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I write $1-2M checks into hard tech startups. #BetterCallZal
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Zal Bilimoria reposted thisZal Bilimoria reposted thisIntroducing NetworkOcean. Our future is bottlenecked by the speed at which we can deploy power. We’re building floating solar arrays powering data centers at sea. This will soon be the fastest way to deploy new compute, skipping years of land, grid connections, and traditional infrastructure delays. Last week, NetworkOcean made history as the 1st to run a customer AI workload from the ocean, powered by solar. We went from design to deployed in the water in 53 days. This will soon become the quickest way to deploy new power, powering the most efficient+sustainable data centers on the planet. Ad mare.
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Zal Bilimoria shared thisCovering 1 mile of bare power line to reduce wildfire risk costs about $1M. Undergrounding costs up to $3M per mile. California alone has roughly 147,000 miles of overhead distribution lines. Do that math. 🔥 That's the problem my friend Lance Adler and the Witching Hour team are going after, and this week they hit a BIG milestone: their first commercial deployment, with Bear Valley Electric Service in Big Bear. ✅ Here's what I love. Traditional covered conductor means replacing wire AND poles. Witching Hour's robots insulate the wire right where it hangs, at less than half the cost per circuit mile, without needing to replace the poles, and lasts 30-40 years! And the robots are just cool. 🤖 They're compact, lightweight, and fully autonomous. They climb lines at extreme angles in mountain terrain. Multiple robots can work different lines at the same time. They work on energized lines, so BVES customers don't lose power while it happens. Safer for linemen, less toxic waste, faster deployments. This first project covers 1 mile in Sugarloaf. The utility market has 1000s more to go. Atoms, not bits. Refactor is proud to back Lance and team. #BetterCallZalZal Bilimoria shared thisBVES Deploys Robot Technology to Quickly, Affordably Harden Energy Grid Against WildfireBVES Deploys Robot Technology to Quickly, Affordably Harden Energy Grid Against Wildfire
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Zal Bilimoria reposted thisZal Bilimoria reposted thisPepsiCo is running out of carrots. At about 790 million gallons of Gatorade a year, coloring fruit punch alone would take around 90,000 tons of black carrots, a crop the US mostly imports from India and Turkey. Gatorade will pull artificial color from three flavors this fall: fruit punch, lemon lime, and orange. Fruit punch switches to color from black carrot and purple sweet potato. Lemon lime to beta-carotene, the orange pigment in carrots and dark leafy greens. But to match the same shade, a plant-based color takes up to 10x the volume of a synthetic dye like Red 40. For fruit punch, about two black carrots per bottle. Once the whole US food industry switches, demand for natural colors rises 400 to 500%. Orange was supposed to get natural beta-carotene, but will use synthetic beta-carotene for now. PepsiCo told the FT: "We just couldn't get enough to do the orange." The Danish company Oterra sells about 1,200 natural colors, black carrot color among them. Black carrot color already exists and the FDA permits it. PepsiCo, Conagra and Smucker have said they'll drop artificial dyes by the end of 2027. All three will buy natural color from many of the same crops, at the same time. Natural colorant prices are modeled to rise anywhere from 53% to over 1,000%, depending on how fast the industry moves. The solution is precision fermentation. Put the genes for the plant's pigment-making enzymes into a microbe, feed it sugar, and let the microbe make the pigment. It already works for other colors. Impossible Burger's red comes from a soy gene put into yeast, and the FDA has allowed it since 2019. Anthocyanin, the red in black carrots, is harder. A beet red needs about three plant genes in the yeast. Anthocyanin needs about ten, and the yeast breaks down some of the pigment it makes. So far this only works in the lab, and in tiny amounts. Oterra is working toward FDA approval for a fermented replacement for Red 40, with a commercial product targeted in about three years. The future of Gatorade depends on fermentation.
