X (company)

X, formerly known as Google X, is a technology research and development subsidiary of Alphabet founded in 2010 by Sebastian Thrun, Astro Teller, and Yoky Matsuoka. X pursues "moonshots," its term for great ideas that use radical new methods and technologies to solve problems affecting global humanity. An idea must meet three criteria to be considered a moonshot: it must address a significant global problem, involve the invention of breakthrough technology, and result in a radical outcome and improved future conditions. X is funded by Alphabet, which has historically budgeted more than $1 billion a year for the company. Google X was rebranded to X in January 2016 following the complete restructuring of Google into Alphabet in October 2015.

The concept for X originated in the late 2000s when Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were searching for a "Director of Other," a job title they conceived of for someone who would oversee creative ideas far outside of Google's typical undertakings. The idea was furthered by Google's self-driving car project Chauffeur––later known as Waymo––led by Sebastian Thrun. As progress on the project exceeded expectations, Thrun, Brin, and Page began discussing the transformation of the project into a full-fledged research lab. X was officially founded as Google X in 2010 by Thrun, Yoky Matsuoka, and Astro Teller. The company was quite secretive of its work in its first few years. Google employees not involved with X were denied keycard access to its lab. Projects at X are typically not revealed for some time to avoid attachment and public commitment, because projects are often canceled if there are too many flaws to overcome, even if they have been in the works for years.

X's logo change in January 2016.

In October 2015, Google was restructured into Alphabet. As a result of the restructure, Google X rebranded to X in January 2016, changing both its name and the design of its logo. In addition, X established Foundry, an internal product and engineering team designed to objectively manage the company's projects. Foundry also decides when to end projects. Although CEO Astro Teller has stated that X avoids attachment to its projects and tries to kill them by examining them for untenable flaws, employees have stated there was no strong consensus on the criteria for killing a project and refusal to kill projects out of attachment was commonplace. In August 2016, it was reported that the 2015 restructure of Google had resulted in new difficulties with X projects due to "red tape and knotty internal politics." In an effort to evaluate company spending after restructuring, X had put a near-hold on hiring new employees. Multiple existing employees had also quit, with several of them citing X's inability to ship products as a reason for departure.

In May 2021, X announced it would be establishing a lab in Tel Aviv, Israel that summer to be led by X's director of strategy, Dr. Adi Aron Gilat. The lab planned to collaborate with local universities and start-ups, as well as to recruit Israeli scientists and technology innovators in fields like agricultural technology, clean energy, robotics, and computing. Since late 2021, X has primarily focused on projects related to climate change and renewable energy methods, partnering with AES, Vector, and Chile's Coordinador Eléctrico Nacional.

X is not so much a company as a radical way of thinking, a method of pursuing technological breakthroughs by taking crazy ideas seriously. X’s job is not to invent new Google products, but to produce the inventions that might form the next Google." ––Astro Teller, CEO of X

X is a self-described "moonshot factory" that aims to solve humanity’s greatest problems with the invention of revolutionary new technologies. Ideas are aimed to be killed upon proposal by X's Rapid Evaluation department in order to quickly discover moonshots. After a new idea for a project is laid out, the department looks for steadfast barriers that would prevent its success. Ninety percent of ideas at X are supposedly killed at this stage. Investigation teams are assigned to take deeper looks into the ideas that aren't killed. If an idea succeeds into a project, it receives a name, budget, and full-time staff assigned to it. X employees are encouraged to fail their projects if needed in order to funnel resources to other projects. Successful projects that reach a large enough scale graduate from X to become standalone companies, most often as part of Alphabet's "Other Bets," the company's term for its non-Google services.

