Intuitive Machines & SpaceX topple - systemic or inevitable?

Satellite Spotlight Edition #13

Author

Imagining Forward
March 11, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

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space brew

// Fascinating topics to discuss this week

deal flow

government

  • USAF STRATFI selects Albedo, Gravitics, Xona Space, Beast Code, CesiumAstro, LeoLabs, Rise8, Umbra for $440M fund (SN).

  • Star Catcher lands $2M LLF space beam demo to power space energy grid (SN).

  • Comtech wins $26M L3Harris anti-jam SatComms deals for USAF & US Army (SN).

  • Gecko Robotics wins $100M NAES deal to modernize power plants & support data center boom (BW).

seed

  • Daqus emerges from stealth with $6M Seed by Morningside for advanced materials (TC).

  • Moonwatt raises $8.3M Seed by AFI Ventures for sodium-ion solar storage (LD).

  • Trimtech secures $31M Seed for protein therapy on neurogenerative diseases (LT).

  • Lila Sciences emerges from stealth with $200M for autonomous labs & superintelligence (PN).

series A

  • Crogl closes $25M Series A by Menlo for autonomous cyber security assistant (TC).

  • ReSource raises $15M by Khosla, Chevron, Mitsubishi to build bioplastics pilot (FM).

  • Glimpse raises $10M Series A for battery defect detection monitoring (AP).

  • Spiritus closes $30M by Aramco, Khosla, Mitsubishi & TDK for carbon capture (CH).

  • Ataraxis AI raises $20.4M by AIX, Palantir for AI cancer prognostic tool (BW).

m&a

  • Gleamer expands AI medical imaging portfolio with two MRI acquisitions (TC).

headlines

🚀

  • Planet x Claude LLM partner to analyze geospatial data at speed & scale (BN).

  • AFRL explores rocket landing pads for rapid military cargo delivery (TLP).

  • USSF secret autonomous space plane achieves stealth mode with aerobrake (TLP).

  • Telesat x Canada construct $25M LEO satellite center to rival Starlink (BK).

🤖

  • Canada sets $300M AI fund for Series A IC, data centres, compute energy by Apr 14 (BK).

  • NUBURU laser partners with COEPTIS robotic automation for defense sales enablement (AR).

  • McDonalds partners with Google Cloud on edge computing for 70M daily customer orders (GF).

🔬

  • BITS collaboration suppresses Parkinson tremors with biorobotic wearable arm (AR).

community spotlight

today, 03/11

  • Climate engineering dinner (NYC).

  • Crypto x Next Layer Capital (NYC).

  • Tech breakfast (LA).

  • Visionary happy hour (LA).

  • TCP in datacentres (SF).

  • Web3 AI agents (SF).

wednesday, 03/12

  • -1 to Bilt fireside chat (NYC).

  • Hardware dinner (SF).

  • Humanoid robots x Github (SF).

  • Hardware meetup (LA).

thursday, 03/13

  • Healthcare hang (NYC).

  • Tech breakfast (SF).

  • GenAI demo night (SF).

  • Climate SoCal x JP Morgan (LA).

friday, 03/14

  • Deep tech brunch (LA).

saturday, 03/15

  • Plug & Play x Taiwan Demo (SF).

sunday, 03/16

  • Solana summit (SF).

upcoming

  • Tech Breakfast (NYC).

  • Alumni Ventures x Nuclear (NYC).

  • SatConference (DC).

  • GovMilSpace (DC).

  • NASA JPL Tour (LA).

cosmic weekly insights

Jupiter by Juno on X by @Konstructivizm

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