Steve Jurvetson

Impressive progress from our portfolio Array Labs with a $20m Series A to scale radar manufacturing and prepare for launch. Designing radar systems for mass manufacturing, borrowing from consumer electronics and telecoms, is a powerful unlock for cost, speed, and deployment at scale. The traction speaks for itself: nine-figure contracted revenue, multiple government awards, and expanding product lines. Exciting to see this next phase of execution begin. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/e93jz4k8 #SpaceTech #DualUse #Radar #DefenceTech #NewSpace

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An excellent read, and explains why Carbice is the essential cooling and systems reliability solution for AI chips and datacenter, whether on ground or in space -- and why everyone from Dow to mission-critical military satellites rely on them https://lnkd.in/ggBcvsaR

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Cerebras is now a generational AI company. But between 2018 and 2019, one tiny component nearly killed the company. Back then we were deep into building the first wafer-scale system. Everything depended on a single part most people will never notice. The interposer. It sits between the main board and the dinner-plate-sized silicon wafer. It has to carry enormous power and data loads while having to survive massive thermal cycling. Cold to hot. Off to fully lit. Over and over again. We had just built the largest chip in the world. There was no existing supply chain for it so we had to single source this part. That alone is terrifying. One vendor, no backup. If it failed, the system failed. If the system failed, the company could have failed. For almost three years, this thing was the boogeyman in every board meeting. Would it maintain electrical continuity? Would it warp under load? Would it survive burn-in? Would it work at scale? For long stretches, the honest answer was “we don’t know.” We were burning millions of dollars per month. Time was not our friend. A redesign could have pushed us far enough back that the market might have moved on. At one point, we pulled in a group that I first worked with at IDEO and that used to be called "Failure Analysis". That is not who you call when things are going well! We went back to first principles. Physics. Materials science. Coefficients of thermal expansion. Power dissipation per square millimeter. Analyzing what happens when you push this much power through a system at these temperatures. Again and again. Slowly, painfully, we got there. Finally the interposer worked. Every company pushing the frontier runs into problems like this. There are rarely quick, clever fixes. You just have to do real failure analysis, over and over, until the answer starts to reveal itself. The Cerebras team is itself built from the strongest, toughest material I’ve seen. They earned every inch of the other side of that problem.

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🚀 We’re thrilled to announce our investment in Samara Aerospace’s $10 million Seed round to help bring more stability to satellites in orbit and enable high-sensitivity radio frequency (RF) detection for defense (e.g. hypersonic missiles) and commercial (e.g. vessels) applications.  The round was led by Balerion Space Ventures, with participation from IllinoisVentures GP LLC, MFV Partners, and Access Holdings Samara’s vision: Samara is building a new generation of high-stability satellites, called Hummingbirds, designed to detect the faintest RF emissions from Earth and its atmosphere. The problem: Modern satellites are optimized for cost and speed, at the expense of: ⚠️ Signal instability reducing data quality and reliability ⚠️ Limited ability to detect aircraft radar, ship transponders, and advanced weather systems ⚠️ Inefficiencies that translate into lost time, resources, and data What Samara does differently: At the core of Hummingbird is MSAC (Multifunctional Structures for Attitude Control), an active vibration-cancellation system. Instead of passively damping movements and jitters, MSAC actively eliminates them, allowing for: ✅ Extreme satellite stability for ultra-weak RF signal detection ✅ Support for much larger antennas and solar arrays without sacrificing agility ✅ Cut satellite size and weight without impacting performance Traction: Samara recently launched its technology demonstrator, “Cicada” with SpaceX and received Non-dilutive funding including a $4M SpaceWERX Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) award and a NASA Phase I contract. These are in addition to more than $800m in LOIs that Samara holds with aerospace contractors and companies. Samara's plans to deploy a full constellation of these stabilised satellites, enabling faint radio signals detection for dual-use application: Defence: tracking fast-moving targets, including hypersonic missiles, with precision beyond existing technology.  Commercial/Civil: providing continuous monitoring and awareness of assets across the globe such as vessels and airplanes. What’s next: 🚀 First mission Hummingbird-1 planned for 2027 🏭 Scaling operations with a new 11,200-sq-ft production facility We’re excited to back Samara Aerospace alongside Balerion Space Ventures and What If Ventures, and are excited for what’s to come. You can read the full press release here: https://lnkd.in/enZyy2Xu 💡 Want access to breakthrough ventures like Samara Aerospace? Join our investor network 👉 https://lnkd.in/g4AedRck Note: This announcement is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy securities. #SpaceTech #Aerospace #DefenseTech #DeepTech #VentureCapital

