🛸 Multiverse Brings Quantum-Inspired Compression to LLMs

Spain’s Multiverse Computing has raised €189M (~$217M) in a Series B round led by Bullhound Capital, with backing from HP, Toshiba, and the Spanish government. The company is tackling one of AI’s biggest pain points: cost and scalability of large models.

🔘 Shrink Models, Keep the Power
• Uses tensor networks from quantum physics to compress models by up to 95%.
• Cuts inference costs by 50–80%, with minimal accuracy drop.
• Supports LLaMA, Mistral, and DeepSeek — deployable on phones, PCs, even Raspberry Pi.

🚀 From Spain’s Quantum Labs to Global Edge AI
• Live on AWS Marketplace, targeting telcos, defense, and AI-at-the-edge use cases.
• Founded in 2019; now Spain’s leading AI scaleup with strong public-private backing.
• €59M of latest round came from the Spanish state, backing sovereign AI infrastructure.

📉 A New Layer in the AI Stack
• Compresses open-source models without retraining, saving energy and hardware costs.
• Competes with quantization/pruning — but uses a quantum-inspired framework with better scalability.
• Makes AI more accessible for enterprises outside Big Tech.

Multiverse is betting that compression isn’t a tool—it’s the foundation for the next era of affordable, decentralized AI.

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🧱 Gecko Robotics Uses AI-Climbing Bots to Modernize Infrastructure Inspections

Gecko Robotics has entered the unicorn club with a $125M Series D, building wall-climbing robots that inspect critical infrastructure faster, safer, and more accurately than humans.

🤖 Robots That Scale, Scan, and Report
• Magnetic robots inspect ships, refineries, and power plants — 10× faster than manual checks.
• Capture 1,000× more data per job, feeding into Gecko’s AI platform, Cantilever.
• Reduces risk for workers while boosting maintenance accuracy.

⚙️ AI-First Inspections at Scale
• Used by the U.S. Navy, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, and NAES.
• Cuts downtime and enables predictive repairs with actionable AI insights.
• Backed by $347M total funding; investors include Founders Fund and Y Combinator.

⛓ From Dorm Room to Defense Tech
• Founded in 2016 in a college dorm by Jake Loosararian and Troy Demmer.
• Now valued at $1.25B, expanding across defense, energy, and manufacturing.

Gecko is turning dangerous inspections into a high-speed, high-precision AI process — climbing walls to keep infrastructure upright.

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🪙 Meliuz Becomes Brazil’s First “Bitcoin Treasury” Fintech

Brazilian fintech Meliuz has raised R$180M (~$32.4M) through a follow-on share offering to buy bitcoin, becoming the first public company in the country to formally adopt bitcoin as a treasury asset.

🪙 Bitcoin on the Balance Sheet
• Funds will be used entirely to purchase bitcoin for long-term holding.
• Marks a bold pivot from cashback and financial services into crypto-native treasury strategy.
• Positions Meliuz as Brazil’s first public “bitcoin treasury” fintech.

📉 Public Offering to Fuel Crypto Strategy
• Raised R$180M via primary offering priced at R$7.06/share (~5% discount).
• BTG Pactual acted as sole bookrunner on the offering.
• Shareholder vote in April enabled bitcoin to become a formal reserve asset.

📈 Institutionalizing Crypto in Brazil
• Move echoes MicroStrategy-style bitcoin accumulation — but in LatAm fintech context.
• Demonstrates growing institutional confidence in bitcoin amid high inflation and currency volatility.
• Could inspire other public firms in Brazil to explore crypto as an alternative asset class.

🚀 Fintech Meets Bitcoin Maximalism
• Founded in 2011, Meliuz started with cashback and digital finance tools.
• This marks a strategic shift toward crypto-forward treasury and brand positioning.
• Aims to lead in bridging fintech utility with decentralized asset adoption.

Meliuz is betting that bitcoin isn’t just a store of value — it’s a new financial identity for the next generation of LatAm fintech.

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🛸 Alexandr Wang Joins Meta After Scale AI Stake to Lead AGI Effort

Meta has acquired a 49% non-voting stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion, valuing the data-labeling powerhouse at ~$29B — and bringing on its co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang to lead Meta’s “superintelligence” initiative.

✅ Scale AI Meets Zuckerberg’s AGI Ambitions
• Wang will head Meta’s new AGI division, reporting directly to Mark Zuckerberg.
• The group will focus on developing artificial general intelligence with access to Scale’s massive data infrastructure.
• Wang remains on Scale’s board, while CSO Jason Droege becomes interim CEO.

💰 $14.3B for Talent, Infrastructure, and Strategy
• Meta’s stake is non-voting — ensuring Scale’s operational independence.
• The structure avoids regulatory pushback while securing data access and leadership.
• Scale remains a core vendor to OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and U.S. defense — for now.

🛸 Meta’s AGI Bet Gets Real
• Comes after disappointing traction with Meta’s Llama models in the enterprise market.
• Zuckerberg has been on an AI talent spree — offering up to 9-figure comp to top researchers.
• The deal positions Meta to vertically integrate data labeling and model training.

🚀 From YC Startup to Global AGI Hub
• Scale AI was founded in 2016 by Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo.
• Went from defense contracts to powering AI pipelines for Silicon Valley giants.
• Now at the center of Meta’s most ambitious AI play yet.

Meta didn’t just invest in Scale — it invested in its architect. Wang’s move signals a new phase of AGI competition, where infrastructure and intelligence are built in-house.

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🔘 Proxima Fusion on road to Build the First Stellarator Power Plant

Munich-based Proxima Fusion has closed a €130M Series A to develop the world’s first commercial stellarator-based fusion power plant, offering a radically stable path to net-energy fusion in the 2030s.

🔩 Fusion That Runs Steady, Not Scary
• Uses stellarators, which confine plasma with external magnets — unlike Tokamaks, no internal currents = better stability.
• Combines quasi-isodynamic designs with AI and high-temperature superconductors (HTS) for compact, scalable machines.
• Based on research from the Max Planck Institute’s Wendelstein 7-X, the world’s most advanced stellarator.

📈 From Coil to Commercial Power
• 2027: Targeting “Model Coil” milestone — a full-scale magnet testbed.
• 2031: Net-energy prototype named Alpha to be operational.
• 2030s: Launch of Stellaris, the first grid-ready fusion power plant.

💳 Europe’s Biggest Fusion Bet
• €130M Series A led by Redalpine, UVC Partners, Atlantic Labs, and Earlybird.
• Europe’s largest private fusion round to date; brings total raised to €185M+.
• German government support signals rising momentum behind deeptech energy bets.

⚠️ Still a Long Road to the Grid
• Technical hurdles: precision magnet manufacturing, tritium breeding, and power conversion.
• Fusion remains a long game — capital-intensive with multi-decade ROI timelines.
• But stellarators may offer a more commercially viable and steady-state alternative.

Proxima isn’t chasing the next fusion breakthrough — it’s engineering the one we already have into reality.

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