Mitch Lee

Today, we’re announcing that we’ve raised $115 million in funding, including a $100M Series A led by @kleinerperkins. America has lost the ability to build, and we’re here to restore it. My co-founder, @NoahMcGuinn, and I left our jobs at @SpaceX , where we worked on programs including Starship, Starshield, and @Starlink, to build a company that will solve construction’s greatest challenges. Infrastructure is the foundation of civilization, and construction is the precursor to innovation. If America wants to build a brighter future for the next generation, we have to make it faster, cheaper, and safer to build. That’s where @TerraFirma_Inc comes in. We’re a new type of company, a robotic construction company that builds the full technology stack needed to deliver an order-of-magnitude improvement in one of the world’s oldest, largest, most important, but least efficient industries. We are building technology that expands what’s possible in construction on Earth, and then we'll use that same technology to build megastructures and colonies on the Moon and Mars. We’ve made tremendous progress over the past year, growing the company more than 10x in the last 12 months. We are performing projects across the world. By the end of October 2026, we are on track to operate 3 of the top 3 largest robotic construction fleets in the world, each on a different continent, bringing unprecedented speed, scale, and efficiency to some of the world’s most complex critical infrastructure projects. This funding will allow us to step on the gas and scale our manufacturing, software, operations, and construction deployments, including work on massive commercial and government contracts. We’re building the future of construction right here in Austin, Texas, and scaling it globally. If you want to be part of the team changing the world, now and on Mars, join us. Our Series A was led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Glade Brook Capital Partners, BANNER VC, Saga Ventures, Trust Ventures, Definition, PEAK6, Magnetar Capital, and Ravelin Capital. Huge thanks to all of our angel investors, friends, and family who have helped and supported us throughout this journey. Apply here: jobs.ashbyhq.com/TerraFirma-Inc…

Ramp Cofounder @eglyman says paying high performers the same is one of the fastest ways to destroy a culture of excellence: “One of the most damaging things you can do to an organization is if there are folks who are getting paid similarly, and have similar ownership, and are just not pulling their weight.” “That leads to this very tough but fair question from folks of—I'm busting my ass, working super hard, and giving up on things, and there's all these folks free riding and you're not enforcing high standards, why should we obsess so much over reaching a higher potential?”

LNG just took 68% of all alternative fuel vessel orders in 2025. Methanol got 22%. The reason is not decarbonization ideology. LNG has 220 bunkering ports worldwide. Methanol has fewer than 50. A vessel ordered today runs for 25 years, and shipowners order against infrastructure, not targets. This is the same asymmetry from my last piece, showing up in shipping now. LNG's global buildout is not a bet... It is already the default. themerchantsnews.substack.com/p/china-has-a-…

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The tech workforce is splitting in two A year ago, we ran the first large-scale survey of how tech workers feel about their jobs and careers. What emerged we summarized in four words: burned out, but optimistic. Today, we're back with the results from our 2026 survey, and it's a tale of two workforces. Half of tech right now feels amplified by AI—more capable, more confident, more excited than they've been in their entire career. The other half feels shaken by it—less sure of their value and whether there’s still a place for them. Which side of that line you fall on predicts how you feel about your career more than anything else, including your role, seniority, company size, or any other measure we collected. The workforce is bifurcating into two realities. A few other takeaways that surprised us: + Significant burnout jumped from 44.7% to 55.7% in one year, while career optimism fell from 54.8% to 48.7%. A worrisome trend. + 53% of tech workers would steer a newcomer away from a career in their own role, even when they're optimistic about their own future. + The biggest AI fear is of being squeezed to do more work. Only 22% worry about “losing my job to AI.” Far more worry about being expected to do more for the same pay, getting trapped in an unsustainable pace, and the quality of their work declining. The question that best predicts how a tech worker feels about their work, in 2026, is no longer "What do you do?" or "Where do you work?" It’s "What has AI done to your sense of who you are?" Read the full report here: lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-tech-wor…