Nebular

investing in things. @finnmurphy12

[Conor Deegan @conordeegan]

Super proud of the team on this one. Having an open-source, MIT-licensed reference implementation that's been audited (twice) is rare, and as a security company that's the bar I think we should hold ourselves to.

As more and more AI code and AI applications get shipped, security is degrading at a rapid rate. High quality reference implementations to build on top of are becoming a security necessity.

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

Show Notes: https://t.co/hwYUlTvAkY
Transcript: https://t.co/TCvWz7ptlb
Spotify: https://t.co/yoD4CGwmBm

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

90% of clinical trials fail and it’s not for a lack of trying. We spend over a quarter trillion a year to solve the ailments that trouble you and your loved ones. But we haven’t figured out how to convert that spend into an improving hit rate in finding the drugs that change lives.
So today a 28 year old with eczema has two choices: a steroid cream that wrecks her skin with long-term use, or a $37,000/year injection that only has a 50/50 chance of success.

@viswacolluru looked at those numbers and figured there must be a better approach.

The most successful drugs in history have come from nature. Aspirin, taken by 1 in 3 Americans daily, is from willow bark. Metformin, used by 500 million diabetics, is from a plant, Goat's Rue. Quinine from tree bark was first added to tonic water to mitigate malaria in pasty Europeans in the tropics. Half of all FDA-approved drugs are sourced from the natural world.

So Viswa created Enveda to unlock the 99% of nature's chemistry that we haven’t been able to read until very recently, and went from seed to unicorn in 5 years doing it.

It was really special to sit down with both Viswa and @pablolubroth at @lifeschemistry’s Boulder HQ for the Season 1 finale of Forecast 2050 to talk about the future of medicine.

We discuss:
- Why capital markets have been bad for patients.
- Why insisting on understanding how drugs work in the body is actually slowing down drug discovery.
- Why aging is not inevitable, and how to stop your body from killing you.
- Why mental health will be the defining medical crisis of the next 25 years as the mindsugar of TikTok AI slop only gets more corrosive.

https://t.co/Qg0dSWrWF0

Show Notes & Transcript in the comments👇

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

👀

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

The biggest issue facing young adults today?

Housing & lack of community.

The picket fences and idealistic social towns of the boomers are but a fever dream of the past. Having a garden AND room for 2.4 kids? You best hope you joined Anthropic in 2023.

This is a failure of a half century of bungled policy holding back the original ultimate human technology. Cities.

@devonzuegel thinks there is no reason the next great American city can’t be oriented to both families and founders, and she's hard at work 90 minutes north of SF proving it.

For Episode 9 of Forecast 2050, I sat down with Devon of @esmeralda_inst to talk about harnessing urban planning as a powerful technological force for good, age-segregation in America and the impending population crisis, and why we need more incredible cities popping up across the country over the next 25 years.

We discuss:
- The American college system drives age-segregation and breaks up families.
- How self-driving cars will transform cities by 2050.
- The widening gulf between the physical and the digital, as it becomes increasingly harder to build in the real world and easier to do things in the digital one.
- Why we need an alternative to the suburbs.
- Chautauqua, the town once home to Thomas Edison’s family, as the inspiration behind the family-oriented builder community Devon is building with Esmeralda.

https://t.co/6XlLQT5q2Q

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

The UK in 2050. If you listen to the SF bubble you'd think it's well on the way to being a failed state.

But things are cooking and Britannia won't go gentle into the night. @matthewclifford & @soundboy think there is no branch of the tech tree from which the UK could not plausibly produce the next trillion-dollar company.

On this episode of Forecast 2050 Matt, the cofounder of @join_ef and Ian, co-founder of @pluralplatform we talk about what Britain's resurgence could look like over the next 25 years.

