Ash Ravikumar

Science. Coffee. Food.
Founder, ttOS
Past: CERN. Uni TTO ( 2X USA; 3X Australia). Honeywell

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

Our startup program is live.
https://t.co/eoplzurReF
Design principles:
KPI/Measurable = ⏲️time
- Time to access technology ( free prototypes)
- Time to get agreement ( simple express agreement)
- Time to get help to grow (investment, industry experts)

[CERN Venture Connect @CernVenture]

🚀 Introducing CERN Venture Connect (CVC) for deep tech Startups! 🌟

CVC aims to connect cutting-edge tech from CERN + ambitious founders + investors/incubators.

Apply now https://t.co/sE7QHTtVLY

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

Happy birthday Bob. I am glad to have the "chance to have the listened to lyrics the way they were intended to be heard"

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

Today we wish Bob Dylan a happy 85th birthday.

Listen to this excerpt from Dylan's Nobel Prize lecture where he reflects on the literary influences that shaped his songwriting. Classic works like 'Moby-Dick', 'All Quiet on the Western Front', and 'The Odyssey' informed his understanding of storytelling and human nature.

Hear the full lecture: https://t.co/cFBj6dwoff

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

LFG

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

I thought this was parody. WHAT!!! 😯
https://t.co/oWR1XOkeFj

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

So much to unpack. Fair warning - you will read it a few times. My ADHD made me read way more than I should have about Guinea worms. Going to have nightmares tonight.

[Anastasia Gamick @AGamick]

We should fund and build more organizations that are meant to solve problems - instead of working on them.

New essay.

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

@wolfejosh Love @Bellroy Been using their products for last 10+ years. Love their carry nerding here -https://t.co/uwqe7TgohK
Legit legends

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

@bznotes @generalcatalyst @htaneja @redglassvc saalgirah mubarak

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

@bznotes Road named after Abdus Salam inside CERN.

[EU–INC @euinc_petition]

This week the upcoming proposal on "EU Inc." by the European Commission was leaked. We looked into the details.

It contains a lot of improvements but yet fails on the actual main goal: Creating one true standard across Europe that creates legal certainty for our startups.

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

@ESPNcricinfo Horrible sportsmanship

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

One of the best things I read. And the take away is play poker :)
Jokes aside - Current moonshots/ Big if true thesis - Autonomous Labs and protein/molecular manufacturing. I really am massive fans of both. if true, they will revolutionize.
Timelines - best case a decade. Super optimistic 5 years.
In the meantime - build with traditional manufacturing. Don't buy expensive equipment to rebuild a lab. Use contract services to test and prove the material works.

[Gaurab Chakrabarti @Gaurab]

Our first reactor? @TungstenSeanide and I built it from Home Depot parts in three weeks. Rented a lab behind Dallas Love Field, had to rip out the ceiling panels to fit it. That machine started a multibillion-dollar company. People keep trying to throw it away. It still works.

A year earlier I was 26, doing my MD/PhD, studying how pancreatic cancer hides from the immune system using chemistry. The mechanism? Cancer cells were producing hydrogen peroxide to blind immune cells. But the enzyme doing it? It was more efficient than anything in industrial chemistry.

Cancer was outperforming a $6 trillion industry.

A few months later, I was at a poker game in med school. Got seated next to Sean, an MIT chemical engineering PhD. He was studying hydrogen peroxide production at massive industrial scales. I told him his approach was techno-economically insane. Traditional chemical engineering: heat, pressure, heterogeneous catalysis. The whole industry operates at 20% yield and considers that acceptable. I'd just watched cancer cells hit 90%+. I was a cancer biologist. He was a chemical engineer.

What if we married our two worlds?

Six months later we pitched enzyme-based chemical production at MIT's 100K. We lost, taking second place for $10,000. I thought: "Either this works or I go be a doctor." So we drove Sean's Subaru to Home Depot and bought the biggest PVC pipe that we could find. They cut it so it would fit in the trunk. Three weeks later we had a leaking prototype, held together with zip ties, producing chemicals at 4x the industry average yield.

That prototype made us the peroxide kings of Dallas.

Two float spa owners saw our MIT pitch and shared it in their Facebook group. Suddenly we were supplying an entire niche we didn't know existed. We spent the next months driving around Houston, hand-delivering product. Made $10,000 a month from that PVC reactor. We had profitably miniaturized the chemicals industry. Same thing Nucor did for steel: decentralized production. That was 2016.

Today:

- Bioforges in Houston, Texas
- Shipped 150M lbs of chemicals last year
- DoD contracts for critical chemical precursors
- Shipping container reactors deploying internationally
- DOE Loan Programs Office funding (same program that backed Tesla)
- Almost $1 billion raised from Founders Fund, Blackrock, Temasek, GIC, Baillie Gifford

People have no idea how huge the chemical industry is.

