Relentless
Read bullet-point summaries of Relentless interviews on American manufacturing, hard tech, robotics, biotech, defense, space, and industrial startups.
Episodes
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Manufacturing 1 million drones a year | Olaf Hichwa, Neros
This episode features Olaf Hitchwa, co-founder and CTO of Nuros, discussing the company's rapid scale-up to a 250,000 sq ft factory targeting 1 million
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Sam Altman - How to Start a Startup
This episode is a wide-ranging conversation with Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, covering how startups have changed in the AI era, the internal logic
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Manufacturing 1,000s of Nuclear Reactors | Isaiah Taylor, Valar Atomics
This episode follows Isaiah Taylor, founder of Valar Atomics, at their first reactor test site in Utah where a bare patch of dirt in September became a 25 MW
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Pablo Escobar and the logistics of running a cartel | Ryan Petersen
Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport, discusses the logistics of global trade, drawing parallels between modern supply chains and historical examples like
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Powering the AI Data Center Buildout | Sec. Energy Chris Wright & Scott Nolan
The US has seen almost zero electricity generation growth over the past two decades, even as oil and natural gas production surged, largely due to regulatory
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The Manufacturing Startup That's Outcompeting China | Jim Belosic, SendCutSend | Round II
Jim Belosic is the founder and CEO of Sinasend, a US-based manufacturing startup that is one of the few companies genuinely competitive with China on price
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How to Start a Cult | Lulu Cheng Meservey
Lulu Cheng Meservey, founder of Rosta, discusses how founders can build cult-like followings and cultures around their companies, drawing on historical examples
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Why Elon Outcompetes Everyone | Eric Jorgenson
Eric Jorgenson, author of The Book of Elon, breaks down why Elon Musk is an outlier among outliers: he combines a grand, purposeful mission with first
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How Brian Armstrong Built Coinbase
Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, reflects on building one of the world's largest crypto companies over 13 years, discussing leadership
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Peter Beck — We're scaling Electron faster than SpaceX scaled Falcon 9
Peter Beck is the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, a space company he started in 2006 in New Zealand with essentially no money, and which has grown into a
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Manufacturing 1 million drones a year | Soren Monroe-Anderson, Neros
Soren Monroe-Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Neros, discusses scaling America's largest FPV drone manufacturer from a garage operation to a 250,000-square-foot
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The American Uranium Enrichment Startup | Scott Nolan, General Matter
Scott Nolan is the co-founder and CEO of General Matter, a startup building a privately owned uranium enrichment facility in the United States, a capability the
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The US vs. China Manufacturing Debate
The US has gone from producing roughly 30% of the world's manufactured goods in the 1980s to around 16% today, while China has risen from almost nothing to
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Space Datacenters | Baiju Bhatt, Aetherflux
Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood and founder of Aetherflux, discusses his journey from fintech to space hardware, the philosophy behind building Aetherflux
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The Quest to Cure Alzheimer's | Sacha Schermerhorn, Babylon Bio
Sacha Schermerhorn is the founder and CEO of Babylon Bio, a company attempting to cure Alzheimer's disease. He argues that the problem is solvable but has been
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How micro1 grew from $4M to $200M revenue in a year | Ali Ansari
Ali Ansari is the founder and CEO of micro1, a company that provides expert human data to AI labs for training and improving models. The episode covers micro1's
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The Future of Metal Manufacturing | Machina Labs
Ed Mayer is the co-founder and CEO of Machina Labs, a company building robotic systems that form sheet metal without traditional dies, enabling rapid, low-cost
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My Conversation with Mehul Nariyawala, co-founder of Matic