- Europe's risk aversion is a bigger threat than American superiority.
- Career politicians won’t survive in the new multipolar world.
- Why the pro-growth movement is losing the culture war — and how to win it back.
- How Britain could win the AI Age by 2050.

https://t.co/tFtAAUB5ST

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

YouTube: https://t.co/R5psALGGka
Stardust Publication #1 on Safety: https://t.co/PbHJ4DiHXv
Stardust Publication #2 on Ethics: https://t.co/s00RXmEpeS
Show Notes: https://t.co/2suxuy10EE
Transcript: https://t.co/imsoyJV4yk
Spotify: https://t.co/3M97W44iKX
Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/dK1gjYOqrK

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

Yanai Yedvab has a plan to dim the sun to save our world. Will we need to use it?

Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and global temperature trends moving in one direction. The challenge of decarbonisation? It takes time and it costs money.

Can we buy that time to build the political will to pull it off by deploying technology to cool things in the interim?

After working as a nuclear physicist for the Israeli government for nearly three decades, Yanai co-founded Stardust, a company working on solar reflective technology to give us the decades we need to make this transition.

For Episode 7 of the Forecast 2050, I sat down with Yanai on the occasion of Stardust’s recent publication of two groundbreaking papers to talk about some inconvenient truths, and Yanai’s radical optimism for the next 25 years in spite of them.

We discuss:
- Why the energy transition will take 50-70 years — and why we can't afford to wait.
- How dispersing reflective particles in the upper atmosphere can stabilize global temperatures.
- What the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo taught us about solar geoengineering.
- The Montreal Protocol as a masterclass in planetary-scale environmental diplomacy.
- How Stardust's clinical trials approach makes geoengineering safe.
- How the data Stardust collects could unlock quantum leaps in weather prediction
- Why unlimited ambition — not incrementalism — is what will actually save the world

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:10 From Nuclear Physics to The Climate Crisis
04:01 The Failure of Climate Activism
05:28 How Solar Reflective Technology Works
09:12 The 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo
12:01 The Montreal Protocol and How to Negotiate in a World at War
16:03 Buying Time: Weaning off Fossil Fuels Will Take 50-70 Years
18:55 Data Centers, Fission, and Fusion
19:59 Preparing for Emergencies the Israeli Way
23:40 Radical Transparency: The Only Way To Gain Trust
27:05 Persuading the Policymakers
33:05 Unlimited Ambition is What Will Save the World
35:10 Stardust Will Unlock Quantum Leaps in Weather Prediction
36:54 Stardust in 2050
40:20 Why Stardust Has to Be a Private Company
45:32 Optimism for the Future is Rational

Show Notes, Transcript, and Links to the Stardust Papers in the comments👇

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

YouTube: https://t.co/U6eqPt9mos
Show Notes: https://t.co/PIJWiatvch
Transcript: https://t.co/SiDAKlqsNz
Spotify: https://t.co/ae5gK1GYkn
Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/Vati0nn7Fl

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

@bryan_johnson might actually be on the most righteous mission of them all. The only way to save the current social contract & prevent runaway healthcare spending is to extend healthy lifespan far beyond where it sits today. So that the 80 year olds of tomorrow are like the 40 year olds of today.

@CJHandmer thinks that human civilization has barely gotten started and that between solving aging and speeding to the stars we have a LOT to look forward to.

For Episode 6 of the Forecast Series, I sat down with Casey at the @TerraformIndies HQ to talk about the technologies that will completely reshape society by 2050.

We discuss:

- China's dominance in solar deployment should be a wake-up call for the West.
- Antimatter is the best rocket fuel candidate to make humans multi-planetary and interstellar.
- Longevity science is the only solution to plummeting birthrates across the planet.
- The melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is way more dangerous than previously anticipated.
- World governments are lying to us about their population sizes.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:53 The Solar Revolution
03:43 AI is a Supersonic Tsunami
06:00 Civilization Is Just Getting Started
08:46 Intelligent Life in the Universe
12:03 The $40 Trillion Ticket to Space: Antimatter
20:57 Space Exploration by 2050
22:09 Mitigating The Climate Catastrophe
27:53 Terraforming Mars vs Terraforming Venus
35:00 Solving the Birthrate Crisis: Humans Will Become Like The Elves in LOTR and Live Indefinitely
42:07 China Is Losing Sleep Over Their Problems As Much as We Are
44:46 Governments Are Lying About Their Population Sizes
46:11 The 2050 Moonshots That Will Save The World
52:45 Easter Egg :)

Extended Show Notes & Transcript in the comments👇

[Nebular @Nebularvc]

@PhilipJohnston @Starcloud_ @nvidia Let’s goooooo Starcloud!!

