🔭Rare Earths, Rare Discoveries

👋 Welcome! Today we’re where record-breaking black holes meet a modern minerals rush—and the race for discovery stretches from the depths of space to the core beneath our feet. The journey starts here… will you come?

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Black Hole May Break Records – Astronomers studying the “Cosmic Horseshoe” galaxy say it could host a black hole 36 billion times the Sun’s mass—10,000× heavier than the Milky Way’s. Observations suggest it may be the most massive confirmed black hole yet, surpassing contenders like TON 618. If verified, the find would provide some of the clearest evidence yet that galaxy collisions can create ultra-massive black holes.

Students’ AI Browser Aims to Beat Chrome – Two University of Washington students on leave launched Meteor from Y Combinator’s summer batch, targeting Chrome’s dominance. Forked from Chromium, Meteor uses “agentic AI” to automate tasks from shopping to scheduling—and even homework—while adding proactive, voice-enabled features to redefine how we browse.

Instagram Tests ‘Picks’ for Shared Interests – Instagram is developing “Picks,” a feature letting users select favorite movies, books, games, and music to find overlaps with friends. Still an internal prototype, it aims to boost personal connections, though rollout plans remain uncertain.

Rolls-Royce Wants to Power AI’s Future – Rolls-Royce plans to supply small modular nuclear reactors to meet AI data centers’ soaring energy needs. CEO Tufan Erginbilgic says SMRs could fuel a trillion-dollar market by 2050, positioning the company as a global leader in AI infrastructure power.

T-Mobile Cuts IT Roles Amid Restructure – T-Mobile has laid off an undisclosed number of employees in its IT organization to “realign” operations for digital-first services. The Bellevue-based carrier, which employs about 70,000 people, says hundreds of other roles remain open and is offering support to affected staff. The move follows record quarterly earnings and the recent acquisition of UScellular’s wireless operations.

F5 Cuts 106 Washington Jobs in Product Reorg – Security and application delivery giant F5 is laying off 106 employees in Seattle and Liberty Lake as part of a global product organization restructure. Senior engineers and managers were impacted, with some reassigned to growth areas. The move aims to align resources with top priorities, despite quarterly revenue rising 12% to $780 million and stock up nearly 30% this year.

Anthropic Acqui-Hires Humanloop Team – Anthropic has hired Humanloop’s co-founders and much of its staff to strengthen enterprise AI offerings. The team’s expertise in prompt management, evaluation, and compliance will support Anthropic’s push for safer, large-scale AI deployments, intensifying competition with OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

Bullish Soars in $13.2B NYSE Debut – Crypto exchange Bullish surged over 150% in its New York Stock Exchange debut, closing with a $13.16 billion valuation. Targeting institutional clients, the Peter Thiel-backed firm raised $1.11 billion and plans to convert much of the proceeds into stablecoins, betting on long-term AI-powered digital asset growth.

U.S. Pledges $1B for Critical Minerals – The Trump administration will provide $1billion to boost America’s critical minerals and materials sectors, the Energy Department announced. Funding will support mining, processing, and manufacturing technology to strengthen domestic supply chains for rare earths and other key resources vital to energy, defense, and tech industries.

Global Stocks Hit Records on Fed Hopes – World equities hit new highs, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Nikkei all breaking records as traders price in a near-certain September Fed rate cut. Bond yields fell, the dollar weakened, and gold rose, while oil prices slipped.

Founder First Fund Targets Pacific Northwest Startups – Portland-based Founder First Fund is raising its first fund to back pre-seed and seed-stage companies in software, clean tech, deep tech, and AI/ML. Led by Josh Carter and Justin Vandehey, with former Twilio exec Bobby Napiltonia as venture partner, the firm will invest $100K–$500K per startup, prioritizing “ignored founders” across the Pacific Northwest.

Fountain Life Secures $18M for Expansion – Longevity startup Fountain Life, co-founded by Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis, raised $18 million in a Series B led by EOS Ventures. Known for high-end preventive health screening and optimization, the company plans to open new centers in Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami by 2026.

Welcome to the Critical Minerals Era, where metals once hidden or overlooked are now the hottest commodities on Earth. From lithium and cobalt fueling electric vehicles to neodymium and dysprosium magnetizing our clean-energy future, these materials are the cornerstones of progress—and strategic leverage.

In a bid to fuel high-tech innovation, the U.S. set aside nearly $1 billion to expand its capacity to extract and process the critical minerals powering electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and microelectronics. At the same time, Australia’s $135 million lifeline to its last lead smelter is now powering rare-earth refining—an investment acting as a geopolitical bulwark against China’s dominance.

Beneath the dust of America’s old gold rush towns, a new scramble is quietly taking shape. Abandoned mines and forgotten waste piles—once symbols of a bygone era—are being reimagined as vaults of rare earths, graphite, and lithium, the hidden ingredients of our digital lives. Yesterday’s discarded tailings are becoming today’s “tech gold.”

In Wyoming, this modern mineral hunt has reached a milestone. The Brook Mine’s newly revealed trove of rare earths and other strategic elements—critical for jet engines, semiconductors, and green infrastructure—is the first U.S. discovery of its kind in 70 years. It’s a find that could rewrite America’s role in the global technology race.

But the stakes are far greater than the market price of any single metal. Our appetite for devices, renewable energy, and defense technology is pushing mineral demand beyond existing reserves. Analysts warn that, at current consumption rates, materials like indium and cadmium could run dry within decades.

This is no longer just a question of profit margins—it’s about who controls the building blocks of the future. The scramble for mineral security now carries the same urgency, and potential recklessness, as the 19th-century gold rush. The difference? Today, we know better. We have the science, the foresight, and the public awareness to make this race one we can win without repeating the environmental and social wreckage of the past. The question is whether we will choose to.

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100 million

black holes could be scattered across the Milky Way—stellar-mass remnants of dead stars, invisible until their immense gravity betrays their presence.