Alexander Ens

Today, Zipline raised $1.5b at a $21.5b valuation. When we started Zipline, flying autonomously in the US was illegal. Which made it really hard to convince investors to give us money! But we were too naive to think that meant we shouldn’t try. We started the company on a cow farm. We worked out of run-down construction trailers so that we could keep engineering, manufacturing, and flight test all unified and in one place. Hiring people from normal companies like Google was hard because we didn’t have a cafe or laundry service. But enough risk takers and rebels wanted to go on an insane adventure with us. They became the early team. We decided to launch in smaller countries and focus on life-saving use cases. We hired incredible entrepreneurs and operators in Rwanda, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, and other countries. For eight years, Zipline expanded our service across Africa, serving thousands of hospitals and health facilities and reducing maternal mortality by 51%. Today, the network saves over 14k lives every year and is cash flow positive. Last year, Zipline launched at scale in the US and the service exploded. We grew flight volumes about 100x over the last 18 months, and now make more than a million deliveries a year per metro. We’re now expanding with our partners to millions of deliveries per day. Normal families love having access to anything they need in 10-20 minutes, no matter where they live. Spend more time with loved ones and less time worrying about errands. Zipline builds drone delivery that is silent and safe. No one wants to hear an extremely loud “swarm of bees” delivering to their backyard or their neighbor’s. Automated delivery needs to be insanely quiet, which guided the overall architecture of our technology delivering from 330 ft in the air. We are 6 times quieter than the closest competitor during delivery. Zipline also now has over 150m commercial autonomous miles (10x the rest of the industry combined) and no safety incidents. Neighborhoods should demand silent and safe delivery! Today, Zipline is announcing two things. First, we just signed the largest autonomous vehicle contract in human history to expand automated delivery nationally with Walmart, our first and biggest partner in the US. We’re starting by scaling to 300 supercenters throughout the country. Second, we’ve raised $1.5b at a $21.5b valuation from existing and new investors, led by Paradigm, WCM, and Layer. Zipline was a hard company to believe in for the first ten years of our history. Investors didn’t think the company was “investable”. Most people didn’t even think Zipline was an economic venture. Thanks to those who have rooted for us along the way. To all of the tens of millions of customers and families who rely on Zipline day in and day out: thank you for helping us build the future. Zipline has grown more than @ryanzip, @keenanwyrobek, I, and all others at the company could have imagined. There is a big opportunity to build a new layer of infrastructure for humanity over the coming years. We want to approximate teleportation. We can build a logistics network that connects and serves all people on earth. We can free human flourishing from the choking constraint of traffic and roads. There are no roads where we’re going. 🚀🌎

Defense funds realizing they have to pivot back to climate tech

BREAKING: OpenAI just banned a man for fixing his own TV. He was taking it apart on his own computer. OpenAI flagged it as “cyber abuse” and shut his account. He says he lost $500. People say Claude stopped helping with this kind of work this week too. You paid for the TV, paid for the AI and you still need their permission. This is why I run open models. Nobody can ban you from your own computer.

Russia’s Lancet kamikaze drone used to be one of its most dangerous weapons. Now a pro-Russian militant says one unit fired about 100 of them in three months and hit just three targets, one of them a roadside shop. defence-blog.com/the-once-fe…

