Wingmen, Wafers, & Wagers

In Memory of Josh Baer ⚙️

This week we lost Josh Baer, founder of Capital Factory and the godfather of Austin's startup scene. For more than two decades he built the Texas tech community one founder at a time, always leading with the same question: how can I help? 

He gave first, he gave generously, and he never kept a tab. Hat tip to you, Josh. We'll miss you.

📈 Portfolio Pulse

✈️ Anduril: Fury Goes to Production

The Air Force picked Anduril and General Atomics to build its first fleet of Collaborative Combat Aircraft, four months ahead of schedule. Anduril's Fury, now redesignated the FQ-44A, drops its prototype "Y" and heads into production across the program's first three lots. The service wants at least 150 of these drone wingmen by the end of the decade, on the way to a planned 1,000. Each is supposed to cost less than a third of an F-35. Anduril also made the short list to supply the autonomy software that flies them. Palmer Luckey said he would build the arsenal. The Air Force just placed the order. Air & Space Forces | Defense News | Breaking Defense

⚛️ PsiQuantum: Breaking Ground Down Under

PsiQuantum broke ground in Queensland on what it says will be the world's first utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer. The Moreton Bay site comes with a Linde cryoplant ordered back in 2024, one of the largest ever built for quantum, due in late 2027. It follows the May opening of PsiQuantum's test lab at Griffith University. Photonic chips, networked over standard optical fiber, cooled to near absolute zero. The pitch is quantum and AI together as one industrial computing stack. Everyone talks about fault tolerance. PsiQuantum is pouring concrete. PsiQuantum

💻 SpaceX: $60B for Cursor

Three days after the largest IPO in history, SpaceX went shopping. It agreed to buy AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion in stock, a deal first floated in April with a $10 billion breakup fee attached. Cursor was about to raise $2 billion from a16z, Thrive, and Nvidia at a $50 billion valuation before SpaceX preempted the round. The logic is to bolt a real coding lab onto SpaceX's AI division, the one built around xAI that has been restructuring after a rough stretch. Since Friday's debut, the stock ran from $135 to north of $200, adding close to a trillion dollars (now ~$185). That is roughly 16 Cursors in a week. TechCrunch

🧠 Neuralink: Samsung Lands the Chip

Samsung is reportedly building Neuralink's next brain chip, its fourth generation, on a 4nm process under the codename "O1." It would be the first contract between the two, and it moves Neuralink off TSMC, which made the first three generations. The new chip is built for two-way communication: not just reading neural signals, but writing data back into the brain, the kind of capability that could one day restore vision. Samsung went with a mature 4nm node on purpose, trading raw density for the yield and thermal stability an implant demands. Test chips ship in early 2027. The interface is starting to talk back. SamMobile

🎯 xAI: Grok Goes to War

A DOJ filing meant to defend xAI's Colossus turbines accidentally revealed where Grok really lives. To get an NAACP Clean Air Act suit tossed, the government argued that shutting down the Southaven, Mississippi plant would threaten national security, then backed it with sworn testimony from the Pentagon's AI chief. The disclosure: a "Grok Gov Model" inside Project Maven helped US forces hit 2,000 targets with 2,000 munitions in 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury. Maven used to run on Anthropic's Claude. Now it runs on Grok. Dozens of unpermitted turbines and one classified war record, surfaced in an environmental docket. The quiet part is now in the court file. Mississippi Free Press | The Hill

🦾 Anthropic: Mythos & Fable Go Dark

Anthropic's two most powerful models, Mythos and Fable, are offline. After Amazon's Andy Jassy flagged jailbreak risks to the Treasury Secretary, the administration imposed stringent export controls on Friday night, and Anthropic pulled both models entirely. The roots go deeper: weeks earlier, Washington threatened controls after learning Mythos had reached a foreign telecom with ties to the CCP, access Anthropic says it then revoked. The company says it had explicit government approval to deploy Fable. Officials say Anthropic keeps speaking a different language than this White House. Commerce, the CIA, and the science office are all meeting the company this week. The most capable models in America, grounded by a communication breakdown. Axios

