Ray Blanco:

This Founder Helped Build SpaceX’s Most Powerful Rocket Engine. Now He’s Building a ‘Fighter Jet for Orbit.’

Jeff Thornburg helped turn a government research project into SpaceX’s most powerful rocket engine. Now, he’s trying to do the same thing at his startup Portal Space Systems, which is taking an idea set aside by NASA and turning it into high-powered propulsion for the next generation of spacecraft.

Portal, founded in 2021, announced a $50 million Series A funding round Thursday that values the company at $250 million.

The company is developing a technology called solar thermal propulsion. Today’s standard satellite engines either burn chemical fuel or convert the sun’s energy to electricity, using that to power efficient but low-powered thrusters. Portal’s engines would instead concentrate the heat of the sun, using that to heat propellant and move the spacecraft along at high speed.

Solar thermal power is, in Thornburg’s view, the next logical step in rocket tech. NASA had studied the technology extensively in the late nineties and concluded it provides better performance in many cases. It wasn’t developed further because there wasn’t enough demand for in-space mobility.

Now, with thousands of new satellites flying every year and the U.S. military demanding fighter spacecraft that can fly quickly between orbits to surveil or threaten rivals, that demand has arrived.

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James Altucher:

Meta Just Dropped the First AI Model From Its Superintelligence Labs

Meta launched Muse Spark this week, the first large language model from Meta Superintelligence Labs, the AI division led by Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang. The model now powers the Meta AI chatbot across the Meta AI app and meta.ai.

Executives describe Muse Spark as optimized for speed rather than scale, and it heads up what the company envisions as a broader "Muse" model family. 

Muse Spark marks a departure for Meta, which had previously built its AI identity around open-source Llama releases. The new model will be kept proprietary, with its architecture and code withheld from public access, Bloomberg reported. Meta said it is considering making the model available via API to select partners and hopes to open-source future versions.

The model supports three reasoning levels: Instant, Thinking, and Contemplating modes. Meta AI can now launch multiple subagents in parallel to work on different parts of a query simultaneously. The company also built multimodal perception into the model, allowing Meta AI to process images alongside text – a capability Meta said will extend to its AI glasses.

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Greg Guenthner:

Treasury Secretary Bessent Slams Crypto Industry 'Nihilists' as Clarity Act Remains in Limbo

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent lashed out Thursday against crypto leaders still resisting the passage of the industry’s long-coveted Clarity Act, dubbing them “nihilists” who must be overcome to ensure the stalled bill’s passage.

“A growing share of crypto development relocated to places with clear rules, such as Abu Dhabi and Singapore,” Bessent said in an op-ed published late Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal. “Though industry nihilists may argue otherwise, there is one way to give developers and entrepreneurs the comfort to reshore: durable law.”

The Treasury Secretary’s comments come as the Clarity Act – a crypto market structure bill that would formally legalize most industry activity – remains stalled in the Senate. Though Senate Republicans remain committed to holding a key, months-delayed vote on the legislation later this month, key disagreements among stakeholders remain unresolved.

The most prominent of those disputes is one between certain crypto companies and the banking industry over the payment of yield on stablecoin holdings to customers.

Congressional leaders worry time is running out for the Clarity Act to pass this spring, before November’s looming midterm elections grind all legislative activity to a halt over the summer.

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