Mehul Nariyawala is co-founder of Matic, a company that spent six years building a vision-only autonomous robot vacuum before shipping its first unit in late
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WTF is happening at xAI | Sulaiman Ghori
Sulaiman Ghori is an engineer at xAI who joined the company around the Grok 3 era, when it was still a small team of roughly 100 engineers. He describes a
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My Conversation with Shuo Wang, co-founder of deel
Shuo Wang, co-founder and CRO of Deel, discusses the company's journey from a YC crypto startup to a $1 billion ARR global payroll and HR platform operating in
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How Zipline Scaled to 2 Million Drone Deliveries | Keller Cliffton
Zipline is an autonomous drone delivery company that has scaled to over 2 million commercial deliveries, starting with blood transfusions in Rwanda and
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Bringing Back Supersonic Planes | Ian Brooke, Astro Mechanica
Ian Brooke is the founder and CEO of Astro Mechanica, a company building low-cost, long-range supersonic aircraft. His goal is to make supersonic travel
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How Land Raising Works | Laurence Allen, Terranova
Terranova is a startup that lifts land out of flood zones by injecting wood chip slurries underground, a process that could protect entire cities from flooding
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Competing to Build the Fastest-Growing Energy Startup Ever | Base Power, Zach Dell & Justin Lopas
Base Power is a vertically integrated energy startup co-founded by Zach Dell and Justin Lopas, aiming to lower the cost of delivered electricity to American
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China, Robotics, & Open-Source AI | Clem Delangue
Clem Delangue is the co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, the open-source platform often described as "GitHub for AI," hosting over 6 million models, datasets
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The Greatest World Conquerors In History | Ben Wilson
Ben Wilson, creator of the podcast How to Take Over the World, discusses what makes history's greatest founders, conquerors, and builders tick—and why so few
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Curing Age-Related Diseases w Epigenetic Medicines | Lada Nuzhna, General Control
Lada Nuzhna, founder and CEO of General Control, is building a biotech company that engineers epigenetic medicines to treat age-related diseases. She previously
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Why Elon Outcompetes Everyone | Shaun Maguire, Sequoia
Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, explains why Elon Musk outcompetes nearly every other entrepreneur — not just because of his individual brilliance
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Fireside Chat w Joshua Browder
Joshua Browder is the founder and CEO of DoNotPay, a consumer rights automation platform, and Browder Capital, an early-stage venture fund. He grew up as the
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Mold Toxicity & How To Treat It | Ariana Thacker, Moldco
Ariana Thacker, founder and CEO of Moldco, discusses mold-related illness as a major but overlooked root cause of chronic disease
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Competing With China In 3D Printing | Max Lobovsky, Formlabs
Max Lobovsky is the co-founder and CEO of Formlabs, a 3D printing company that has survived and thrived in an industry littered with failed startups. The
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Building Unmanned Cargo Planes | David Zagaynov, Poseidon
David Zagaynov, co-founder and CEO of Poseidon, is building unmanned cargo planes to drastically reduce the cost of moving goods by air. After working at
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How Shinkei Is Reshoring America's Seafood Supply Chain | Saif Khawaja
Saif Khawaja is the co-founder and CEO of Shinkei Systems, a company building robotic systems that radically improve how fish are processed at sea. Their
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Inversion CEO on Building the Future of Space Delivery | Justin Fiaschetti
Inversion is building re-entry vehicles that deliver cargo from orbit to anywhere on Earth in under an hour, targeting primarily military customers who need
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How To Build A Self-Sustaining City On Mars | Saurav Shroff, Starpath
Saurav Shroff is co-founder and CEO of Starpath, a company building the machines needed to make life multi-planetary, starting with Mars. The core insight
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The Creator of Onewheel | Kyle Doerksen
Kyle Doerksen is the founder and CEO of Future Motion, the company behind Onewheel — a self-balancing electric skateboard with a single large wheel, a motor
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The Tesla of Boats | Mitch Lee, Arc
