Tobin Fisher

I’m excited to be presenting at AIAA SciTech 2026 next week in Orlando. Our Eos Atomics team, in collaboration with Kevin Bowcutt and the University of Maryland, has been exploring direct fusion-to-air heat exchanger windows for hypersonic propulsion applications. This work tackles a demanding set of challenges - surviving extreme temperatures, radiation, and pressure differentials, while maintaining chemical compatibility in both oxygen and hydrogen-rich environments. One particularly compelling outcome of this study is the identification of novel hypersonic operating envelopes that appear well suited for direct fusion-driven propulsion. These occur at extreme altitudes (>130,000 ft), where dynamic pressure and thermal loads are significantly reduced - beyond the limits of conventional combustion, yet still firmly within the realm of sustained flight. We’re looking forward to sharing these results at SciTech and engaging in discussions on what this could mean for the future of high-altitude, high-speed flight. AIAA-2026-2214: Hypersonic Nuclear Fusion Combined Cycle Propulsion Enabled by Direct Charged Particle-to-Air Beam Window Array Thursday, Jan 15, 1:00pm

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Forbes published my latest article on what many investors may be getting wrong about robotics. Humanoid robots look like the future. But investing in humanoid hardware may not be. Manufacturing asymmetry is real. Competing with Asian supply chains is not a typical venture risk profile. Outside of companies like Tesla or Amazon, most hardware startups, even unicorns, will face extreme pressure. The long term U.S. advantage is far more likely to sit in embodied AI software and the intelligence layer, not in assembling robot bodies. In robotics, the control point will not be the factory. It will be the mind. https://lnkd.in/gmcVtCa5

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Four announcements in one week. Not for headlines but for the industry momentum. 𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲: 𝐏𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐨𝐬𝐨 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨. This isn’t just about tighter integration. It’s about how we believe this industry should be built. Photonics design has been too fragmented - layout, simulation, and manufacturing living in separate worlds. That doesn’t scale for what’s coming. With this connector with Cadence, engineers can move directly between #Virtuoso and #PhotonForge - design, simulate, iterate - in one continuous loop, aligned with real process constraints. The bigger idea is simple: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝. 𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞. We’re building toward an open, connected ecosystem across #EDA, #foundries, and #simulation because that’s what it will take to scale this technology for AI infrastructure and beyond. Better tools matter. Better alignment across the industry matters more. Proud of the team Prashanta Kharel, PhD, and grateful to partners like Cadence GlobalFoundriesTSMC who share this direction. #Photonics #EDA #SiliconPhotonics #OpenEcosystem #AIInfrastructure #Engineering

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Of all the incredible hardware that flows through Vendra (YC S24), space parts and mechanisms are my favorite. There's so much optimization in every single component, from maximizing stiffness-to-weight ratios, to surviving the insane shock and vibe of launch, to using coatings and materials that won't corrode or contaminate other parts. And the wild part is the hardware often looks deceptively simple. The mechanism in Starship that deployed dummy satellites on their successful test flight yesterday is a perfect example of this. Years of design, test, and iteration went into a set of parts that are optimized for thermals, vacuum compatibility, lubrication, shock/vibe, reliability, and probably a thousand more parameters. It blows my mind every time to think about. Huge congrats to the SpaceX team for a successful flight. Excited for many more to come!! 🚀🚀🚀

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We just wrapped up a huge week at Figure - here’s what we announced: 1/ Announced >$1B in Series C. This gives us the strongest balance sheet in humanoid robotics - critical to scaling Helix (our AI) and BotQ (robot manufacturing) 2/ Launched a partnership with Brookfield, who manages $1T in assets globally. Together we’re planning to scale AI infrastructure for Helix, already collecting real-world data for Helix pretraining, and working commercially to deploy robots 3/ Announced Project Go-Big - our push to build the world’s largest humanoid pretraining dataset. We are scaling out human video collection and our F.02 humanoid can now learn directly from human video. This project is accelerated by our partnership with Brookfield, who owns over 100,000 residential units As a founder, timing is everything. Too early or too late is fatal Right now, we’re in the sweet spot for humanoids: advanced hardware is maturing that can walk and do human-like tasks, production manufacturing is spinning up, and most importantly - neural networks are delivering. I believe we’re at the starting line of scaling synthetic humans to billions of units

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INTRODUCING: The very first episode of our NEW SHOW co-produced with NYSE: The Space & Defense Market Update. We'll be here once a month to provide you an overview on everything you need to know as an investor in the space & defense industry. This is going to be a golden year, and we’ll have a front-row seat at the center of global capital markets, alongside the industry’s top leaders, showcasing the innovations and deals moving the needle. Consider this v1. Tune in to see how the show evolves! S/O: Kevin Hawkins, Crystal Shen, Pete Asch, Lance Glinn, Laura Diorio and the rest of the amazing NYSE team.

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Manufacturing’s labor crunch is feeding a rich training set for robotics, laying out the foundation for future autonomy - we’re investing in solutions that turn today’s labor crisis into tomorrow’s robotic runway.  Over the past month, I mapped the problem and the “bridge stack” ➡️ TLDR: Factories are bleeding talent faster than autonomous systems can replace it. We are living in an awkward “in between stage” where industry is not quite ready to adopt available tech (nor is the tech ready to take on dynamic manufacturing environments) but also can’t afford to simply do nothing. A few opportunity zones I discuss in my deep dive: 🔗 Data integration glue: A vendor agnostic fabric that normalizes PLC, MES, and sensor data in <100 ms so ai copilots (and future bots) can reason in real time. 🤖 Auto programmed robotics: Software that mines worker logs & video to auto generate code, slashing deployment costs and opening automation to <$1M revenue plants. 📈 Human centric ux & upskilling: Voice first, multilingual guidance and micro credentials that cut ramp up time by up to 50% while building a cross plant skills graph robots can consume later. 🛠️ Flexible micro automation: Cobots that can learn new motions from a handful of demonstrations and swap robotic hands or tools in minutes without taking the equipment offline. Why this matters: Each zone pays for itself in human productivity today and wires the factory so robotics can better integrate tomorrow. To read the full thing: https://lnkd.in/e48nNk-3

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