We've been talking a big game about nuclear energy. It was time to put our money where our mouth is. Thrilled to announce at long last that we made one of our largest investments to date in portable fission reactor startup
@RadiantNuclear
!
The era of clever opportunists has passed. The latest application era is over.
A new infrastructure era has begun. Technologists now reign.
We will not back any new pure-software co’s until further notice.
👩🏻🔬🚁🛰🔋⚙️🤖🔬⚗️👨🏾🚀
So we have a blog! First up
@ameekapadia
gives the state of play in engineering-led biology, why we use “TechBio” (shoutout
@vasudevbailey
), and where we’re focused on investing.
Cantos got its name from the stanzas of epic poetry. We view entrepreneurship as the modern hero’s journey, but the firm is named after the _units_ of said stories because they get written one word at a time.
The future is built today.
It’s official,
@AtomosSpace
raised $5M in a seed round we’re proud to support… and Co-Founders
@Vanessa_J_Clark
and
@RamblingWilliam
were guests on the very first episode of our podcast, Near Frontier!
At Cantos we believe in 10-20 years a handful of computational therapeutics discovery/design (“AIDD”) companies will be among the largest in the world.
We think there’s a decent chance
@nablabio
will be one of them. Why we invested…
We’re proud to announce our investment in
@strongholdxchg
, bringing better institutional trading to digital assets on the
@StellarOrg
network. Go Tammy & Sean!!!
We finally get to share our largest investment with you. Skyryse’s mission is to make urban air mobility as cheap as hailing a car and we couldn’t be more about it 🚁
World, meet Luna. She just successfully conducted the world’s first fully autonomous end-to-end flight without a pilot’s hands on the controls in a modified, FAA-approved helicopter.
There’s a lot of hype, some FUD, and many questions about nuclear energy rn. Figured we’d give you the state of play… and why we’re optimistic.
by
@andrewkirima
Cement is one of the materials that underpins modern life but its supply chain is inefficient AND it emits 2Gt CO2/year. We're proud to have backed
@gurinder_nagra
and the Furno team to solve these twin problems by improving regular old gray cement production w/o novel materials.
Rotating detonation rocket engines (RDREs) are coming. We've known for a long time detonating prop (rather than burning it) is more efficient, but the heat would melt the engines.
@NASA
and
@VenusAerospace
are both making strides! 🚀
#hypersonics
Want to learn to fly a helicopter like Jon Hamm? All it takes is 30 minutes and our FlightOS automated tech. See “how freakishly intuitive it is” to fly the world’s safest, most automated aircraft:
#jonhamm
#aviation
#aviationsafety
#aerospace
Same mission, new name. We've deepened our partnership with Character Biosciences (fka Clover Therapeutics) as they bring precision medicine to drug discovery
Read more about how Character uses patient diversity to design drugs for diseases of aging here:
Human Tissue Engineering Company Prellis Biologics Raises $8.7 Million Series A Round; Announces First Animal Transplant of Its 3D-Printed Tissue | Business Wire
Wall Street will tell you, ESG is a mega-trend. This is why we backed
@ethicinvesting
in 2016 and continue to increase our position as they grow AUM 🌱🌍📈
Forget the next Uber and Airbnb.
We want the next Genentech, ARM, Illumina, Qualcomm...
...whose IP provides the step-ladder to the next era of innovation.
In the Bay Area technology has led to an unsustainable rise in housing costs. We believe it has an ability (and responsibility) to address the problem too. Proud to have partnered w
@OpenlandHQ
earlier this year in that mission. 🏡🏢🏗
Listen to the latest episode of Near Frontier with
@sduggleby
of
@VenusAerospace
as we talk about their mission, culture, and how to build a hypersonic space plane.
Our friend Elliot visited
@solugen
and wrote about why this Houston-based carbon-negative chemicals producer is so exciting. We certainly couldn’t have said it better!
In the aftermath of the SVB meltdown, it's never been more important to communicate *why* the startup ecosystem is crucial for our future.
Here's the story of a startup aiming to decarbonize the chemical industry using biology:
3/ You'll notice the art for our podcast, Near Frontier () is changing too, with a sonic version of our logo and color-coded for our three primary focus areas––green for climate tech, blue for TechBio, and purple for aerospace/next-gen compute.
The sky may be the limit for clean energy but what about looking down? We're proud to announce our seed investment in Bedrock Energy &
@joselyn_lai
! Bedrock is repurposing & improving on tech from O&G to unlock geothermal for large buildings.
5% of petroleum output goes to making the chemicals in nearly everything you touch.
Oil used to be plants.
Let’s skip a few steps, including the pollution & explosions.
@solugen
and their peers are leading the bio-chemical revolution now upon us 🍃
5/ Because launching rockets is so sexy and cool it causes people to ignore that the biggest markets enabled by space are on the ground. Rocket launch is a $5 billion dollar business. SpaceX is making it cheaper. Ground equipment for satellites is a $130 billion dollar business.
