“One day soon, at a research lab near Santa Barbara or Seattle or a secret facility in the Chinese mountains, it will begin: the sudden unlocking of the world’s secrets. Your secrets.
Cybersecurity analysts call this Q-Day—the day someone builds a quantum computer that can crack the most widely used forms of encryption. These math problems have kept humanity’s intimate data safe for decades, but on Q-Day, everything could become vulnerable, for everyone: emails, text messages, anonymous posts, location histories, bitcoin wallets, police reports, hospital records, power stations, the entire global financial system.”
A weekly dispatch featuring exclusive interviews with deep tech founders & a roundup of the most important deep tech news.
- Trump’s renewable crackdown threatens US battery boom
- Space Force may use SpaceX satellites instead of developing its own, senator says
- First gene-edited pig liver transplanted into a brain-dead person
- Nuclear startup Oklo returns to NRC after rare rejection
- Can Musk put man on Mars?
- Shipbuilders swarm Capitol Hill to lobby for aircraft carrier funding
- Momentum seems to be building for Jared Isaacman to become NASA administrator
- Firm wins Space Force funding to provide an “aircraft carrier” in orbit
- How Extropic plans to unseat Nvidia
- Mini-Satellite Sends Encrypted Quantum Message a Record-Breaking Distance
- Earth AI’s algorithms found critical minerals in places everyone else ignored
- NRO expands spy satellite network with back-to-back SpaceX launches
- Former Astronauts rally behind Jared Isaacman
- OQTOPUS: Researchers launch open-source quantum computer operating system
- Vertical farming company Plenty files for bankruptcy after raising nearly $1B
- Space Force to Launch 100+ Sats in 2025
- Can geothermal energy meet the moment?
- ‘Chinese Military Companies’ Permeate US Tech Supply Chain
- Can Earth’s Rotation Be a Power Source? Physicists Debate Bold New Idea
- A mysterious startup is developing a new form of solar geoengineering
- 1X will test humanoid robots in ‘a few hundred’ homes in 2025
- Anduril might build a weapons factory in the UK
Star Catcher successfully demonstrated its solar power beaming technology by transmitting energy over 100 meters, marking a significant step toward its goal of building a power grid in low Earth orbit (LEO). This technology could power spacecraft, especially those with limited energy capacity or nearing the end of their lifespan. The company is preparing for further tests, including a transmission over a kilometer, with plans to deploy the tech in orbit next year. (via Payload)
- Mapping the future of metamaterials
- Physicists discover a copper-free high-temperature superconducting oxide
- Graphene-based programmable surfaces advance terahertz imaging and 6G communications
- Automated technique for large-scale graphene transfer can boost electronic chip production
- Novel protocol enables photon entanglement without quantum measurement
- Quantum computing milestone: 56-qubit computer provides truly random number generation
- ‘Magnetic tweezers’: Making robotic surgery safer and more precise with a human touch
- Nuclear Fusion Requires Certain Fuel, and Researchers Have Found a Greener Way to Make It
- We’re one step closer to a giant interferometer on the moon
- DNA-loaded lipid nanoparticles are poised to bring gene therapy to common chronic diseases
- Japanese scientists use stem cell treatment to restore movement in spinal injury
- AI reads cancer cells’ 3D shape to predict their drug response
- Can we make AI less power-hungry? These researchers are working on it
- High-precision quantum gates with diamond spin qubits achieve error rate below 0.1%
- 3D nanotech blankets offer new path to clean drinking water
- Nuclear energy startup Marvel Fusion raises $50M as race to develop tech heats up
- AI-powered energy centered predictive maintance solutions company Nanoprecise closes $38M Series C funding
- Vestaron raises over $20M in funding for novel, peptide-based crop protection solutions
- Allen Control Systems raises $30M in Series A funding for autonomous precision robotics for defense
- EQT raises €21.5B for its latest infrastructure fund
- Galatea Bio gets $25M to map genetic diversity of 10 million people, help pharma create new medicines
- DOE reissues $900M nuclear SMR opportunity, scraps community criteria to focus on technical merit
- Spain backs Sateliot with $15M to expand connectivity constellation
- Epicrispr raises $68M, will start clinical trial of epigenetic editing for FSHD
- Augustine Therapeutics closes $85M series A for HDAC6 inhibitors
- 1789 Capital, Type One Ventures to back Axiom Space at $2B valuation
- Nuclear startup Terrestrial Energy goes public via SPAC, netting $280M in merger
- Hillstar Bio raises $67M for immunology drugs
- Ophthalmology startup Character Biosciences gets $93M for genetics-based approach
- Dyna Robotics raises $23.5M in funding for AI robots
- Biotechnology company Hubble Therapeutics closes $7.3M Series A financing to develop a gene therapy to cure pediatric blindness
- Pangea Aerospace raises $25M Series A round to fund space propulsion work
- Tempero Bio gets $70M to advance substance abuse treatment
- NATO Innovation Fund leads €25M Series A in photonics startup Camgraphic
- AI chip startup FuriosaAI reportedly turns down $800M acquisition offer from Meta
- XGS Energy, a developer of next-gen geothermal power projects, raised a $13M round
Farewell to Gaia, the Milky Way’s Cartographer / Climate VCs and startups are chasing the defence tech trend / The New Billionaires of the AI Boom / The Unbearable Loudness of Chewing / Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life / I drove 300 miles, then asked police to send me surveillance footage of my car. / Human urine, a valuable resource as fertilizer for sustainable urban agriculture / Why the Human Brain May Power the Next Tech Revolution / How Planetary Defenders Planned to Stop That City-Killer Asteroid / Devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries / CIA Director Reveals Signal Comes Installed on Agency Computers / Ethically Sourced ‘Spare’ Human Bodies Could Revolutionize Medicine / Biologists witness first case of a shark intentionally making sounds / SpaceX reportedly has a secret backdoor for Chinese investment / Mathematicians uncover the logic behind how people walk in crowds / Aircraft detection at planetary scale / Bitcoin in the bush – the crypto mine in remote Zambia / U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat / Inside Silicon Valley’s Invite-Only IRL Dating Scene / Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening / Turtle smuggler gets 30 months in federal prison / Yahoo is selling TechCrunch / The Weight of the Internet Will Shock You / Hot New Thermodynamic Chips Could Trump Classical Computers / 23andMe Files For Bankruptcy / US lifts sanctions on Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer linked to North Korean money laundering / What can we learn from how Wikidata is navigating conflicting accounts