Mitch Lee is co-founder and CEO of Arc Boats, an LA-based electric boat startup that has spent four and a half years building high-performance electric boats by
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Building Long-Range Hypersonic Missiles | Bryon Hargis, Castelion
Castelion is a defense startup building hypersonic missiles to restore US deterrence against peer adversaries like China. Co-founder and CEO Bryon Hargis, a
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Why There's A Housing Crisis In The US | Alexis Rivas, Cover
Cover is a vertically integrated homebuilder that manufactures custom homes in a factory and assembles them on-site, aiming to solve the US housing shortage
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How US Hardware Startups Will Outcompete China | Pari Singh, Flow
Pari Singh is the founder and CEO of Flow Engineering, a company building software that fundamentally changes how complex hardware is designed. Flow's mission
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The Manufacturing Startup That's Outcompeting China | Jim Belosic, SendCutSend
Jim Belosic founded SendCutSend in 2018 as a self-funded, bootstrapped on-demand sheet metal and CNC manufacturing company based in Reno, Nevada, starting with
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Hardtech Roundtable: China vs USA, Manufacturing, AI Cults, Silicon Valley, Regulation
A group of hard-tech founders — Sam D'Amico (Impulse Labs), Jason Carman (Story Company), Will O'Brien (Ulysses), Michael LaFramboise (Aurelia Systems), and
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We'll Build 1 Million Humanoid Robots by 2028 — Bernt Børnich, 1X
Bernt Børnich is the founder and CEO of 1X, a company building humanoid robots designed to live alongside people in their homes. After a decade of foundational
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#50 - Jason Carman, Founder of Story Company
Jason Carman is the 25-year-old founder and CEO of Story, a media company that makes cinematic films about science, engineering, and the future. He just
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#49 - Ian Laffey, Cofounder & CEO of Theseus
Theseus is building a hardware-software module that lets drones navigate without GPS, using cameras and AI to visually match terrain against satellite maps. The
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#48 - Police Chases, Ride Alongs, Bureaucracy | Daniel Francis, CEO Abel Police
Daniel Francis is the founder and CEO of Abel Police, a startup that uses AI to turn body camera footage into police reports, freeing officers from a task that
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#47 - Building a MASSIVE Mach 25 Space Gun in the Desert | Mike Grace, CEO Longshot
Mike Grace, co-founder and CEO of Longshot, is building massive space cannons in the desert to launch payloads into orbit using kinetic energy instead of
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#46 - Ending The Genetic Lottery | Noor Siddiqui, CEO Orchid
Noor Siddiqui is the founder and CEO of Orchid, a company that offers whole genome screening for embryos created through IVF, giving parents unprecedented
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#45 - What Happens If A Million Drones Attack Tomorrow | Michael LaFramboise, CEO Aurelius
Michael LaFramboise is the co-founder and CEO of Aurelius, a defense startup building autonomous laser systems that shoot down drones at near-zero marginal
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#44 - WTF is happening in El Segundo?!
A group of founders based in El Segundo, California—a small coastal neighborhood in Los Angeles—have built a concentrated cluster of hard-tech and defense
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#43 - SpaceX, Starship, Building A Gas Station On Mars | Halen Mattison, CEO General Galactic
Halen Mattison spent roughly three years at SpaceX working on Dragon and Starship programs before founding General Galactic, a startup building novel
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#42 - Why Ancient Rome Didn't Industrialize | Casey Handmer, CEO Terraform Industries
Casey Handmer is the founder and CEO of Terraform Industries, a company focused on making synthetic fuels from solar energy, with a long-term vision of
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#41 - Building The First Biotech Prime | Jake Adler, CEO Pilgrim
Jake Adler is the founder of Pilgrim, a defense biotech company building next-generation military medicine and biosurveillance systems. The conversation spans
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#40 - WTF is App Mafia - 18/yo earning $45M/yr building apps
App Mafia is a collective of four young app entrepreneurs — Zach Yadegari (18), Blake Anderson, Alex Slater (19), and Connor McLaren — who have each
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#39 - Thiel Fellowship, Backing Young People | Danielle Strachman, 1517 Fund
