Techin' Geek

Nuclear fusion conjures images of massive reactors or banks of dozens of large lasers. Avalanche co-founder and CEO Robin Langtry thinks smaller is better. 

For the last several years, Langtry and his colleagues at Avalanche have been working on what’s essentially a desktop version of nuclear fusion. “We’re using the small size to learn quickly and iterate quickly,” Langtry told TechCrunch.

Fusion power promises to supply the world with large amounts of clean heat and electricity, if researchers and engineers can solve some vexing challenges. At its core, fusion power seeks to harness the power of the Sun. To do that, fusion startups must figure out how to heat and compress plasma for long enough that atoms inside the mix fuse, releasing energy in the process. 

Fusion is a famously unforgiving industry. The physics is challenging, the materials science is cutting edge, and the power requirements can be gargantuan. Parts need to be machined with precision, and the scale is usually so large as to obviate rapid fire experimentation. 

Some companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) are using large magnets to contain the plasma in a doughnut-like tokamak, others are compressing fuel pellets by shooting them with powerful lasers. Avalanche, though, uses electric current at extremely high voltages to draw plasma particles into an orbit around an electrode. (It also uses some magnets to keep things orderly, though they’re not nearly as powerful as a tokamak’s.) As the orbit tightens and the plasmas speed up, the particles begin to smash into each other and fuse.

The approach has won over some investors. Avalanche recently added another $29 million in an investment round led by R.A. Capital Management with participation from 8090 Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Founders Fund, Lowercarbon Capital, Overlay Capital, and Toyota Ventures. To date, the company has raised $80 million from investors, a relatively small amount in the fusion world. Other companies have raised several hundred to a few billion dollars.

Space-based inspiration

Langtry’s time at the Jeff Bezos-backed space tech company Blue Origin influenced how Avalanche is tackling the problem.

“We’ve figured out that using this sort of SpaceX ‘new space’ approach is that you can iterate really quickly, you can learn really quickly, and you can solve some of these challenges.” said Langtry, who worked with co-founder Brian Riordan at Blue Origin.

Going smaller allowed Avalanche to speed up. The company has been testing changes to its devices “sometimes twice a week,” something that would be challenging and costly with a large device.

Currently, Avalanche’s reactor is only nine centimeters in diameter, though Langtry said a new version grow to 25 centimeters and is expected to produce about 1 megawatt. That, he said, “is going to give us a significant bump in confinement time, and that’s how we’re actually going to get plasmas that have a chance of being Q>1.” (In fusion, Q refers to the ratio of power in to power out. When it’s greater than one, the fusion device is said to be past the breakeven point.)

Those experiments will be carried out at Avalanche’s FusionWERX, a commercial testing facility the company also rents out to competitors. By 2027, the site will be licensed to handle tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that’s used as fuel and is crucial to many fusion startup’s plans for producing power for the grid.

Langtry wouldn’t commit to a date when he hopes Avalanche will be able to generate more power than its fusion devices consume, a key milestone in the industry. But he’s thinks the company is on a similar timeline as competitors like CFS and the Sam Altman-backed Helion. “I think there’s going to be a lot of really exciting things happening in fusion in 2027 to 2029,” he said.

How many of the companies with recent layoffs are truly adapting their workforces to the efficiencies and challenges of artificial intelligence? And how many of them were just using AI as an excuse to cover other problems?

That’s the question posed by a New York Times article on the trend of “AI-washing,” where companies will cite AI as the reason for layoffs that might actually be caused by other factors, like over-hiring during the pandemic.

AI was the stated reason for more than 50,000 layoffs in 2025, with Amazon and Pinterest among the tech companies who blamed the technology for recent cuts.

But a Forrester report published in January argued, “Many companies announcing A.I.-related layoffs do not have mature, vetted A.I. applications ready to fill those roles, highlighting a trend of ‘A.I.-washing’ — attributing financially motivated cuts to future A.I. implementation.”

Molly Kinder, a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institute, noted that saying layoffs were caused by AI is a “very investor-friendly message,” especially when the alternative might mean admitting, “The business is ailing.”

January was such a long month that it has already brought us five fresh European unicorns: from Belgium to Ukraine, several tech startups raised funding at valuations above the $1 billion threshold.

But before we take a closer look at who joined the club, two caveats.

First: This count includes startups that may be incorporated elsewhere but have their roots or a large part of their team in Europe. Until a pan-European corporate structure exists (often called “EU Inc”), this split will remain common — and we’ve decided to overlook it. Take Lovable, which is incorporated in Delaware but cannot be dissociated from Stockholm’s startup scene.

Second: valuation doesn’t equal commercial success, and it is too early to tell whether all of these companies will achieve the kind of traction that Lovable has, with the company recently crossing $300 million in annual recurring revenue. But in the current climate, the fact that VCs were willing to invest in them at unicorn valuations is a strong signal of where the appetite is. 

With these caveats out of the way, let’s dive in.

Aikido 

Belgium-based cybersecurity startup Aikido Security reached unicorn status with its $60 million Series B funding round. Valuing the company at $1 billion, the round was led by DST Global, with participation from PSG Equity, Singular, Notion Capital, and others.

According to a press release, the funding will help Aikido enhance its platform, which was built to unify security across the entire software lifecycle and is already used by more than 100,000 teams globally. The company also reported “five-times revenue growth and nearly three-times customer growth” over the last year.

In a blog post, the startup celebrated this milestone and its significance. According to its team, “in an industry dominated by Palo Alto and Tel Aviv heavyweights, Aikido shows that Europe can build a world-class software security company and win globally.”