One of our customers: An 80-person water treatment company in rural America, quietly doing $250M annual revenue, with $150M spent just on chemicals. And there are thousands more like them. This is why it's a $6T market. And the supply chains are fragile. America has zero domestic TNT production until 2028. We import dozens of critical chemicals needed for semiconductor manufacturing. COVID and tariffs made it obvious: We don't make the chemicals we need to make the things we need.

Much is learned in the making of things.

You can read all the papers, draft business plans, theorize. But you don't know if it works until you're tearing out ceiling panels to fit a reactor and hand-delivering product to float spas at 6 AM. The gap between theoretically possible and actually manufacturable is where companies live or die. I keep finding that the hardest problems in one industry have already been solved in another, or by nature. Cancer biology solved industrial chemistry for us. Nucor proved the business model.

Materials science is what unlocks Kardashev.

Energy abundance needs materials breakthroughs. Defense needs domestic supply chains. AI scaling needs physical infrastructure. Physical bottlenecks determine whether we can actually build the future we're betting on. It all comes back to atoms. Here I share what I learn: the cross-industry connections, the weird market dynamics, the supply chain vulnerabilities nobody's talking about, and the (sometimes) boring technology that makes it happen.

If you're building in the world of atoms, I want to hear from you.

You can just do things.

[OpenAI @OpenAI]

GPT-5.2 derived a new result in theoretical physics.

We’re releasing the result in a preprint with researchers from @the_IAS, @VanderbiltU, @Cambridge_Uni, and @Harvard. It shows that a gluon interaction many physicists expected would not occur can arise under specific conditions.

https://t.co/EAZhKWacsG

[Andreas Klinger 🦾 @andreasklinger]

A startup in Wales is manufacturing diamonds for semiconductors in space. Yep… for real. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🔥🇪🇺

To repeat this and to make this clear: @Space_Forge is  literally building forges in space.

And if their vision works – and trust me this is not hyperbole – this will literally kickstart a whole new industry for humanity: Manufacturing in Space! 🧑‍🚀

Their mission? Grow ultra-pure crystals in orbit. Each worth a fortune.

Those crystals the foundation for chips of countless future technologies. Chips that power everything from 5G networks, to EVs, to future quantum systems.

Ok what the hell: Why satellites? The problem: On Earth, gravity frequently ruins the crystals while growing. Eg convection introduces tiny defects into every crystal we grow.

In orbit, with less effective gravity, those defects disappear.

The result: dramatically more efficient, more powerful and better functioning semiconductors.

Launching an actual satellite factory sounds completely insane, but exactly the kind of level of ambition we need here in Europe. 🔥

So naturally, I flew to Wales to find out how it works.
We were the first to tour their new facility – and you are the first to see it!

In the video we will be touring their clean rooms, see crystals grown, stand in their mission control, and learn how the two founders started this company after three pints in a pub.

I am not overhyping this when i say: Space Forge is literally the spearhead of a whole new industry for humanity…

This is the kind of level of WTH-ness we need here in Europe. 🙏❤️

Shoutout and thanks to Joshua, their founder, and his team for having us around!

Full video on our Youtube and in the replies. Appreciate your like & RT🙏

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

@andreasklinger spoke to some friends inside CERN about the channel and they are ready when you are

[Andreas Klinger 🦾 @andreasklinger]

🇪🇺 Europe we neee to talk:

If you wonder why you dont know about more epic european startups - because they are all there.

Mentality.

Americans present the future. Europeans barely showcase at all.

On my youtube we try to showcase epic stuff behind the scene.
We reach out to companies building stuff you wouldnt believe - genuinely potentially generation definining stuff.

You won’t hear about them. Or only years later. Why? Mindset.

Those are all actual responses (paraphrased)

While small and PR is founderled:

- “still stealth…” (2years in)
- “we havent finalized our PR strategy yet”
- “would it be ok to film in 15months once we gear up for the next round”
- “we arent ready yet for too much publicity” (wtf does this even mean)
- “yes we do <insane stuff> in <wtf future tech> but can you not present it too hyperbole. We still dont know if <unrelated minor thing> will lead to <whatever>”

Once they raised money and got a PR team:
- “sorry we cant really facilitate press right now for this <epic moment in human history>” (still wtf for me)
- “sorry the channel is too small. We can only do major news stations.” (Which nobody watches anymore)
- “we are doing a demo for investors on this day for 1h with 80 other people… whatabout we do the shoot then” (and not 1h before when not 100 people run through the shot)
- “yes we are happy to do a show&tell but the new facility isnt really done yet and the old one not impressive enough so we cant show anything”
- “yes we are happy to do the shoot. But we decided we cant shown<the thing> nor <the facility> nor talk about details because we want a big PR push in 8months”

Context: I am doing a youtube channel where we showcase the best European frontier tech startups. Get them to brag about insane stuff they do. Fix self and external image. And trust me its hard work.

We can only shoot half the stuff we want. And its super sad bc the companies are insane. And it’s *never* a good reason why they chicken out. All of the responses above are real cases.

