Apple killed its decade-long microLED display project in 2024. The same year, a Sunnyvale startup hit 200 femtojoules per bit shooting data between AI chips with the same physics — and now holds 84% of US patents in the niche.
Kurzweil listed exotic computing substrates in 2005 as heirs to silicon. Twenty-one years on, silicon won by getting weirder — and his lone forward bet, that quantum stays special-purpose, has aged best of all.