(Re)Share | #48 - Announcing Fly Fund III
GenAI physics | Weather prediction | Nano-satellite reentry | Deepfakes | Chip controls
Welcome to the last (Re)Share of 2024, coming to you from the sweltering humidity of Cairns, Australia. It’s been quite a year and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed covering the deep tech side of things with you all. 2024 was all about finding the voice of (Re)Share and 2025 will focus on the process - more frequency, more consistency, same pun levels. Have a very happy holidays to everyone reading the newsletter and I’ll see you all in January.
Shameless Plug
Last week Fly Ventures announced our third fund, an €80 million vehicle to continue the mission of catalyzing Europe’s best technical talent to solve the world’s hardest, most transformational problems. Raising a fund in today’s climate is no easy feat and Fund III took an enormous effort. But due to the strength of our portfolio, positioning and partnership that we were able to achieve it and in a single closing. While raising a fund is a notable milestone the work really has just begun. We’re 100% open for business and eager to put our money to work. If you’re in the market for a deep tech, first check VC please reach out!
Stuff worth sharing
Out of the bottle - Huge news coming out of DeepMind in the form of the Genie 2, an advanced AI model capable of generating interactive 3D environments from a single image prompt. We’ve talked about its predecessor in past issues and I was floored even when limited to 2D worlds. Genie 2 creates rich, dynamic 3D simulations complete with complex physics, character animations, and object interactions, all made possible with just a keyboard. Given the training data / example outputs, it’s easy to see the impact in gaming, but robotic training is really where this gets interesting. Modeling realistic physics and object interactions across long-term context could significantly expand the Overton window.
Mission seemingly impossible - NASA’s plans for returning astronauts to the Moon has once again hit a snag and is now scheduled for April 2026. Artemis II has already been postponed once - slated for a late 2025 launch - due to heat shield issues discovered during previous missions. Those shields are always critical but are of particular importance because the Artemis II mission is designed to leverage “skip reentry” for its return into Earth’s atmosphere, named for its similarity to skipping a pebble on a pond. The article goes on further to highlight the growing tensions between NASA, SpaceX and the incoming Trump administration. Like the early 60’s, geopolitical saber rattling is now driving much of the fervor for space innovation - this time with China.
Looks like r-AI-n - DeepMind introduced GenCast, an AI-driven weather prediction model that delivers SOTA accuracy for forecasts up to 15 days in advance. GenCast powers its ML approach with over four decades of historical weather data to generate probabilistic forecasts. The model was uniquely strong at predicting extreme weather, which we’ve all become more and more accustomed to over recent years. More impressive was the speed unlock. GenCast is able to produce ensemble forecasts in just eight minutes with a single processor. Compare that to the hours required by conventional systems and you begin to see how big of a deal this is - disaster response, agriculture yield, renewable energy management, etc. Next generation weather prediction is a big area of interest for me and (spoiler alert) will make an appearance in my annual Hard Problems I Want to Back for 2025. Full paper here.
A picture’s worth <1,000 words - OpenAI basically owned this month with their fantastically positioned 12 Days of Shipmas release event. Rather than a single unveil, they slow-dripped product releases over a twelve day festival of tech. My personal favorite was Day 3, where they brought Sora to the masses - or those with a $20 / month subscription. Now anyone can create and iterate on short-form video content with a simple text instruction. Seeing as I’m currently in Australia, I obviously made a delightful clip of a wombat doing what wombats do. We’ve had image creation capabilities for a couple years now but, for me video synthesis, plus the refined user interface (vs. a Discord for example) is absolutely magical. I’ve said this before but the creativity explosion we’ll see in the next decade as these tools proliferate is going to be incredible.
Data hunting and gathering - Not to be outdone, Google introduced Deep Research within its Gemini offering. This intelligence assistant automates complex web research tasks and packages them in a summary view that you might expect from a junior Analyst. The new Gemini capability leverages the advanced reasoning and multi-step planning that their heavier models now boast. As a VC that is very entrenched in the Google Drive ecosystem, I’m thrilled to see this. In the last issue I highlighted the fun I’ve been having with Notebook ML and while I haven’t taken Deep Research for a spin professionally, I’ve already made a shortlist of 2025 research projects. For readers interested in those please let me know and I’d be happy to share what I find.
Voice of a generation - A recent report indicates that ElevenLabs’ AI voice generation technology was very likely utilized in a Russian influence campaign named Operation Undercut. The effort aimed to erode European support for Ukraine by producing fabricated news videos with AI-generated voiceovers that criticized Ukrainian leaders and questioned military aid. Researchers confirmed the use of ElevenLabs’ technology through the company’s AI Speech Classifier. Naturally, the company is in panic model and spun up some impressive safety measures to prevent unauthorized impersonations - not a new issue for them or any GenAI startup.
Cosmic storm chasers - Researchers from the University of Exeter have been leading efforts to track the environmental impact of satellite reentries. Using data from 950 satellite reentries recorded in 2024, the team projects that by 2033, vaporized material from satellite disintegration could reach 4,000 tons annually.
Their focus centers on the effects of aluminum, specifically the release of aluminum oxide particles as a result of the reentry process. These particles may harm the ozone layer and alter Earth’s albedo, but that’s still in question.
As mega-constellations like Starlink plan tens of thousands of launches, the researchers stress the need for sustainable practices to minimize atmospheric pollution and its long-term environmental consequences.
Cash in your chips - The US is intensifying efforts to curb China’s semiconductor industry through some fresh export restrictions. This marks the third major crackdown on China’s ability to produce advanced chips and remains one of the last truly bi-partisan topics on the hill. The latest measures also affect Chinese chip toolmakers. Naturally, the Chinese won’t take this lying down and have advised domestic companies to quickly realign to local alternatives.
Portfolio Flex
Carbmee announced their €20 million Series A to accelerate AI-driven Scope 3 emissions monitoring across Europe.
Wayve was featured in a Wired head-to-head investigation of their approach to full self driving vs. massive players like Waymo.