Announced in March 2022, Chorus works to solve global supply chain issues and provide deeper insights into shipment logistics. The project has involved the development of sensors, software, and machine learning (ML) tools to radically improve insights into shipped goods such as their physical location and state of condition. On March 16, 2022, it was announced that Project Chorus was partnering with Kuehne + Nagel to offer select customers real-time solutions and insights into the state of their global supply chain and logistics operations. Chorus also assisted pharmaceutical distributor Healthcare Logistics with providing visibility into an end-to-end cold chain of COVID-19 vaccines, ensuring that 11 million vaccine doses were uncompromised and safely delivered across New Zealand.

Tapestry is a project pursuing the creation of a virtualized and decarbonized electric grid in an effort to meet national decarbonization targets and fight climate change. Work on Tapestry began in 2018, and the project was announced in April 2021 at the Leaders Summit on Climate event.

Tidal is creating technologies capable of monitoring marine life and underwater conditions to preserve the ocean's ability to support living creatures, thus maintaining its major role in the world food chain. The project is first testing its technology with fish farmers. Tidal has developed an underwater camera system coupled with a set of machine perception tools that can track, monitor, and interpret fish behaviors invisible to the human eye. It can also collect environmental information about the water like temperature and oxygen levels. This insight allows fish farmers to track the health of their fish and make informed decisions about their pens. Work on Tidal began in 2017, and the project was announced in March 2020.

Taara is a project pursuing light beam technology as a cost-effective and quickly deployable method of providing high-speed internet to rural or underdeveloped areas around the world. It is based on open standards, making it compatible with existing infrastructure including radio and fiber. Taara works with telecommunication companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and governments around the world to accelerate network deployments. Taara has utilized some of the technology of the discontinued Project Loon, such as its ground lasers, and reportedly moves more data daily than Loon did during its entire existence. In 2020, Econet partnered with Project Taara to expand high-speed internet to communities across Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Wolverine project is focused on creating a device capable of speech segregation in a room full of multiple speakers. The project team has created multiple iterations of earbuds with sensors and microphones to achieve this effect. The project began in 2018 and was announced in March 2021.

The Intrinsic project worked to improve the potential and accessibility of industrial robotics by developing software tools to make them easier to use and less expensive, thus making them accessible to a wider range of people. Work on the project began at X in 2016, and Intrinsic was launched as an Alphabet company in July 2021.

Launched in 2016, Mineral was a project that aimed to address the global food security crisis through “computational agriculture,” X's term to describe new technologies that improve humanity's understanding of botany. The Mineral project team created a small plant rover prototype equipped with cameras and programmed with various machine algorithms to monitor field crops, measure fruit ripeness, and detect problems with plants such as diseases. By taking thousands of photographs and converting image pixels into data, the rover had the ability to predict crop yields by counting a plant's flowering rate and measuring its leaf size and greenness. It could also combine the collected plant data with satellite imagery and weather data to create predictive models of the plant's growth cycle. Mineral was first announced as an unnamed project in 2019, and publicly named in October 2020. Mineral became an Alphabet company in January 2023.

Malta was a grid-scale renewable energy storage project that stored electricity as heat in high-temperature molten salt, and cold in low-temperature liquids. The electricity, which was generated from a wind farm, was converted into hot and cold thermal energy and then stored. A heat engine would recombine the two energy temperatures on demand, converting them into electric energy to be sent back to the grid. Malta was launched as an independent company in December 2018. In August 2019, Malta CEO Ramya Swaminathan stated the company was still in the design phase and was aiming for commercial availability within a few years. In March 2023, Malta proposed the Bluefin Energy Storage Project, a project to build a $468 million energy storage facility in Titusville, Florida. Provided Malta can secure federal funding, construction on the building is planned to begin in 2024.

Firefly.

Waymo––first known as Chauffeur––was a self-driving car project started in January 2009. The first car tested was a Toyota Prius that the research team modified for autonomous driving. The Prius was able to drive itself over 100,000 miles. Eventually, the team developed Firefly, a prototype of a self-driving car designed without a steering wheel or pedals. Instead, the car is equipped with multiple sensors and cameras placed all around its body in order to detect and respond accordingly to other vehicles, humans, and obstacles in the road. Firefly cars were first tested on the roads of Mountain View, California, and Austin, Texas beginning in 2015. In December 2016, Project Chauffeur graduated from X to become Waymo, an independent Alphabet company. Waymo has since expanded to twenty-five cities across the US.