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I’ve been working on the theory of why small, shippable factories are the perfect inversion to the centralized prefab factory model. It all collapsed into one line of math (credit to Gilles Retsin): Factory Efficiency = Usage × (Throughput × Product Value ) / ( CapEx + Deployment OpEx) The idea is that the closer you can drive Usage to 100 % while keeping the denominator tiny, the faster the flywheel spins.  A shippable microfactory tackles this by primarily focusing on a high Usage factor. Because the microfactory can be packed up afterwards and reused, its CapEx gets amortized over multiple projects, effectively raising its overall Usage across the year. If one project alone doesn’t fully occupy the factory, it can simply roll over to another job to maintain high Usage. Its CapEx is often an order of magnitude lower than a centralized factory (< $1M vs. $10-50M min), so the breakeven throughput is more achievable on a small pipeline of work. The real breakthrough here is portability. There is near-zero stranded capital and almost no idle time. To flesh this theory out, I wrote 3000 words on the topic for Brad Hargreaves and Thesis Driven. The article breaks down: - why “fixed factories, shipped goods” is being inverted to shipped factories, fixed goods - what a sub‑$1 M robotic cell does to CapEx per home versus a £45 M off‑site plant - early production/cost data on a shippable microfactory from Mollie Claypool, Gilles Retsin, Sam Baker and the Automated Architecture (AUAR) team - the hybrid reality of robots tackling the heavy structural components and human crews assembling faster and cheaper - technical constraints to pull this model off and future considerations on the optimal business model (own vs. rent) Major shoutout to Gilles Retsin for helping me pull this together. https://lnkd.in/eRTnbZPa

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NVIDIA Unveils Spectrum-X Silicon Photonics: A 3.5X Leap in AI Networking Efficiency Introduction At Hot Chips 2025, NVIDIA revealed details of its Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics interconnect, a breakthrough in silicon photonics that promises to reshape how AI compute clusters scale. Unlike traditional optical interconnects, NVIDIA’s new design brings massive power efficiency gains—critical as the industry grapples with the escalating energy demands of large-scale AI. Key Details • Silicon Photonics Redefined • Traditional silicon photonics has centered on die-to-die (D2D) interconnects for CPUs and GPUs. • NVIDIA is extending the concept to Ethernet-based AI networking, making it core to scaling AI superclusters. • Performance Gains • 3.5X improvement in power efficiency compared to legacy optical interconnects. • Optimized for high-throughput, low-latency networking, essential for multi-thousand GPU clusters. • Designed to remove bottlenecks that occur when training massive large language models (LLMs) and generative AI systems. • Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics • Integrates silicon photonics directly into Spectrum-X switches, enabling seamless AI fabric scaling. • Provides energy-efficient bandwidth to meet the needs of next-gen GPUs, including NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture. • Allows hyperscalers and sovereign AI projects to scale clusters while containing power and cooling costs. • Strategic Implications • Moves NVIDIA beyond GPU dominance into networking infrastructure leadership. • Aims to address one of AI’s biggest challenges: data center energy consumption. • Puts NVIDIA ahead of competitors like Intel and AMD, who are focusing more narrowly on processor-level D2D photonics. Why It Matters As AI models grow into the trillion-parameter range, compute alone is no longer the bottleneck—interconnect efficiency is. NVIDIA’s Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics addresses this challenge head-on, offering both scalability and sustainability. By cutting energy costs while boosting throughput, it not only strengthens NVIDIA’s grip on the AI ecosystem but also ensures that future AI infrastructure can scale without collapsing under its own power demands. I’ve had the privilege of reaching over 17 million views in the past year, sharing daily insights with a network of 26,000+ followers and 9,000+ professional contacts across defense, technology, and policy. If this topic resonates, I welcome you to connect and continue the conversation. Keith King https://lnkd.in/gHPvUttw

