Friday’s wire leaned hard toward capital going into physical things. Reactors, cathode plants, industrial printers. The AI announcements were there too, but they had a different shape than they did a year ago, and that shift is the more interesting story. Hardware got the big cheques Antares picked up a $161 million Strategic Breakthrough Award to demonstrate a space reactor. That is a demonstration contract, not a production one, and the gap between those two things has swallowed plenty of nuclear programs before.

A day of wire traffic, sorted. Apple took the consumer slot, but the money moved in orbit, in private credit, and in defense. Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo, the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, Apple Watch Series 12 with an all-new Health Sensing System, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5. Six product releases inside forty minutes, which is a lot even by Apple’s standards. The Watch line carries the interesting claim: Apple says Series 12 delivers the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable, and it’s pairing that sensor work with Apple Intelligence for health and fitness.

Apple folded a phone and raised prices across the board. Underneath that, a memory startup came out of stealth with half a billion dollars and a claim that should worry a few people in Hsinchu. Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo, its first foldable, at $1,999 for 256GB and $3,199 for 2TB. A 5.4-inch outer display and a 7.6-inch inner one, with Touch ID, Apple Pencil support, and an iOS 27 rebuilt around multitasking that adjusts to screen size and orientation.

London-based Agon has emerged from stealth with a $7 million pre-seed and a $23 million seed round, developing sovereign AI training infrastructure aimed at European defense customers. The company is being funded against a gap that European defense ministries have been describing publicly for two years. Applying machine learning to intelligence, surveillance, targeting, and electronic warfare requires training runs on classified data, and training runs require compute at a scale that no European defense ministry owns internally.

Three rounds closed in a single session, all funding the same problem from different angles. Onyx Security raised a $113 million Series B led by Bessemer for a platform that lets enterprises deploy AI agents securely, taking total funding to $153 million. Groundcover raised a $100 million Series C led by One Peak for observability software capable of monitoring AI agents, bringing its total to $160 million. Spur Intelligence raised $200 million led by Insight Partners for technology that distinguishes human from bot traffic to identify fake users and threats.

Integral Privacy Technologies has raised $25 million in total funding, with backing from Venrex, The General Partnership, Array Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures, LiveRamp Ventures, Haystack, Virtue Ventures, Also Capital, Caffeinated Capital, LifeX Ventures, Circle & Co, and WS Investments. The round is aimed at scaling what the company calls its Forward Deployed Privacy Services — a service layer meant to make sensitive real-world data usable for AI training without triggering the regulatory and re-identification risks that normally keep that data locked away.

This annual list honors exceptional young innovators whose big ideas turn into real-world solutions on December 6, 2023. CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 27, 2023 - MIT Technology Review recently announced an inspiring new class of Innovators Under 35, who will be honored in a free virtual event on Wednesday, December 6, 2023, from 11:00 am -1:00 pm ET with the theme, “What Makes an Innovator?” For more than 20 years, MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 list has celebrated innovators and their drive to reshape the world for the better.

San Francisco, November 27, 2023 — Argil.org is proud to announce the launch of its groundbreaking no-code platform, redefining the landscape of app development. With the fluidity of clay and the limitless potential of technology, Argil.org empowers users to effortlessly craft dynamic applications tailored to their unique visions. Gone are the days of intricate coding and technical barriers. Argil.org offers an intuitive interface that requires zero coding knowledge, allowing creators, entrepreneurs, and innovators to materialize their ideas without constraints.

KEMBLE, England and HOLLISTER, Calif., Nov. 27, 2023 - ZeroAvia today announced that it has completed its Series C funding round at a total of $116m. The UK Infrastructure Bank joins the round as a cornerstone-level investor alongside co-leads Airbus, Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital and NEOM Investment Fund (NIF) as announced in September, with the Series C round set to accelerate the company’s journey to certification of its first engines and advance R&D that will scale the clean propulsion technology for larger aircraft.

San Francisco, November 21, 2023 - In recent years, the world has witnessed a profound transformation in the realm of technology, with the emergence of what experts term “Deep Tech.” This cutting-edge field encompasses a range of disruptive and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, robotics, biotechnology, and more. Deep Tech has rapidly gained momentum, revolutionizing industries across the globe and heralding a new era of innovation and possibilities.