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Steve Jurvetson

@FutureJurvetson108,893 subscribers

Co-founder of Future Ventures and DFJ, supporting passionate founders to forge a better future. Early VC investor in Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, Commonwealth Fusion.

Shorts

Commonwealth Fusion just closed an oversubscribed $863M B2 round with Google, NVIDIA, Morgan Stanley and electric utilities. From science to engineering to mass manufacturing, CFS is leading the charge to what many call the holy grail of clean energy — abundant, carbon-free, continuous 24/7 power in any geography. Energy drives the wealth of nations, and China has been adding new energy at a pace 20x that of the U.S. We need magnetic fusion to fully power the estimated 10x growth in electricity needs for AI data centers and EVs with emission-free energy. Future Ventures and Khosla Ventures did the Series A. Vinod Khosla: “CFS is one of the most impactful and ambitious projects I have seen in my whole career.” New investor Laurene Powell Jobs: “To meet the challenges of this century, we need energy that is abundant, clean, and accessible everywhere. That’s what fusion offers. For the first time in history, we have a real opportunity to commercialize the long-held promise of fusion power, and CFS has just taken a decisive step toward making that promise a reality." Commonwealth Fusion Systems or for more.

Commonwealth Fusion just closed an oversubscribed $863M B2 round with Google, NVIDIA, Morgan Stanley and electric utilities. From science to engineering to mass manufacturing, CFS is leading the charge to what many call the holy grail of clean energy — abundant, carbon-free, continuous 24/7 power in any geography. Energy drives the wealth of nations, and China has been adding new energy at a pace 20x that of the U.S. We need magnetic fusion to fully power the estimated 10x growth in electricity needs for AI data centers and EVs with emission-free energy. Future Ventures and Khosla Ventures did the Series A. Vinod Khosla: “CFS is one of the most impactful and ambitious projects I have seen in my whole career.” New investor Laurene Powell Jobs: “To meet the challenges of this century, we need energy that is abundant, clean, and accessible everywhere. That’s what fusion offers. For the first time in history, we have a real opportunity to commercialize the long-held promise of fusion power, and CFS has just taken a decisive step toward making that promise a reality." Commonwealth Fusion Systems or for more.

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Beeple's REGULAR ANIMALS debut at Art Basel today with Elon + Zuck finally in the ring, and Bezos too

Beeple's REGULAR ANIMALS debut at Art Basel today with Elon + Zuck finally in the ring, and Bezos too

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Brewing a Better Bite of Meat Here’s why we led the Series A of The Better Meat Co., announced today. I am a meat eater, but I know that eventually, we won't slaughter animals for meat. Although we believe this is inevitable, on Earth and Mars, it takes concerted effort to get us there. And as we saw with electric cars, you have to have a better product to catalyze a change. Saving the world is the byproduct. After investing in some of the pioneers of cellular ag and precision fermentation, we pondered what problem remained unsolved by the mainstream approaches to slaughter-free meat and began a quest for the best cost economics and speed of scaling. For cellular ag and plant-based approaches, cost has been their biggest challenge, and the meat market is highly price elastic. We did a thought experiment: given all of the approaches to alt-protein out there, which will be the lowest cost 50 years from now? We assumed all R&D efforts reach their ultimate end points by then. I think we found the winner: Better Meat goes from seed to harvest in under 17 hours! No plant or animal can compete with that growth rate. The key: growth from cell expansion instead of cell division, part of the magic of the kingdom of fungi. And they have mastered continuous production off simple sugar feedstocks with no waste stream. The only downstream processing is some dehydration. At their current research scale facility, they already beat beef on cost, and soon chicken. Some of the key drivers from their patented process: fastest growth cycle of any organism, continuous production, minimal downstream processing (unlike plant protein isolates, for example, where most of the plant biomass is byproduct), and it’s a nutritious whole food. It’s also shelf stable at room temperature for easy shipping. So, it should scale more rapidly and cost-effectively than other approaches can ever achieve. Oh, and it is delicious and tastes like meat, even better than pure meat in some blended product taste tests (think hamburger or sausage blends). They are a B2B ingredient supplier, and the first to get FDA and USDA approval for blended meat products. The Series A will allow them to scale to tens of millions of pounds of annual production for a number of large food companies. Company: Today’s funding news: • •

Brewing a Better Bite of Meat Here’s why we led the Series A of The Better Meat Co., announced today. I am a meat eater, but I know that eventually, we won't slaughter animals for meat. Although we believe this is inevitable, on Earth and Mars, it takes concerted effort to get us there. And as we saw with electric cars, you have to have a better product to catalyze a change. Saving the world is the byproduct. After investing in some of the pioneers of cellular ag and precision fermentation, we pondered what problem remained unsolved by the mainstream approaches to slaughter-free meat and began a quest for the best cost economics and speed of scaling. For cellular ag and plant-based approaches, cost has been their biggest challenge, and the meat market is highly price elastic. We did a thought experiment: given all of the approaches to alt-protein out there, which will be the lowest cost 50 years from now? We assumed all R&D efforts reach their ultimate end points by then. I think we found the winner: Better Meat goes from seed to harvest in under 17 hours! No plant or animal can compete with that growth rate. The key: growth from cell expansion instead of cell division, part of the magic of the kingdom of fungi. And they have mastered continuous production off simple sugar feedstocks with no waste stream. The only downstream processing is some dehydration. At their current research scale facility, they already beat beef on cost, and soon chicken. Some of the key drivers from their patented process: fastest growth cycle of any organism, continuous production, minimal downstream processing (unlike plant protein isolates, for example, where most of the plant biomass is byproduct), and it’s a nutritious whole food. It’s also shelf stable at room temperature for easy shipping. So, it should scale more rapidly and cost-effectively than other approaches can ever achieve. Oh, and it is delicious and tastes like meat, even better than pure meat in some blended product taste tests (think hamburger or sausage blends). They are a B2B ingredient supplier, and the first to get FDA and USDA approval for blended meat products. The Series A will allow them to scale to tens of millions of pounds of annual production for a number of large food companies. Company: Today’s funding news: • •