Danielle Strachman is co-founder and general partner at 1517 Fund, a venture fund that backs young founders, often teenagers and college students. Before 1517
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Manufacturing American Drones At Scale | Olaf Hichwa, Neros
Neros is an American drone company founded by Olaf Hitchwa and Saurin, two former competitive FPV (first-person view) drone racers who pivoted from hobbyists to
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#37 - Manufacturing, America, China | Cameron Schiller, CEO Rangeview
Cameron Schiller is co-founder and CEO of Rangeview, a startup in El Segundo building America's first "cyber foundry" — a digitally controlled metal casting
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#36 - Solving Health Using AI | Max Marchione, Superpower
Max Marchione is the co-founder of Superpower, a company building an AI-driven healthcare platform that combines blood testing, wearable data, wearables, and
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#35 - Automating Drill & Blast | Elliot F. Poirier, Watoga
Watoga is building an AI operating system for the mining industry, starting with drill-and-blast optimization and grade control. Co-founded by Elliot F. Poirier
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#34 - Bringing Manufacturing Back To America | Aaron Slodov, CEO Atomic Industries
Aaron Slodov is the founder and CEO of Atomic Industries, a company using AI to digitize and modernize manufacturing skills, and co-founder of Reindustrialize
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#33 - Launching Mirrors Into Space | Ben Nowack, CEO Reflect Orbital
Ben Nowack, CEO and founder of Reflect Orbital, is building a constellation of mirror-equipped satellites that redirect sunlight from space to Earth on demand
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#32 - Jakob Diepenbrock, Discipulus
Jakob Diepenbrock is the founder and general partner of Discipulus Ventures, a hard tech residency program based in El Segundo, California. The program brings
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#31 - Autonomous Hyperlogistics | Garrett Scott, CEO Pipedream
Garrett Scott, CEO of Pipedream, is building "hyperlogistics" — a system to deliver anything in under 10 minutes for less than a quarter, enabling people to
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#30 - Sheet Metal | Kenneth Cassel, CEO RMFG
Kenneth Cassel is the founder of RMFG, a metal fabrication startup in Fort Worth, Texas, that makes custom sheet metal parts using fiber laser cutting and other
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#29 - Automated Drill Rigs | Ted Feldmann, CEO Durin
Durin is a mining technology startup building automated drill rigs to dramatically cut the cost and time of mineral exploration in the US. Founder Ted Feldmann
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#28 - Automating Production Planning | Fil Aronshtein, CEO Dirac
Fil Aronshtein is the co-founder and CEO of Dirac, a company building BuildOS, the first automated work instruction platform for manufacturing engineers. Since
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#27 - Aleks Gampel, Cuby
Cuby is a construction technology company building mobile microfactories that produce homes on-site using unskilled labor and digitalized instructions.
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#26 - Automatic Drone Stations | Curt Lary, CEO Hextronics
Hextronics is scaling fast: from garage startup to global drone station manufacturer
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#25 - Creating A Stove That Boils Water in 30 Seconds | Sam D'Amico, CEO Impulse
Sam D'Amico, founder and CEO of Impulse Labs, has spent four years building a high-performance induction cooktop with an integrated battery that can boil a
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#24 - Integrating Military Assets | Zane Mountcastle, CEO Picogrid
Picogrid, a defense technology startup, builds hardware and software to integrate disparate military systems — sensors, drones, robots, cameras, and even
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#23 - Manufacturing Nuclear Reactors At Scale | Isaiah Taylor, CEO Valar Atomics
Valar Atomics, founded by Isaiah Taylor, is building nuclear reactors at unprecedented speed by treating nuclear energy like a manufacturing problem rather than
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#22 - Making It Rain | Augustus Doricko, Rainmaker
Rainmaker, a weather modification startup founded by Augustus Doricko, has grown from roughly 8–9 employees to over 50 in about 15 months, vertically integrated
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#21 - Creating An AI Data Scientist | Rahul Sonwalkar, CEO Julius
Rahul Sonwalkar is the founder and CEO of Julius AI, an AI-powered data science tool used by millions that lets non-technical users analyze data, generate
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#20 - Will O'Brien, Ulysses
