after facing antitrust scrutiny. Now the fast-growing company is in talks with investors to raise funding at a valuation near $15 billion, said two people with knowledge of the company who spoke on the condition they not be identified because the discussions are confidential. The Information earlier reported Plaid’s funding talks.

Other companies that play similar “building block” roles in the financial technology boom include Affirm, which offers lending and went public this year; Shopify, which enables e-commerce transactions; and Plaid, which helps apps connect with bank accounts.

He ended up raising $102 million for Fast in January. Stripe was one of the main investors in the financing.

Last year, as Fast’s business grew in the pandemic, investors began messaging Mr. Holland daily asking to invest in the company. “I have people LinkedIn messaging and emailing, just offering, ‘Take $5 million at any valuation you like,’” he said. “It is a bizarre world to live in.”

“If Stripe didn’t exist today, we would first have to build Stripe,” Mr. Holland said. “That’s a lot of work. They’ve already done that.”

Domm Holland, chief executive of Fast, an e-commerce checkout software start-up, said Stripe sped up his company’s progress. Customers who use Stripe to accept online payments can then use Fast’s software for their checkout process.

“We are in a hyper-growth industry and within that, the company itself is experiencing hyper-growth,” Dhivya Suryadevara, Stripe’s chief financial officer, said in an interview.

Stripe now processes hundreds of billions of dollars in payments a year, has expanded to larger customers including Salesforce and Booking.com, and has made more than 30 investments in other fintech start-ups.

One of the building-block companies is Stripe. Founded in 2010, Stripe started out by offering to process payments for small businesses and start-ups. By 2018, it was worth $20 billion and had begun investing in other start-ups.

Just as cheap cloud computing and smartphones once enabled a wave of new app start-ups, the financial technology sector has developed its own set of building blocks, allowing new companies to spring up faster.

Many are capitalizing on people’s long-simmering distrust of the big banks, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. Often, the start-ups offer slick and easy-to-use apps, no physical branches and low or no fees. And they are building on people’s growing familiarity over the past decade with tech tools and digital payments, a shift that has accelerated in the pandemic.

The financial technology start-ups that are riding the boom run the gamut. They provide services including checking accounts, mortgages, insurance, investing, payment processing and cryptocurrencies.

“It’s what Amazon did to offline retail,” he said. “It’s just playing out 10 years later in fintech right now.”

“The banks are extremely vulnerable” because they have not kept up with what customers expect, said Mark Goldberg, an investor at the venture capital firm Index Ventures. He predicted $1 trillion of market value could transfer from old guard financial institutions to tech companies over the next two decades.

Many investors are now making bold predictions that these start-ups will upend big banks, established credit card providers — and in some cases, the entire financial system.

In total, venture capital investors poured $44.4 billion into financial technology start-ups last year, up from $1.1 billion in 2009, according to PitchBook, which tracks private financings.

Even tiny financial start-ups that have not formally introduced their products — such as Zeller, which will offer banking services to businesses; and Sivo, which is building lending software — have raised millions of dollars and been valued at nine-digit sums.

Financial technology companies are also making a splash on the stock market. On Tuesday, Robinhood, a stock trading app popular with young adults, filed for an initial public offering. And Coinbase, a cryptocurrency start-up, is scheduled to go public in the next few weeks in what could be a $100 billion listing.

Now start-ups with names like Blend, Brex and Dave that provide decidedly unglamorous banking, lending and payment processing offerings are hot tickets. That was punctuated this month when Stripe, a payments company, raised $600 million in a financing that valued it at $95 billion, the highest ever for a private start-up in the United States.

Sila is one of thousands of financial technology start-ups riding an investor frenzy driven by a growing realization that Big Finance is ripe for a tech makeover. When the pandemic forced businesses to speed up their usage of digital tools, including e-commerce and online banking, the demand for what is known as fintech exploded.

“I know folks in the space who raised rounds in less than one week,” he said.

