Wednesday 15 November 2017

Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates’ investment firm plops $80 million on Smart City

Microsoft has recently been pushing to help communities foster more innovation by evolving them into incubation hubs where the very foundation of the area centers around technology. Microsoft has been calling their connected experiment, Smart Cities and it now looks like the companies former CEO is stealing a play from the businesses playbook and opening up his own funded technological community.
While Microsoft has decided to place its city in or near bustling tech-related areas such as Denver and China, former company CEO Bill Gates is sprouting up his own community in Phoneix, Arizona, near west valley and just 45 minutes outside of the downtown area. Gates’ location choice may seem a bit odd now, but it’s fair to assume the co-founder of Microsoft has done a bit of research which may have included the prospect of a freeway leading directly from Belmont to Las Vegas.
Just recently, an investment firm associated with Bill Gates invested $80 million into what’s being codenamed the Belmont project. For $80 million, Gates is looking to dedicate 3,800 acres of the project to office, commercial, and retail space while an additional 470 acres will be reserved for educational innovation such as public schools with the remainder reserved for private residences.
According to a report from NBC News, “Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles and autonomous logistics hubs.”
As Internet of Things devices and machine learning becomes more prevalent, creating interconnected systems are becoming easier for service providers. Perhaps, with one visionary (a proven one at that) at the helm, the Belmont Project can avoid the red tape of working around established pseudo monopolies with proprietary protocols to streamline a living condition many have hoped for, for some time.


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