The Saturday Morning Newsletter #44
Decomposition, Parents, Conversations, Culture, Graphene, and More
👋 Hello friends,
Thank you for joining this week's edition of The Saturday Morning Newsletter. I'm Drew Jackson, and today we're exploring 12 articles, essays, companies, ideas, podcasts, videos, or thoughts that caught my attention this week for their potential to significantly impact our future.
Before we begin: The Saturday Morning Newsletter by Brainwaves arrives in your inbox every Saturday, a concise and casual digest of current events, optimistic news stories, and other interesting tidbits about venture capital, economics, space, energy, intellectual property, philosophy, and beyond. I write as a curious explorer rather than an expert, and I value your insights and perspectives on each subject.
Time to Read: 5 minutes.
Let’s dive in!
#1: Echandia
Description: Echandia is a maritime battery startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Echandia recently raised $11M in venture capital funding. Electrification has reached many aspects of our world, from cars to trucks to lawn mowers to homes and many other sectors. Now, commercial applications are increasing. Echandia’s goal is to expand electrification in shipping and global maritime transport.
#2: Lux Aeterna
Description: Lux Aeterna is a reusable satellite developer.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Lux Aeterna recently raised $4M in venture capital funding. The satellite industry has evolved over recent years, but the core infrastructure is still designed to be disposable. Mass-produced satellites are designed to burn up in the atmosphere after their fuel has been depleted. Lux Aeterna is trying to revamp this process, continuing to add more reusability into every stage of the life cycle.
#3: Aedifion
Description: Aedifion is an energy optimization startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Aedifion recently raised $17M in venture capital funding. Their platform enables building operators and developers to make their buildings more efficient, leveraging real-time data and AI to reduce the energy consumption and operating costs by up to 40%. This helps pursue greener real estate and more renewable construction methods.
#4: Elemental Advanced Materials
Description: Elemental Advanced Materials is a developer of graphene.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Elemental Advanced Materials recently raised $20M in venture capital funding. Elemental is leveraging waste plastics, gases, and any other materials containing carbon to produce high-performance graphene and hydrogen. Their solution replaces current processes that are toxic, resource-intensive, and generally harmful to the environment.
#5: Aircapture
Description: Aircapture is a direct air capture startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Aircapture recently raised $50M in venture capital funding. In order to combat climate change, removing CO2 from the atmosphere is critical to slowing down and preventing these effects. Aircapture’s technology uses containerized, modular units that can be deployed to a customer’s specific site and suck CO2 directly from the air there.
New Atlas: Nature’s Clean Up Crew Is Disappearing
More than 30% of the animals responsible for assisting in the decomposition of dead animals are struggling to survive. Their absence could trigger an increased amount of zoonotic diseases that could dramatically impact our lives. To prevent such rash outcomes, the hope is to continue protecting these species as best as we can to hopefully reverse the decline.
Department of Energy: New Pathway for Test Advanced Reactors
The Department of Energy announced a new pilot program to expedite the testing of advanced nuclear reactor designs under DOE authority outside of reactors in national laboratories. The DOE is seeking reactor companies interested in constructing and operating test reactors on their own—hopefully, dramatically increasing nuclear research in the U.S.
New York Times: We May Not Agree on Climate, but We All Feel the Heat
We’ve entered a new wave of more frequent and intense heat waves that will aggressively test infrastructure, our health system, and our communities across the country. Given the divisions politically in our country, it’s not surprising that the solution to these heatwaves cannot be agreed upon, but what isn’t in doubt is that something needs to be done to mitigate these effects.
Pitchbook: Space-Tech Surpassing Historical Levels in 2025
Venture capital investment in space-tech is on the path to surpass historical levels in terms of nominal dollars in 2025. However, there are some clarifiers here, firstly being that the deal count is much lower than historical levels thus far, meaning more money is being assigned to mature startups. In other words, there are fewer rounds, but they are bigger than normal. This could signal that more money is required to get these startups off the ground, potentially disrupting the future of space tech.
Philosophy Break: Parenting Responsibilities and Proposed Licenses
The philosopher Hugh LaFollette proposes that, in order to better protect children, parents should undergo a competency check before being able to raise children. This could hopefully reduce a significant amount of harm that parents do to their kids.
Big Think: 3 Ways to Have More Meaningful Conversations
How can we have more important, meaningful, and “thinking” conversations with our close friends? This article suggests 3 easy ways:
See conversation as an opportunity - Dive into the deep end, have your friend examine your position from every angle.
Start small - Don’t go big right away, start small.
Pick your punches - Not all conversations need to be or can be philosophical, pick the right opportunities (a classic you’ll know it when you see it moment).
Cormack on Culture: The Constipation of Culture
This article is quite interesting.
It claims that late-stage capitalism and internet algorithms have led to a “constipation of culture.” In other words, there’s more content than ever before, but less and less of it feels worth seeing or hearing.
Maybe you feel that way too. Maybe you don’t. If you do, the article discusses how we now require a reset, letting go of the past and making space for a new era of completely new thoughts, expressions, and creativity.
Unfortunately, our regurgitating generative AI agents probably won’t help this problem, as they aren’t capable of dreaming up truly novel concepts.
What’s next?
It’s complicated. This isn’t just an individual-level decision, something that you can just wake up to one day and decide to change and the world is better off. Unfortunately, it requires change at the societal and potentially even global level at this point.
So, in your approaches to culture, content, and thereabouts, you can make one of two choices: go along with the status quo (be a follower) or you can change and try to produce and appreciate the novelty (be an early adopter).
It’s up to you.
See you Wednesday for Brainwaves,
Drew Jackson
Website: brainwaves.me
Twitter: @brainwavesdotme
Email: brainwaves.me@gmail.com
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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this content are my own and do not represent the views of any of the companies I currently work for or have previously worked for. This content does not contain financial advice - it is for informational and educational purposes only. Investing contains risks and readers should conduct their own due diligence and/or consult a financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Any sponsorship or endorsements are noted and do not affect any editorial content produced.