Stacy Curtin

catalyx space Raises $5.4M to Revolutionize Orbital Reentry Tech Catalyx Space, a young company building better ways to bring things back from space, has raised $5.4 million in seed funding led by Outlander VC, following a $1.7 million pre-seed round earlier this year. Founded in 2024 by Rifath Shaarook, Catalyx is developing reentry capsules that can safely and reliably return payloads from orbit — a critical capability as more industries leverage space for research, manufacturing, and innovation. The fresh capital will help Catalyx turn its designs into real products, expand internationally, and onboard customers across defense, biotech, and manufacturing. Other investors in the round include Arka Venture Labs, Techstars, and several venture funds. Just six months after its first check, Catalyx completed a successful drop test of its capsule — a major milestone proving the tech works. As the space economy accelerates, Catalyx aims to make safe payload recovery a standard part of orbital operations — unlocking new opportunities for research and satellite reuse. 🌍✨ #SpaceTech #StartupFunding #CatalyxSpace #Innovation #ReentryTechnology #Aerospace Read More: https://lnkd.in/dxcBBSUx

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California’s incentive story is a mixed bag—and we’ve lived it firsthand. Over the past decade we’ve produced north of $30M in content. You’d think we would have benefitted from California’s tax credits along the way. We didn’t. Not because they weren’t valuable, but because the realities of casting, crew, timing, and LA-based production pushed our projects into the wrong lane. As an indie, the queue was long and traction was slow. So we adapted. We got good... very good at making premium work for less. We stopped waiting for eligibility and built muscle where bigger production companies lean on subsidy. Funny enough, the statewide data now reflects that shift: more features are shooting in CA, but they’re smaller budget indie films driving activity. Total spend is down, incentives lift some projects, and competition is rising. For us, it’s an inflection point. With a slate of horror films ramping up, we finally plan to apply for incentives and compete in that arena. We’re no longer the producer trying to break into the line, we’re the one who proved we could deliver without the incentive, and now stands to amplify impact with it. The bad news? The system still isn’t frictionless. The good news? Efficiency is leverage and we’ve accumulated a lot of it. Here’s hoping the next $30M looks different than the last. If California’s incentives truly favor indies, people like us should be able to scale, not just survive.

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California just made it official: Hollywood's getting a massive tax break. On Friday, the state legislature formally voted to more than double film tax credits from $330M to $750M annually through 2035, totaling $1.5B in subsidies over the next decade. The expansion passed by huge margins with minimal opposition. The move comes after months of heavy lobbying by a coalition of filmmakers and major industry unions. Companion bill AB1138 is expected to pass this week, which would boost individual project credits from 20% to 35% and broaden eligibility to include shorter TV shows, animated content, and competition shows, addressing longstanding complaints that California's incentives weren't competitive enough to prevent productions from fleeing to states like Georgia and New York. #thedailies

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Glad to hear that King County, WA will keep funding Harbor Island Studios for the short term, but long term funding is necessary to keep developing WA's only large-scale Film/TV studio to get the resources needed that supports our creative economy.

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ChatGPT has told me countless times that Alaska Airlines' loyalty program is NOT Atmos Rewards. (A recent change, but it is.) It's also hallucinated credit card benefits, miscounted characters in newsletter subject lines, and confused template modules with editable content. Even with a detailed ChatGPT project that reflects my style guide and workflow, AI has real limitations as a co-editor. My solution: I keep a "Known Issues" log. Every time the project fails in a new way, I document it and update the instructions. Now the system checks against its own failure history before giving feedback. It's been a game changer for making AI actually useful in editorial QA.

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Warner Bros. Discovery said it would split into two publicly traded companies, separating its studios and streaming business from its fading cable television networks as the parent of HBO and CNN looks to compete better in the streaming era. The breakup announced on Monday is the latest sign of the great unraveling of decades of media consolidation that have created global conglomerates spanning content creation, distribution and in some cases, telecommunications. It unwinds WarnerMedia and Discovery's 2022 merger, giving the streaming and studios business more room to scale without being weighed down by the declining networks unit. The new streaming-and-studios company will include Warner Bros, DC Studios and HBO Max - the crown jewels of WBD's entertainment library. The networks unit, which will hold up to a 20% stake in its counterpart, will house CNN, TNT Sports and Bleacher Report. With Aditya Soni #Media #Streaming #Television https://lnkd.in/gvmS9nYB

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Last week I got invited to attend the 2025 Apple Event at the company's headquarters in Cupertino, CA. I was told that the company had a new health feature but little did I know it was so much more in store. When I walked into Apple Park for this unveiling there was buzz from the moment I arrived. The crowd, the anticipation—you could tell something big was coming. The company unveiled several new products including three new phones. Here are some things that stuck with me: -The ultra-thin iPhone Air with an almost 3D front screen and built-in translation—being able to connect in someone else’s language felt genuinely human. -A front camera that auto-frames so no one gets cropped out of group shots (finally!). -Apple Watch updates that can flag hypertension/high blood pressure—tech nudging us toward proactive health. -Headphones translating languages in real time—wild to experience live. -A sleek phone band that turns your device into a wearable accessory. I left thinking about how the best tech disappears into life—making us a little more connected, a little healthier, and a lot more curious. Which new product would you try first? #technews #eventrecap #AppleEvent #iPhoneAir #Innovation #HealthTech #handson #consumertech #smartphone

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The market is #jazz. Interconnected, improvisational, full of chromatic connections we've been missing. Twenty years before I powered Netflix's growth engines, I was learning jazz fundamentals in my dad's recording studios: the most powerful moments come from controlled dissonance. Chromatic passing tones are notes that sound wrong alone but bridge distant harmonies. The market operates the same way. What sounds like noise is actually dynamic composition. #AI can give us the big picture; the #interconnection, the #cross-pollination between geographies and business value chains. It helps us to see and hear the jazz. I've spent 15 years across advertising, entertainment, and tech, from physical execution to leading growth engines at Netflix in partnership with the Co-CEOs. I can see how the fragmented media landscape creates inefficiencies when ad sales are treated as separate from content development and technology infrastructure. But these aren't separate systems, they're instruments in the same composition. According to the Forum for the Future's Business Transformation Compass, looking for interconnections means finding opportunity that sits between the challenges. AI gives us that context to see chromatic passing notes; the tools to experiment, learn, and adapt. The companies succeeding now aren't those with the best individual AI tools, but those willing to read the full jazz score. What dissonance could unlock your next breakthrough? Ve Dewey, MBA FRSA Daria Scoccimarro Rance Kristin Krall Brian Farrell

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