The Saturday Morning Newsletter #83
Time to Start Believing Again, Confusing Busyness With Purpose, and Moving Fast and Breaking Things
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 why we should stop preventing all wildfires - catch up here.
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Let’s dive in.
#1: Aetherflux
Description: Aetherflux is an orbital datacenter startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Aetherflux is currently trying to raise $250M in venture capital funding. Aetherflux is building power stations based in space. As AI data centers grow rapidly, they’re looking for solutions to provide additional bandwidth to meet increased demand. Where better to put new energy sources and datacenters than in orbit? Satellites can transmit power and data back to Earth using infrared lasers, enabling efficient transfer and small Earth-based infrastructure.
#2: Xona
Description: Xona is a satellite navigation network creator.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Xona recently raised $170M in venture capital funding. For decades, the world has relied on GPS. Now, the next generation of technologies demands a new level of precision for tracking. Xona’s technology, based on satellite-driven precise location data, is perfectly positioned to meet this demand. They’ve proven their infrastructure works and are using this funding to scale their model dramatically.
#3: Arc
Description: Arc is a producer of electric boats and propulsion systems.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Arc recently raised $50M in venture capital funding. Arc has primarily focused on electric boats for recreational personal use, but it recently raised funding to expand into commercial boats. These include tugboats, ferries, and defense vehicles. Their technology is revolutionizing this industry, providing greater reliability in a clean package.
#4: Foreverland
Description: Foreverland is a developer of cocoa-free chocolate.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Foreverland recently raised $6M in venture capital funding. Foreverland produces cocoa-free chocolate products. Given recent increases and fluctuations in cocoa prices, developing similar, consumer-loved alternatives to cocoa will enable brands to keep prices low while maintaining high supply.
#5: Epoch Biodesign
Description: Epoch Biodesign is designing enzymatic recycling technologies.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Epoch Biodesign recently raised $12M in venture capital funding. Epoch is currently aiming to address the unrecyclability of Nylon 6.6. This material is found in apparel, carpets, airbags, and more, and is currently lacking a cyclical option. Epoch uses enzymes to break down the material, recycle it, and reform it in the future.
Nuclear Newswire: On Moving Fast and Breaking Things
Recent nuclear regulatory changes have followed the technology approach: move fast and break things. Moving fast isn’t the problem; it’s the things that break along the way. When it’s a tech startup, the ramifications are limited. When it’s a nuclear power plant, that could spell disaster for thousands or millions. Whether we like it or not, this dynamic is likely to persist for the near future.
NPR: Oil and Gas Prices Soar, Solar Is a Solution for Some
As the war with Iran continues, oil and gas prices have increased. Some countries have been heavily affected because they primarily use fossil fuels for energy. Many countries are better off than they have been historically due to partial transitions to solar energy, battery systems, and even electric vehicles.
The New York Times: Vertical Farms Tried to Compete With Open Field Farming
Over the last decade, the vertical farming industry has grown exponentially, attracting significant venture capital. However, these startups have mostly withered since. It aimed to be a climate-friendly solution to modern farming. Thin margins, steep competition, and rising energy costs spelled the downfall of vertical farming as we know it.
The New York Times: NASA Wants You to ‘Start Believing Again’
Some of us didn’t stop (it might have been a slight, decades-long pause). NASA has recently become more serious about putting a base on the Moon. This week, they released a roadmap for the upcoming decade, aiming to inspire people in the same way the Space Race did. If you’re like me, you’re hesitant to believe at this point, given how much the agency has flip-flopped over the last few decades, but there might be hope.
PitchBook: Ultra Mega-Funds
Jeff Bezos is seeking to raise a $100B fund. How does that vehicle deploy capital while maintaining returns? So far, the only proof point is SoftBank, which has not posted much profit. There are unique dynamics with megafunds, including a limited investor base, potential for infighting, a need for world-class exits, and a tendency to overpay.
European Union Intellectual Property Office: The Importance of IP Rights to SMEs
Small- and medium-sized businesses represent 99.8% of all businesses in the EU. For many, IP is central to their success and competitiveness in the market. Studies have found that companies with IP rights generate 24% more revenue per employee (up to 41% when adjusted). As such, when a startup has intellectual property, it needs to be protected to increase revenue opportunities and solidify a moat.
Redman Spokesman: The Case Against IP
This author argues that, based on what we see in nature, intellectual property is abnormal. Survival doesn’t depend on who did what first. In the creation of IP, we curate artificial scarcities when knowledge should be available to all. Intellectual property often hinders more than it helps.
Aeon: A Duty to Oneself
Some African traditions idealize harmony and vitality and provide insight into how to treat ourselves. In many non-Western philosophies, harmony is considered a central value. In their opinion, when we violate a duty to ourselves, we are failing to treat ourselves in these friendly ways. Additionally, this article provides a long list of duties you should consider.
Reddit: I’ve Spent 30 Years Confusing Busyness With Purpose, And The Realization Is Humiliating
I honestly couldn’t say it better than this writer:
I’m 47. I’ve had the same job for 19 years. I own a home. I have a retirement account. By every conventional metric, I’ve “made it.”
But last month I had a panic attack in a grocery store because I couldn’t decide between two types of pasta sauce. Not because I cared about the sauce—because my brain was so fried from a decade of performative productivity that a simple decision felt like defusing a bomb.
I’ve been operating under the assumption that constant motion equals value. That if I’m not optimizing something, learning something, side-hustling something, I’m falling behind. I’ve turned my entire existence into a performance review where the metrics keep changing and the evaluator is a faceless void that never says “enough.”
The truth that’s been hardest to sit with: I’ve been running from stillness because stillness would force me to ask whether any of this actually matters to me. Whether I even like my life, or if I’ve just gotten very good at tolerating it.
I started tracking how I spent my time for two weeks—not to optimize it, but to see how much of my day was genuine versus performative. The results were devastating. Roughly 60% of my waking hours were spent on things I don’t care about, justified by narratives I absorbed from people who profit from my anxiety.
The grocery store incident was my body finally saying “no more.” I’ve started the painful work of untangling real priorities from internalized capitalism. It’s humiliating to realize at 47 that I’ve been living someone else’s life, but maybe humiliation is just what clarity feels like when you’ve been numb for decades.
I’m not sharing this because I’ve figured it out. I’m sharing it because I suspect I’m not the only one who confused exhaustion with virtue.
That’s a wrap on this week’s roundup.
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Drew Jackson
Founder & Writer
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Next Deep Dive: Assassins, Threats, Coverups, Greed - April 1st, 2026
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