[Philip Johnston @PhilipJohnston]

I am super excited to share that @Starcloud_ has raised a $170M Series A at a $1.1bn valuation to fuel our development of data centers in space 🚀

The round comes after the successful deployment of our first satellite, Starcould-1, a few months ago, which had the first @NVIDIA H100 on board and was the first to train an LLM in space. The funds will be used to develop our third satellite, which aims to be cost-competitive with Earth-based data centers in terms of AI inference cost.

The round was led by @Benchmark and @EQT Ventures, and we are excited to welcome Benchmark GP, @Chetanp Puttagunta, to our board. We are also excited to welcome other new investors, including the world's largest infrastructure fund, @Macquarie Capital, @SevenSevenSix 7️⃣7️⃣6️⃣, Manhattan West, Adjacent, Carya, GSBackers, and Harpoon.

We are very grateful for the continued support of existing investors, including @NFX, @NebularVC, @YCombinator, @FUSE_VC, @Soma_Capital, 3Capital Partners, Wyld VC, Tiny VC, and Taurus Ventures.

Onwards!

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

NATO? Gone. The UN? Useless. Taiwan? Coercively unified with China.

The future of global relations is being shaped before our eyes today in Iran.

But are we too focused on the now to see the bigger picture?

I sat down with the former UK Foreign Secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, to talk about the next 25 years of conflict and diplomacy, and how to navigate a world where nobody cares about the old rules anymore.

His stark warnings for the years ahead:
The death of soft power
Taiwan being much more important than Iran for Western security
The potential NATO collapse by 2050
A 2050 world without America at the helm
Sir Malcolm’s escapades with Gorbachev and the CCP

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:05 Why Politicians Can’t Predict the Future
03:37 The Power of Double Agents in Spycraft
04:38 Social Media Diplomacy Was Inevitable
12:46 Soft Power is Dead
16:25 The Cult of Youth in Global Leadership
18:54 The West Must Think Long-Term to Survive
27:43 Technological Innovation Will Hurt Old People
30:58 The Chinese Will Eat Their Rich
38:11 Meeting Gorbachev and His Philosopher Wife
44:32 There Are No Good Guys and Bad Guys
46:46 Ukraine will Freeze Up like Korea, Kashmir, and Cyprus
47:55 Taiwan is More Important than Iran
53:23 How Smaller Countries Operate without Pax Americana
55:09 “The Chinese and the Russians Cannot Believe Their Luck” - on NATO Collapse
59:59 America May Not Be the Main Character in the Future

Show Notes & Transcript in the comments👇

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

The genetic lottery is over, and yet no one is having kids.

In the latest Forecast 2050 episode, @noor_siddiqui_, Founder & CEO of @OrchidInc, is building and envisioning a world where embryo screening and artificial wombs could become the default way humans reproduce in 25 years.

We discuss:
- The genetics revolution happening right now
- Causes of plummeting birthrates
- The moonshot nobody wants to fund: artificial wombs
- Genetic enhancements to upgrade humanity
- What goes wrong when old people run the world, and how to fix it

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:50 Rolling the Dice No More: The Embryo Screening Revolution
05:27 Artificial Wombs Are the Tech Challenge of Our Time
07:47 Why Aren't We Having Kids?
17:03 The Broken Generational Contract
18:56 Nature Beats Out Nurture
21:45 AI & Genetic Technology Could Give Us Superhuman Powers
30:54 Noor’s Plan for 2050
37:10 What We Lose When Old People Run Everything

Extended Show Notes & Transcript in the comments👇

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

If you email your consciousness to Mars do you die or is the copy still you?

Will superintelligence gawk at us in human zoos or will they help uncover the meaning of life?

Why the timeline to quantum secure your crypto was yesterday.

