Mitchell Fogelson

At Commencement in May, CMU will recognize the career accomplishments and impact of four extraordinary leaders in their fields. Jensen Huang, @NVIDIA founder and CEO, will deliver the Commencement keynote and receive an Honorary Doctor of Science and Technology degree.

congrats to the W26 batch! the first one where founders shipped and grew faster than before since agentic coding stated to really work a crazy stat is we have ~3x number of companies from a year ago that hit series A metrics in just 3 months

Congratulations to the YC W26 batch on completing their Demo Day!

showtime for YC W26 demo day let’s go!!

100% agree. Thanks for continuing to support Space companies like @beyondreachlabs

🎉 Ask me why I am so excited for this year's @ycombinator Winter '26 batch: - GRU Space (YC W26) building out a lunar tourism economy - Beyond Reach Labs (YC W26) building stiff-yet-compact deployable structures for space - seriously under-served market IMO - AxionOrbital Space (YC W26) building foundational models for the Earth

draw me like one of your space solar arrays @beyondreachlabs

I’m super excited to finally be able to share that @Starcloud_ is collaborating with @NVIDIA on a space version of the next-gen Rubin chip called Space-1 Vera Rubin Module! Does that render look familiar?? 👀😃🚀

I just watched Jensen walk on stage to the deployment of @Starcloud_-1 😱🤯😲 @NVIDIA GTC

Done with investor meetings for the day. Back to building the future of space solar @beyondreachlabs

Hearing people getting excited about some animated Firefly. So here's the original animated firefly from last year. And @FireflySpace is already working on a sequel. (credit to @TheBrianMcManus for the original animated goodness)

Voltair (@voltairlabs) is building the world's first global network of autonomous drones for Earth observation. Utility, rail, telecom inspections for a fraction of the cost, then weather, insurance, and more. On-demand data on the physical world. Congrats on the launch, Hayden, Avi, Ronan, and Warren! ycombinator.com/launches/PhE-v…

to celebrate pi day i had @claudeai simulate newtonian gravity then divide the circumference by the diameter to calculate pi! took 2min wow

I was accepted into W26 of @ycombinator as a 19yo solo-founder. The first ever from Tajikistan 🇹🇯 Never let your zip code define your trajectory. Dream massive! The journey so far: • 11yo: Started competitive coding (3x Olympiad🥇) • 13yo: Built my first VC-backed startup • 14yo: First exit (acquired by the United Nations) 💵 • 15yo: Received a software patent • 16yo: Awarded a Medal from President of Tajikistan • 18yo: Retired my mom 🧡 Now, I'm building Wayco 🚀 ↳ Full-Stack AI MedLegal Firm ↳ Trusted by America's largest outsourced Medical Case Management Platform ↳ Pre-Seed from @sequoia scout fund & first angel of @elevenlabs @snowmaker @lukaivicev @englishpaulm @deckelly @nur_daulet_ @samanfarid @rod_mallo, @barticz and others!

We were on @NBCNews !!! So excited to share what we are building with new audiences!

It's Y Combinator's 21st birthday today.

@bennbuilds @4TristanS @reflectorbital Congrats @bennbuilds !

Built a space mirror, launching soon

@VladSaigau you should add @beyondreachlabs

@VladSaigau Hi @VladSaigau at @beyondreachlabs we are building deployable solar arrays that enable 100KW power for orbital data center, commercial space stations, and 24/7 power transfer for earth.

The orbital compute supply chain is forming right now. We’ve been mapping the emerging specialist ecosystem to show how orbital data centers will differ, in terms of supply, from traditional satcom. Satcom baselines optimize for RF routing, spectrum efficiency, pointing accuracy, and link availability. Orbital data centers are not primarily a signal-routing endpoint. The spacecraft is an energy conversion and heat-rejection machine wrapped around a compute payload. The freed mass from ditching the downlink is completely reallocated to solar arrays and radiators, shifting us from an RF-routing architecture to a thermodynamic-optimised one. The triangular bottleneck in orbital compute is the three-way interdependence of solar generation, thermal rejection, and silicon efficiency: any single subsystem can only scale as far as the other two allow, so true power density gains require all three to advance in lockstep, otherwise one becomes the binding constraint. We built a supply chain map across the full thermodynamic triad (thermal systems, power systems, compute payloads) plus bus/platform and networking & links. (Note: we explicitly exclude end-to-end operators like @SpaceX and @Starcloud_ to focus purely on the specialist enabling layers.) Suppliers are already responding directly: @RocketLab Lab just launched advanced silicon solar arrays specifically for gigawatt-scale space-based data centers; Starpath debuted ultra-thin @StarlightSolar_ panels, @Redwire is pushing new low-mass ELSA arrays plus Q-Rad deployable radiators; Kepler, Axiom, and others are advancing optical relays and hosted compute nodes. Talent markets confirm the shift. NVIDIA posted an “Orbital Datacenter System Architect” role. There is also SpaceX and Amazon Leo hiring, and business activity, in silicon packaging, perovskite solar, and optical ISLs. Capital is following: we found ~$250M deployed into these enabling hardware specialists since January 2025, heavily concentrated in power generation, networking/links, and thermal management. Reaching target 100 kW/ton power densities will still require major advances in solar arrays and radiator performance, creating narrow but high-conviction white space even as consolidation risks rise. We imagine a web of specialist suppliers solving narrow thermodynamic problems, working alongside traditional space firms extending flight heritage and compute giants feeding silicon into orbit; though significant consolidation and acquisitions are likely in the next 24-36 months as scale and vertical integration pressures intensify. We welcome any thoughts or insights on this so please share. Read the full analysis here, as well as the investment breakdown and and Excel download of our exhibit companies 🧐: research.33fg.com/analysis/orbit…