Jochai Ben-Avie

One in three Americans doesn’t have internet at speeds fast enough to use Zoom. Despite being an essential utility, building out the nation’s internet infrastructure has been largely left to market forces with highly uneven results: 40 million Americans are still waiting to be connected. Large traditional internet service providers have not and will not invest in communities where the economics don’t fit their business models.

In his annual letter, Bill Gates predicted that the United States is “eighteen to twenty four months away from significant levels of AI use by the general population” and that African countries are just a year or so behind that. The pace of AI development is breathtaking, with generative AI tools like ChatGPT forecast to have an adoption curve steeper than the smartphone.

Connect Humanity has closed its first investment, in Wave 7 Communications, which will enable hundreds of unconnected people to gain access to the internet for the first time.