Project Wing focused on developing an electric-powered autonomous drone delivery service with the goal of reducing local traffic congestion and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The project began in 2012 with an initial focus on delivering emergency medical devices, though that quickly shifted to the delivery of less vital goods. Wing's first official deliveries were completed in 2014 in rural Queensland, Australia. Wing drones are capable of flying up to seventy miles per hour and 150 feet above the ground. They are designed to handle packages weighing up to 2.6 pounds. Packages are lowered to the ground via a cable attached to the drone and released after land is detected. Wing graduated to an Alphabet company in July 2018. The company operates in select areas in the United States, Australia, and Finland. Deliveries are available from businesses partnered with Wing, which include Walgreens, Blue Bell Creameries, Easyvet, and Texas Health.

Chronicle was a cybersecurity project that developed an intelligence and analytics platform providing visibility into cyberattacks. The platform identified intricate patterns within large amounts of data, providing a better insight into a company's security situation and resulting in the quicker discovery of a cybercrime. Work on the Chronicle project began in 2016. In 2018, Chronicle graduated from X to become an independent business at Alphabet. In June 2019, Chronicle became part of Google Cloud.

Project Brain created an artificial neural network for various machine learning applications in real-world scenarios. Work on the project began in 2011, and Brain graduated to become part of Google AI in 2012. Brain’s technology powers various Google products and functions including Google Translate, the Android speech recognition system, YouTube video recommendations, and the search function in Google Photos.

Google Life Sciences, later renamed Verily, was a life sciences project that pursued the development of breakthrough health devices capable of monitoring various biomarkers in the human body to enable early disease detection. Some devices included a bracelet designed to detect cancer by measuring nanoparticles in human blood, assistive eating utensils for people with tremors or limited mobility, and "smart" contact lenses embedded with wireless chips and sensors to measure the blood sugar level of diabetics. In 2014, Google Life Sciences introduced Project Baseline, a long-term collaborative study with Duke and Stanford University. The goal of Project Baseline is to find what a "normal" human looks like through the collection of various health data such as blood samples, medical images, and genetic data. A pilot research study of around 200 people began in 2014 upon the project's announcement. In April 2017, Project Baseline began recruiting 10,000 people for a four-year study in North Carolina and the San Francisco Bay Area. In August 2015, the Google Life Sciences project spun out to become its own company under Alphabet. In December 2015, Google Life Sciences changed its name to Verily.

Dandelion was a geothermal energy project that sought to make the implementation of geothermal home energy systems less expensive and more accessible. The project first focused on developing a quicker drilling method for installing ground loop pipes. Dandelion spun out into its own company in July 2017, upon which it also raised a seed funding round of $2 million. It is first operating in New York and plans on expanding to other states in the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States.

Google Glass Explorer.

Project Glass developed a wearable set of "smart" glasses that enabled hands-free interaction with information displayed within a user's field of vision. X officially revealed the project in April 2012, saying it had been in development for two years. The first Google Glass prototype, Google Glass Explorer, was released in April 2013 exclusively to consumers who pre-ordered the device at Google I/O 2012. It was not intended to be a final consumer product. In May 2014, the prototype became available for all to order in the US. In June 2014, it was released to consumers in the United Kingdom. Although it was not a finished product, Glass was heavily promoted in the media and received publicity from New York Fashion Week, Vogue, and The Simpsons. This led to higher expectations of the product and subsequent disappointment from consumers, which CEO Astro Teller credits as part of why the project eventually failed. Glass also received negative attention due to privacy concerns. Google Glass was taken off the public market in January 2015, but it continued to sell to businesses. A second iteration of the device, Google Glass Enterprise Edition, was released in July 2017. It was removed from the market in March 2023, and support for the line of devices will end after September 15, 2023.

