While most of us are thinking about the weekend and time off, some of the most well-known tech billionaires, like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, are working on an idea that sounds like something straight out of a movie. They want to build a special city in Greenland – a place without traditional rules, where they can freely develop advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and even micro-nuclear energy.
The idea is to create a so-called “freedom city” – a space where the state regulates almost nothing. Instead, they would make the rules themselves. Such experiments already exist, like Próspera in Honduras, which is also backed by Thiel, and another project in California.
Greenland is particularly interesting to them because melting ice is revealing rare minerals, and the cold climate is perfect for large data centers powering AI systems. On top of that, the remoteness and minimal regulation mean fewer obstacles to building whatever they want.
Although it all sounds very ambitious, the project is still in its early stages. Trump’s former ambassador to Denmark, Ken Howery – who is also Thiel’s associate – is involved in the negotiations, but Denmark has previously made it clear that Greenland “is not for sale.” So, for now, this attempt seems like an idea waiting for its moment.
On one hand, such cities could bring major technological progress. On the other hand, it raises the question of what everyday life would look like in a place where private companies write the laws.
Without clear boundaries between business and governance, such freedom can easily become an abuse of power.
In Brief: Tech World Highlights
- Microsoft announced it is purchasing 3.7 million metric tons of carbon removal credits from development firm CO280 to meet its goal of becoming carbon negative by 2030.
- Reports indicate that Google has laid off “hundreds of employees” in its departments responsible for Android, Chrome, and Pixel, in a move to become “more efficient.”
- OpenAI released a major update for ChatGPT, improving its memory so that the chatbot can rely on all previous conversations to provide more personalized answers.
- Senator Josh Hawley has called on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress over allegations that the company compromised U.S. national security.
- Alphabet’s Waymo has started its first international testing in Japan by manually driving its vehicles through seven Tokyo districts to collect mapping data.
Trending AI Tools:
- Cogito v1 Preview – A new family of open-source LLMs trained using IDA technology.
- Gemini Deep Research – Now available with the 2.5 Pro Experimental version.
- Nemotron Ultra – NVIDIA’s open-source reasoning model with 253 billion parameters.