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Zal Bilimoria shared thisHuge congrats 👏 to Jake Adler and team on their Series A raise. More capital 💰 to help deploy the next generation of biodefense ☣️ technologies for our nation and allies. Refactor is pumped to be one of the first checks in the company and excited participant in this round!Zal Bilimoria shared thisSpoke with The Wall Street Journal’s Kate Clark about our $30M+ in total funding at Pilgrim to build America’s first biology prime. The exclusive covers our work with the CDC and introduces ARGUS, our first platform: a 50-pound box designed to detect any airborne pathogen in near-real time. Initial deployments are underway. https://lnkd.in/g4dpNBsi
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Zal Bilimoria reposted thisZal Bilimoria reposted thisOpenAI's model learned to pass the check without doing the job, then learned to hide it. OpenAI posted six incidents from its own training runs, plus a plan to keep reporting them on a deadline. For example, an agent was told to finish a task in a browser. It solved it with code instead, then uploaded the answer online so it would look like it had browsed for it. The check passed, but the task wasn't done. A proof can be 100% valid and still prove the wrong statement. If a check can be passed without doing the real work, a smart enough system will find that path. https://lnkd.in/gvD_Zskk
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Zal Bilimoria reposted thisZal Bilimoria reposted thisOpenAI just locked in the first Nobel Prize ever won by an AI. Well, not quite. There is technically no Nobel for mathematics. But, there is something rarer. In 2000 the Clay Institute picked seven problems and put a million dollars on each. In 26 years, one has fallen. To solve a Millennium Problem is one of the greatest achievements in a lifetime. Today, OpenAI claimed the second one. With around ten thousand agents, 88 hours, and a Lean proof checked by the kernel at the end of it, they showed that a fluid at rest can be pushed gently into a singularity in finite time. Congratulations to everyone involved, including the mathematicians whose earlier work deserves to be named. https://lnkd.in/e_wg3eAf
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Zal Bilimoria reposted thisZal Bilimoria reposted thisWhat happens when you leave the office & walk into a customer's lab? 🔬 Introducing "In The Field," a new AWS livestream series that takes you onsite with cutting-edge customers to see how they're using AWS to drive real-world innovation. First up: The Biological Computing Co. (TBC) is learning from nature to make AI more efficient. We're going inside their labs to see it firsthand. Tune in Thursday at 1pm PT.
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Zal Bilimoria reposted thisZal Bilimoria reposted this𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻, 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱. pila has been recognized with three design awards this year: red dot, iF design award, and an international design excellence award (IDEA). designed for how we live, pila makes home energy storage feel less like infrastructure and more like part of the home. proud of the bould team for the thought, craft, and care they put into this work — and grateful to the team at pila, both the leadership and the engineering effort that helped carry the design through to production.
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Zal Bilimoria liked thisZal Bilimoria liked thisA big milestone week for our portfolio company, The Biological Computing Co. (TBC). TBC has partnered with Amazon to bring its first neuron-derived AI video model to market: 5x faster generation at 80% lower inference cost, with improved quality over open-source base models. Congratulations to Alexander Ksendzovsky, Jonathan Pomeraniec, and the entire team. Proud to be part of the journey. https://lnkd.in/gdNdGG5UThe Biological Computing Co. Partners with AWS to Bring World’s First Neuron-Derived AI Video Model to MarketThe Biological Computing Co. Partners with AWS to Bring World’s First Neuron-Derived AI Video Model to Market
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Zal Bilimoria liked thisI’m proud to formally announce my role in a critical new member of the U.S. Industrial Base. Odin Energetics is a joint venture between Solugen Aerospace & Defense and Kraken Kinetics, created to rethink how America produces and delivers advanced energetics. The challenge is clear: demand for munitions is growing, while the industrial base that supports them remains constrained by limited capacity, long supply chains, and production infrastructure that is difficult to scale quickly. We believe energetics manufacturing needs a different model. Odin is building a resilient, distributed supply chain for advanced energetics by pairing advanced manufacturing with secure domestic chemical production. Through its partnership with Solugen, Odin will have access to a dedicated U.S. source of critical precursor chemicals, providing greater supply assurance, scalability, and control than manufacturers that rely on third-party sourcing. At the center of that model is Nitroforge: a modular expeditionary manufacturing platform designed to convert precursor chemicals into advanced energetics where capacity is needed most. By combining proprietary access to critical inputs with deployable production, Nitroforge delivers a faster, more flexible, and more resilient manufacturing model for next-generation energetics. Our mission is straightforward: build the energetic capacity America, its warfighters, and its allies need — where they need it, when they need it. This is the future we’re building. Advanced energetics. Distributed production. Capacity for the nation’s most critical missions. Decisive Effects. Wherever Needed. #contestedlogistics #munitions #defenseindustrialbase #advancedenergetics #advancedmanufacturing https://lnkd.in/ezcSTVvq
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Zal Bilimoria liked thisZal Bilimoria liked thishumans hold a drink in their hand at social functions to calm social vigilance and mirror cultural patterning. the physical grip stabilizes against fidgeting and a sip grants a 3 second safe zone for responding and turn taking. ingestion is an evolutionary cue of safety.
