Google Maps for gold? AI-Assisted Mine Prospecting is Tough!

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… technically a flying boat! 
When challenged to imagine how to electrify aviation, Billy Thalheimer, CEO and co-founder of REGENT Craft, and his team set to work looking at what has been done with hydroplanes before – and what emerging technologies are available today that change the equation for what is possible and economically achievable.

“Building with atoms is harder than building with bits. You can’t just revert to your last code push,” Mr. Thalheimer told us. “Early on, it was really just finding those investors that ‘got’ tough tech.” And such investors he did find, bringing in allied capital with hands-on operational experience running manufacturing, aviation, and maritime businesses.

REGENT Craft is settling into its expanding headquarters in Rhode Island, where the team enjoys the benefits of its specially-chosen locale: access to the U.S.A’s top naval composites experts, aerospace giants, and deep-rooted talent pools in avionics, software, and other key capabilities needed to make nontraditional vessels glide above the seas. 

With the potential to fundamentally change how goods and people are shuttled along coastal communities globally, REGENT has been carefully fusing together a team of interdisciplinary specialists. While it may not be the astronaut career Mr. Thalheimer originally envisioned, it sure is an exciting ride!

P.S. Thank you to our episode sponsor, The End Effector! JMill will be decoding deep tech over there, so join the mailing list to get read-in.

P.P.S. Thank you to our tough tech champions. Mariemma, you're our newest Pioneer! We really appreciate your support! If you’d like to follow Mariemma’s example, take a look at our pay-if-you-can membership options so you can help us bring Tough Tech Today to more folks!

The blue parts of our planet are beautiful yet stunningly punishing for even our toughest of technologies.

Dark, crushing, unexplored, and unknown – the depths of the seas are where an explorer like Jeff Smith has devoted his career to understanding. As the Vice President and General Manager of Autonomous and Undersea Systems at Saab, Inc., Smith has experience developing submersibles of nearly every shape and size, including some of the most advanced systems for remotely-operated and autonomous research vessels. 

A distinguished figure in the undersea robotics realm, Smith brings a wealth of experience from his involvement in innovative startups and contributions to significant projects supporting the US Navy and other long-standing partners in ocean exploration. His journey, inspired by childhood memories of Jacques Cousteau's adventures, has led him to a career where his passion for the seas intersects with cutting-edge technology, embodying the adage that when you do what you love, it hardly feels like work.

Our conversation with Smith offers an insightful look into the challenges and opportunities within ‘blue technologies’. He highlights the critical role of autonomy and robotics in probing and protecting over 70% of the Earth's surface covered by oceans. His work developing cost-effective undersea systems underscores the importance of practical approaches in advancing our understanding and capabilities in marine environments. Smith also shares his entrepreneurial journey, from his start with a credit card and a dream to building Riptide Autonomous Solutions (acquired by BAE Systems), a major force in the unmanned undersea vehicle space. 

This episode not only peers into the technical aspects of undersea exploration but also touches on the broader implications for environmental conservation and defense. Smith’s emphasis on the need for continued innovation, especially in battery technology and onboard machine intelligence, points to a future where autonomous undersea vehicles play a pivotal role in addressing some of the planet's most pressing challenges. This conversation with Jeff Smith not only educates but also inspires, reminding us of the vast, unexplored frontiers beneath the waves and the tough tech required to navigate them safely.

P.S. Thank you to our episode sponsor, The End Effector! JMill will be decoding deep tech over there, so join the mailing list to get read-in.

P.P.S. Thank you to our tough tech champions. We really appreciate your support! If you’d like to follow Erika’s example, take a look at our pay-if-you-can membership options so you can help us bring Tough Tech Today to more folks!

Tough Tech Today is transitioning seasons, recapping our Season 3 themes exploring the tough tech domains of biology, space, and fusion energy. We are also preparing for the show's fourth season and we are really excited for it!

Upcoming themes:

• Blue tech – The advanced technologies of the maritime industry. Incredible machines, sustainable oceans, and mysteries to solve in our planet's seas.
• Quantum sciences – A wild world where physics gets weird, we are super curious about opportunities in computing, sensing, and communication.
• Artificial Intelligence – While it was only fairly recently that "A.I." has debuted on the pop-culture zeitgeist, for years tech trailblazers have been developing incredible applications of machine intelligence to solve our world's toughest challenges.

