Gigascale Capital

#FusionIsHere :-) Fusion energy is the hardest, most capital intensive, and complex technology of the 21st century and one of the important breakthroughs of our lifetime. This week's Fusion event at SF Deep Tech Week covered leading technical approaches and strategies to continue the industry's growth. We heard fusion approaches from: Kyle Schiller, CEO at Marathon Fusion Darren Woulfe, Head of Magnet Business Commonwealth Fusion Systems David Gates, CTO at Thea Energy Robin Langtry, CEO at Avalanche Energy Derek Sutherland, Head of Fuze-Q Physics Zap Energy Andrea (Annie) Kritcher, Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Designer of NIF shot (!) Alison Christopherson, Plasma Physicist at Xcimer Energy Corporation JC B. CEO at Fuse And policy, funding, and public-private partnerships perspectives from: Andrew Holland, CEO at Fusion Industry Association Sally Benson, Professor at Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Ahmed Diallo, Director at ARPA-E Malcolm Handley, Fusion VC at Strong Atomics Thank you to everyone who attended. For those that missed it, subscribe for future updates here: https://lnkd.in/g5DgRa4n Special thanks to Gigascale Capital for sponsoring and @Andrew Cote for their leadership and enthusiasm for Fusion!

Interested in fusion energy? Xcimer Energy Corporation is hiring for a variety of roles to commercialize intertial fusion using groundbreaking laser technology. Here’s what you need to know: 1️⃣ Fresh off a major Series A funding, Xcimer aims for viable fusion energy within 10 years. 2️⃣ The team is building a system grounded in proven science — the National Ignition Facility (NIF) confirmed that hitting a target with a high power laser can create a controlled fusion reaction. 3️⃣ Many countries, including the US, are investing heavily in fusion energy, aiming to demonstrate fusion power plants within 10 years. The technical risks are big, and so is the potential for impact. Explore Xcimer’s open roles below. >> LINKS TO APPLY IN COMMENTS << 🎯 Optical Control Systems Engineer Master of light and precision? Design state-of-the-art UV laser systems for nuclear fusion. Apply your electrical engineering skills and technical leadership to develop active beam control systems and industrial automation for Xcimer’s new facility. 🔬 Chemical Engineer – Molten Salt Systems Push the boundaries of materials science and engineering in molten salt environments. Your expertise in salt purification, chemistry control, and corrosion mechanisms will be crucial in enhancing our fusion chamber and molten salt systems for sustainable energy solutions. 💻 Information Technology (IT) Administrator Tech enthusiasts, this one's for you! From managing networks to troubleshooting, your skills will keep the company at the forefront of technology. ⚡ Pulsed Power Engineer Got a pulse on power? Design and oversee high voltage systems for cutting-edge excimer lasers, supporting both prototype and future power-producing reactors. #climatetech #jobalert #hiring #engineeringjobs #itjobs #techjobs

🌱 The best products aren’t designed just to be viable. They’re made to be lovable. For Matthew Rogers, Co-Founder of Mill, it's all about the MLP: Minimum Lovable Product. "What's the threshold where people are going to love your product?" he asks. At Mill, achieving lovability took two years. For Matt, it’s not about rushing to market or striving for perfection; it's about finding that sweet spot where innovation meets user delight. So, how does Mill do it? By making recycling your food scraps easier and more fun than throwing them in the trash. Overnight, Mill's food recycler turns kitchen scraps into something like odorless coffee grounds—reducing a households emissions by half a ton a year. It's easy, awesome, and a surprisingly good dinner party trick. And the proof is in the response. The first product sold out entirely, with thousands of backorders for the next-gen version. Plus Mill has some pretty impressive stats on how its changing customer behaviors to reduce food waste overall. Dive deeper into Mill's journey to creating a product people truly love. https://lnkd.in/gxsPxFEq #foodwaste #productdesign #startups #climatetech #environment

🍌 In this month’s Gigascale Spotlight, we’re talking about food waste with Matthew Rogers, Co-Founder of Mill. It's tempting to believe food waste is harmless. It's biodegradable, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case when it's thrown in the trash. When left to decompose in landfills, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent at warming the atmosphere than CO2. Food waste accounts for a staggering 10% of global emissions. Households are a big culprit, with nearly half of all food ending up in the trash. Enter Mill, founded by Matthew Rogers and Harry Tannenbaum. They've created a sleek, high-tech food recycler that turns scraps into odorless, dry grounds that can feed farms or gardens. In its first year alone, Mill saved ~2 million pounds of food from landfills and drove some pretty impressive behavior change among its customers. Want to dive deeper? Check out the full conversation for more insights. #climatetech #cleantech #foodinnovation #foodwaste