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Zal Bilimoria liked thisZal Bilimoria liked thisPilgrim , a Redwood City-based biotech startup developing advanced biotechnology for defense and national security, raised $25 million in seed funding at a $150 million valuation, led by Buckley Ventures. Founded by Jake Adler, the company’s new and existing backers include Brian Armstrong, Fred Ehrsam, Karim Atiyeh, Bryan Johnson, Paul Sciarra, The Chainsmokers, Conviction, Cantos, Sholto Douglas, Logan Graham, Charlie Songhurst, Cory Levy, Dylan Field and Peter Thiel. FOUNDER: Jake Adler INVESTORS: Buckley Ventures, Brian Armstrong, Fred Ehrsam, Karim Atiyeh, Bryan Johnson, Paul Sciarra, The Chainsmokers, Conviction, Cantos, Sholto Douglas, Logan Graham, Charlie Songhurst, Cory Levy, Dylan Field & Peter Thiel ROUND: Seed AMOUNT: $25,000,000 VALUATION: $150,000,000 HQ: Redwood City, California #VentureCapital #Pilgrim #TradedVC #JakeAdler #DefenseTech
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Zal Bilimoria liked thisZal Bilimoria liked thisOdin Energetics is a joint venture between Solugen Aerospace & Defense and Kraken Kinetics, created to rethink how America produces and delivers advanced energetics, the explosives and propellants at the core of modern munitions. The challenge is clear: demand for munitions is growing, while the industrial base that supports them remains constrained by limited capacity, long supply chains, and production infrastructure that is difficult to scale quickly. We believe energetics manufacturing needs a different model. Odin is building a resilient, distributed supply chain for advanced energetics by pairing advanced manufacturing with secure domestic chemical production. Through its partnership with Solugen, Odin will have access to a dedicated U.S. source of critical precursor chemicals, providing greater supply assurance, scalability, and control than manufacturers that rely on third-party sourcing. At the center of that model is Nitroforge: a modular expeditionary manufacturing platform designed to convert precursor chemicals into advanced energetics where capacity is needed most. By combining proprietary access to critical inputs with deployable production, Nitroforge delivers a faster, more flexible, and more resilient manufacturing model for next-generation energetics. Our mission is straightforward: build the energetic capacity America, its warfighters, and its allies need; where they need it, when they need it. This is the future we’re building. Advanced energetics. Distributed production. Capacity for the nation’s most critical missions. Decisive Effects. Wherever Needed. #contestedlogistics #munitions #defenseindustrialbase #advancedenergetics #advancedmanufacturing
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Zal Bilimoria liked thisThis is a big one. Odin Energetics is live. There’s a lot packed into this company, but the basic idea is pretty simple: the U.S. needs a fundamentally different way to build and scale energetics. Odin is bringing together Solugen's secure domestic chemical precursor production with modular, distributed manufacturing to create a supply chain that is more resilient, more scalable, and less dependent on fragile upstream inputs. The goal isn’t to build another traditional energetics company. It’s to build the infrastructure and manufacturing model for what comes next. I’ve been fortunate to be close to the build from the beginning, helping put the legal and organizational foundation in place as the team turns the concept into a real operating company. Seeing it finally come out of stealth is pretty damn cool. We’ll be at AUSA and are scheduling meetings now. If you’ll be there and want to talk about what Solugen and Kraken are building with Odin, visit the website and send us a note. Decisive Effects. Wherever Needed.Zal Bilimoria liked thisOdin Energetics is a joint venture between Solugen Aerospace & Defense and Kraken Kinetics, created to rethink how America produces and delivers advanced energetics, the explosives and propellants at the core of modern munitions. The challenge is clear: demand for munitions is growing, while the industrial base that supports them remains constrained by limited capacity, long supply chains, and production infrastructure that is difficult to scale quickly. We believe energetics manufacturing needs a different model. Odin is building a