This Week I’m Tracking: 13 developments across the sectors shaping our future
Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights
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Let’s dive in.
#1: Forerunner
Description: Forerunner is a provider of flood resilience software.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Forerunner recently raised $39M in venture capital funding. Forerunner is a climate-tech software platform for local governments and other managers that streamlines flood risk management and regulatory compliance. Forerunner digitizes property-level flood data, simplifies FEMA reporting, and automates improvement and damage tracking.
Description: Logos Space Services provides LEO broadband satellite communications.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Logos Space Services recently raised $50M in venture capital funding. Logos is a satellite communications startup deploying a LEO satellite constellation. They focus on providing secure, high-bandwidth broadband and optical interconnectivity to enterprises and government.
Description: Phathom Technologies captures and stores carbon dioxide.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Phathom Technologies recently raised $12.5M in venture capital funding. Phathom Technologies is a climate-tech startup developing marine-based carbon dioxide removal systems. Phathom captures biogenic emissions from industrial sources and other sources and safely stores them in ocean waters as stable bicarbonate, converting waste carbon into long-term ocean alkalinity enhancement.
Description: Inertia Enterprises is a fusion energy startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Inertia Enterprises recently raised $450M in venture capital funding. Inertia develops laser-driven inertial confinement technology. Spun out of research labs, Inertia designs modular laser architectures and high-repetition target systems to commercialize clean, grid-ready nuclear fusion power.
#5: Upside Robotics
Description: Upside Robotics builds solar-powered agricultural autonomous robots.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Upside Robotics recently raised $7.5M in venture capital funding. Upside is an agtech company building lightweight, autonomous field robots for precision farming. Its mobile robotic fleet doses nutrients directly to individual crops, reducing chemical fertilizer waste by up to 70% while improving crop yields and soil health.
World Nuclear News: IEA’s Projections Suggest There Could Be 1,000 SMRs by 2060
The International Atomic Energy Agency has released its annual projections of future energy demands and nuclear power capacity. The high case estimates that small modular reactors could provide up to 284 GW of capacity. At the end of 2025, 413 nuclear reactors were operating worldwide, generating 377 GW.
The New York Times: A Second Judge Strikes Down New York’s Climate “Superfund” Law
A second federal judge in New York has ruled that the state’s new climate law is unconstitutional. This law would have required fossil fuel companies to pay billions of dollars to cover the costs of climate change. A handful of other states are pursuing similar laws in the coming years.
Boston: US Acknowledges for the First Time That It Has Deployed Weapons in Space
The United States has confirmed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space. Two years ago, the U.S. warned that Russia was developing a new space-based, anti-satellite weapon. In recent years, the United Nations has held multiple debates about weapons in space.
The New York Times: Google Takes the AI Data Center to Outer Space
Google is currently undergoing Project Suncatcher, which aims to put artificial intelligence data centers into space. On October 1st, 2026, they are sending the first satellite up into space for a technology company. As data centers continue to grapple with physical limits, having computing in Space has become increasingly attractive.
The Wall Street Journal: A Rocket Supply Crunch is Making it Harder to Hitch a Ride to Space
A rocket supply crunch is prompting a scramble across the space industry. Companies are consistently looking for additional ways to get satellites and spacecraft deployed into space. Many rockets under development are behind schedule. One issue is that SpaceX has stopped selling missions where several companies share space on a Falcon 9 rocket. Launch demand is set to outstrip supply at least through the end of the decade.
Big Think: History Shows That Human Progress is a Myth
The Western view is that progress is the natural way to view history - everything is always getting better. Historically, though, when looking back hundreds or thousands of years, none of these assumptions are made about the future of mankind being potentially better than it’s ever been in the past. Progress is not the same as improvement. Progress means a cumulative advancement that does not regress over generations or centuries. In this case, technology progresses greatly over time. Ethics and politics do not.
CBC: Climate Change Past the Point of No Return
A bit of existential dread this week.
From the top, the United Nations acknowledged that Earth has lost its chance to prevent some of the worst harm from global warming.
Have we lost all hope? No. But irreversible harm may still be coming.
“Instead of giving up, scientists and UN officials recommend trying to limit excessive warming and then bring the temperature back down to the agreed-upon threshold. But it still will mean decades of increased weather-related disasters, rising seas, extinctions, and melting ice and glaciers.”
This is a bleak view. It’s tough to stay positive about the world’s long-term potential when these factors are on the horizon.
What should we do? Live each day to the best of your abilities. Try to do “your part” to the extent you can and encourage others to do theirs.
That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.
Drew Jackson
Founder & Writer
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