Cast AI 

Cloud optimization company Cast AI is headquartered in Florida, but has Lithuanian roots and a major office in Vilnius — which explains why many now consider it to have become Lithuania’s fifth unicorn.

Cast AI’s valuation now exceeds $1 billion following a strategic investment from Pacific Alliance Ventures (PAV), the U.S.-based corporate venture arm of Korean conglomerate Shinsegae Group. In April 2025, Cast AI raised a $108 million Series C that had reportedly already brought the company close to unicorn territory.

Alongside its latest funding round, the company also introduced OMNI Compute for AI, which aims to help users deploy more AI workloads on fewer GPUs and remove regional capacity constraints.

Harmattan AI 

French defense tech company Harmattan AI was only founded in 2024, but is already worth $1.4 billion, according to its latest funding round. The $200 million Series B was led by Dassault Aviation, maker of the Rafale fighter jets, and also ties into a broader partnership.

Before securing this key partner, Harmattan AI had already signed agreements with the French and British ministries of defense and with Ukrainian drone maker Skyeton, amid growing appetite for autonomous defense aircraft.

Osapiens 

German ESG software firm Osapiens raised a $100 million Series C led by Decarbonization Partners, a joint venture between BlackRock and Temasek, which valued the company at over $1.1 billion.

Founded in Mannheim in 2018, Osapiens now has more than 2,400 customers worldwide, including large multinational companies that rely on its platforms and tools for sustainability reporting and data compliance, but also to mitigate supply chain risks.

Preply

The 14-year-old language learning marketplace Preply is now a unicorn valued at $1.2 billion — a milestone that also embodies Ukrainian resilience. The edtech company was founded in the United States, but its founders are Ukrainian and supporters of their home country, where Preply has a team of 150 employees.

According to its CEO, Kirill Bigai, who believes in AI-enhanced learning, proceeds from the $150 million Series D round will help the startup hire more AI talent across its four offices — now located in Barcelona, London, New York, and Kyiv.

Waymo has nearly finalized a new $16 billion funding round that will value the robotaxi company at $110 billion, according to the Financial Times.

More than three-fourths of that funding will reportedly come from a source close to home — Alphabet, where Waymo is a subsidiary. (The company was incubated as part of Alphabet’s “moonshot factory” X.)

The FT reports that Waymo is bringing on new investors Dragoneer, Sequoia Capital, and DST Global, with existing backers Andreessen Horowitz and Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala also participating in the round.

When contacted by TechCrunch, a company spokesperson said in a statement, “While we don’t comment on private financial matters, our trajectory is clear: with over 20 million trips completed, we are focused on the safety-led operational excellence and technological leadership required to meet the vast demand for autonomous mobility.”

The company is expanding quickly, including with a recent launch in Miami. That growth has come with some challenges, including a number of robotaxis that stalled at traffic lights during a widespread San Francisco blackout.

Waymo has more than $350 million in annual recurring revenue, according to the FT. The company last raised a $5.6 billion Series C in 2024, valuing the company at $45 billion.

Kofi Ampadu, the partner at a16z who led the firm’s Talent x Opportunity (TxO) fund and program, has left the firm, according to an email he sent to staff that TechCrunch obtained. This comes months after the firm paused TxO and laid off most of its staff.

“During my time at the firm, I was deeply grateful for the opportunity and the trust to lead this work,” Ampadu wrote in the email, sent Friday afternoon, with the subject line “Closing My a16z Chapter.”

“Identifying out-of-network entrepreneurs and supporting them as they sharpened their ideas, raised capital, and grew into confident leaders was one of the most meaningful experiences of my career,” he wrote.

Ampadu led the program, which launched in 2020, for over four years until its pause last November, taking over for the initial leader, Nait Jones. Afterward, Ampadu seems to have worked at a16z’s latest accelerator, Speedrun.

Ampadu’s departure perhaps signals the end of the TxO chapter. The fund and program focused on supporting underserved founders by providing access to tech networks and investment capital through a donor-advised fund. Though some founders spoke highly of the program, others criticized the controversial donor-advised structure. The program also launched a grant program in 2024 to provide $50,000 to nonprofits that help diverse founders.

Its last cohort was in March 2025, and its indefinite pause came as many top tech names reframe, cut, or eliminate prior public commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We’ve reached out to a16z and Ampadu for comment.

His full note below:

I moved to the United States three months before my 11th birthday. One month later, I started 6th grade in a school more than 5,000 miles from my home, my friends, and everything familiar. Recently, my mom reminded me that my school required me to enroll as an English-as-a-Second-Language student. My memory immediately returned to how confused I felt. Even at 10 years old, I knew it made no sense that a kid from Ghana, an English-speaking country, was being asked to learn a language he already spoke fluently.

This was a systems requirement, a blanketed assumption about what students from certain places could or could not do. That same type of systemic assumption is what we set out to challenge through the Talent x Opportunity Initiative. The venture ecosystem often relies on proxies such as schools, networks, and prior credentials, which can obscure exceptional founders who do not follow the most common paths. TxO invested in and supported these overlooked founders to bridge the gap between talent and opportunity.

During my time at the firm, I was deeply grateful for the opportunity and the trust to lead this work. Identifying out-of-network entrepreneurs and supporting them as they sharpened their ideas, raised capital, and grew into confident leaders was one of the most meaningful experiences of my career.

As I move on to my next chapter, I leave with pride in what we built and gratitude for everyone who helped shape it. Thank you for the trust, the collaboration, and the belief in what is possible. There is more work to do and I am excited to keep building.