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The largest fusion power purchase agreement ever ☀️🔜🤖 Google just procured 200MW of clean power directly from Commonwealth Fusion’s first commercial plant in Virginia, with an option to buy more. From science to engineering to mass manufacturing, Commonwealth is leading the charge to what many call the holy grail of clean energy — abundant, carbon-free, continuous 24/7 power in any geography. “We aim to demonstrate fusion’s ability to provide reliable, abundant, clean energy at the scale needed to unlock economic growth and improve modern living and enable the largest market transition in history.” — CEO Bob Mumgaard News:

The largest fusion power purchase agreement ever ☀️🔜🤖 Google just procured 200MW of clean power directly from Commonwealth Fusion’s first commercial plant in Virginia, with an option to buy more. From science to engineering to mass manufacturing, Commonwealth is leading the charge to what many call the holy grail of clean energy — abundant, carbon-free, continuous 24/7 power in any geography. “We aim to demonstrate fusion’s ability to provide reliable, abundant, clean energy at the scale needed to unlock economic growth and improve modern living and enable the largest market transition in history.” — CEO Bob Mumgaard News:

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Taking a peek inside with a full-body MRI (at 1mm^3 resolution) It's a preventative screen I have done a few times now, most recently at prenuvo. They measure brain volume changes over time, screen for tumors, bone spurs and cysts, and scan the brain arteries for aneurysms. 👍

Taking a peek inside with a full-body MRI (at 1mm^3 resolution) It's a preventative screen I have done a few times now, most recently at prenuvo. They measure brain volume changes over time, screen for tumors, bone spurs and cysts, and scan the brain arteries for aneurysms. 👍

12,000 просмотров

Videos

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No, it’s not electric sheep after all 🐑 🤖

Steve Jurvetson

654,352 просмотров • 1 год назад

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Optimus just beat me in rock paper scissors!

Steve Jurvetson

360,322 просмотров • 1 год назад

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“Do you like our owl? It’s synthetic” — Blade Runner

Steve Jurvetson

27,998 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад

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☄️ Of all of my space rocks, this Bjurböle is quite special, as it was recovered from the seabed, with great effort, in 1899. It is the only complete recovery of a meteorite at sea. Meteorites hit the Earth randomly, and thus ~70% of them hit the oceans and disappear forever. This claim was a reasonable assumption, since 71% of the Earth is covered by ocean, and it was recently verified by analysis of the world’s infrasound sensors used to monitor the nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The sensors recorded meteorite impacts by land and by sea, as seen in the B612 video here. Here’s is how this unique space rock recovery happened: on March 12, 1899, at 9:30pm, a bright fireball screamed over my homeland of Estonia on final approach, making a thunderous noise like artillery fire for what seemed like minutes and smashed into the Baltic Sea. Helsinki’s major newspaper Päiväleht asked for witness details and drawings to help locate the fall. As a result of Finnish citizenry’s efforts, the trajectory of the fireball was triangulated, and its impact point was determined to be in the Baltic Sea about 50 kilometers from Helsinki. Because the Baltic Sea was still frozen over in March, there was evidence of the point of impact — a three-meter hole in the surface ice. Then the recovery effort: they tried to find it by poking around with sticks, but the meteorite was 25’ down on the bedrock. So, they built a waterproof well out of wooden beams and dropped it through the hole in the ice. The well was pumped to empty out the water and mud. This did not succeed completely, but in the end a diver was able to find the fractured meteorite and pull it out. It was then displayed the following year at the World’s Fair in Paris in the Finnish pavilion. Bjurböle is a distinctive LL4 meteorite. It is unusually friable and its fine-grained creamy matrix is packed with chondrules — spherical silicate-rich droplets of fiery rain that aggregated from the dust and ice of our early solar system, before the planets formed. It also sports the catalog stamp of the Finnish Museum of Natural History (and was obtained by a meteorite trade).

Steve Jurvetson

20,793 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад

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Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 Hand Controllers 55 years ago today, the mighty Saturn V roared to life and launched Apollo 11 skyward. Neil Armstrong sat in the left seat with this translational controller T-handle in his left hand and this rotational controller at his right — the control joysticks for the spacecraft. But the left handle has a special function at launch: if catastrophe struck on the pad or during ascent, a counterclockwise crank of the handle would initiate the solid rocket engines in the red escape tower, pulling the Command Module away from the rest of the rocket, to return separately by parachute. For the entirely of the Apollo program, that handle was never twisted, even on Apollo 12 when lighting strikes disabled the entire control deck of the Command Module and lit up almost all of the alarms. The user interface continues to the present day, with a similar T-handle at the center of the SpaceX Dragon display deck. The handle felt the same to me, with a similar twist to the left. In the final photos, you see the translational and rotational controllers that flanked Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11. They were removed from the Command Module post flight as with each of the Apollo missions, and after decades in storage, discarded as waste in 1985. They have had several owners since then, and if I can obtain the third controller, I intend to reunite the lot with their spacecraft by donating them to the Smithsonian.

Steve Jurvetson

27,561 просмотров • 1 год назад