In a similar scramble I did to jump on AI in late 2022 (moving from remote work and nomads to AI apps), I am now scrambling to chase any remaining moats As AI companies will suck up everything else (in my humble opinion) So for every moat left I see where I can pivot towards to that with my sites/apps Proprietary data or content: - I launched a nomads.com paid data API for companies from $2,490/year to $9,990/year, the city data is great because it's made by real members who for example review/like/dislike a city after visiting it, or being able to see which places are growing or shrinking (interesting of real estate, coworking, or gym investors) - hoodmaps.com neighborhood data is very valuable and I'm building a paid API for that too, as well as including it in the Nomads API Network effects / community: - I made the nomads.com community free (before $99, now just $1 to avoid spam), the more people, the more network effect Audience / distribution: you can get attention on demand - I have an @X audience and I get paid well for it (about ~$15K/mo), but I've also diversified that with my blog levels.io's email list and Telegram subscribers, which is now 187,279 people who get daily/weekly/monthly email digests of my posts Physical component: hardware, locations, IRL: - I have been improving and promoting nomads.com meetups, there's now 8 meetups planned in the next 30 days, but is has to keep growing, I've also added fitness meetups etc. - I've been using and working on hotelist.com a lot and improving it, it seems to fill a real void in booking sites that all suffer from rating inflation and filters that are not modern, I'm adding features I want and it seems that's working. Today I'm adding a filter for Longevity Hotels, that have a strength training gym, wellness area, blackout curtains, as a counter balance to the boomer hotels with champagne on check in and a gym with only treadmills etc. Hotelist is fundamentally IRL because hotels are IRL - Not really IRL but vibejam.com is an annual event that's every year has ~1000 people participating vibe coding games and this year had over 1 million people playing the games, and AI companies really like to sponsor it because it's a great way to get exposure for their AI building tools - I am building a pieter.com 1990s retro PC mini remake, like the SNES Mini, or the ModRetro M64, a hardware product I can sell marketed for nostalgia, especially after the last few weeks where it took off finally, I think there could be some market, and hardware is fun to try - I sell merch on levelsio.com and make about $1K/mo from it, I haven't been very active on it but could expand this if I want Capital: owning assets and investing - I was already heavily invested in AI companies but have been even more with the acquisition of Cursor giving me $SPCX stock, I'll hold on to that, I think money will keep getting sucked from the traditional economy and replaced with paying AI companies money - As a hedge, I've also put more money in bonds with IB01 ETF in case the AI bubble pops, $IB01 is a nice simple ETF for that - I am actively looking at buying more land and real estate (especially coastal) as that's a scarce asset that will remain scarce post-AGI - I am actively investing in startups with levels.vc although I'm wondering what startups are still valuable to invest in as Big AI and Big Tech suck up everything, if you look at the last YC batch, it's all "Cursor for {industry}" harnesses and hardware, I think robotics could be interesting to invest but it's unclear who will be the winner as ironically robots have a low barrier to entry. Most robots are just Chinese-made components put together with some vibe coded software by their Western founders! - I am open to buyers for photoai.com and interiorai.com to increase the amount of capital I can invest elsewhere Regulatory: licenses and legal barriers - I am bad at this, and don't like regulation by nature. So I don't have anything here. And I don't think I will try pursue anything in here. I have friends building apps that work on getting EU subsidies or EU government program credits for emissions etc. But it's not my thing So yes, chasing moats it is! Let's see if it works

Australian munitions specialist Defendtex has unveiled an updated version of its “Night Wraith” loitering munition at the Land Forces 2026 exhibition in Perth. The system evolved from the company’s earlier “Snare” concept, presented at Land Forces 2024 as a 70 mm laser-guided rocket intended for land-attack missions against armored vehicles at ranges of up to 50 km (31 miles). The latest Night Wraith variant is being positioned for both land-attack and counter-drone roles. According to Defendtex CEO Travis Reddy, the munition features a modular design that can accommodate additional in-line batteries to extend its range and endurance. In its standard configuration, Night Wraith has a reported total weight of 10 kg (22 lb), a 4 kg (8.8 lb) warhead and a length of 2.3 m (7.5 ft), with a wingspan of 2.5 m (8.2 ft). An optional 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) rocket booster can assist with launch. Defendtex lists a maximum range of up to 1,000 km (621 miles), a cruising speed of 200 km/h (124 mph) and a burst speed of up to 500 km/h (311 mph). The company is also positioning the system as a potentially more cost-effective alternative to existing 70 mm guided rockets, including BAE Systems’ APKWS. Source: Janes | Photo: Andrew White #Australia #Defendtex #NightWraith #Snare

I'd expand the moats left to: - Proprietary data or content: data nobody else has, or unique content you can create - Network effects / community: users make it more valuable for each other - Audience / distribution: you can get attention on demand - Physical component: hardware, locations, real-world operations - Capital: owning assets and investing (esp into the AI companies as they are and will suck up large parts of the economy) - Regulatory: licenses and legal barriers

Technical moats are mostly over at this point. If you’re building something that is meant to be durable, the only moats now are: • Proprietary data • Network effects • A physical component

This is the Jevon's paradox of paperwork. Unless we have the societal will to avoid it, bureaucracy is about to enter its e/acc era.

I work in CRISPR discovery research. This is one of the most exaggerated nothing-burgers ever and would be laughed out of the room if a human scientist attempted to publish something like this. (cont.)

One missile, or seven. Same price. a16z's @DefenseInDepth_ on the arsenal the US could have for the price of the one it's buying: a16z.news/p/magazine-depth-a…

Ever tried to teach a computer science graduate to become a tactical air warfare analyst? I have, and it’s very difficult. A friend and I had a name for the issue these graduates face: the 4 Cups/4 AMRAAMs problem. 4 cups of sugar are useful for baking. 4 AMRAAMs are useful for killing the enemy. But to a computer scientist, they’re both sets of 4 items with no distinction between them. It’s easier, usually, to teach a good analyst to program computers.

Bro literally chose to identify as profitable. This is incredible.

Latvia purchased domestically produced counter-drone interceptors before a safe and mature warhead solution was ready, the country’s military chief says, as a dispute over the procurement escalated between PM Andris Kulbergs and former MOD Andris Sprūds. balticsentinel.eu/8544904/la…

We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so. Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training. You can read the full post here: darioamodei.com/post/we-must…

Well, it was inevitable we'd get here. Glad we got as far as we did. Now priority 0 is to make sure AI access and innovation proliferates as widely as possible. The upside is that the technology wants it that way. It refuses to be caged.