Just caught something interesting about Jed McCaleb's latest move. The guy who co-founded Ripple and built Stellar is apparently pivoting hard into AI research now. We're talking a billion dollars from his XRP holdings going straight into AGI development.

So here's the play: Jed McCaleb is channeling this through the Astera Institute, which he founded as a non-profit. The focus is on neuroscience-inspired AI, basically trying to build AI systems that actually work like the human brain. Pretty ambitious stuff. He's also dedicating another $600 million specifically to neuroscience research to support that vision.

What's wild is the methodology they're going for. Brain-computer interfaces to study neural activity, using that data to inform AI development. It's a completely different lane from where McCaleb was operating during his crypto days. By 2022, he'd already exited his XRP position and stepped back from Ripple, so this feels like a genuine shift in focus rather than just diversification.

The interesting part is how this reflects where serious money is moving right now. Jed McCaleb seeing AGI as the transformative field of the next decade, worth a billion dollar bet. Whether you're bullish or skeptical on AI, you've got to respect the conviction here. This isn't venture capital chasing hype, it's someone who already made their fortune betting on a different paradigm now betting on this one.