Brian Heligman

After 2+ years heads down, I'm thrilled to unveil what I've been building with @aryelipman! @biosphereio, we're unleashing biomanufacturing with a breakthrough UV-sterilized reactor that will slash the cost of producing abundant and sustainable chemicals and food at world scale. We're backed by $8.8m in financing led by @lowercarbon and VXI, with support from @foundersfund, GS Futures, @caffeinatedcap, B37, and @CapitalAlso. My entrepreneurial path started back at UT Austin, where I spent 6 years developing new battery tech Despite initially promising results and some DoE funding, I eventually saw the real headwinds in the battery market’s dynamics: between the dominance of BYD/CATL and the steady progress of entrants like @SilaGene , it became clear 2022 was not the right time for a new anode play. After some tough reflection, I shut down my battery venture and my passion for sustainable manufacturing led me to synthetic biology. That reconnected me with @aryelipman who was targeting the massive opportunity in the industrial bioproduction market. Together, we reimagined bioreactor design from first principles and created Biosphere. We're thrilled to announce both our successful development of UV sterilized reactors and our ongoing work with the platform for the @DeptofDefense. Immense gratitude to: @claydumas - a first believer from my battery days through Biosphere @ScottNolan , Tae Huh, & Orin Hoffman - some of our earliest champions and supporters @SexyLikeMeiosis , Sean Liu, @eitan_me, & @joshuamarch - Killer operators who’ve provided tons of tactical guidance @heyjudka & @TimSDobbs - collaborators who were instrumental in getting Biosphere off the ground We’re excited to partner with more industry leaders to unlock biomanufacturing's full potential! Read more below.

Back when I was kicking around ideas about upgrading intermittent solar into protein, I never imagined the beachhead customer for the product would be the US Military! So excited to work with a great team to push chemE frontiers build towards manufactured abundance

I’m not sure if it’s comforting or terrifying that our military industrial base used to be so much more rad yet still had such massive bureaucratic inefficiency

I will always remember the first time I heard the DOD’s drone guy talk about his need to optimize his kill chains. Claude must be feeling so conflicted these days

Other than Musk and Rickover, are there good examples of singular engineering leaders worth studying? I love Andy Grove as much as the next guy, but it’s not the same thing

Hi, energy storage expert here - this isn't cute or heartwarming. These nitrogens are only huddling together for comfort because they are EXTREMELY DISTRESSED! Stop encouraging this behavior.

@TheAnnaGat @bsgallagher @davidavalerio @Dave_Hone I took a class from Thomas Holtz back in 2013 - can’t say I’ve kept up with him but he was very friendly/passionate and would probably answer an email! scholars.umd.edu/directory/thom…

@bsgallagher @davidavalerio @Dave_Hone Also @BrianTHeligman might have recs?

Do I know any paleontologists? Asking for a friend.

@lulumeservey Entrepreneur Extortion tax? Alright I’m done

@lulumeservey The Innovator’s Ransom

Do NOT call it the Billionaire Tax or Wealth Tax In politics, naming is everything (eg “death tax” vs “estate tax”) The BILLIONAIRE TAX is named *perfectly* 3/4 of California voters want billionaires to pay more in taxes! If you oppose this bill, do NOT concede that it is a “tax” on “billionaires” If you are calling it by the name that its sponsors carefully gave it, you are losing

@zachweinberg @RobTerrin If you’re interested in actually understanding this stuff, @JesseJenkins would be the place to start.

@RobTerrin Decades for storage being financially viable at any scale + increasing demand. Basically...natural gas. As much of it as humanly possible.

This x100000. Most interesting thing I learned in the last two years.

@Ben_Reinhardt I think the responsibility has to fall on DOE over anyone else tbh. It’s also just moving from strength to strength from the lithium win so it’s a pretty big hole to get out of

@BrianTHeligman But Brian, how can it be worthwhile if it doesn't make sense for VCs?

It’s pretty wild how thoroughly uncompetitive the entire us battery sector is. Prussian white cathodes as a winner was predictable years ago, but there’s just no path for commercializing it in the US tech ecosystem

It actually was very very obvious, years before this call too

I had a blast talking about biomanufacturing and science commercialization with @D_R_Goodwin on the Climate Biotech Podcast! First podcast in a long time, super fun to discuss what we're up to at @biosphereio. If anyone is looking for manufacturing partners to scale up their specialty bioproducts, you know where to find me! open.spotify.com/episode/522GK9…

@CalebChamberla6 Such great products! I love the little modbus shields

Ohhhh, this is neat.

Maybe the actual thing is the most free cash flowing industrial software co in the last 20 years I guess - I’m sure the robot people are valued much higher

I wonder what inductive automation is actually worth? By all accounts, that has to be the most valuable industrial software co started in the last 15 years, right?

I really think there has to be a tech play disrupting industrial automation with esp32’s running freeRTOS. With a bit of polish you have modbus, sparkplugB, io-link, and at least a few years of 50-90% gross margin

@eigenron @yacineMTB I mean this is like so extremely relevant to RL lol

@yacineMTB i agree, but they weren’t talking specifically about RL here. only how natural intelligence is tied to goals.

~8 minutes in and i can already sense the difference in the abstraction layers at which Dwarkesh and Dr. Sutton operate

Yeah, I don’t think LLMs are a safety concern, but if anyone actually builds the goal-oriented agent capable of experiential learning and juices it with 1 TW of power, it has to be the end of humanity, right?