Thank you, our Season 3 guests!

• BioTech
  • New Equilibrium Biosciences - Virginia Burger
  • Elevian - Mark Allen
  • Concerto Biosciences - Cheri Ackerman
• Space
  • Space Capital - Chad Anderson
  • Mithril Technologies - Scarlett Koller
  • Arkenstone Ventures/USAF USSF - Preston Dunlap
• Fusion
  • Proxima Fusion - Francesco Sciortino
  • TDK Ventures / Type One Energy - Tina Tosukhowong
  • Focused Energy - Thomas Forner and Pravesh Patel

P.S. Thank you to our tough tech champions. We really appreciate your support! If you’d like to level-up your support of our work, take a look at our pay-if-you-can membership options so you can help us bring Tough Tech Today to more folks!

If this company perfectly combines lasers and atoms, the reaction could be worth trillions of dollars.

Focused Energy’s Thomas Forner, CEO, and Pravesh Patel, CTO, join us to talk about making lasers. Lots and lots of lasers. But for what aim? They are pointing hundreds of directed beams at a tiny target: a millimeter-sized plastic capsule of deuterium and tritium, about the size of a peppercorn. These experiments may reveal a commercial pathway to grid-scale fusion energy. In contrast to other pursuits for nearly limitless clean energy such as stellarators and tokamaks, our third installment of the Tough Tech Today fusion series spotlights Focused Energy’s inertial approach to excite hydrogen isotopes. 

Uniquely straddling the Atlantic to tap into specialized talent pools in Austin, Texas, and Darmstadt, Germany, this team is leveraging discoveries from top fusion labs in the U.S. and Europe. The company has spun out of the Technical University of Darmstadt and combined with talent from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the first net energy gain from nuclear fusion was demonstrated in 2022.

In a planet hungry for energy, the company aims to generate significant revenues within a few years, fast-tracking commercialization of fusion energy while tapping into early revenues streams Focused Energy is deriving from testing other organizations’ technologies, cleaning up nuclear waste, and providing other valuable services as the company matures its laser drivers, high-gain ignition facility, and, eventually, establishes a pilot power plant. It is a lot of progress for a venture that has raised $82 million to date, including closing an $11 million Series A in 2023. From maintaining a permanent presence among regulators in Washington, D.C., to working with other energy companies to ‘educate the market’ about why fusion energy is now a venture-class investment opportunity, Forner, Patel, and the Focused Energy team exemplify a multinational collaboration of some of the world’s top minds.

P.S. Thank you to our tough tech champions. We really appreciate your support! If you’d like to level-up your support of our work, take a look at our pay-if-you-can membership options so you can help us bring Tough Tech Today to more folks!

🔖Topic Timecodes:

[1:50] Focused Energy’s approach to fusion
[6:07] Differences from WX-7
[7:41] Magnetic vs. inertial fusion
[11:16] How ignition discovery changed the inertial fusion industry
[12:46] Focused’s focus
[14:18] Biggest misconception about fusion in venture capital
[17:52] Comparison of risks between fusion, fission, and autonomous driving industry
[20:57] Developing in public vs private sector
[24:48] Founding story of Focused Energy
[28:23] Working between US and Germany
[34:30] Balancing cooperation and competition
[36:16] Connections to government and politics
[40:10] What’s on the whiteboard
[41:53] Number one technology priority for Focused Energy
[43:28] How does inertial fusion work?
[48:30] Focused Energy is hiring

🧠Relevant Links:

• Episode homepage: https://www.toughtechtoday.com/fusing-atoms-with-lasers/
• Thomas Forner on LinkedIn: https://de.linkedin.com/in/forner-thomas
• Pravesh Patel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pravesh-patel
• Focused Energy homepage: https://focused-energy.world

👏Credit Roll: 

• Producers: Jonathan 'JMill' Miller and Forrest Meyen
• Guests: Thomas Forner and Pravesh Patel
• Hosts: JMill and Forrest Meyen
• Editing: JMill
• Transcript: JMill

Investors are betting big on clean energy becoming the norm.

