👋 Clement Cazalot

I’ve been working on the theory of why small, shippable factories are the perfect inversion to the centralized prefab factory model. It all collapsed into one line of math (credit to Gilles Retsin): Factory Efficiency = Usage × (Throughput × Product Value ) / ( CapEx + Deployment OpEx) The idea is that the closer you can drive Usage to 100 % while keeping the denominator tiny, the faster the flywheel spins.  A shippable microfactory tackles this by primarily focusing on a high Usage factor. Because the microfactory can be packed up afterwards and reused, its CapEx gets amortized over multiple projects, effectively raising its overall Usage across the year. If one project alone doesn’t fully occupy the factory, it can simply roll over to another job to maintain high Usage. Its CapEx is often an order of magnitude lower than a centralized factory (< $1M vs. $10-50M min), so the breakeven throughput is more achievable on a small pipeline of work. The real breakthrough here is portability. There is near-zero stranded capital and almost no idle time. To flesh this theory out, I wrote 3000 words on the topic for Brad Hargreaves and Thesis Driven. The article breaks down: - why “fixed factories, shipped goods” is being inverted to shipped factories, fixed goods - what a sub‑$1 M robotic cell does to CapEx per home versus a £45 M off‑site plant - early production/cost data on a shippable microfactory from Mollie Claypool, Gilles Retsin, Sam Baker and the Automated Architecture (AUAR) team - the hybrid reality of robots tackling the heavy structural components and human crews assembling faster and cheaper - technical constraints to pull this model off and future considerations on the optimal business model (own vs. rent) Major shoutout to Gilles Retsin for helping me pull this together. https://lnkd.in/eRTnbZPa

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Entanglement, Inc. launches Maritech Intelligence Systems, Inc., a direct result of our recent acquisition of Applied Ocean Sciences (AOS) “This is what happens when decades of deep ocean science meets quantum-logic AI at scale. Maritech unlocks maritime intelligence capabilities that simply weren’t computationally possible before—at a moment when the oceans matter more than ever.” — Jason Turner

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Echo River Capital's latest investment in Solidec marks another exciting shot-on-goal to leverage #water to decarbonize industry. With potential gigaton-scale reductions, Solidec is "forging a path to emission-free molecules for the global chemical manufacturing industry, and creating opportunities to accelerate innovation in multiple other industries." By using water and air, Ryan DuChanois and the team are creating a #fossilfuelfree manufacturing platform for industrial chemicals. Exciting days ahead!

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Great things happened in the Techstars network in June: →  83 new investments →  8 portfolio companies secured funding →  1 portfolio companies were acquired →  3 Founder Catalyst programs have opened applications ➕Kumulus Water (Techstars 2022) raises €3.1M for atmospheric water generators that turn air into water. ➕Lendorse raises €1.7M to offer income-based financing for international students. ➕Poppy Flowers (Techstars 2020) raises $1.7M to build on its floral business. ➕NeedEnergy (Techstars'23) (Techstars 2023) secures funding for clean-energy sector. ➕Alva Health Inc. (Techstars 2021) gets $500K NSF Grant to advance real-time stroke detection wearable. ➕Wibo (Techstars 2023) secures €500K to scale its corporate learning startup. ➕CubeNexus Inc (Techstars 2024) raises $650K in pre-seed funding. ➕Serve First CX (Techstars 2024) secures £4.6M to expand its AI-driven customer experience offering. https://lnkd.in/gqskDqtv

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🇺🇸 The U.S. is the WORLD’S LARGEST consumer of stable isotopes, yet has minimal domestic production capacity — constraining nuclear, pharmaceutical, defense, and other CRITICAL industries. Actinide raised millions out of the last Discipulus Ventures Cohort to build a scalable American isotope platform and ignite the next ATOMIC AGE in America👇 Who Actinide was founded by Eric Olszewski and Robert Mendelsohn Eric is a repeat founder and early Ethereum developer who personally funded $1M+ into Actinide. Robert has spent nearly a decade building isotope separation machines and has prototyped nearly every separator described in the literature. Problem Isotopes unlock advanced materials by changing how substances behave, improving heat transfer, mechanical response, and transport properties through controlled atomic-scale interactions. Yet supply is highly concentrated: Russia dominates many high-value isotopes, while U.S. production capacity remains extremely limited. Solution Actinide rebuilt Manhattan Project–era calutron technology from first principles. Using modern physics simulation, advanced magnetic assemblies, semiconductor-grade components, and in-house manufacturing, Actinide produces isotopes faster and at far lower cost than legacy systems. Vision and Progress Actinide’s first full-scale machine has successfully produced material verified by an independent third-party lab. The company has signed supply agreements across nuclear and pharmaceutical markets, including isotopes priced near $36,000 per gram. Early demand already exceeds current throughput. Hiring Actinide is scaling American manufacturing at the atomic level. They are hiring machinists, metallurgists, control systems engineers, and operators to help build the domestic supply chain for the most valuable materials. Contact: eric@actinideinc.com Discipulus Ventures backs founders tackling America’s hardest problems. If you’re building something ambitious like Actinide, apply to our Cohort: 👉 https://cometogundo.com

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😧It appears the public markets fear of AI has done a 180 - from fear of excessive investment to AI's ability to obliterate long incumbent software companies. I have a feeling we are going to hear the new riff "software is eating software" more times than the famous 2011 op-ed statement from Andreessen that "software is eating the world". Another 180 - long hardware, short (trad) software 🤯. AI infrastructure is literally eating memory. The global memory-ship shortage is expected to last another few years! 💽 Shout out to our pals at Inovia Capital for their State of Canadian Software Report. Thanks for the Miovision mention regarding the massive partnership potential for Canadian companies in the Middle East. 👉 https://lnkd.in/dyB8JkEh

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DeepSeek-V3.2 is also available on Atlas Cloud now. We worked with SGLang to fix tool-use in non-streaming mode. The model now supports tool_call, tool_choice, response_format and reasoning. Price: $0.28/M Input & $0.4/M Output. Try it on Atlas Cloud: https://lnkd.in/gUb9i_B8

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🚨 New Generation Space Podcast Episode Alert 🚨 Portfolio Spotlight with CEO Mike Gulla of Adaptive Insurance 🌍 Host Leah Martin chatted with Mike Gulla, CEO of Adaptive Insurance, a Texas-based startup using AI-driven parametric insurance to tackle climate risk head-on. Fresh off a $5M Seed round, Mike shares how Adaptive is helping communities and businesses stay resilient in the face of increasingly extreme weather. Lewis Alun Jones, Generation Space’s VP of Investment also joined the conversation, to unpack why Adaptive is a standout in the space. 🔗 Listen now: https://lnkd.in/eXNBtWkv

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DUAL USE Military Technology! Farmers and Ag Retailers are inundated with data, but it often lack the insights needed for effective decision-making. Tesseract Ventures has developed an integrated platform that synthesizes data from a multitude of sources, including #drones, #robots, in-field #sensors, data sources, imagery, and more. This comprehensive approach provides farmers and Ag Strategics with unprecedented insights into increasing profitability and efficiency of their operations, enabling them to optimize every aspect of their farms. We call it Tesseract Synthesis.

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