By last year, things had changed. When Mr. Karkal set out to raise funding for his new financial technology start-up, Sila, which makes regulatory compliance software, he garnered $5 million in a few months with a fraction of the pitches. He said he was frustrated it didn’t happen even faster.

SAN FRANCISCO — In 2009, Shamir Karkal and several colleagues struggled to raise money for a banking start-up, Simple. Most of the 70 venture capital firms they met over the course of a year didn’t see the point of the idea, he said. The few that did thought it would fail.

Times are flush for young tech companies like Stripe and Coinbase, which are having a moment as they upend the financial establishment.

The Start-Up Enemies of Wall Street Are Booming

But to launch such a product, the company would also need access to a new type of data: your thinking.

Picture this: Your home assistant asks if you’d like to play your favorite podcast, and a flick of your fingers in the air lets you click play. Or, you’re wearing AR glasses that display images over the real world, and you scroll through your text messages in midair while your smartphone stays in your pocket.

Last week, the company said it’s working on a “stylish” pair of glasses to replace your need for a computer or smartphone. Its next revelation will come later this year and has something to do with an all-day wearable, “soft robotics” and haptic gloves, Facebook says.

The research news is part of a trio of announcements related to Facebook’s 10-year push into immersive technologies.

The announcement comes two years after the social media company bought CTRL-Labs, a start-up developing a wristband capable of turning brain impulses into computer input. The acquisition was reportedly worth between $500 million and $1 billion. The firm was absorbed by Facebook’s Reality Labs, which is also in charge of Oculus virtual reality headsets.

Controlling devices through thoughts has been shown to work. BrainCo, for example, developed a headband with sensors that lets people move items at a distance using their mind. The company later developed robotic limbs that detect and react to muscle signals.

The Mark Zuckerberg-led company insists that data privacy is a top concern, as it should be with a device that takes personalization to a whole new level. Facebook notes that information would be stored locally on the device rather than sent into the cloud. The only information meant to be collected is the intent for you to move your hand, the company says.

“It’s located right next to the primary instruments you use to interact with the world — your hands. This proximity would allow us to bring the rich control capabilities of your hands into AR, enabling intuitive, powerful and satisfying interaction,” Facebook says.

Facebook is going after your wrist because that’s where people are used to donning wearables. People have used Fitbits for over a decade and Apple Watches for half as long. Your wrist is also close to your hands, which people typically use to control devices.

The conversation surrounding AR spectacles hit in a big way when Google announced Google Glass, a $1,500 pair of smart glasses that flopped with consumers in 2014. The search conglomerate gave them a facelift and re-marketed them for businesses. Snap also tried with its Spectacles for Snapchat, a $150 pair of snazzy glasses equipped with cameras, audio and microphones. Those also failed to take the world by storm.

It’s too soon to tell whether the device will ever come to market. Facebook says the research is still in the early phases, and any type of consumer product would be years away. Still, it isn’t the first to imagine futuristic glasses enhancing the real world with digitized imagery.

Rolling out nerve-sensing gadgets would enable Facebook to reinvent the computer “click.” So instead of using a mouse or tapping on your phone, you’d think about moving a finger to trigger a reaction in AR.

“If you send a control to your muscle saying, ‘I want to move my finger,’ it starts in your brain. It goes down your spine through motor neurons, and this is an electrical signal. So you should be able to grab that electrical signal on the muscle and say, ‘Oh, okay. The user wants to move the finger,’ ” Nathalie Gayraud, a research scientist at Facebook Reality Labs, says in a video.

In demonstration videos, the prototype looks like a thick black iPod strapped around the wrist. In theory, sensors on the device would be able to pick up what hand movements you intend to make through a technique for recording nerve signals known as electromyography (EMG).

Facebook says the wristband product would rely on a “neural interface” that adapts to you and your environment.

“We’re developing natural, intuitive ways to interact with always-available AR glasses because we believe this will transform the way we connect with people near and far,” Facebook said in a blog post.

