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He made your free video player run smoothly. Now he’s doing that for robots. Jun 22, 2026

Show notes

French serial entrepreneur and open-source legend Jean-Baptiste Kempf has been building Kyber, an infrastructure layer to control remote devices in real time.

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World model maker Odyssey nabs $1.45B valuation backed by Amazon and other big names; plus, General Intuition in talks to raise $300M at around $2B valuation Jun 19, 2026

Show notes

World models are the next big thing in AI beyond LLMs and, with this round, Odyssey has cemented itself as one of the startups to watch.

Also, General Intuition is in talks to raise around $300 million at a roughly $2 billion valuation from backers including Jeff Bezos. The startup trains AI agents on spatial-temporal reasoning.

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SpaceX alum nabs $22M to turn rocket engines into geothermal power plants Jun 18, 2026

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Critical Energy is turning rocket engines into geothermal power plants, and it wants to build 300 GW per year by 2045.

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Startup Foundation Alloy developed a new alloying technique; plus, Probably raises $9M to build a more reliable kind of AI Jun 17, 2026

Show notes

Instead of heating metals, Foundation Alloy beats them into submission. The startup has raised $22 million to scale up production of its alloys.

Also, the company Probably wants to prevent hallucinations and factual errors from reaching users, and achieve accuracy on par with deterministic systems.

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Jeff Bezos’s Prometheus raises $12B to build an ‘artificial general engineer’ for the physical world; plus, Theker building a factory robot that doesn’t specialize in anything Jun 15, 2026

Show notes

The new round values the physical AI startup that aims to automate heavy engineering and drug design at $41 billion.

Also, unlike humanoid robots designed around a fixed form — think Boston Dynamics — Theker's machines are built to be reconfigured.

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Endurance Energy raises $54M to harness a massive untapped energy source; Jedify raises $24M to help companies arm AI agents with context on their businessplus, Jun 12, 2026

Show notes

SpaceX alumni Andrew Redd is betting the ocean has vast amounts of untapped geothermal energy.

Also, the funding round was led by Norwest, with participation from S Capital VC, Cerca Partners, and Oceans Ventures. Snowflake Ventures also participated as a strategic investor.

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Datadog veterans launch AI coding startup Niteshift on a bet against Big AI lock-in; plus, Zest launches a restaurant discovery app Jun 11, 2026

Show notes

AI coding agent startup Niteshift has raised a $7 million seed round from a who's who of angels. It's betting companies will want power over, not lock-in, with model makers.

Also, backed by Alexis Ohanian’s 776 and Kindred Ventures, Zest uses transaction data and AI to generate restaurant recommendations based on users’ real dining habits and the places they frequent.

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Evotrex raises $30M to build the RV that doesn’t need a charging station; plus, so long FAANG and hello to MANGOS Jun 10, 2026

Show notes

The startup is one of many entering the RV space, but it's banking on a hybrid power system that can go far beyond campsites.

Also, with SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all eyeing massive public debuts, the tech industry may soon have a new class of corporate overlords — and a new acronym to match. Say goodbye to FAANG and hello to MANGOS.

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Helion, the Sam Altman-backed fusion startup, raises $465M to build a power plant for Microsoft Jun 08, 2026

Show notes

Fusion startup Helion is racing to complete a power plant for Microsoft by 2028. A fresh infusion of cash should help with that.

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Is Silicon Valley ready to put robots in people’s homes? Hello Robot is. Jun 05, 2026

Show notes

The California startup released the fourth-generation of its home assistance robot, Stretch.

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