$650M for space defense. America's first advanced reactor breaks ground. A blueberry-sized brain implant targets depression.

True Anomaly raised $650M in Series D at a $2.2B valuation, co-led by Eclipse and Riot Ventures, with new investors Paradigm, Atreides, G Squared, and VanEck joining.

The company was selected as one of 12 prime contractors for Golden Dome SBI prototypes — the Pentagon's $185B space-based missile defense shield.

Capital will fund a manufacturing scale-up from 140,000 sq ft to 2M sq ft over four years, workforce growth from ~250 to 500+ by year-end, and ~12 missions in the next 18 months.

True Anomaly is the only company in the Golden Dome group built exclusively for space defense — no commercial satellite business, no launch division, no telecommunications revenue to hedge against program risk.

The Space Force's FY27 budget request includes $71B total and $19B in procurement — a 77% increase over last year — creating the macro demand backdrop for this raise.

Each funding round has roughly tripled the last ($17M → $100M → $260M → $650M in under four years), reflecting accelerating investor conviction in the space defense thesis.

The $2.2B valuation and $1B total capital create a clear path toward a potential IPO, though CEO Even Rogers says the company is "not working to a fixed timeline."

Second-order opportunities include propulsion systems, autonomous maneuvering AI, orbital sensor payloads, and the broader space domain awareness supply chain feeding both Andromeda and Golden Dome.

Risk caveat: Golden Dome's cost estimates range from $185B (Pentagon) to $3.6T (AEI), and the Space Force's own leadership says it won't build interceptors if they're not affordable — program survival is the binary.

TerraPower broke ground on Kemmerer Unit 1, mobilizing roughly 1,600 construction workers on the former coal plant site.

The Natrium plant uses a 345 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor with integrated molten salt energy storage, allowing output to flex between 345 MW and 500 MW based on grid demand.

Construction timeline is 42 months, targeting reactor operation by end of 2030 and grid connection in 2031, with ~250 permanent jobs once operational.

This is the first non-light-water commercial reactor to receive an NRC construction permit in decades — the regulatory precedent alone reshapes the pathway for every advanced reactor developer behind TerraPower.

TerraPower has already signed a deal with Meta to potentially deploy up to 8 Natrium plants by 2035 — connecting advanced nuclear directly to AI data center demand.

The project sits on a former coal site, demonstrating the coal-to-nuclear workforce transition that gives advanced nuclear bipartisan political support in energy-producing states.

TerraPower is privately held (backed by Bill Gates, with ~$2B+ raised), but the construction start de-risks the entire advanced nuclear supply chain — sodium handling, TRISO-X fuel fabrication, molten salt storage components, and specialized engineering firms.

The NRC also proposed a new Part 57 microreactor licensing framework this week, further streamlining the regulatory pathway for smaller advanced designs — a parallel de-risking signal for the sector.

Risk caveat: no advanced reactor has yet generated commercial power in the US. A 42-month construction timeline is ambitious by nuclear standards, and cost overruns on first-of-a-kind builds are historically the norm.

Sereact raised $110M Series B led by Headline, with Bullhound Capital, Felix Capital, and Daphni as new investors; Air Street Capital, Creandum, and Point Nine returning.

200+ Sereact systems are live across Europe, completing over 1 billion production picks with roughly 1 in every 53,000 requiring remote human help.

Cortex 2.0 combines a vision-language-action model with a world model — robots simulate multiple possible actions before moving, selecting the highest-scored path for stability, collision risk, and efficiency.

Sereact's thesis is software-first, hardware-agnostic — the same AI brain runs across robotic arms, mobile manipulators, and humanoid platforms, positioning it as a potential "Mobileye for robotics."

The data flywheel is the competitive moat: every pick, failure, and recovery across 200+ deployed systems feeds back into model retraining, creating an advantage that widens with every shift.

Customers include BMW, Daimler Truck, Mercedes-Benz, PepsiCo, and Austrian Post — production environments, not pilots — validating that the software works under real throughput constraints.

The round is a 4x step-up from the €25M Series A just 15 months ago, reflecting rapid commercial traction and investor conviction in the physical AI software layer.

Sereact's stated ambition to expand from logistics into humanoid robot platforms positions it to compete for the emerging market where Tesla Optimus, Figure, and Unitree all need intelligence software.

Risk caveat: valuation was undisclosed, and the US expansion is pre-revenue — Boston office and team are being built from scratch, and North American warehouse operators may have different integration requirements than European customers.

