This Week I’m Tracking: 13 developments across the sectors shaping our future
Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights
Refer a Friend - Earn These Rewards
Let’s dive in.
#1: Alva Industries
Description: Alva Industries is a producer of ultra-compact electric motors.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Alva Industries recently raised $16M in venture capital funding. Alva Industries is a deep-tech company that manufactures high-performance electric motors. Using its patented FiberPrinting process, Alva crafts lightweight, coreless electric motors for applications across robotics, autonomous systems, defense, and aerospace.
#2: Sizable Energy
Description: Sizable Energy is a pumped hydro electricity startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Sizable Energy recently raised $25M in venture capital funding. Sizable Energy is a clean energy startup developing gigawatt-scale, long-duration energy storage systems using subsea pumped hydro technology. By using floating and deep-ocean reservoirs to pump saltwater brine, the platform bypasses traditional land-use constraints and offers resilient grid storage.
#3: Millow
Description: Millow is a producer of alternative meats.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Millow recently raised $2M in venture capital funding. Millow is growing mycelium on oats to produce a low-water, low-emissions meat alternative. It plans to use these funds to expand its capacity and build out its commercial team to launch its minimally processed, two-ingredient mycelium meat in the European foodservice market.
#4: BioScout
Description: BioScout is a developer of sensors that alert farmers to fungal pathogens.
Why Is This Company Interesting? BioScout recently raised $6.75M in venture capital funding. BioScout is an agtech startup providing real-time, automated detection of airborne crop diseases. BioScout combines field-deployed air sensors, robotic microscopy, and computer vision to track airborne fungal spores, giving farmers early warnings and reducing unnecessary chemical spraying.
#5: Chargepoly
Description: Chargepoly is a startup focused on electrifying heavy-duty and commercial vehicle fleets.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Chargepoly recently raised $23M in venture capital funding. Chargepoly is a tech company specializing in ultra-fast, high-power EV charging infrastructure for commercial fleets, electric buses, and heavy-duty trucks. Its intelligent power-dispatching hardware and software balance power distribution to optimize charging costs and efficiency.
NBC News: Why Nuclear Energy is Making a Global Comeback
The United States leads the world in nuclear energy production, representing around 30% of global electricity generation. Globally, governments are turning to nuclear energy as a stable power source amid geopolitical uncertainty, rising electricity demand, and accelerating climate change. Nuclear power stalled after major accidents, but demand has surged recently.
ABC News: Army to Spend $2B to Build Nuclear Microreactors at 5 Bases as US Seeks to Ramp up Nuclear Power
The U.S. Army announced this week that it plans to add nuclear microreactors at 5 military bases as a reliable energy source independent of the commercial electric grid. The Trump administration has provided billions in loans for large nuclear reactors to meet current demand. The Army expects to build and operate more than 20 nuclear microreactors.
The New York Times: Why States Are Cutting Back on Their Climate Goals
After the Trump administration pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, many states passed their own laws to curtail carbon emissions. Most states that set climate goals are not on track to meet them. States that are behind either need to accelerate or abandon them. Unfortunately, some states are beginning to cut back or abandon those goals instead.
The New York Times: Is Your City Prepared for Climate Disaster?
When it comes to the effects of climate change, what matters isn’t just risk, but a place’s ability to withstand it. AlphaGeo, an AI company that analyzes and predicts location risk, ranked the resilience of 72 of the world’s largest cities. A good score was driven by two factors: low physical exposure to a checklist of climate risks and a high adaptation to those risks.
The New York Times: The Roman Telescope Promises a New Era of Cosmic Exploration
In the 1990s, NASA launched its first fleet of observatories, beginning with the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, NASA plans to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which promises to chart a view of the universe so wide and so deep it would take over half a million TVs to display just one image in full. The gaze is a thousand times faster and at least a hundred times wider than Hubble’s.
Pitchbook: AI Can Help Spot Bad Lettuce. That Doesn’t Make it a Good Business
Despite several outbreaks of foodborne diseases, founders and venture capitalists say that building businesses around detecting outbreaks is chasing a fad. Venture capital often chases flash-in-the-pan businesses. In food safety, investors understand the business is driven by regulatory rather than epidemiological factors, a key distinction that determines where capital flows.
The Guardian: If You’re Just Interested in Answers, You’re Missing Out
Philosophers argue that asking a question can change your mood, and having a questioning mindset can change your life. When you live focused on answers, you crave certainty, which often isn’t present in the world and naturally limits you. Questioning fosters exploration and curiosity and should be our mindset in approaching most, but not all, situations in the world.
Reddit: Corruption of the Soul is the Price for Understanding the World.
When we come into this world, each of us is a naive, basic, unknowing entity, completely oblivious to the world that is around us. Yet, over time, as we keep learning and gaining more experiences and interactions with the world around us, we slowly begin to know, and that innocence fades.
Often, we gain knowledge of the world and see that it is not the sunshine-and-rainbows place we once thought it to be. Unfortunately, corruption of the soul is the price we must pay to understand the world.
If corruption of the soul is the price to pay to understand the world, then faith is the healer of the soul, since there is no true understanding of the world. You cannot prove or, for that matter, disprove the presence of a higher calling for your life—belief is what gives you peace of mind and what teaches you that you don’t need to understand everything in order to appreciate it.
In a way. Innocence and delusion are their own forms of self-preservation, because understanding too much can corrupt your soul and your peace.
I think this is a very unique perspective on modern life and the situations we find ourselves in. What does it cost to learn more about the world, to truly understand it? It may cost everything we have.
That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.
Drew Jackson
Founder & Writer
Found this analysis valuable? The best way to support Brainwaves is to share it with someone who’d benefit from these insights.
Refer a Friend - Earn Rewards
Enjoying this week’s wrap-up? Share it with someone who’d appreciate it. When you use the Refer a Friend button below, you’ll earn rewards for every new subscriber—from exclusive stickers at 3 referrals to a guaranteed copy of my upcoming book Futures Thinking at 25. Check out the full program here.
Keep Exploring
Next Deep Dive: Lessons Learned from a Hostage Negotiator - September 16th, 2026
Previous Editions: View the archive here
New to Brainwaves? Join hundreds of readers getting bi-weekly deep dives into the forces reshaping our world.
Sponsor This Newsletter: Reach an engaged audience of forward-thinking readers. Email us for details.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal opinions, not financial advice. This content is educational only. Investment decisions carry risks - always consult professionals and do your own research. All sponsorships are clearly disclosed.
© 2026 Brainwaves. All rights reserved.