It was great to spend some time with Mike Schroepfer (Gigascale Capital), Manik Suri (GlacierGrid) and Harry McCracken (Fast Company) and bring the climate topic on Collision Conference center stage. I was in particular excited to highlight how 1) energy efficiency and 2) scalability (in particular through modularity) are paramount criteria in energy transition technologies. With the available renewable power expected to remain a bottleneck in the next decade as electrification (and computing power requirements) intensify, Dioxycle is set to develop the most energy-efficient route to make ethylene from recycled carbon with the ultimate potential to displace over 1% of the world's CO2 emission. Our modular approach of building cells that assemble into stacks, which can in turn be parallelized, also sets us on track for ultra-high CapEx reduction over time. By building 1,000 of a single unit, we gain 1,000 times more opportunities to learn and improve, rather than constructing a single plant that is 1,000 times larger and we've seen the benefit of this approach through the solar revolution.

🌍 Climate tech took the spotlight at this year's Collision Conf! We had a blast discussing how solving the climate crisis can save businesses money while reducing polluting emissions. Our own Mike Schroepfer joined Manik Suri (Founder/CEO of GlacierGrid) and Sarah Lamaison, PhD (Co-Founder/CEO of Dioxycle) to talk about how their companies are replacing fossil fuels with carbon-recycling tech and saving energy with automated cooling systems. As Schrep said, "It's all about leveraging innovative technologies to revamp industries that haven’t seen change in almost 100 years.” Special thanks to moderator Harry McCracken from Fast Company for the engaging discussion. Stay tuned for the full panel discussion for more insights on the future of climate solutions. #collisionconf #climatetech

If you’re not deeply enmeshed in climate tech innovation, there’s a good chance you don’t know the name Yet-Ming Chiang. But if you are, you probably do — or you know about the companies he has helped launch. Chiang is a material science and engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he started his freshman year undergraduate studies in 1976. Chiang never left. He got his bachelor’s degree and his doctorate from MIT in 1980 and 1985, respectively. He’s also an entrepreneur and a co-founder of two of the buzziest climate tech companies right now: Form Energy, which is developing long duration energy storage systems and is currently valued by financial data firm Pitchbook at $2.06 billion, and Sublime Systems, which is commercializing cement made with electrochemistry and is currently valued by Pitchbook at $90 million. That’s not all. Chiang is 66 years old, and in just the last year he co-founded three new companies, all of which are still in relative stealth mode. One of the companies, called Propel Aero, is focused on electric aviation. Chiang declined to share the names of the other two but did share their general focus areas: lithium extraction from hard rock resources and the stimulation of geologic hydrogen. Meet Yet in my story here on Cipher News: https://lnkd.in/eRh6-auy

Fusion energy could bring the Sun’s power right here to Earth, unlocking nearly limitless, clean, grid-scale power. Join us for a conversation on fusion energy at SF Deep Tech Week. You’ll meet industry founders, engineers, scientists, and policymakers, all driving this groundbreaking innovation forward. Get ready to geek out over the latest fusion advancements, trade-offs, and the exciting strides private companies are making. 🤓 We’re excited for Alison Christopherson’s talk on inertial fusion energy. As Head of Target Design for Xcimer Energy Corporation (a Gigascale portfolio company), she’ll dive into how their recent $100 million Series A is helping them build the biggest, baddest laser yet—5-10x more powerful than any before. The science is proven. Now it’s a question of moving it from the lab to scale. Link to register in comments. #sfdeeptechweek #deeptech #fusionenergy #climateaction

Climate is taking center stage this week at Collision Conf Our own Mike Schroepfer, Sarah Lamaison, PhD (Dioxycle), and Manik Suri (GlacierGrid) join Harry McCracken (Fast Company) to discuss what it takes to scale hard tech, and how this climate tech thing isn't about "saving the world" – it's about building scalable, high-performance businesses that're modernizing 100-year-old industries. Watch it live: Wednesday at 11:25 am ET on Centre Stage.

What a week it was for Xcimer! On the heels of our $100 million Series A raise, we have more exciting news to share - last week we signed our award agreement with the Department of Energy (DOE) in the Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program. We’re one of just eight companies selected by DOE to receive funding for meeting milestones in the first 18 months of a five-year program for private-sector-led teams to develop comprehensive designs for a fusion pilot plant. Our CEO, Conner Galloway and VP of Chamber and Plant Design, Susana Reyes were on-site at the White House to mark this momentous event. We’re now on the cusp of harnessing the potential of fusion energy to bring this power source to the world. To get there, forging public-private partnerships will be instrumental. We can’t wait to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Read more about the program here: https://lnkd.in/ewrVyjdZ #fusionenergy