TechCapsules

Bucking EV slowdown, Sila raises $300M to expand battery materials factory

Battery materials startup Sila announced a $300 million funding round to expand its Washington state factory, enabling production of enough anode material for over 100,000 electric vehicles. The expansion comes amid a U.S. EV demand slowdown following Trump‑era policy shifts, while global sales rise 27 % year over year. Sila’s silicon‑carbon anodes offer 40 % more energy density than graphite and can charge faster, positioning the company as a key alternative to Chinese graphite suppliers. The plant, already operational since September, will scale to tens of gigawatt‑hours annually.

💡 By boosting domestic anode production, Sila reduces U.S. reliance on Chinese graphite and supports the growing grid‑scale battery market, especially for AI data centers and renewable integration.

Photon Queue Raises $4 Million Oversubscribed Seed Round

Photon Queue, a spinout from the University of Illinois Urbana‑Champaign, announced the close of an oversubscribed $4 million seed round led by Playground Global. The funding will accelerate development of its room‑temperature quantum memory that stores and synchronizes single photons in free‑space optical loops, eliminating the need for cryogenics, vacuum chambers or quantum transduction. The company has already deployed its first commercial devices at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Maryland, demonstrating demand from leading research institutions. Its technology is compatible with photonic, trapped‑ion and neutral‑atom platforms, offering ultra‑high efficiency and bandwidth. The capital infusion will expand product development, manufacturing capacity and further customer deployments across quantum‑computing and networking ecosystems.

💡 By removing cryogenic and vacuum constraints, Photon Queue’s memory could become the practical “glue” that links disparate quantum processors, enabling scalable quantum networks.

Galaxy Commits $5 Million to Prepare Bitcoin for Quantum Computing Threat

Galaxy Digital launched the Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative, committing up to $5 million to address potential quantum computing threats to Bitcoin’s cryptographic infrastructure. The three-pillar program includes developer grants for quantum-resistant transaction proposals and migration tools, an expanded research program to analyze threats for investors and policymakers, and a new Quantum Advisory Council. Initial council members include Barry Sanders from the University of Calgary, Damien Bérubé from MIT, and Eran Tromer from Boston University. Galaxy aims to bridge the gap between rapid quantum advancements and Bitcoin’s slower engagement with post-quantum cryptography. The initiative responds to recent findings suggesting that breaking Bitcoin’s secp256k1 curve may require fewer quantum resources than previously estimated, potentially allowing private key derivation within Bitcoin’s ten-minute block confirmation window. This exposure specifically risks wallets with permanently exposed public keys, which account for roughly one-third of the circulating supply. Galaxy’s Head of Firmwide Research, Alex Thorn, emphasized the need to make the threat legible to stakeholders while funding the technical work required to secure the network against future quantum attacks.

💡 Recent research indicates that breaking Bitcoin's encryption could take minutes rather than years, exposing a significant portion of the circulating supply to immediate theft. This funding accelerates the development of defensive tools before theoretical vulnerabilities become practical exploits.

Italian startup ORiS raises funding for laser power-beaming technology

Italian startup ORiS announced a €5 million pre‑seed round, €4.5 million led by Earlybird and Pitchdrive and a €500,000 regional grant, to advance its laser‑based wireless power‑beaming system for satellites. The Turin‑based team has demonstrated ground‑level power transfer to drones hovering 100 m away and plans two orbital tests in 2027, the first with partner Dcubed to beam energy over 10 m. CEO Andrea Villa says the technology can retrofit existing satellites and work with any solar array, aiming for a commercial service after a third demonstration with an undisclosed client. ORiS also markets a terrestrial version called LOONA, backed by NATO’s DIANA program, and envisions lunar applications. The funding will support a 15‑person staff and space‑flight milestones by late 2028 to scale operations.

💡 Demonstrating laser power beaming in orbit could unlock a new, retrofit‑friendly method for powering the growing fleet of small satellites, accelerating deployment of more capable constellations.

Natural raises $30M to reinvent payments for AI agents — and take…

Natural, a startup founded by former Ivella co‑founders Kahlil Lalji and Eric Wang with engineer Walt Leung, has raised $30 million in a Series A led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green, bringing total funding to $40 million. The company is building a payments layer that lets autonomous AI agents move, store and settle funds without human authorization, addressing the mismatch between existing credit‑card and ACH rails and AI transactions. Natural’s infrastructure aims to support vendor payments, collections and peer‑to‑peer transfers for agents, and it plans to incorporate both bank links and USD‑stablecoin options. The team includes former executives from Stripe, Ramp and Square, and it hopes its speed of development will let it challenge incumbents such as Stripe in the emerging AI‑agent payments market.

💡 By giving AI agents instant, autonomous payment capability, Natural could unlock a flood of machine‑generated commerce that far outpaces current human‑driven volumes.

Colossal Biosciences reportedly in talks to raise new capital at $20B–$30B valuation

Colossal Biosciences, Dallas‑based de‑extinction startup, is reportedly negotiating a new financing round that could value the five‑year‑old company at $20 billion to $30 billion, Axios said. The firm, which last year announced plans to resurrect the dire wolf, has begun generating revenue through contracts with U.S. government and United Arab Emirates, the latter contributing $60 million. It has spun out three subsidiaries: Breaking, which tackles plastic waste; Form Bio, a computational biology platform that raised $30 million; and Astromech, an AI‑driven modeling firm valued at $2 billion. Recent initiatives include adding bluebuck antelope as a sixth target species and partnering with University