Inevitable

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Using Drones to Make Rain and Snow with Rainmaker Jan 20, 2026

Show notes

Augustus Doricko is Founder and CEO at Rainmaker, a company using cloud seeding, drones, and radar to increase rain and snow as water scarcity and drought intensify across the West. In this episode of Inevitable, the conversation focuses on why cloud seeding—often misunderstood as science fiction or geoengineering—has existed for decades and why it has only recently become possible to prove it actually works.

The discussion centers on the industry’s core constraint: attribution. For years, operators couldn’t measure whether precipitation would have occurred anyway. Doricko explains how advances in dual-polarization radar and targeted flight paths now make it possible to identify human-caused snowfall, unlocking a path to scale.

Doricko also walks through Rainmaker’s vertically integrated approach, from weather-resistant drones and proprietary radar to software and validation systems, and why the company focuses on snowpack as a bankable water source. The episode also addresses public scrutiny, regulatory bans, and what it takes to build water infrastructure in a category that’s easy to misunderstand but increasingly necessary.

Episode recorded on Dec 16, 2025 (Published on Jan 20, 2026)

In this episode, we cover:

[1:53] Cloud seeding vs geoengineering
[3:27] How cloud seeding works and its history
[9:14] When and how it became commercially deployable
[15:28] Advantages of using drones vs manned aircraft
[18:34] The limits of today’s validation methods
[24:54] Why Rainmaker focuses on snowpack first
[27:34] Rainmaker’s go to market
[29:34] Acquiring legacy operators to scale faster
[32:40] Why Rainmaker sells services, not water
[38:25] State bans, politics, and public backlash
[40:39] Chemtrails and Texas flood controversies
[47:15] The future of cloud seeding in the US and abroad

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

AI Hits a Power Wall. Starcloud Launches Data Centers Into Orbit Jan 13, 2026

Show notes

Philip Johnston is co-founder and CEO of Starcloud, a company building data centers in space to solve AI's power crisis. Starcloud has already launched the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into orbit and is partnering with cloud providers like Crusoe to scale orbital computing infrastructure.

As AI demand accelerates, data centers are running into a new bottleneck: access to reliable, affordable power. Grid congestion, interconnection delays, and cooling requirements are slowing the deployment of new AI data centers, even as compute demand continues to surge. Traditional data centers face 5-10 year lead times for new power projects due to permitting, interconnection queues, and grid capacity constraints.

In this episode, Philip explains why Starcloud is building data centers in orbit, where continuous solar power is available and heat can be rejected directly into the vacuum of space. He walks through Starcloud’s first on-orbit GPU deployment, the realities of cooling and radiation in space, and how orbital data centers could relieve pressure on terrestrial power systems as AI infrastructure scales.

Episode recorded on Dec 11, 2025 (Published on Jan 13, 2026)

In this episode, we cover:

[04:59] What Starcloud's orbital data centers look like (and how they differ from terrestrial facilities)
[06:37] How SpaceX Starship's reusable launch vehicles change space economics
[10:45] The $500/kg breakeven point for space-based solar vs. Earth
[14:15] Why space solar panels produce 8x more energy than ground-based arrays
[21:19] Thermal management: Cooling NVIDIA GPUs in a vacuum using radiators
[25:57] Edge computing in orbit: Real-time inference on satellite imagery
[29:22] The Crusoe partnership: Selling power-as-a-service in space
[31:21] Starcloud's business model: Power, cooling, and connectivity
[34:18] Addressing critics: What could prevent orbital data centers from working

Key Takeaways:

Starcloud launched the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into orbit in November 2024
Space solar produces 8x more energy per square meter than terrestrial solar
Breakeven launch cost for orbital data centers: $500/kg
Current customers: DOD and commercial Earth observation satellites needing real-time inference
Target: 10 gigawatts of orbital computing capacity by early 2030s

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

The Missing Piece Holding Back Advanced Nuclear with Standard Nuclear Jan 06, 2026

Show notes

Kurt Terrani is CEO of Standard Nuclear, a company focused on a part of nuclear energy that gets far less attention than reactor designs but can become the true bottleneck: fuel.

