The Saturday Morning Newsletter #72
How to Think, The Supreme Court Favors the Rich, and 10cm Earth Photo Resolution
This Week I’m Tracking: 14 developments across the sectors shaping our future
Reading Time: 6 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 a special edition interview - catch up here.
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Let’s dive in.
#1: Array Labs
Description: Array Labs is a developer of small satellites for Earth observation.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Array Labs recently raised $20M in venture capital funding. Array Labs is designing and building the world’s most advanced radar satellite. These satellites can create systems that achieve higher power, greater sensitivity, and greater flexibility compared to existing radar solutions, capable of supporting 3D imaging in real time. These satellites provide up to 10cm resolution, an extremely clear picture from space.
#2: Sortera
Description: Sortera is an aluminum sorting startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Sortera recently raised $45M in venture capital funding. Sortera is helping realize the circular economy by leveraging its patented artificial intelligence technology to produce low-cost, high-quality metal for domestic manufacturing. They primarily source metal scrap generated by automobile shredders across the U.S. A large portion of this supply is traditionally shipped overseas, so this solution enables sourcing closer to home.
#3: Aerones
Description: Aerones is a provider of robotic inspection of wind turbines.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Aerones recently raised $62M in venture capital funding. Aerones designs and produces robots that inspect wind turbines. They’re much easier, faster, cheaper, and safer than using humans to manually inspect, repair, and clean these turbines. This decreases wind turbine downtimes and increases capacity, driving revenue and actionable results across the 10,000 turbines they’ve already worked on.
#4: Arbor Energy
Description: Arbor Energy is a carbon removal startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Arbor Energy recently raised $55M in venture capital funding. Arbor’s CO2 turbine uses oxy-combustion to deliver clean energy at the lowest cost of new baseload power. Their design is scalable and modular, enabling deployment in most regions of the world more quickly than existing solutions (years rather than decades). The machinery is capable of running on a wide variety of fuels, from natural gas to syngas.
#5: XGS Energy
Description: XGS Energy is a geothermal power project developer.
Why Is This Company Interesting? XGS Energy recently raised $13M in venture capital funding. XGS is a developer of small, modular geothermal energy projects that use water as the heat-transfer fluid. XGS completed a field test of its technology in 2024 and is now operating its first commercial-scale well in California. This funding will help support XGS’s multi-gigawatt project pipeline.
World Nuclear Association: What Nuclear Will Look Like in 2026
The nuclear industry needs to see many real projects deployed in 2026 to sustain the traction gained in 2025. Countries need to move forward with nuclear pursuits, and private entities need to thoroughly evaluate investment decisions. Financing these projects will be a key piece of the puzzle that public and private entities need to increasingly prioritize.
The New York Times: Trump Pulls Out of Climate Treaty
Many scientists and others around the world are worried this week after President Trump announced that the United States is withdrawing from 65 international treaties, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the foundational legal framework for climate action. This treaty has been in place for 34 years and is signed by every other nation on Earth.
The Wall Street Journal: The Prospect of Inhabiting Other Worlds
Some are beginning to argue that humans should seriously consider inhabiting other planets. This can help advance scientific discovery, perhaps improve our government, and mitigate our future risk. There’s always the chance our planet may be wiped out by an asteroid or nuclear war, or any other threat. Finding alternative solutions may be interesting to pursue.
The New York Times: Auditing of Private Equity and Venture Capital Slows Under Trump
In 2023, the IRS announced a plan to conduct significant audits of private equity, venture capital, and real estate investment firms. These industries constitute a large portion of U.S. GDP, and have previously been unmonitored. Over the last two years, the agency hired and trained examiners to dig into these companies; however, since Trump returned to office, nearly all of the senior leaders of this operation (those who were trained) have left, leaving a vacuum in the system.
The New York Times: The Supreme Court Increasingly Favors the Rich
A new study this week found that the Supreme Court has increasingly ruled in favor of the wealthy. The study found that the Supreme Court has become deeply polarized, especially in cases where one side is wealthy and the other is poor. Republican appointees are far more likely than Democrats to side with the wealthy. This percentage is up from 45% in 1953 to 70% in 2022.
The New York Times: Trump Is About to Lose Control of the Economy
Many of Trump’s economic advances in 2025 may be undone in the first part of 2026. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on both of the Trump administration’s tariffs and the president’s ability to control the Federal Reserve Board. Congress is due to rule on the new nominee to lead the Fed. These developments will have a significant impact on the economy and Trump’s agenda, but are largely beyond Trump’s control, which may prove to be a stark contrast to 2025.
IP Watchdog: IP Legislation Shaping 2025 and the Future
The intellectual property landscape is complex heading into 2026. Artificial intelligence continues to expand and take over many conversations—with legislation starting to catch up, targeting deepfakes and other measures to increase transparency. Patents are likely to be reformed, and copyrights are likely to gain greater accountability in 2026.
The Times: How to Think
I love this quote: “The value philosophy has for most of us is not in teaching us what to think, but how to think.” Instead of always relying on what “the ancients” preached, we should take their lessons to heart and learn where we actually stand on these metrics. The internet only perpetuates this issue, with many echochambers throughout.
Wall Street Journal: Could Should Might Don’t Book Review
Futurists disagree over how much the future is under human control and foresight. Nick Foster, in his new book, explains 4 different postures futurists take: Could Futurism, Should Futurism, Might Futurism, and Don’t Futurism.
These groups all, in Nick’s opinion, focus too much on the grandiose when they should be prioritizing the mundane, the ordinary.
The mundane is where we live the majority of our lives, so, in this sense, futurists have failed to deliver value or a relevant picture of the future that could be close to our world as it currently stands.
I think this perspective is so interesting. I’ve bought his book and plan to read it at some point, but I can’t say that I fully agree with his conclusion (yet). I think futurists have created a lot of unforeseen value, but potentially not due as a direct result of their targeted actions, so in this case, Nick would be correct.
No matter where you stand on this, I think it’s interesting to think about the mundane vs. the extraordinary and where we live our lives.
That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.
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Drew Jackson
Founder & Writer
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Next Deep Dive: Special Edition Interview - January 21st, 2026
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