Gcam was a computational photography project that began in 2011. The project stemmed from the need for a camera powerful enough to equip with the concurrently developing Google Glass. The Gcam team experimented with various photo technologies including image fusion, which it included in its first Google Glass prototype released in 2013. Gcam later created another iteration of image fusion called HDR+, which launched within the Android camera app for the Google Nexus phone models 5 and 6. It also powers the default camera mode of the Google Pixel phone and a range of other image processing products across Alphabet. Gcam graduated to Google Research in 2015.

X unveiled the Everyday Robots project in November 2019. The project first involved training robots to sort through waste and separate recyclable materials from trash. The robots were designed to be used in offices. X's office testing of the robots found that they reduced waste contamination levels from 20 percent to less than 5 percent. The project's goal was to create robots that could learn by themselves rather than having to be programmed to complete specific tasks. The robots eventually practiced other tasks using its gripper hand such as holding cups and opening doors. Everyday Robots spun out into its own company in November 2021. In February 2023, Alphabet announced it would be absorbing parts of Everyday Robots's technology and team.

H2E, or Hydration to Everyone, was a project aimed at increasing access to clean drinking water by harvesting water from the air through the use of atmospheric water harvesters. The project involved performing field research on whether such harvesters could work in regions with low access to clean drinking water. The research team developed a harvester prototype powered by solar heat. The research findings showed that the harvesters could provide safe drinking water to 1 billion people. However, the research team could not meet its goal of producing clean water at a cost of 1¢ per liter, nor were they equipped to take on the hardware integration needed in the next phase of the project. Instead of continuing, the H2E team decided to end the project and make its findings available to the public.

Project Foghorn involved removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from ocean water and turning it into carbon-neutral fuel by filtering it through a tank. After this method ultimately failed, the research team considered partnering with desalination plants to lower the end cost of the fuel. With a lack of existing desalination plants and a target cost of $5 per gallon of fuel, the project was ended after two years when the team found they were unable to bring the cost lower than $15 per gallon and therefore could not compete with gasoline prices.

Makani was a renewable energy company founded in 2006. It was acquired by Google in 2013 and folded into X for further development. Makani developed energy kites, plane-like devices equipped with rotors and generators. The kites generated power by flying in large circles at heights of 1,000 feet in areas with strong, consistent winds, thus allowing the rotors to work as individual wind turbines. The created energy powered the kite's onboard generator which in turn sent the energy down a tether to the grid. After years of testing, Makani developed a kite capable of generating up to 600 kilowatts of electricity, which is enough to power about 300 homes. In February 2019, Makani became an independent company within Alphabet and partnered with Shell to bring energy kites to offshore environments. Makani was shut down in February 2020 after Alphabet found that it was not commercially viable or profitable in the long run. The Makani team later released The Energy Kite Collection, a portfolio of resources regarding the Makani project including a technical report, avionics, simulation code repositories, flight logs, technical videos, and a simulation tool.

Loon balloons in flight.

Loon was a project that used weather balloons to extend internet access to remote areas around the world. The project was unveiled in June 2013, with work reportedly having begun two years prior in 2011. The polyethylene balloons, which measured fifteen meters across and twelve meters tall, were powered by battery-operated solar panels and equipped with ten-kilogram payload boxes containing long-term evolution (LTE) antennae and the control and communication systems. The balloons received internet via high-speed signals transmitted from the ground to the nearest transceiver. The chosen transceiver would then relay the signal to the other balloons in its network. The lifespan for Loon balloons was 100 to 150 days. Loon provided internet services to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, and to areas of Peru after flooding in January 2017. In July 2018, Loon graduated from X and became its own company under Alphabet. It raised $125 million in April 2019 from HAPSMobile, a project between SoftBank and AeroVironment. Loon was shut down in January 2021 after it was found that the company was no longer financially viable.