1 acre of grass absorbs up to 3 tons of carbon / yr. When it's unhealthy it loses much of that ability. With improved grazing techniques the world could sequester an additional 16.3 gigatons–nearly 3 years' of total U.S. emissions–over the next 30 yrs.
Our M.O. is backing founders who are utterly obsessed with a massive, critical industry that most innovators ignore, but once they point it out you can't unsee it. Saif and the Shinkei team opened our eyes to commercial fishing. Follow along and get fish-pilled with us 🐟
On the latest episode of Near Frontier we chat with
@melanie_matheu
of
@Prellisbio
about making organoids with lasers, developing fully human antibodies ex-vivo, and the long-term prospects of bio-printed organ transplantation. Listen here! 🩸🖨️🧫
#techbio
By 2040 our data storage needs will outstrip the available supply of microchip-grade silicon on the planet. If that doesn’t freak you out you’re not thinking hard enough. Good thing we’ve got
@catalogdna
.
😳 Our office watched this like a suspense movie
❗️ live demo of our app
❓ by a stranger
‼️ on one of the most popular Spanish TV shows
⁉️ scanning Miss Spain 2003/current host of "La Voz"
& its *FLAWLESS* 🎉👏🥳
⭐️ for him & his impeccable technique
We look for companies skewed from the consensus, where the crowd is mostly right about the end state but wrong about how to get there. Examples:
-
@skyryse
: safer easier planes & helis not flying cars
-
@MissionBarns
: lab-grown fat w/ plant-based protein
-
@Humane
: not AR but ___
We are donating to every organization, cause,
@GoFundMe
, and Change petition we can find that can help bring about structural change WRT to institutionalized racism in the US.
We also want to meet more black frontier tech entrepreneurs.
Asking for your help and guidance.
The NRC is the biggest hurdle in approving new fission plants. If you founded a microreactor company you might want its former Commissioner on your Board. So that's what
@RadiantNuclear
did.
The thing about rocket ships is they usually take years to get off the ground. When we invested in
@SymbioRobotics
' seed round 4.5yrs ago we knew it'd be a while before people started talking about them. Well, that time as come 🚀🤖🚗
I’m excited to finally share the big news: I'm joining
@Cantos
where I'll continue investing in frontier categories at the pre-seed + seed stages.
I’m thrilled to join
@IanRountree
,
@AmeeKapadia
, & the rest of the team.
Definitionally, cantos are sections that provide breaks
Why we should electrify ocean freight is sorta obvious so we figured we’d tell you about the other reason we invested in Fleetzero…
fighting diseconomies of scale in our supply chain🔋🚢
Deep Tech Demo Day is LIVE
@BoostVC
!
34 startup profiles from 13 different funds 👀
Categories include: Bio, Aerospace, Crypto, AI, Robotics, Climate, Gaming and more 🤖🧬🚀🌱
Investors: browse, meet & invest 💰you can still join via
A monumental day for
@Astranis
! Our heartiest congratulations to the team that worked so hard to make this happen!! 🍾🎊 And thank you SpaceX for the ride all the way to GEO.
CONTACT. The
@Astranis
spacecraft separated on schedule and we have achieved contact. So far: confirmed successful solar array and antenna deployments. Voltage readings good. Batteries charged. Systems nominal.
The deep tech founder journey can feel lonely. So we started Near Frontier to share lessons from founders building bleeding edge hardware and bio startups… to show you’re not alone.
Staying in the water, FleetZero (
@fleetzero1
) is designing the world’s first long-range zero emission electric container ship. And they are doing this at cost parity with fossil fuel-powered ships.
The company has raised $17M+ from
@Breakthrough
,
@climatecap
, &
@cantos
.
We are open for business. We will not stop backing breakthrough technical entrepreneurs even in a recession. We have only deployed half of our active fund & our LPs are committed to the long-term with us. We are finalizing 2 investments this week & will make 2 new ones in Q2.
While much of the tech community is distracted by crypto volatility, our portco
@ArableLabs
is making sure we aren’t limited to a diet of crickets and seaweed in 30 years.
#agtech
Building a Surrogate Human Immune System
We just led an investment in Prellis Bio to 3D-print an army of externalized human lymph nodes for antibody therapy for COVID-19 and potentially all new pandemic diseases.
My summary:
More:
We have a hunch VR will be the technology of 2019 (hellooo, Oculus ‘Santa Cruz’). It’s early days for the space but we’re thrilled to announce our foray into it by way of the rock star team at
@supermediumvr
👽🌐🤠
#OASIS
We believe in DLT but remain concerned about PoW’s energy usage. While current rates shouldn’t be extrapolated, BTC & ETH are already unsustainable. This is one reason we support
@StellarOrg
& advocate for
@lightning
... & nuclear fusion.
#ScaleSustainably
All qubits are not created equal! Coherence times determine how many physical qubits are needed for a logical qubit, and Atom’s times are MANY multiples of other quantum computing companies. ⚛️ 🔥