Those are the scenarios Facebook has in mind if it were ever to deploy a muscle-sensing wristlet.

Facebook is researching how to take minute nerve movements in your arm and translate them into gesture controls for your gadgets. The idea announced Thursday would help the social networking giant launch augmented reality glasses, which would rely on new ways to control computers and interact with the virtual world.

Your wrist might be the key to unlocking new ways to interact with the digital world.

Facebook reveals plan to let you control augmented reality with your thoughtsThe social media firm is working on a wristband for interacting with digital gadgets

Academics have argued Fedcoin accounts, which could be interest bearing, could allow the Fed to bring monetary policy interest rate changes directly to the consumer level, rather than relying on financial markets to translate changes in short-term rates into broader changes in real-world borrowing costs. Digital dollar accounts could also be used to speed government stimulus payments along the lines of those seen during the coronavirus pandemic.

Some also believe digital dollars, and the accounts that hold them, could have a broader mission.

Private cryptocurrencies are “not really useful as a store of value and they’re not backed by anything,” unlike the current dollar which has the support of the Fed, Mr. Powell said. “They’re more of an asset for speculation, so they’re also not particularly in use as a means of payment. It’s more a speculative asset that’s essentially a substitute for gold, rather than for the dollar,” he said. Related Video

Fedcoin advocates see a digital dollar as a tool to speed up real-time payments. Depending on how a Fedcoin gets set up, it could also broaden access to the financial system by making it easier for those currently without bank accounts to get an account that would use digital dollars.

The Fed has been mulling a fully digital dollar, which some refer to as Fedcoin, for some time as private offerings have arrived, but it has yet to say with any level of specifics what such an offering might be.

“We don’t need to rush this project, and we don’t need to be first to market,” Mr. Powell said. “The real threshold question for us is does the public want or need a new digital form of central bank money to complement what is already a highly efficient, reliable and innovative payments arena and system,” he said.

In his appearance, Mr. Powell said the Fed’s work on a digital dollar was driven mainly by changes in technology. He repeated his existing view that because of the dollar’s critical role as the world’s reserve currency, it is far more important that the Fed get a digital dollar right than it is to move quickly.

The Fed leader repeated in his comments that the U.S. is only at the beginning of its efforts to explore what a digital dollar might be, and that its work is not intended to disrupt the private financial sector, nor is it driven by the rise of private offerings like bitcoin. Many supporters of private cryptocurrencies seek to supplant government offerings, but Mr. Powell said that so far, these offerings aren’t doing that.

To adopt a fully digital dollar, “we would need buy-in from Congress, from the Administration, from broad elements of the public,” Mr. Powell said. Most importantly, “we would not proceed with this without support from Congress, and I think that would ideally come in the form of an authorizing law, rather than us trying to interpret our law to enable this,” he said.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Monday that the U.S. central bank is actively exploring the launch of a fully digital dollar and would move to adopt such an offering only with the support of the nation’s elected leaders.

he future of education requires radical changes and vision, the kind of vision that proves to be critical in order to advance today's children skills development into the transformational career and workforce of tomorrow.  

That is what he did when he was unhappy with the obsolete education that his own children were receiving. So, he created his little Ad Astra School to provide them with the skills that will actually build a strong ground for the skills they will need in the future.

Astra Nova School is a pioneer in experimental learning. Experimental today, mainstream tomorrow. Elon Musk may not be involved in the school this time, but the fact is that the idea came out from Tesla's CEO pretty much in the same way all his ideas do: He sees something that is not working well for the world. He believes there is a need for something new and better that will help humanity, and he plants the seed.

Astra Nova School makes age, geographical location, and cultural background obsolete. Instead, children from ages eight to 14 can work together on the same project if their skills are complementary. The school builds on a multicultural and global environment, where children learn soft skills in a natural way.

