January 14, 2026

Bill Gates-backed Type One Energy raises $87M ahead of $250M Series B

Type One Energy has raised more than $160 million from investors to date. The new funding will help the company further refine its stellarator technology.

Meet the new biologists treating LLMs like aliens

January 12, 2026
How large is a large language model? Think about it this way. In the center of San Francisco there’s a hill called Twin Peaks from which you can view nearly the entire city. Picture all of it—every block and intersection, every neighborhood and park, as far as you can see—covered in sheets of paper. Now…

How next-generation nuclear reactors break out of the 20th-century blueprint

January 12, 2026
Commercial nuclear reactors all work pretty much the same way. Atoms of a radioactive material split, emitting neutrons. Those bump into other atoms, splitting them and causing them to emit more neutrons, which bump into other atoms, continuing the chain reaction.  That reaction gives off heat, which can be used directly or help turn water…

Hyperscale AI data centers: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2026

January 12, 2026
In sprawling stretches of farmland and industrial parks, supersized buildings packed with racks of computers are springing up to fuel the AI race. These engineering marvels are a new species of infrastructure: supercomputers designed to train and run large language models at mind-­bending scale, complete with their own specialized chips, cooling systems, and even energy…

Sodium-ion batteries: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2026

January 12, 2026
For decades, lithium-ion batteries have powered our phones, laptops, and electric vehicles. But lithium’s limited supply and volatile price have led the industry to seek more resilient alternatives. A sodium-ion battery works much like a lithium-ion one: It stores and releases energy by shuttling ions between two electrodes. But unlike lithium, a somewhat rare element…