In this episode, Kurt provides a nuclear fuels 101, walking through the front end of the fuel cycle from uranium processing and enrichment to fabrication. He explains in plain terms what makes TRISO fuel different, why it appears so frequently in next-generation reactor designs, and how fuel performance shapes reactor economics, safety, and scalability.

The conversation also unpacks Standard Nuclear’s origin story, which emerged from a Chapter 11 restructuring of UltraSafe Nuclear, and explores a future where reactor-agnostic fuel suppliers replace vertically integrated fuel strategies to unlock faster deployment across advanced nuclear technologies.

Episode recorded on Dec 4, 2025 (Published on Jan 6, 2026)

In this episode, we cover:

[1:53] An overview of Standard Nuclear
[3:26] Nuclear’s history in Oak Ridge, TN
[6:07] The nuclear fuel cycle
[8:35] US involvement and ownership in this cycle
[10:17] TRISO fuel or coated particle fuel
[17:56] Why enrichment access constrains deployment
[21:43] Government’s role bridging fuel supply gaps
[24:03] Why reactor companies try vertical integration
[26:26] Standard Nuclear’s origin story
[28:51] Why fuel must become a commodity
[33:42] The case for standardizing TRISO specs
[39:20] Challenges of building a fuels company

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Modular, High-Quality Homes Built Faster and Cheaper with Cuby Dec 16, 2025

Show notes

Aleks Gampel is COO and Co-founder at Cuby, a company rethinking how homes are built in the middle of a nationwide housing crisis. The cost of housing has soared while construction productivity has barely budged in decades, and today’s homes are still built through slow, wasteful, and carbon-intensive processes that aren’t designed for escalating climate risks. Instead of shipping prefab boxes across the country, Cuby asks what it would look like if housing finally had its assembly line moment—and the factory moved to where homes are needed. Their mobile microfactories are inflatable, rapidly deployable facilities that manufacture standardized home components on or near the job site using mostly unskilled labor, then assemble houses in a predictable, repeatable way. In this conversation, Aleks unpacks the roots of the housing shortage, why past modular attempts fell short, and how Cuby’s model could change what’s possible for housing affordability, waste reduction, and resilience.

Episode recorded on Nov 20, 2025 (Published on Dec 16, 2025)

In this episode, we cover:

[4:40] Causes for the housing crisis today
[8:17] Emissions associated with housing and how Cuby differs
[12:54] An overview of industrialized construction
[16:43] Main challenges with industrialized construction
[19:25] Cuby’s antithesis to centralized gigafactories in construction
[27:08] How Cuby’s inflatable mobile microfactory works
[30:17] Cuby’s European headquarters and China facility
[31:57] Cuby’s single-family home design
[33:30] The company’s business model
[37:52] Why Cuby isn’t displacing jobs
[38:55] The company’s funding to date
[40:15] What’s next for Cuby

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

The Breakthrough Fusion Has Been Waiting For with Pacific Fusion Dec 09, 2025

Show notes

Carrie von Muench is the COO and Co-Founder of Pacific Fusion, a company building the first pulser-driven inertial fusion system designed for net facility gain. Fusion has long promised limitless, carbon-free, dispatchable power, but only recently have breakthroughs—from ignition at the National Ignition Facility to major advances at Sandia and new high-efficiency pulse-power technology—shifted fusion from scientific aspiration to solvable engineering challenge.

The Pacific Fusion founding team came together after these 2022 milestones revealed a credible, engineering-driven path to fusion energy. Backed by a landmark $900M Series A led by General Catalyst, the company is developing a highly modular system that can be mass-manufactured using accessible materials and domestically sourced supply chains. In this episode, Carrie explains why these breakthroughs matter, how the modular pulser architecture works, why New Mexico became home for the world’s largest pulse-power facility, and how fusion could reshape global energy, industry, and security. MCJ is proud to participate in Pacific Fusion’s Series A through our venture funds.