At Astra Nova School students learn critical thinking, robotics, and solve problems through live team games with students from around the world.

Joshua Dahn, who was also a teacher in the previous Ad Astra school, has stated that Elon Musk has no financial interest in the Astra Nova School. Indeed, his plate is already quite full dividing his time between his several companies. 

A few years ago, Elon Musk, started the experimental Ad Astra School --the predecessor to Astra Nova School-- in one of SpaceX's factories for his own children and selected children of SpaceX's employees. But he has no involvement in the new school. 

he approach is a logical one, yet, innovative. In general, school systems are rigid. They are more system-centric than student-centric. Astra Nova is changing that by creating a philosophy of student centricity, a value for individual abilities, praising curiosity, and encouraging problem-solving and critical thinking. "What if students were taken seriously and their time well spent? Astra Nova believes in meaningful student experiences across age levels and domains." 

ccording to the non-traditional Astra Nova School's Website, students learn about simulations, case studies, fabrication and design projects, labs, and corporate collaboration. "Astra Nova develops students that are enthralled by complexity and solving for the unknown. We redesign each year based on our students. We apply the lessons learned from every project, lab, and discussion to inform our next move." 

he Astra Nova School's pillars include caring about community, focusing on student experiences, and sharing the work they do with the world.

Ad Astra School was the experimental school that Elon Musk started in one of SpaceX's factories to give an education to his own children and selected children of SpaceX employees more in tune with the reality these children will have to face in their future. 

Astra Nova (New Star, in Latin) is a not-for-profit independent school in Los Angeles, California. Astra Nova School was co-founded, designed, and run by the former Ad Astra School team. In Latin, Ad Astra means to the stars. 

Most recently, the need for social distancing due to the Covid-19 pandemic forced educational institutions from elementary school to higher education to accelerate the change and embrace online learning, considering and accepting virtual environments as an efficient educational tool even faster. Finally, online learning is accepted as the future of education.

We are certainly not at our brightest time at the same time of the day. Learning in the mornings may suit early birds whilst learning in the late evening is when night owls get the best results and better use of their time, since it is then when they are more alert and focused. 

Despite what many may believe, online learning is fast, efficient, prioritizes students' own learning pace, adds flexibility, and lets each individual student learn at their own best time. As individuals, we are not all the same. 

What we do know, however, is that the future collaboration between humans and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) --the type of AI that is about as capable as a human-- is going to become a reality in the next few decades. The current education system in most countries is doing nothing to prepare the workforce and leaders of tomorrow. It is time for a change.

In the 2020s, students will have to learn how to apply their skills in shorter terms than the generations before them. They, the Generation Alpha, children born from 2010 to 2025, and the first generation entirely born within the 21st century, will need to possess a quick response and apply critical thinking as well as ethical problem solving in a variety of new situations, many of which are yet unknown. These children will interact with robots as a learning tool. 

The future of work will involve space travel and multi-planetary life. For tomorrow's workforce, the future of work will depend on the kind of education and skills they will receive from schools and colleges during this decade. The 2020s, is a decade of transition.

The future of work --and this is something we are already seeing in sectors such as manufacturing, supply chain, and logistics-- will involve robots and Artificial Intelligence collaborating with humans. A new way of machine + human collaboration becoming mainstream. 

No one knows if they will ever be part of the curriculum, unless the education system gets a very much needed update and upgrade to the 21st century, in addition to a mindset with vision into the future. What I mean is that most of today's schools and teachers are not ready to educate the workforce that will be active between 2030 and 2040. Traditional schools will need a radical change if they want to remain relevant.

In the 2030s, many jobs are going to be quite different from the jobs that exist today. Moreover, many of those jobs do not exist just yet, and some are simply unimaginable today. The future of work will require a set of skills that are not taught in schools today. 

The homeownership gap between white and Black households has also grown in the past decade, and the Urban Institute projects the Black homeownership rate will decline between 2020 and 2040.