Tina Tosukhowong of TDK Ventures joins us for a review of the major approaches to curbing carbon emissions in hard-to-abate industries. A thorough assessment led Tosukhowong to opportunities for practical, grid-scale fusion. TDK Ventures invested in Type One Energy Group, a private fusion company affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their stellarator-based design is one of several that have emerged in recent years, with the Type One team and their thesis-driven backers like Tosukhowong of TDK Ventures being among the leaders of commercial fusion approaches in the United States.

TDK Ventures is pursuing “big ticket items that contribute to climate change”, Tosukhowong states, including  aviation, shipping, cement, steel, industrial heat, and the overall building sector. Each is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, each is foundational to our society’s operation, and each is in the crosshairs of tough tech startups looking to preserve the habitability of our planet for future generations. 

How do we harness the power of the stars to deliver clean energy on Earth?

It has been a collective goal – and, perhaps, an impending imperative – for human civilization to secure renewable energy sources for its present and future needs. The team at Proxima Fusion (https://www.proximafusion.com/about), led by co-founder and CEO Francesco Sciortino (https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesco-sciortino-aa340180/), is focused on one approach to build a fusion power plant. Their use of a “stellarator”, a wildly complex machine that until recently has been literally impossible to build, could prove the economic viability of the design and its underlying physics. 

Headquartered in the booming ‘tough tech’ center of Munich, Germany, and drawing in expertise globally, Francesco shares with us how his team of scientist-engineers are leveraging prior learnings from tokamak systems as well as integrating institutional knowledge from their stellarator’s predecessor, the famed Wendelstein 7-X reactor built by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.

P.S. Thank you to our tough tech champions. Special shoutout to Erika – you are our first Advocate member. We really appreciate your support! If you’d like to follow Erika’s example, take a look at our pay-if-you-can membership options so you can help us bring Tough Tech Today to more folks!


🧠Relevant Links:

• Episode homepage: www.toughtechtoday.com/harnessing-the-power-of-a-star/
• Francesco Sciortino on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesco-sciortino-aa340180/
• Proxima Fusion homepage: http://proximafusion.com/
• MIT PSFC article about Proxima Fusion: https://www.psfc.mit.edu/news/2023/from-mit-bonds-to-stellarator-breakthroughs-proxima-fusion

👏Credit Roll: 

• Producers: Jonathan 'JMill' Miller and Forrest Meyen
• Guest: Francesco Sciortino
• Hosts: JMill and Forrest Meyen
• Editing: JMill
• Transcript: Alan Yan and JMill
• Blog Author: JMill
• Art Design: JMill (stellarator icon credit Olena Panasovska)

🔖Topic Timecodes:

• [forthcoming]

📖Transcript:

Transcript is viewable here: https://otter.ai/u/cEyXpgYNFKgTPRZWbR78cvc-88A

Standing up a space force within the world’s largest bureaucracy is not for the faint of heart.

Preston Dunlap – former (and first) Chief Architect / Chief Technology Officer of the United States Air Force and Space Force and present CEO of Arkenstone Ventures – has developed a privileged view into the government machinations necessary to design, develop, and buy the right mix of tough tech capabilities. Mission-focused and multidisciplinary, Dunlap and the organizations in which he engaged at the most senior levels have commanded hundreds of billions of dollars in defense acquisitions.

A curious combination of computer scientist, operations researcher, and international relations practitioner, Dunlap walks us through his approach to investing vast amounts of capital into companies and organizations big and small. We also discuss what it is like working within the government, aligning and mobilizing tremendous human resources to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the United States… which may or may not include actual space invaders.
P.S. Tough Tech Today is now open to patron support, so we have launched a pay-if-you-can membership so you can help us bring Tough Tech Today to more folks! 

🎧Listen: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1169378/13570194-architecting-the-space-force-with-preston-dunlap-of-arkenstone-ventures 

🧠Relevant Links:

• Episode homepage: www.toughtechtoday.com/architecting-the-space-force/
• Preston Dunlap on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/preston-dunlap/
• Preston's Documents list: https://www.linkedin.com/in/preston-dunlap/recent-activity/documents/

👏Credit Roll: 
Producers: Jonathan 'JMill' Miller and Forrest Meyen
Guest: Preston Dunlap
Hosts: JMill and Forrest Meyen
Editing: JMill
Transcript: Alan Yan and JMill
Blog Author: JMill
Art Design: JMill (Space Force emblem credit to United States Space Force.)

