The Saturday Morning Newsletter #59
Great Thinkers Changing Their Minds, A 5th Failure for Firefly, and Why Autonomous Farming Robots Are the Future
This Week I’m Tracking: 13 developments across the sectors shaping our future
Reading Time: 5 minutes of curated insights
Your weekly pulse check: The most important events in venture capital, energy, space, economics, intellectual property, philosophy, and more. I distill the most important developments across sectors I track, saving you hours of research while keeping you ahead of the curve.
New to these updates? They pair with our bi-weekly Brainwave analyses for comprehensive sector coverage. Wednesday’s deep dive explored top venture capital trends shaping our future - catch up here.
Let’s dive in.
#1: Vycarb
Description: Vycarb is an ocean carbon-capture technology startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Vycarb recently raised $5M in venture capital funding. Vycarb combines carbon neutralization processes with sensing technology to enable instantaneous CO2 capture, removal, and storage. Passive water flow is stored using pH-mediated dissolution in an accelerated process compared to Earth’s natural carbon storage reactions.
#2: Voltai
Description: Voltai is a developer of wave energy systems for ships.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Voltai recently raised $1.8M in venture capital funding. Their modular system can be installed on any maritime platform and scaled quickly. The technology allows ships to produce clean, renewable energy, reducing carbon emissions and fuel costs. This enables ships to continue operating as energy regulations tighten.
#3: Membrion
Description: Membrion is an industrial wastewater treatment startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Membrion recently raised $20M in venture capital funding. Most companies don’t realize how much time and money they are losing on inefficient wastewater treatment systems. Now, there’s a better solution on the market, utilizing electro-ceramic desalination for harsh industrial wastewater conditions.
Description: SwarmFarm Robotics is a developer of autonomous farming robots.
Why Is This Company Interesting? SwarmFarm Robotics recently raised $19.8M in venture capital funding. Currently based out of Australia, SwarmFarm is developing a farming system complete with commercial autonomous robots that scale easily without harming the underlying soil conditions. These robots are already operating across North America, but this funding will allow them to continue their exponential growth in the region.
#5: Asterix Foods
Description: Asterix Foods is a precision fermentation startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Asterix Foods recently raised $4.2M in venture capital funding. They are creating a new type of protein that is entirely animal-free, which they claim is sustainable, affordable, and efficient. The company is currently operating in stealth mode.
BBC: Renewables Overtake Coal as World’s Biggest Source of Electricity
The growth in energy demand over the last decade has been met with an adequate supply of renewables, leading to a slight decline in the share of coal and gas use overall. Furthermore, this year, renewables made up the biggest share of electricity, signalling continued interest from global players that renewables are good investments and are here to stay. Developing countries accounted for the lion’s share of the switch, but other countries continue to adopt these technologies.
World Nuclear News: Micro Modular Reactor Company Hadron Energy Plans IPO
Hadron Energy is planning to go public in a $1.2B combination with GigCapital7 Corp in the first half of 2026. This would be the first publicly listed light water micro modular reactor company (as you might have guessed). The reactor technology generates 10MW of energy and 35 MW of heat. The goal is that the technology could be transported in shipping containers, deployable anywhere in the world.
Forbes: Pulling the Plug on Wind Energy is a Losing Strategy
Wind energy is being delayed and over-regulated in the US. Yet, it’s hard to deny the momentum globally behind wind energy. The International Renewable Energy Agency reports that wind energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels in all major markets, on average, around 53% cheaper. In addition, wind energy has been proven to generate lasting financial returns for investors.
Space: Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha Disaster
This week, the first stage of Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket, during its seventh-ever flight, exploded during a preflight trial. This is another setback for the company, which suffered another failure earlier this year in April. The Alpha rocket debuted in 2021; however, just two of the orbital launches so far have been successful.
Science Alert: Earth Received A NASA Laser Message From 307 Million Miles Away
NASA’s Psyche beamed a message using an infrared laser back to Earth from 307 million miles away, more than twice the distance between Earth and Mars. Advancing laser communications is another step in the progression to life on Mars. Now we are closer to streaming high-definition video and gathering data from Mars faster than ever before.
IP Watchdog: How IP Fuels America’s Economic Engine
Intellectual property rights enable ideas to become legally recognized assets, which fuels investment, job creation, and economic expansion. Key to this discussion is the idea of predictable intellectual property rights. If rights are in fluctuation, innovation suffers and has a resulting negative economic impact. As such, governments should prioritize the stability of these rights to provide assurances to investors regarding future work.
Big Think: 5 Great Thinkers Who Rejected Their Own Ideas
Philosophers rarely change their minds, but in these 5 cases, they did. Who are these 5? St. Augustine, Kant, Marx, Wittgenstein, and Simone Weil. These moments of self-correction are a strength, as these philosophers found something that overturned a previous belief and dared to go back on their prior work. It might make their old and new work even more powerful.
Forbes: How to Thrive When Change Won’t Slow Down
As I’ve discussed in my Futures Thinking series and as this article highlights, we live during a time where there is constant change and things are always happening.
This causes what the author labels “future shock,” which refers to anxiety caused by too much change coming at us too fast.
This author is releasing a book soon, discussing how we can understand the new landscape of the world and keep up to date with everything.
Their take is that if you look further into the future and start using the future as a stepping stone instead of a stumbling block, you can better situate yourself towards what’s to come.
This is where resilience is born and you can proactively address the future instead of reactively suffering.
That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.
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Drew Jackson
Founder & Writer
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