Andrew Couillard

Investor @HarpoonVentures. Pirate @BlackFlagVC. First check for founders building critical tech. Navy EOD.

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: Elon Musk says it would "be an honor" to hire Jensen Huang.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Former Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly being floated as a potential replacement for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: Nvidia, $NVDA, is now working with an "outside firm" to find a new CEO to replace Jensen Huang, per Bloomberg.

The company is also reportedly weighing naming a temporary CEO while searching for a replacement.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Google DeepMind announces its Gemini agents have “mathematically verified” Signal's cryptographic protocol in just 4 weeks.

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: Nvidia $NVDA prepares to fire CEO Jensen Huang, WSJ reports.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: Nvidia stock, $NVDA, falls sharply on reports that Jensen Huang had another affair with a senior employee at the company.

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

@zerohedge The enrichment bill is the one I'd watch. 77% of the enrichment US reactors bought in 2025 came from overseas, 26% from Russia. General Matter (a Harpoon portfolio company) is working to change that in Paducah, Kentucky.

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

The n8n team just shipped Nod: an open-source agent that runs on your own computer, uses whatever model you pick, and asks before it sends, pays or deletes anything.

2.7M views overnight. Proud Harpoon backs @n8n_io https://t.co/IiUEgceLWv

[n8n.io @n8n_io]

Meet Nod, your own open-source personal agent from n8n Labs

Ask it to prep your calls, collect invoices or cancel a subscription

It runs on your computer with its own browser to get the job done across apps and websites, using the AI provider you choose👇

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

Merlin is going to fly a full casualty evacuation mission in Morocco with no remote pilot and no flight crew. Tasking, takeoff, an austere pickup site, the flight back, landing.

AFRICOM is funding the first phase. Good news to land on Veterans Day. Congrats @NotMattGeorge 🫡

[Merlin @MerlinAero]

Transporting a wounded noncombatant or service member to medical care is time-critical and logistically complex. @USAfricaCommand (AFRICOM) is seeking autonomous solutions that can accelerate access to a higher level of care while reducing the number of personnel exposed to risk.

Merlin has been awarded a $500,000 contract in the initial phase of AFRICOM’s Autonomous Casualty Evacuation (CASEVAC) Industry Technology Challenge. It will fund a demonstration of Merlin Pilot™ autonomously executing a CASEVAC mission in Morocco, planned for early U.S. government fiscal year 2027.

Find out how Merlin Pilot could bring onboard autonomy to CASEVAC missions, without relying on a remote ground station or flight crew. https://t.co/m1vqO6XybM

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

@ursamajortech Love this. Thank you to every vet on the Ursa Major team 🫡

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

@NotMattGeorge Big step, Matt. Design reviews to integration is where it gets real. Congrats to the whole Merlin team 🫡

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

@lhamtil @bybillstephens He's right to watch it. Kodiak already has 37 customer-owned driverless trucks hauling for Atlas in the Permian, and IKEA Supply is lined up as its first unsupervised long-haul customer, Dallas to Houston. (Harpoon is an investor.)

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

@TheDeadDistrict Good to see more capacity. We need a deeper SRM bench. Harpoon portfolio company Ursa Major in Colorado won $137M from the Navy in October for motors on two next-gen missile programs.

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

Aalo just hired the person who ran the NRC's advanced reactor division.

Mo Shams spent 17 years at the NRC, then led licensing for Natrium at TerraPower and worked Xe-100 licensing at X-energy. Licensing is the long pole in nuclear. Great get, @MattLoszak
https://t.co/b9JPwiAp8y

[Aalo Atomics @AaloAtomics]

We are proud to welcome Dr. Mo Shams to Aalo Atomics as Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs.

Mo is one of the people who rebuilt how America licenses advanced reactors, with 25 years of engineering and nuclear regulatory experience.

He previously served as Senior Director & Deputy of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs at TerraPower, where he led licensing activities for the Natrium and MCFR reactors. That work contributed to the NRC’s ahead-of-schedule issuance of a construction permit for the first commercial non-light-water reactor in the U.S. in more than 40 years.