🔖Topic Timecodes:
[2:08] What is Arkenstone Ventures?

[4:58] Most exciting technology areas

[7:47] Thoughts on government and VC investments in space

[14:02] New emerging phenomena, e.g. unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs)

[19:21] Bringing companies on board and helping them grow

[25:25] How starting Arkenstone was different than joining another company

[31:34] Biggest challenges as CTO of Air Force and Space Force

[37:39] Staying up to date and knowledgeable about many systems and sciences

[42:31] Does Preston spend time trying to predict the future of tech?

[46:08] Dealing with setbacks

[50:46] The name and ethos of Arkenstone Ventures 

[53:04] Preston’s closing thoughts

📖Transcript:
Transcript is viewable here: https://otter.ai/u/orLilBYuMDszJkz8bsif89OoNMA

An early-stage startup will offer unparalleled weather data when it unfolds its orbital sensors.

Captivated by the stars and focused on improving life on Earth, Mithril Technologies founder and CEO, Scarlett Koller, is venturing into weather awareness and storm tracking by launching and commercializing a large space-based sensor. In this episode, we have the privilege of learning how Koller and her co-founder are translating a new technology out of the lab and into a space business.

Aviation, shipping, insurance, and defense industries are each keen to get better clarity on Earth’s complex atmosphere at any given place and time. Where we currently get a partial image once a day, Mithril's technology offers nearly a complete image per second, a significant improvement that could have profound implications for disaster management. Utilizing microwave radiometry and with an incredible ambition to create huge 100-meter-diameter orbiting reflectors, Mithril’s platform would change the way storms are tracked by providing real-time images of the whole internal structure of a storm. Such holistic data is not available today, as some of the best approaches over the decades continues to be the reliance on specialized flight crews to fly instrumented airplanes through a storm… a risky, imperfect strategy that only provides incomplete snapshots of a storm system. Likewise, satellite imagery to-date provides only slivers of a weather pattern.

Though complex and fraught with challenges, the allure of space and its relationship to our planet inspires and drives tough tech trailblazers like Koller. With Mithril, she hopes to make an impact in the field of Earth observation and contribute to the realization of humankind's space dreams.

P.S. Tough Tech Today is now open to patron support, so we have launched a pay-if-you-can membership so you can help us bring Tough Tech Today to more folks! 

🧠Relevant Links:

• Episode homepage: https://www.toughtechtoday.com/tracking-weather-from-space/
• Scarlett Koller on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scarlett-koller-17748682/
• Mithril Technologies homepage: https://www.mithril.space

👏Credit Roll: 

• Producers: Jonathan 'JMill' Miller and Forrest Meyen
• Guest: Scarlett Koller
• Hosts: JMill and Forrest Meyen
• Editing: JMill
• Transcript: Alan Yan and JMill
• Blog Author: JMill
• Art Design: JMill

🔖Topic Timecodes:

• timecodes will be available after release.

📖Transcript:

Transcript is viewable here: https://otter.ai/u/93uhbOa_QUnHu3_8HDut2FamviI

In one sentence: The space economy is booming in more ways than one.
Space-based assets are changing the way industries operate on Earth. Chad Anderson – Founder and Managing Partner at Space Capital – is one of those individuals who has a deep perspective on the what it is like backing the entrepreneurs who are launching the newest breed of space companies.
An investor by profession and explorer by passion, Anderson relates to us how “the economy of the future” will be built on global positioning systems, geospatial intelligence, and communications.
To paraphrase the title of a book by Ashlee Vance, the heavens have gone on sale. Anderson’s evangelism is perhaps not only warranted, but perhaps fully validated, as exhibited by his and his team’s early investments in mature startups such as Planet and LeoLabs and younger companies such as Quantum Exchange and Lunar Outpost. (Note that Lunar Outpost is Tough Tech Today co-host Forrest Meyen’s company, which we covered in episode 9 with the founder and CEO, Justin Cyrus.)
We also learn about Anderson’s unique experiences concocting whiskey and mezcal in pursuit of adventure and cultural discovery.

P.S. Tough Tech Today is now open to patron support, so we have launched a pay-if-you-can membership so you can help us bring Tough Tech Today to more folks!