FDA approved Motif's IDE for the RESONATE study, evaluating the Motif XCS System in adults who haven't responded to two or more depression medications.

The DOT implant is wirelessly powered, blueberry-sized, sits in bone (not on brain tissue), and is implanted in a 20-minute outpatient procedure — fundamentally simpler than traditional deep brain stimulation.

The study's primary endpoint is 12-month safety, with secondary measures tracking depression symptom reduction, anxiety, cognitive function, and quality of life.

This is the first BCI to target depression as its primary indication — expanding the BCI category beyond paralysis, communication, and motor rehabilitation into mental health, a vastly larger patient population.

Treatment-resistant depression affects ~3 million Americans who don't respond to standard medications — a market where existing options (TMS, ECT, ketamine) all have significant limitations.

The device builds on 10+ years of Rice University research funded by DARPA, ARPAH, and the NIH BRAIN Initiative, with prior peer-reviewed publications demonstrating safe brain stimulation without tissue contact.

Motif is privately held and positioned for a significant funding round if safety data reads out positively — the depression indication alone represents a multi-billion-dollar TAM.

The minimally invasive, outpatient form factor is the key differentiator: if proven safe, it could make brain stimulation accessible at a scale that surgical DBS never achieved.

Risk caveat: this is an early feasibility study, not a pivotal trial. The path from IDE to commercial approval typically takes 5–7 years, and efficacy for depression via epidural stimulation is unproven in controlled settings.

Tokamak Energy secured £70M ($95M) for magnet systems under the STEP programme, running from March 2026 to March 2029 across eight work packages.

Tokamak Energy's Demo4 HTS magnet system achieved 11.8 Tesla with 7 million ampere turns — the first full tokamak-configured HTS system demonstration at fusion-relevant field strengths.

STEP has expanded its supplier base to 500+ companies (83% UK-based) and progressed site planning at West Burton, including geotechnical surveys and environmental assessments.

Tokamak Energy is the UK's only specialist manufacturer of high-field HTS magnet technology — this contract secures sovereign capability and reduces dependence on foreign supply chains for critical fusion components.

The contract sits within the UK government's £2.5B fusion R&D commitment announced at the Spending Review, making STEP one of the most well-funded fusion programmes globally.

HTS magnets are dual-use technology — applicable beyond fusion to particle accelerators, medical imaging, and industrial processing — giving Tokamak Energy revenue diversification beyond the STEP timeline.

The £70M contract provides three years of guaranteed revenue visibility for Tokamak Energy, de-risking the company's capital structure during a period when many fusion companies face funding uncertainty.

Second-order opportunities include the HTS magnet supply chain: rare earth materials, superconducting wire manufacturers, cryogenic cooling systems, and precision coil-winding equipment.

Risk caveat: STEP's 2040 target for first operation is behind the US commercial fusion developers aiming for the early-to-mid 2030s, and government programme timelines are subject to political and budgetary risk across parliamentary cycles.

The participant controlled a computer through thought — including Pong — within approximately two hours of being introduced to the concept, nine months after implantation.

The same Brain Interchange device delivering therapeutic cortical stimulation for stroke rehabilitation was repurposed for computer control with no modification to the implanted hardware.

CorTec received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation and TAP program admission in April 2026 — accumulating three major regulatory and clinical milestones in a single month.

This is the first fully implanted, wireless BCI to demonstrate both therapeutic and assistive functions in the same patient using identical hardware — a platform capability no other BCI company has shown.

The two-hour learning curve from zero to Pong suggests the decoder generalizes quickly, which matters for clinical adoption — patients and clinicians need fast onboarding, not weeks of calibration.

CorTec is now the first and only European company to reach this clinical milestone, positioning it as the leading EU-based BCI platform alongside US competitors Neuralink, Synchron, and Blackrock Neurotech.

CorTec's dual business model — proprietary BCI platform plus a revenue-generating CDMO division serving other neurotechnology companies — provides near-term cash flow while the flagship product advances through trials.

The multi-indication platform (stroke, epilepsy, paralysis, depression) is the valuation lever: each validated indication expands TAM and reduces binary clinical risk.

Risk caveat: the computer control demonstration is outside the scope of CorTec's current FDA Breakthrough Designation (which covers therapeutic stimulation only) — a separate regulatory pathway would be needed to commercialize the BCI-for-control application.