Episode recorded on Nov 19, 2025 (Published on Dec 9, 2025)

In this episode, we cover:

[13:28] Pacific Fusion’s origins and founding team
[17:54] The company’s unique financing structure
[18:57] Why traditional venture models fail for fusion
[25:42] Pacific Fusion’s progress to date
[27:23] What a pulsed magnetic fusion system looks like
[29:15] The path from modular components to full-scale system
[33:20] Looking ahead at Pacific Fusion’s 2026 milestones
[35:04] Why they’re building in Albuquerque, New Mexico
[41:29] The global race with China to commercialize fusion
[46:24] The fusion supply chain

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

AI-Powered Infrastructure Development with Unlimited Industries Dec 03, 2025

Show notes

Alex Modon is CEO and Co-founder of Unlimited Industries, a company transforming infrastructure development through AI-driven automation. Unlimited tackles one of the biggest bottlenecks in climate and industrial innovation: the outdated, risk-averse world of engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC). Traditional EPCs are often misaligned with the needs of first-of-a-kind projects. Unlimited flips the script by using AI to generate thousands of design permutations, drastically cutting feedback loops, iteration time, and overall cost. Alex shares how his background in software, combined with childhood exposure to industrial environments, inspired him to take on this hard problem—and why he believes the only way to build faster is to rebuild the entire system from the ground up.

Episode recorded on July 29 (Published on Dec 3)

In this episode, we cover:

⁠[03:15] An overview of EPCs
[05:05] How EPCs make money
[07:06] Why FOAK projects face EPC challenges
[10:02] Reducing marginal cost of engineering design with AI
[12:35] Alex’s pivot from software to infrastructure
[15:39] Why EPCs resist adopting AI tools
[19:14] Unlimited’s capital projects platform explained
[23:41] How Unlimited manages physical construction
[26:36] The company's vision of fully autonomous construction in the future
[28:08] Why physical abundance drives Alex

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Using AI to Supercharge Nuclear Operations with Atomic Canyon Nov 19, 2025

Show notes

Trey Lauderdale is the CEO and Founder of Atomic Canyon, a company bringing artificial intelligence into the nuclear energy sector. Atomic Canyon recently deployed the first commercial on-site generative AI system at a U.S. nuclear facility. While AI’s growth is creating massive demand for reliable, clean baseload power, Atomic Canyon explores the reverse question: does nuclear need AI just as much to solve workforce shortages and accelerate new reactor deployment? Trey’s path to nuclear is unconventional. After building and selling a healthcare communications platform, he moved to San Luis Obispo and discovered he lived 10 miles from California’s last nuclear plant. That proximity led to applying lessons from one highly regulated industry to another. In just two years, Trey has built partnerships with PG&E and Diablo Canyon, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, the kind of institutional relationships that typically take years to establish in the nuclear industry. Perhaps that speed says something about both the urgency of the problem and the credibility of the solution.

Episode recorded on Aug 12, 2025 (Published on Nov 19, 2025)

In this episode, we cover:

[2:49] An overview of Atomic Canyon
[04:45] Trey’s path from healthcare to nuclear
[08:50] The myths vs reality of nuclear power plants
[10:41] Understanding nuclear’s administrative bottlenecks
[12:14] How Trey started Atomic Canyon with no nuclear experience
[17:59] Learning from Diablo leadership and facility
[20:24] Deploying the first on-premise nuclear AI system
[23:39] Security measures for data sets
[29:23] Building NuclearBench with Idaho National Lab
[32:02] Scaling from one plant to fleet-wide adoption
[38:53] Where Atomic Canyon needs help
[40:09] The company’s funding to date

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Autonomous Construction Sites and AI-Powered Heavy Equipment with Bedrock Robotics Nov 13, 2025

Show notes

Boris Sofman is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bedrock Robotics, a company turning existing construction equipment into fully autonomous fleets through same-day hardware upfits. With over $80 million in funding from Eclipse, 8VC, NVIDIA Ventures, and former Waymo CEO John Krafcik, Bedrock is tackling a major bottleneck in the global economy: a massive construction labor shortage just as demand for data centers, clean energy projects, housing, and manufacturing is skyrocketing.

In this episode, Boris shares how his experience building autonomous vehicles at Waymo inspired him to apply similar AI and machine learning approaches to heavy equipment. He explains why full autonomy matters in construction, what it unlocks for efficiency and safety, and how Bedrock plans to accelerate infrastructure and industrial development through robotic automation.