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Favorite Companies: Francis Yuen (Baseband), Colin Gallacher (Haply Robotics), Francis Doumet (Metaspectral), David Proulx (Skywatch) and Christopher Robson 🇨🇦 (Wyvern), Amol Karnick (KA Imaging) and Arad Gharagozli (Galaxia) 🚀 Key Takeaways from Canadian Space Day from Heather Jo Richman • Commercial speed matters, Governments want to leverage commercial space tech faster, not reinvent it • Everything in space is dual-use, Civil, commercial, and military applications are now inseparable • Openness accelerates innovation, Open architectures, shared data, and licensing models outperform closed systems • Strategic decoupling is real, Western space ecosystems are explicitly designed without reliance on China or Russia • Space is now a warfighting domain, ISR, domain awareness, and decision advantage are central to modern conflict • You don’t need a venture fund to deploy capital — Strategic customers, primes, and non-dilutive pathways are increasingly active • The global space economy is ~$600B+ annually, ~75–80% driven by commercial activity, on track toward a $1T+ market • Canada has invested ~$9B into space programs and innovation — spanning civil, defense, climate, and commercial capabilities • Moon + resources are converging, Cislunar infrastructure, lunar access, and asteroid mining are moving from theory to execution • Space debris is a top systemic risk, Collision timelines can be measured in ~1–2 days, not months • Commercial, military, and space sectors are merging — Procurement, platforms, and partnerships are converging fast Big takeaway: Space is no longer a niche industry — it’s foundational infrastructure for economic and national security. Great seeing: Greta R. SpiveyMelissa OhNAOKI ANDOAntonio White Great work on the event: Heather Jo RichmanSerdar Turac, Ph.D.Elodie Masson Suzanne Wilkinson Graham Mackintosh Frederic Pelletier Rana Sarkar thanks for the invite! FYI: Dr. Charles E. Bray, Jr.Edward GonzalesMike CareyMichele PearceBryan Chan Craig GilmerDavid KervinStan CrowBrian RogersAndrew ErmitanoNick Hackard, PMPJareth Lamb Jen Scholten #CanadaSpaceDay #CanadianSpace #SpaceTech #DualUse #DeepTech #NewSpace #SpaceEconomy #MadeInCanada #DualUseTech #DefenseTech #NationalSecurity #ISR #SpaceDomain #Aerospace #GovTech #CriticalInfrastructure#VentureCapital #SpaceInvesting #StartupEcosystem #HardTech #FrontierTech #Scaleups #Commercialization

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SpaceX and Elon Musk are seeking to solve the impending AI data storage bottleneck problem by launching up to a million solar-powered satellites. They will be well-served to contact Lior Bar-Shalom of Arbell Energy LTD, whose revolutionary technology doubles the efficiency of current solar energy capture. Just this past week, Arbell - a recent graduate of CREATION-SPACE's Expand accelerator - won the Audience Choice Award at Israel Space Forum's IL Space Pitch 2026 in Tel Aviv. #solarenergy #Israelitech #startupnation #accesstospace #spacetech #ai #spacex #energyefficiency https://lnkd.in/eZJkaYC5

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Went deep with Heatmap News about the latest tariff fun times -- it's super important to realize that the US manufacturing ecosystem has atrophied enough that medium+ volume, non-defense startups are presently wise to start offshore until something changes. Have heard horror stories about cost structures simply not working unless you have sufficient volume to fully vertically integrate -- and that's before we increased tariffs on manufacturing inputs.

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