Ulysses is building autonomous underwater robots to restore seagrass ecosystems, starting with a service that makes seagrass restoration cheaper, faster, and
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#19 - Solving ADHD | Nathalie Gouaihardou, Neurode
Neurode is a startup building a wearable headband that treats and tracks ADHD without drugs, using non-invasive brain stimulation to improve focus, memory, and
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#18 - Cat Orman, Flyby Robotics
Cat Orman is co-founder of Flyby Robotics, a Los Angeles–based drone startup building American-made, modular drones designed as open platforms for machine
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#17 - Christian Keil, VP Astranis
Christian Keil is a VP at Astranis, a company building high-orbit satellites to connect the world, and hosts the First Principles podcast, where he explores how
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#16 - Aleks Gampel, Cuby
Aleksandr Gampel is co-founder of Cuby Technologies, a company building mobile microfactories that mass-manufacture single-family homes using mostly unskilled
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#15 - Chris Power, CEO Hadrian
Chris Power is the CEO and founder of Hadrian, a company building highly automated precision component factories to serve Space & Defense manufacturers, with
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#14 - Curt Lary, CEO Hextronics
Curt Lary is the founder and CEO of Hextronics, a company that builds automated drone stations—physical infrastructure that enables drones to fly, land, swap
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#13 - Sheel Mohnot, BTV
Sheel Mohnot is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and podcast host whose career has been defined by saying "yes" to unusual opportunities, building businesses in
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#12 - Plaid For The Healthcare Industry | Andrew Arruda, CEO Flexpa
Andrew Arruda is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who moved from Canada to the U.S. to build AI companies — first Ross Intelligence (AI for legal
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#11 - Siqi Chen, CEO Runway
Siqi Chen is the co-founder and CEO of Runway, a company building AI-powered creative tools. Before Runway, he founded the social gaming company Serious
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#10 - Creating The Next Lucas Films | Jason Carman, CEO Story Company
Jason Carman is the head of content at Astranis, a satellite internet company, and the creator of S³, a weekly documentary series profiling deep-tech startups
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#9 - American Manufacturing | Aaron Slodov, CEO Atomic Industries
Aaron Slodov is the CEO and co-founder of Atomic Industries, a company building an "AWS for manufacturing" — a platform that makes it as easy to produce
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#8 - Soren Monroe-Anderson, CEO Neros
Soren Monroe-Anderson is the co-founder of Neros Technologies, a defense-focused drone startup based in the United States. He grew up in Alaska with a deep
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#7 - Hyperlogistics | Garrett Scott, CEO Pipedream
Garrett Scott, founder of Pipedream Labs, is building underground autonomous logistics infrastructure — a network of subterranean tubes and robots that move
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#6 - Building 1,000s Of Nuclear Reactors | Isaiah Taylor, CEO Valar Atomics
Isaiah Taylor is the founder of Valar Atomics, a company aiming to mass-manufacture nuclear reactors to produce cheap hydrocarbons like jet fuel and natural
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#5 - Fil Aronshtein, CEO Dirac
Filip Aronshtein is the founder and CEO of Dirac, a company automating the creation of assembly work instructions for manufacturers. The company's name honors
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#4 - Terraforming Deserts | Augustus Doricko, CEO Rainmaker
Augustus Doricko is the founder of Rainmaker, a cloud seeding startup in El Segundo, California, working to increase water supply in the American West and
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#3 - John Coogan, TBPN
John Coogan is the founder of Soylent (a meal replacement shake) and Lucy (a nicotine products company selling nicotine gums, lozenges, and pouches to help
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#2 - Zane Mountcastle, CEO Picogrid
Picogrid, founded by Zane Mountcastle, builds a hardware-and-software platform that connects sensors, cameras, and unmanned systems to the software systems that
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#1 - Turner Novak, Banana Capital
Turner Novak is the founder of Banana Capital, host of The Peel Podcast, and a prominent tech investor and content creator on Twitter (164K+ followers) and