🧬 Paradromics: First Patient, First Implant

Paradromics completed the first surgical implant of its Connexus brain-computer interface in a live patient, part of the FDA-cleared Connect-One feasibility study at University of Michigan Health. The first participant is a Michigan woman who has lost the ability to speak to motor neuron disease, and she will be followed for six years. The device records neural signals through a high-density electrode array, routes them to a transceiver in the chest, and beams them wirelessly to an external receiver. The goal is to restore speech and give computer control back to people with severe motor impairment. Neuralink gets the headlines. Paradromics just put one in a patient. NeuroNews

👀 Watch List

🛩️ Shield AI: Hivemind Wins Its Contract

While Anduril and General Atomics won the airframes, the Air Force ran a separate race for the brains. Shield AI landed a production contract to put its Hivemind autonomy software on the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, part of a software-first approach that lets the service upgrade the AI without redesigning the jet. Hivemind is already flying aboard Anduril's Fury, and Shield AI now competes with Anduril and Collins to become the program's primary autonomy provider by 2027. Founded in 2015, the company also builds the V-BAT and X-BAT. The drones are getting built. Shield AI wants to be what flies them. Shield AI

🏭 Nox Metals: Reindustrializing in Detroit

Nox Metals raised an $11.5 million seed to cut aluminum faster than anyone in America. The Detroit startup, barely seven months into production, uses AI to turn metal quoting and ordering from days into seconds, then ships custom-cut plate to factories across the industrial base. The round was led by Hyperion, with Y Combinator and, notably, Palmer Luckey writing checks. This summer it revives a WW2-era, 30,000-square-foot factory in Detroit. The thesis is the reindustrialization trade in its purest form: software-speed logistics wrapped around physical atoms. China added 295,000 industrial robots last year. America added 34,000. Nox wants to close that gap one slab at a time. Nox Metals

💬 Prompt

What can I help you with?

Write a warm, bedtime-friendly story for my 4-year-old son, Jack. The story should be about Lightning McQueen teaching Jack an important lesson about empathy and leadership.

Make the story about 4 minutes long when read out loud. Keep the language simple, fun, and gentle for bedtime. Include a coyote as one of the characters because Jack loves coyotes.

The story should feel adventurous but not scary. It should show Jack learning that a good leader helps others, listens carefully, and thinks about how others feel. End with a sweet, calming bedtime ending.

📚 Content

🩻 Midjourney's Full-Body Scanner

The company that made its name generating dreamlike images now wants to image you. Midjourney Medical, a side project from founder David Holz, built a full-body ultrasound scanner with Butterfly Network: step onto a platform, get lowered into a ring of thousands of transducers, and walk out 60 seconds later with a 3D map of your insides. Holz calls it "in many ways superior to even MRI" and pitches it as a "magical spa experience." About a dozen people have been scanned so far, which is either the start of preventative medicine for everyone or the most ambitious wellness startup ever. Probably both.

💰 The 5% Freakout

When California floated a 5% net-worth tax, the Valley's billionaires did what they do best and started a group chat. The San Francisco Standard got inside it, and the cast reads like a Forbes list: Brin, Andreessen, Moritz, Garry Tan, Collison, and Armstrong among the names. The strategies got creative fast, including one proposal to simply buy the company collecting petition signatures and shut it down. Whatever you think of the tax, the response is a clinic in how capital reacts when someone reaches for it.

📖 Answers Without Effort

Shane Parrish's latest Brain Food lands a line worth taping to your monitor in the AI era: you can get the answer without effort, but you can't get the understanding. The issue also points to a Knowledge Project episode with Benchmark's Bill Gurley on systems thinking and second- and third-order effects. This is one of our favorite blogs.

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