🧠Relevant Links:
Episode homepage: https://www.toughtechtoday.com/betting-on-space/
Chad Anderson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadson/
Space Capital homepage: https://www.spacecapital.com

👏Credit Roll: 
Producers: Jonathan 'JMill' Miller and Forrest Meyen
Guest: Chad Anderson
Hosts: JMill and Forrest Meyen
Editing: JMill
Transcript: Alan Yan and JMill
Blog Author: JMill
Art Design: JMill

🔖Topic Timecodes:

• [0:51] Chad Anderson’s bio and story
• [07:21] Recent transformations in the space market
• [10:55] Space Capital’s first investment
• [14:37] Identified the most promising seed stage startups
• [17:22] How time horizons affect investing in early-stage space startups
• [23:05] How awareness about space is affecting companies and markets
• [27:30] More applications for space, namely satellite communications
• [31:02] Space Capital's investment in Rendered.ai
• [37:59] Toughest technology challenges to solve in space
• [45:17] Geopolitical subtext to commercial space pursuits
• [52:44] Chad’s side projects

📖Transcript:
Transcript is viewable here: https://otter.ai/u/1LGDcrnMBxtkqjzd9QvvfS5Toq4

In one sentence... The interactions of the microbial world within us has been incredibly difficult to see – until now.

From the depths of our intestines to the surface of our skin, our bodies are host to trillions of microbial cells spanning thousands of species. While critical to helping us to fend off illnesses and digest complex foods, we know very little about the complex interactions among these microbes.

The team at Concerto Biosciences, led by CEO and Cofounder Cheri Ackerman, has put in place a key step in advancing the understanding of ourselves: a system, the “kChip”, that enables measurement of the interactions that occur among a multitude of species. The result of Concerto Biosciences’s high-throughput, combinatorial approach includes new medications, better health outcomes, and the early glimpses into previously undiscovered relationships occurring in and among every living creature, with fascinating applications beyond therapeutics such as within agriculture. Building an ensemble of microbial species and orchestrating them for a particular purpose is non-trivial and previously unimaginable. Much works remains, as it is difficult to capture real-world bacterial diversity or environmental complexity, but the kChip platform and library of multifactorial interactions enables a robust foundation for new research and development.

Dr. Ackerman and her colleagues have set their company’s sight on first addressing imbalances with the skin microbiome, with particular attention on developing a sophisticated yogurt-like topical treatment for eczema. We dive deep into how this all works, from the invention of the kChips’ droplets-based platform to how the raw technology is maturing past its origins in an academic research lab.

P.S. Tough Tech Today is now open to patron support, so we have launched a pay-if-you-can membership so you can help us bring Tough Tech Today to more folks! 

🧠Relevant Links:

• Episode homepage: https://www.toughtechtoday.com/orchestrating-microbes/
• Cheri Ackerman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheriackerman/
• Concerto Biosciences: http://concertobio.com
• foundational publication on kChip: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31186361/

👏Credit Roll: 

• Producers: Jonathan 'JMill' Miller and Forrest Meyen
• Guest: Cheri Ackerman
• Hosts: JMill, Forrest Meyen, Malvika Verma Miller
• Editing: JMill
• Transcript: Alan Yan and JMill
• Blog Author: JMill
• Art Design: JMill

🔖Topic Timecodes:

• [2:12] Introduction to kChip and why it matters
• [5:57] Range of microbes the kChip can test
• [8:31] Cheri’s cofounder, working from Killian Court at MIT
• [9:27] Physicality of the kChip
• [10:34] Business aspects of Concerto
• [13:35] Manufacturing the kChip and scaling experiments
• [14:50] Invention of kChip and toughest technical challenge at Concerto
• [16:33] Different markets for kChip, different microbiomes
• [18:49] Complexity of these microbiomes and how well kChip approximates a microbiome, e.g. skin microbiome
• [22:40] Value creation of Concerto
• [24:32] Who owns the data and do Concerto’s partners care about it?
• [26:17] Ag tech applications of microbes
• [30:29] Microbes and relationship to synthetic biology
• [33:33] Delivery mechanism and formulation of Concerto’s products
• [35:07] Post-Series A. Focusing on eczema and then platform development
• [36:14] Out-licensing at Concerto
• [39:36] Upcoming technical milestones
• [43:12] Cheri’s responsibilities, past experiences