Venus Aerospace raises $91M to build its ‘detonation’ rocket engine
Venus Aerospace raises $91M to build its ‘detonation’ rocket engine

A Texas startup has raised $91m to build a rocket engine most of the industry once wrote off as too hard. Venus Aerospace announced a $91m Series B to develop its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine, or RDRE. Mercury Fund led the round. The backers read …

A tritium ‘nuclear battery’ just reached orbit for the first time
A tritium ‘nuclear battery’ just reached orbit for the first time

The nuclear age has quietly reached commercial spaceflight. City Labs, a Miami firm, has launched BOHR, which it calls the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite and the first nuclear CubeSat. The craft is about the size of a softball. It f…

Musk’s SpaceXAI ships ‘Opus-class’ Grok 4.5 to undercut OpenAI and Anthropic
Musk’s SpaceXAI ships ‘Opus-class’ Grok 4.5 to undercut OpenAI and Anthropic

SpaceXAI has launched Grok 4.5, its most capable model yet. It is the company’s first release since going public and buying the AI coding startup Cursor. This is the joint model the two firms had raced to ship. Elon Musk aimed it squarely at coding and…

Meta’s AI campus flushed a rare bacterium into Cheyenne’s water. The city hit back
Meta’s AI campus flushed a rare bacterium into Cheyenne’s water. The city hit back

A Meta contractor flushed a rare, potentially deadly bacterium into Cheyenne’s wastewater system. The Wyoming city has now suspended all data centre discharge, a fresh flashpoint in the fight over AI’s thirst for water. Officials in Cheyenne, Wyoming, …

Fi’s new collar taps Starlink’s direct-to-cell to track dogs off the grid
Fi’s new collar taps Starlink’s direct-to-cell to track dogs off the grid

Smart-collar maker Fi is putting Starlink in a dog collar. Its new Fi Ultra taps SpaceX’s direct-to-cell satellites. A bolting dog stays trackable even where phone towers cannot reach. The next device to run on satellites is not a phone. It is a dog co…

France’s ZML wants to break Nvidia lock-in with free cross-chip AI software
France’s ZML wants to break Nvidia lock-in with free cross-chip AI software

A Paris startup wants to loosen Nvidia’s grip on AI, not with a new chip, but with software. ZML has released a free tool that runs open-source models fast across Nvidia, AMD, Google, Apple and Intel silicon alike. Nvidia still rules AI hardware, but i…

Apple starts testing China’s state-backed memory chips, and Washington is watching
Apple starts testing China’s state-backed memory chips, and Washington is watching

Apple has begun testing memory chips from China’s state-backed CXMT for devices sold in China, the Financial Times reports. That puts it behind a supplier Washington has flagged as a security risk. Apple has turned to Chinese memory chips for its own d…

South Korea’s FuriosaAI brings its Nvidia-challenger chips to Europe
South Korea’s FuriosaAI brings its Nvidia-challenger chips to Europe

A Korean chip startup wants to sell Europe a cooler, cheaper alternative to Nvidia. Its first “renegade” accelerators just went live in a Lisbon datacentre. FuriosaAI has switched on its RNGD AI accelerators in Europe. The South Korean startup is insta…

Quaise raises $134M to drill superhot rock with microwaves
Quaise raises $134M to drill superhot rock with microwaves

Geothermal used to mean shallow wells and modest heat. Quaise wants to drill kilometres down and blast the rock with microwaves, and it just raised $134 million to try. Quaise Energy has raised $134 million to drill for superhot rock deep underground, …

Google and RWE back Proxima Fusion in record €411mn round
Google and RWE back Proxima Fusion in record €411mn round

Munich-based Proxima Fusion has raised €411mn ($468mn), the largest private fusion round Europe has ever seen and a rare vote of confidence in a technology that has yet to produce a watt of commercial power. The deal values the stellarator company at €…