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Nuclearn gets $10.5M to help the nuclear industry embrace AI, plus ReOrbit lands record funding to take on Musk’s Starlink from Europe Sep 09, 2025

Show notes

Nuclearn got its start when the founders were working at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station just west of Phoenix. They had been experimenting with ways to streamline various repetitive tasks first from a data science perspective then with more advanced AI models.

Also, ReOrbit, a Finnish startup focused on helping nations control their own sovereign satellites, has raised a record €45 million (about US $53 million) Series A round of funding for a European space tech company. The funding round signals that Europe’s new space market is heating up, fueled by a geopolitical environment in which countries increasingly worry about relying on foreign technology for critical infrastructure.

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Nuclear startup Deep Fission goes public in a curious SPAC, Space DOTS raises $1.5M, and Cognition AI defied turbulence with a $400M raise at $10.2B valuation Sep 09, 2025

Show notes

Deep Fission is proposing to build small, cylindrical nuclear power plants and lower them into 30-inch diameter holes drilled one mile down into the Earth. By burying the reactors, the company hopes to solve several problems that plague current reactors, including concerns over meltdowns and potential terrorist attacks.

Also, The corporate space world tired Bianca Cefalo to the point that she found it easier to literally start her own space company and launch objects into orbit.

Bloomberg reported that Cognition AI, the startup behind AI coding agent Devin, has hit a $10.2 billion valuation after raising $400 million, marking a jump from the company’s $4 billion valuation earlier this year.

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Why is an Amazon-backed AI startup making Orson Welles fan fiction? Sep 08, 2025

Show notes

Why is a startup that bills itself as the “Netflix of AI,” and that recently raised money from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, talking about remaking a movie that was first released in 1942?

Well, the company has built a platform that allows users to create their own cartoons with AI prompts — Fable is starting out with its own intellectual property, but it has ambitions to offer similar capabilities with Hollywood IP.

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Koah raises $5M to bring ads into AI apps Sep 08, 2025

Show notes

If you spend any time online, there’s a good chance you’ve seen plenty of ugly, AI-generated ads — but few to none when interacting with AI chatbots themselves. Koah co-founder and CEO Nic Baird argued that will inevitably change.

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Natron’s liquidation shows why the US isn’t ready to make its own batteries and more tech news Sep 05, 2025

Show notes

Sodium-ion battery startup Natron ceased operations this week, ending the company’s 12-year quest to commercialize its technology in the U.S.

The company had $25 million worth of orders lined up for its Michigan factory, but it couldn’t deliver them until it had UL certification, according to Raleigh’s The News & Observer, which reported on the business’s closure because Natron had been planning to bring jobs to the state of North Carolina with its new factory.

Also, Acqui-hires feel like they’re here to stay: The team behind Alex Codes, a popular tool that lets developers use AI models within Apple’s development suite Xcode, is joining OpenAI.

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AI logistics startup Augment raised massive $85M Series A; plus Mark Zuckerberg sues Mark Zuckerberg Sep 05, 2025

Show notes

On Thursday, Augment announced that it raised an $85 million Series A led by Redpoint, with participation from 8VC, Autotech Ventures, and others. The massive round comes just five months after the startup launched out of stealth with a hefty $25 million seed round.

Also, Mark Zuckerberg, a bankruptcy lawyer from Indiana, has filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta.

Mark Zuckerberg the lawyer uses a commercial Facebook page to advertise his legal practice and communicate with potential clients. But his page has been disabled five times in the last eight years, since Meta’s moderation systems flag his account as falsely impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of the platform.

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Atlassian to buy Arc developer The Browser Company for $610M; also, Madrid’s Orbital Paradigm aims to prove a cheaper path to orbital reentry Sep 04, 2025

Show notes

Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian’s CEO and co-founder, said, ‘today’s browsers weren’t built for work; they were built for browsing. This deal is a bold step forward in reimagining the browser for knowledge work in the AI era.’

Also, Francesco Cacciatore is a self-proclaimed skeptic. Yet after spending two decades in the European aerospace industry and hitting, as he put it, a “crisis,” he made an undeniably optimistic bet: he started a space company, saying ‘I wanted to try and build something myself.’

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Orchard Robotics raises $22M for farm vision AI; also, Mistral on the cusp of securing a $14B valuation Sep 04, 2025

Show notes

On Wednesday, Orchard Robotics announced that it raised a $22 million Series A funding led by Quiet Capital and Shine Capital, and with participation from returning investors, including General Catalyst and Contrary. Although the idea of using computer vision for specialty crops isn’t new, Wu says that the largest farms in the U.S. still rely on manual sampling to make critical decisions about farm operations.

Also, French AI startup Mistral AI is finalizing a €2 billion investment at a post-money valuation of $14 billion, reports Bloomberg, positioning the company as one of Europe’s most valuable tech startups. The two-year-old OpenAI rival, founded by former DeepMind and Meta researchers, develops open source language models and Le Chat, its AI chatbot built for European audiences.

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Advanced geothermal startups are getting warmed up and Fizz expands into grocery delivery Sep 03, 2025

Show notes

When congressional Republicans took a sledgehammer to the Inflation Reduction Act last summer, advanced geothermal startups were largely spared. Drilling for renewable energy appears to be one of the few things that engenders bipartisan support. Now, with the uncertainty settled, geothermal companies are announcing deals that promise to pave the way for broader deployment of their technology.

Also, Fizz, the college social app, is expanding into grocery delivery thanks to a new partnership with Gopuff, the startup told TechCrunch exclusively. The partnership will allow students to order anything from late-night snacks to weekly groceries directly within the Fizz app in as fast as 15 minutes.

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Anthropic raises $13B Series F at $183 billion valuation, also OpenAI acquires product testing startup Statsig Sep 03, 2025

Show notes

AI firm Anthropic has raised a $13 billion Series F round that brings its post-money valuation up to $183 billion — funds the company says will be used to grow its enterprise adoption, deepen safety research, and support international expansion.

Also, OpenAI announced in a blog post on Tuesday that it agreed to acquire the product testing startup Statsig, and bring on its founder and CEO, Vijaye Raji, as the company’s CTO of Applications.

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