Kanyi Maqubela

News! We are proud to share our latest $355M set of funds, combining early stage and early growth.

Annie Duke, world-class poker player turned decision scientist, on the single biggest alpha leak in professional investing: "expert investors are alpha generators when putting risk on. they give alpha back on their exit decisions." "endowments when they put positions on are generating between 120 and 180 basis points of alpha." "their exit decisions? they're giving about 70 to 80 basis points back." "this is why the option to quit is so incredibly valuable. this is the place where we can generate a lot of alpha compared to our competitors." 120-180 bps generated on entries. 70-80 bps given back on exits. across endowments, intraday traders, and professional fund managers, the data all says the same thing. the entry often isn't the problem. the exit is.

I've never found a windshield wiper setting that truly satisfied me.

Very excited to announce that at 12:20am on the 4th of July, Aalo achieved criticality on our first full-scale reactor. We cut it close, but we pulled it off!! Working towards this goal with such an incredible group of humans has been the most fulfilling period of my life. This moment has been three years in the making. Last year, Executive Order 14301 called for at least three new reactors to go critical before July 4th, 2026. As of late last Friday night, that goal has been surpassed! When the EO was announced, we immediately sat down to figure out what the most ambitious scope would be, while still being potentially achievable by July 4th. Some of the team proposed doing simplified designs with smaller fuel loads, or building in existing facilities. One thing was clear: We wouldn't have time to integrate a full-scale sodium heat-removal loop to bring the reactor to its full 30 MWt. So here’s where we landed: ➡️ We purchased the entire commercial-scale fuel load. This is enough fuel to operate at 30 MWt / 10 MWe for 3 years before refueling. To my knowledge, it’s the largest fuel load that’s been taken critical in the DOE pilot program, by far. ➡️ We built a full-scale reactor vessel in our factory, and loaded in our commercial graphite layout. All the dimensions, vessel thickness, and manufacturing techniques are essentially the same as we will use for the imminent commercial version. There will be a few minor tweaks for sodium flow and full-power, but nothing major. ➡️ We built an entirely new reactor facility at the Idaho National Lab. Building a building is easy. Building a new reactor facility comes with a mountain of paperwork, policies, operation and training procedures, security, instrumentation and control, and more. Zero-power criticality might seem like a small step, but I can tell you, going through the exercise of building a reactor and taking it to criticality has been extremely valuable. The learnings on regulatory, ops, manufacturing, supply chain, QA, economics, engineering, and design will accelerate our path through to the final iteration at full-power. America is blessed to have a recent Cambrian explosion of startups in nuclear, all going after different markets, technologies, and strategies. I’m excited that sodium, gas, salt, and new PWRs are all getting pushed forward once again. The best outcome for humanity is to have all these advance in parallel, as quickly as possible, while maintaining safety. Thanks again to our amazing team, DOE, INL, BEA, and everyone else who helped us get to where we are today. This could not have happened anywhere else. Happy birthday, America!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 There has never been a better time for nuclear energy. The Second Atomic Age has begun, and this one will be here to stay.

Today, I took an oath of allegiance to the United States, and became a citizen. Heady day for it. Time for a thread.