Forecast 2050 - Episode II - Scott Aaronson

Tom McCarthy and I got to speak with Scott at the most recent Q2B Silicon Valley to talk about how the next 25 years of quantum computing, AI, and cryptography will play out.

We cover whether classical AI might eclipse quantum computing, how post-quantum cryptography will upend global security, and how superintelligence will factor into all of this.

We also debate whether a quantum teleporter is a suicide machine and discussed how advanced AIs would help us uncover the fundamental nature of reality.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
2:04 How AI & Quantum Computing Interact Today
10:36 Why Scott Thinks Classical Computing Might Outdate Quantum
18:24 We Must Prepare for the Post-Quantum World of 2050
27:43 Quantum Computing, Biology, and Consciousness
35:46 The Quantum Teleporter is a Suicide Machine
38:52 Superintelligence & The Ultimate Nature of Reality
45:00 The Battle Between Superintelligences

Thanks to Q2B for helping us coordinate filming at the conference!

Transcript & Show Notes in the comments👇

[Alex Pruden @apruden08]

1/ Superconducting systems currently dominate on cycle time and control maturity, but they rely on 2D nearest-neighbor layouts. That works well for surface codes, but it creates scaling challenges: wiring density, routing overhead, and large physical-to-logical qubit ratios. 🧵

[Nathan Benaich @nathanbenaich]

see you in paris next week for the @airstreet ai meetup!

ft. @cyrildiagne of @bfl_ml, edouard of @GoogleDeepMind and yours truly on @stateofai updates!

--> luma(dot)com/parisai

[Alex Pruden @apruden08]

Whether you believe quantum computing is 2 years away, or 20 years away, it represents the biggest *existential* technical risk to Bitcoin and other digital assets.

The prudent, conservative approach is to assume Q-Day is sooner rather than later, and to prepare accordingly.

[Nebular @Nebularvc]

@projecteleven 🔥

[Project Eleven @projecteleven]

Project Eleven Raises $20M to Prepare
Digital Asset Infrastructure for the Quantum Era

Project Eleven, the leader in post-quantum security and migration for digital assets, today announced a $20 million Series A funding round led by Castle Island Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Fin Capital, Variant, Quantonation, Nebular, Formation, Lattice Fund, Satstreet Ventures, Nascent Ventures, and Balaji Srinivasan.

The round comes as post-quantum cryptography becomes a planning priority for government and industry. Advances in quantum computing could eventually weaken elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), the public-key standard used by networks such as Bitcoin, prompting a staged transition across an ecosystem that secures more than $4 trillion in digital assets.

Project Eleven is building the tools to make complex, multi-year migrations practical for networks and institutions, including readiness assessments, migration test environments, and deployment sequencing.

“As quantum capabilities advance, the stakes couldn’t be higher. We can’t afford to ignore this existential risk posed to the digital asset ecosystem,” said Alex Pruden, CEO and Co-Founder of Project Eleven. “Trillions in value depend on these cryptographic assumptions. Networks like Bitcoin take years to upgrade because they’re governed cautiously by design. We’re focused on making the transition practical now, so the industry can migrate deliberately instead of improvising under pressure.”

“Useful quantum computing is the biggest and most complex threat public blockchains have ever faced,” said Nic Carter, General Partner at Castle Island Ventures. “Project Eleven is building the practical bridge from research to real-world deployment.”

Project Eleven is collaborating with the Solana Foundation and other leading protocols and Layer 1 ecosystems on post-quantum readiness planning and technical work.

The company raised a $6 million seed round in June 2025 led by Variant and Quantonation, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Nebular, and Formation. Project Eleven plans to unveil its next major product release in early 2026, adding capabilities for institutions, protocols, and end users looking to future-proof long-lived cryptographic systems.

🤝
@CastleIslandVC
@nic_carter
@cbventures
@Fin_Capital_VC
@variantfund
@Quantonation
@Nebularvc
@formation_vc
@lattice_fund
@Satstreet
@nascent
@balajis
🤝
@apruden08
@conordeegan
@graememoore
@Dr_DAO_
@nuggimane
🤝