Episode recorded on Sept 30, 2025 (Published on Nov 13, 2025)

In this episode, we cover:

[02:45] Boris’s background in robotics and autonomous vehicles
[04:50] Learnings from Waymo applied to construction
[10:09] Boris’s predictions for autonomous vehicles in the future
[18:44] Why he left Waymo to start Bedrock Robotics
[22:59] Choosing construction as the first market for autonomy
[25:26] How Bedrock upfits machines without permanent modifications
[26:25] Why excavators are the first target use case
[28:20] Training AI to navigate changing job site environments
[30:54] Skipping teleoperation and going straight to autonomy
[35:52] Bedrock’s GTM focus on heavy industrial sectors
[40:46] How to work with traditional industries effectively
[43:55] How autonomy solves labor shortages and safety challenges

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

Crusoe CEO and Co-founder, Chase Lochmiller: Live Special at MCJ Summit Oct 29, 2025

Show notes

Chase Lochmiller is the CEO and co-founder of Crusoe. If you’re a regular listener, Crusoe isn’t new to the pod. This summer, Cody sat down with Chase’s Co-founder and COO, Cully Cavness, during our live event in Austin.

This latest episode was recorded live at the inaugural MCJ Summit in San Francisco at the beautiful Autodesk Gallery. Cody and Chase dive into how Crusoe is building data centers at the intersection of AI and energy. Chase traces his path from MIT soccer captain and mountaineer to climate-focused entrepreneur, and how those experiences shaped Crusoe’s core values of preparation, curiosity, and speed.

He shares the story behind the company’s 1.2-gigawatt Abilene, TX project, its energy-first approach to powering AI infrastructure, and his vision for an era of abundant energy and intelligence. The discussion also explores the future of AI labor, grid integration, and what digital abundance could mean for society at large.

Special thanks to our MCJ Summit attendees and our kind sponsors: Autodesk Foundation, Borusan, Cedar Grove, CSC Leasing, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Obayashi, Palantir, and Safire Partners.

Episode recorded on Oct 15, 2025 (Published on Oct 29, 2025)

In this episode, we cover:

⁠ [01:14] ⁠Chase’s early love of math, science, and soccer
⁠ [02:42] ⁠Realizing academia moved too slow for his energy
⁠ [04:32] ⁠How his entrepreneurial father shaped his path
⁠ [05:05] ⁠Climbing Everest and the origins of “Think Like a Mountaineer”
⁠ [09:32] ⁠Defining Crusoe as a clean AI infrastructure company
⁠ [10:47] ⁠Building vertically integrated “AI factories”
⁠ [16:24] ⁠Inside the 1.2 GW Abilene project for OpenAI and Oracle
⁠ [20:52] ⁠Crusoe’s energy-first approach to compute build-outs
⁠ [25:36] ⁠Using AI demand to accelerate next-gen energy solutions
⁠ [30:24] ⁠When AI becomes a power orchestrator
⁠ [33:31] ⁠Digital labor and AI’s impact on GDP and society
⁠ [38:41] ⁠How Chase hopes Crusoe is remembered in 30 years

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*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant

AI’s Power Gap and Nuclear’s Return with The Nuclear Company Oct 07, 2025

Show notes

Juliann Edwards is Chief Development Officer at The Nuclear Company. The United States has 93 operating nuclear reactors providing about 20% of the nation’s electricity. After decades without new builds, Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia finally came online—despite cost overruns and delays that nearly derailed the project. Meanwhile, China has dozens of reactors under construction and is on pace to surpass the U.S. as the world’s nuclear leader by 2030.

At the same time, an energy-demand gap—driven by AI data centers, reshoring of manufacturing, and widespread electrification—has put nuclear back in the conversation. Hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are scrambling for clean, reliable baseload power.

The Nuclear Company believes it can crack what’s held nuclear back in America. Rather than inventing new reactor designs, they’re using proven models like and targeting “the other 88%” of costs—construction, financing, and project management. Their approach is fleet-scale deployment: building multiple reactors at once to drive down costs through repetition and shared learning. They’re also partnering with Palantir to build an AI-powered operating system to orchestrate these projects.

Beyond her role at The Nuclear Company, Juliann chairs U.S. Women in Nuclear. With 15 years in the industry—from steel commodities to the 2000s nuclear renaissance and the decommissioning wave—she’s seen the cycles and why today’s interest feels different.

MCJ is a multiple-time investor in The Nuclear Company through our venture funds.

Episode recorded on Aug 7, 2025 (Published on Oct 7, 2025)

In this episode, we cover: