Hello!

Welcome to The Saturday Morning Newsletter, a concise and casual digest of current events, optimistic news stories, and other interesting tidbits to round out your week. The concept is simple: 15 articles, essays, companies, ideas, podcasts, videos, or thoughts that caught my attention this week for their potential to significantly impact our future.

I want this to be a collaborative effort, so if you see examples of things that truly impact our future, let me know here. I’ll give you credit for sharing them.

Let’s get started.

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#1: Gimbal Space

Description: A company designing, manufacturing, and distributing fast and affordable satellite components necessary for these vehicles to properly orient themselves in space.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Gimbal Space recently raised a round of $1.2M in venture funding. This continues the trend of continual space innovation—specficially through the lens of trying to make space more accessible by offering cheaper, fast production of necessary parts for commercial and government space programs.

#2: New School Foods

Description: New School Foods is the only producer of plant-based salmon filets that “looks, cooks, tastes and flakes” like wild salmon.

Why Is This Company Interesting? New School Foods recently raised a round of $6M in venture funding from IKEA. Imitation fish products are extremely difficult to produce, so this a large step in the direction of continuing to create meat-substitute plant-based products that are more eco-friendly.

#3: Moxy

Description: Moxy is a startup company that manufactures building materials from forest and farming scraps in a recycling type of process.

Why Is This Company Interesting? Moxy recently raised a round of $11M in venture funding. Moxy’s Cerlos product is significantly more fire resistant than other traditional building products on the market. Combine this with the fact the inputs are all recycled forest and farm scrap material and you have an eco-friendly fire-resistant building product that has the potential to revolutionize the building process.

#4: HabiTerre

Description: HabiTerre is a software company that developed a suite of science technology to deliver actionable insights about sustainability, agriculture, forestry, and other natural processes.

Why Is This Company Interesting? HabiTerre recently raised a round of $10M in venture funding. In the era of data-driven insights reaching all industries, it’s no surprise that the agricultural sector has seen rapid innovation lately. HabiTerre’s solution helps improve agriculture productivity, efficiency, and environmental outcomes through a scalable, accurate, and cost-effective solution.

#5: MMI

Description: MMI is a European startup that designs and manufactures electric and hydrogen-powered buses.

Why Is This Company Interesting? MMI recently raised a round of $8.6M in venture funding. Electric and hydrogen powered vehicles have been a large subject of innovation over the last decade. MMI uses insights gained through car development processes to create buses that leverage the same underlying technology, yet are capable of revolutionizing part of Europe’s already popular public transportation system.

Ecowatch: Renewables Generated 40% of Global Electricity for First Time Ever in 2023

Two new reports from Bloomberg explain that in 2023, 40% of the world’s electricity was generated by zero-carbon sources (14% from solar and wind). In 2023, over 90% of net power capacity additions across the world were either solar or wind. This makes the goal of achieving 100% renewable energy worldwide seem so much more attainable in the near future.

New York Times: Turbine Blades Have Piled Up in Landfills. A Solution May Be Coming.

The previous generation of wind turbines (those installed 15-20 years ago) are beginning to fail and be disassembled, with the large turbine blades ending up in landfills without a true solution. However, many are beginning to see the value of recycling these old blades into new ones. Estimates place recycled blades anywhere around 3-8% lower cost than purely new blades.

New York Times: Court Orders South Korea to Take Stronger Action on Climate Change

To quote the article, “A top South Korean court on Thursday ruled the nation’s measures for fighting climate change insufficient for protecting the rights of citizens, and ordered the government to set firm carbon-reduction targets for 2031 and beyond.” This is a huge step in the right direction—seeing countries hold themselves accountable to set up future generations for success rather than only capture success today.

New York Times: Hungry for Clean Energy, Facebook Looks to a New Type of Geothermal

Large technology and AI companies are struggling to find enough clean energy to power all the data centers they currently have and are planning to build in the future. Many are looking to geothermal energy as an additional way to provide energy for their projects. This week, Meta signed an agreement with Sage Geosystems to develop 150MW of geothermal energy (enough electricity to power 70k homes) to help power their expanding array of data centers.

Wall Street Journal: Most Climate Policies Don’t Work. What Does? Reduce Emissions

An AI evaluation of 1,500+ climate policies across 41 countries found that only 63 worked within 2 years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What’s the secret to success? The fraction of policies that worked combined financial incentives, regulations, and taxes. Any other combination was not effective at producing change within 2 years of policy enactment.

New York Times: NASA Extends Boeing Starliner Astronauts’ Space Station Stay to 2025

Two astronauts, part of a test flight of the Boeing Starliner space vehicle, docked with the International Space Station and were supposed to come back after 8 days. Following failures in the Boeing Starliner, the astronauts have spent months aboard the ISS and will have to stay there many more months longer, eventually returning on a SpaceX capsule in 2025. Boeing continues to experience setbacks in its aviation and space divisions this year.

Wall Street Journal: SpaceX’s Risky Next Mission: The First Private Spacewalk

SpaceX is set to orchestrate the first-ever spacewalk involving private citizens. The mission is funded by Jared Isaacman, a tech billionaire. This mission will continue to advance SpaceX’s space-exploration aims, such as a human mission to Mars. Details on the specific timing of the spacewalk is expected to come shortly.

Pitchbook: VC Investors Hope Gaming Companies Can Boost the IPO Market

Many gaming companies have been rumored to be looking into IPOs. VC money funneling into gaming companies reached $1.8B in Q2 of 2024 as investors continue to view this segment as a powerful driver of future returns. However, some continue to be skeptical about this rationale as gaming companies experience periods of seasonality.

TechCrunch: The SEC Just Made Life a Little Easier for Smaller VCs

This week the United States Securities and Exchange Commission updated the dollar threshold for an investment vehicle to be considered a “qualifying venture fund” from $10M to $12M. Qualified venture funds can raise money from up to 250 investors while not having to register with the SEC as an investment company.

This is important as it allows smaller VCs to continue taking more money without having to bear the financial burdens of SEC reporting.

Reuters: Authors Sue Anthropic for Copyright Infringement Over AI Training

A class-action lawsuit has been filed in California against Anthropic by three authors on behalf of hundreds of thousands of others, alleging that Anthropic used pirated versions of their books to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude. This lawsuit joins countless others against AI giants, all claiming the models produced were trained on proprietary information that should not have been included.

Reuters: OpenAI supports California AI bill requiring 'watermarking' of synthetic content

OpenAI, developer of ChatGPT, supports a California bill that would require companies to label AI-generated content. This is one of 65 bills targeting AI that have been introduced in California during this legislative session. Many of the bills are already dead, but it does show regulators are beginning to see the necessity in putting safeguards on AI.

I’m sitting here writing this article and I’m looking at an orchid plant I bought my mother for her birthday back in May. It’s now almost September and yet it’s only now beginning to die. According to The Spruce, orchid blooms generally last around 2 months (depending on the variety).

Why is this interesting? Compared to the average flower bunch (which in my case has usually lasted 1-3 weeks), buying a potted orchid (generally for a slightly higher price) has a much more beneficial return on investment. So, for anyone in your life you think should be a plant owner or should just feel the effects of having a nice flower in their home for a decent period of time, maybe next time pick the orchid.

See you Wednesday for Brainwaves,

Drew Jackson

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.