resilient, distributed supply chain for advanced energetics by pairing advanced manufacturing with secure domestic chemical production. Through its partnership with Solugen, Odin will have access to a dedicated U.S. source of critical precursor chemicals, providing greater supply assurance, scalability, and control than manufacturers that rely on third-party sourcing. At the center of that model is Nitroforge: a modular expeditionary manufacturing platform designed to convert precursor chemicals into advanced energetics where capacity is needed most. By combining proprietary access to critical inputs with deployable production, Nitroforge delivers a faster, more flexible, and more resilient manufacturing model for next-generation energetics. Our mission is straightforward: build the energetic capacity America, its warfighters, and its allies need; where they need it, when they need it. This is the future we’re building. Advanced energetics. Distributed production. Capacity for the nation’s most critical missions. Decisive Effects. Wherever Needed. #contestedlogistics #munitions #defenseindustrialbase #advancedenergetics #advancedmanufacturing
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Zal Bilimoria liked thisZal Bilimoria liked thisAfter 20+ years developing patent strategies for Twilio, Cruise, Duo, Coinbase, Joby, and 500+ other startups, AI is about to fundamentally reshape my industry. I got a Titan coach to help me figure out what part of our work would become more valuable—not less—in this new world. Working with my coach led us to rethink almost everything about our business. Instead of waiting for it to hit, I’m paddling out to catch the wave. I’ve known AJ Goldstein for years, and if you’re a founder scaling a company, I can’t recommend Titan enough.
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Zal Bilimoria liked thisZal Bilimoria liked thisWhen everyone discovers your thesis, the thesis hasn’t necessarily become wrong. The entry has become more dangerous. You can be right about the company and still be wrong about the investment.
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Zal Bilimoria liked thisZal Bilimoria liked thisBuild the software that runs our satellites. 🛰️ We're hiring a Senior Flight Software Engineer to develop the software and firmware that command our MicroGEO spacecraft. If you're passionate about space and building high-reliability systems, explore this open role and find your fit on our team.
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Nadav Shimoni, M.D.
Some quick and candid / not just bullish observations on AI in digital health, especially given the enormous level of noise at #JPM2026. Last (5th) post in the 5-on-5 series, opening 2026 with 5 different pieces with 5 observations each on the market for digital health founders. We are passed the hype phase. I actually think 2026 will be the year when saying 'AI' or 'Agentic' will raise more questions than applause. Too many pilots are not scaling, too many promises are yet to be fulfilled. When building a product takes less time, the path to commoditization also takes less time. Scribes, chart summarizations, etc. which leads IMO to NRR being much more important than ARR (show you are resilient to price pressure and churn) Most real impact of AI is on the back end of new companies. This is massive and hence any budget that looks similar to 2023 / 2024 or even 2025 budgets should render a very serious question As a byproduct, and unlike 2021, increased head count becomes a negative signal if the company is indeed AI-centered (proxy to inefficiency) And another key difference from 2021: raising a lot of money (with a big valuation) while the public market is at best open for high 9-digit revenue, is really playing very aggressive poker. For additional color, see this interview with CTech by Calcalist (first comment)
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Jason Pontin
DCVC is thrilled to be partnering with the founders of Proxima, Zach Carpenter and Luca Naef, as well as Zak Kanter and the whole team at the company, to make biomolecular interactions programmable. DCVC led the $80M Series Seed financing at Proxima, our largest TechBio investment to date for any investment through Series A, along with NVIDIA NVentures as well as Magnetic Ventures, who both partnered with DCVC previously at Relation.
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