Top stories today:

1. Heart disease: 3 drugs report positive clinical trials
2. Humane Ai Pin out only in 2024, product still not fully built out
3. OpenAI, Character AI in talks to raise money
4. Israel continues to encircle hospitals used by Hamas, IDF says

0. Data and calendar

1. Heart disease: 3 drugs report positive clinical trials

• VERVE-101's single-shot gene therapy reduced LDL-C (“bad cholesterol”) by up to 55% in a Phase 1 clinical trial.

• Lepodisiran, a once-a-year shot, reduced lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a), by up to 94%, also in a Phase 1.

• Wegovy reduced cardiovascular-related death by 20% in a 17.6K patient study. Wegovy is the branded name of semaglutide, already approved for weight loss.

  • Among the most sought-after corporate benefits.

2. Humane Ai Pin out only in 2024, product still not fully built out

• Screenless smartphone that leverages OpenAI’s APIs to answer questions, take pictures (video soon), text and call people, and “catch me up.”

• Confirmed at $699 + $24/mo.

• No App Store, but comes with Tidal for music, potential Slack, Microsoft, Google integration.

Our view: the future of computing is likely AR (more screens, not fewer ones) and Apple can copy voice computing features with Siri

• Siri with Apple’s new LLM can quickly obsolete the Ai Pin. Why not use my existing AirPods and talk to Siri, rather than pay $699 + $24/mo for a new device?

• Not even founding investor Sam Altman is bullish on Humane: “That will be up to customers to decide. Maybe it’s a bridge too far, or maybe people are like, ‘This is much better than my phone.’ Plenty of technology that looked like a sure bet ends up selling for 90 percent off at Best Buy.”

4. OpenAI, Character AI in talks to raise money