Meanwhile the US:
“Yo we rented a warehouse in a toxic zone next to an airport… bought a german machine and put a giant ass US flag up… let me now go on 60 shows and talk about how we reinvented the future of ABCD”

Anyhow if you want to see my windmill fighting subscribe link in the reply 🇪🇺😬🇪🇺

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

Just pure gold. Andreas messed with me with his youtube list a long time ago - learned a lot.
Now this is just pure gold. Components are so freaking cheap. I remember I bought my first 6 axis gyro for $150. Its now $1.24

[Andreas Klinger 🦾 @andreasklinger]

🦾🔥 2026 will be the year of robotics.
And you should start a robotic company right now!

Let me explain you why and show you the opportunities in the video – but here is an outline:

We're in an Will Smith spaghetti moment. Remember how AI-generated video looked horrific two years ago? That's where robotics is right now.

Computer vision is solved. VLAs (vision language action models) are starting to work. The reliability problem is being cracked as we speak.

And unlike software, where you're competing against 15,000 marketing AI startups, humanoids has maybe 200 companies worldwide. Warehousing, the most crowded robotics vertical, has 700. Plus what are you going to do? Build a SaaS that claude can one-shot?

The macro tailwinds are also obvious: Dark factories. Self-driving everything. Drones dominating warfare. China pushing automation hard. The West needing to reindustrialize with an aging workforce.

But the real unlock is that small teams can now move incredibly fast. In the video we show robots built by one person, that is a year later already shown at CES, and raised couple million euros.

Components costs are also dropping. Plus production suppliers actually want to work with startups now.

In the video we are also going into opportunities.

One mental model is simple: robotics is the next SaaS.
Look at any industry, find one specific task, and build a robot that can do it better, faster, or around the clock.

But we go through multiple mental models more in the video

I uploaded the full video right here on X.

But if you got a second, i'd appreciate a share, like, subscribe on youtube (link below!) ⬇️

[Andreas Klinger 🦾 @andreasklinger]

🦾🔥 2026 will be the year of robotics.
And you should start a robotic company right now!

Let me explain you why and show you the opportunities in the video – but here is an outline:

We're in an Will Smith spaghetti moment. Remember how AI-generated video looked horrific two years ago? That's where robotics is right now.

Computer vision is solved. VLAs (vision language action models) are starting to work. The reliability problem is being cracked as we speak.

And unlike software, where you're competing against 15,000 marketing AI startups, humanoids has maybe 200 companies worldwide. Warehousing, the most crowded robotics vertical, has 700. Plus what are you going to do? Build a SaaS that claude can one-shot?

The macro tailwinds are also obvious: Dark factories. Self-driving everything. Drones dominating warfare. China pushing automation hard. The West needing to reindustrialize with an aging workforce.

But the real unlock is that small teams can now move incredibly fast. In the video we show robots built by one person, that is a year later already shown at CES, and raised couple million euros.

Components costs are also dropping. Plus production suppliers actually want to work with startups now.

In the video we are also going into opportunities.

One mental model is simple: robotics is the next SaaS.
Look at any industry, find one specific task, and build a robot that can do it better, faster, or around the clock.

But we go through multiple mental models more in the video

I uploaded the full video right here on X.

But if you got a second, i'd appreciate a share, like, subscribe on youtube (link below!) ⬇️

[Boring_Business @BoringBiz_]

This was an eye opener from Jensen Huang

When asked whether he would rather relive his 20s or be 20 years old today, this is what he had to say:

"I thought our 20s were happier than these 20s. I think everyone deserves some time to be oblivious, and not wear all of the world's problems on their shoulders on Day 1

We are raising a generation that is very cynical and too informed

They are cynical, not because they are inherently cynical. They are cynical because they see so much stuff. It is too much stuff

You have to build up some internal reserve of optimism. You have to build up some reserve of goodness."

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

Compassion. Dignity.
Citizen or not; Still Human.
Heart breaking on what is happening in a country that that stood for those values.

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

If you work in:

• tech transfer
• research commercialization
• deep tech
• innovation policy

I’d genuinely value your perspective.

And if you think I’ve missed something —or gotten something wrong - I would love to chat. DMs welcome.

Full essay - https://t.co/qVBndRcNqI

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

“Commercialization is an area where everyone has an opinion — or a complaint.” @KumarAGarg
🎯

I’m building ttOS — a Technology Transfer Operating System.

The current system is prone to people failure. To reduce people failure, you need a system that prevents it by design —
through transparency and shared visibility.

[Ash Ravikumar @onceageek]

Conclusion

MIT-scale impact, from basic automation alone:

📥 Disclosure intake
684 disclosures × 5 hours = 3,420 hours
→ with ttOS: 684 × 30 minutes = 342 hours
→ ~90% time saving

📊 Evaluation
684 disclosures × 20 hours = 13,680 hours
→ with ttOS: 684 × 1 hour = 684 hours
→ ~95% time saving

That’s not marginal optimization.
That’s structural capacity unlocked.