At X-energy, his efforts advanced domestic and international licensing for the Xe-100 reactor, including the construction permit application at Seadrift and fast-follower licensing applications.

Prior to industry, Mo spent 17 years at the NRC, where he rose to Director of the Division of Advanced Reactors, Research & Test Reactors, and Medical Isotope Facilities. By helping lead the NRC’s advanced reactor program and modernizing its frameworks, he has directly supported America's advanced nuclear resurgence.

Mo also coached the teams that completed the Kairos Hermes construction permit reviews in less than half the standard schedule, led a first-of-a-kind collaboration with Canadian regulators that has become an international model for regulatory harmonization, and spearheaded the NRC’s efforts to enable efficient microreactor licensing.

Mo holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from Georgia Tech. At Aalo, he will lead regulatory strategy as we build on the criticality of our reactor at Idaho National Laboratory and bring the Aalo Pod to customers.

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

@firstadopter Permitting reform helps on the ground. Harpoon portfolio company Starcloud is working the other route: it already trained a model on an NVIDIA H100 in orbit, where there's no grid queue to wait in.

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

72 years after the C-130 first flew, Merlin is taking its C-130J autonomy work with @USSOCOM out of design reviews and into integration. $8.9M task order.

The goal is a lighter load on the crew. Proud Harpoon backs @NotMattGeorge and the team 🫡🇺🇸
https://t.co/INJvE2BRkk

[Merlin @MerlinAero]

Merlin has been awarded an $8.9 million task order to advance our C-130J autonomy program with @USSOCOM from design into integration.

Following the completion of PDR and CDR, this next phase includes system integration, ground test preparation, cybersecurity approval, and airworthiness acceptance, with human factors evaluations, failure mode testing, and simulated flight-test dry runs to verify system behavior and readiness ahead of flight demonstrations.

Read more in our press release. https://t.co/0bPtemupLQ

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Bipartisan Senate bill could fast-track AI data center construction across the U.S., with lawmakers reportedly considering a vote as early as next week.

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

BREAKING: Potential Anthropic IPO buyers now see a valuation as low as $1.1 trillion, per Bloomberg.

Ahead of formal IPO marketing next week, they’re discussing a range of $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion, with some going as low as $1.1 trillion, according to people familiar.

That’s down from $1.4 trillion to $1.5 trillion before Thursday, when the Nasdaq 100 plunged 6.4% and lost a record $2.3 trillion in value in a single day.

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

"If you give them your system and you give them an equivalent-sized system full of food and water and nicotine, which one do they take? From that very first exercise, we've had guys try to steal our stuff."

On the latest Pirates Only, @coolyardandrew sat down with @AdamWarmoth, founder and CEO of @chariotdefense, to talk about the missing power layer at the tactical edge.

Units are pushing drones, EW, sensors, and edge compute down to company and platoon level while leaving generators behind. Adam's Amphora hybridization kit takes power from generators, vehicles, solar, or the grid, stores it, and puts out clean AC and DC. Paired with vehicles and generators, they've seen 50 to 70 percent fuel savings. His product market fit test is simple: give soldiers your system and an equal-size case of food, water, and nicotine, and see which one they take.

We also dive in to:
• Why stakeholder support in defense multiplies instead of adds (and why one zero kills the program)
• The 12 month, $7.6M DIU contract to saturate a brigade with Amphora
• How soldiers buying Chinese battery banks at Home Depot became the real competition
• Adam's path from Kitty Hawk, Uber Elevate, and Archer into Anduril, then Chariot
• Why getting your own reps watching programs win or lose beats learning from a textbook

If you're building in defense, this episode is a can't miss.

Link to episode: https://t.co/wXxE5ooL64

[Andrew Couillard @coolyardandrew]

@CassidyAWaters @BlackFlagVC @AdamWarmoth 🎯🎯