At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, leaders from Ambrosia Energy and Bloom Energy discussed how the physical infrastructure supporting AI is becoming a critical area for innovation. They emphasized that as AI models and applications expand, the demand for power, cooling, and data center capacity grows, creating new business opportunities. The session focused on the challenges and emerging categories within AI infrastructure that could shape future market dynamics.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-10-08
Detroit-based startup Bloom has closed a $3.6 million seed round led by SNAK Venture Partners, with participation from Flyover Capital, Mana Ventures, and Detroit-area investors. Originally founded in 2023 to help mobility companies outsource manufacturing and logistics, Bloom pivoted into a marketplace model that uses AI agents to connect buyers with domestic suppliers, parts makers, and manufacturing services. CEO Justin Kosmides says the company has facilitated over 2,000 matches for more than 140 companies so far.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-10-07
Researchers at Saarland University's Big Data Analytics Group have published ExplainDB, a teaching DBMS written in Python paired with a set of Jupyter notebooks covering storage, indexing, and query processing. The materials accompany Prof. Jens Dittrich's Database Systems 2024/25 lecture series on YouTube and can be run directly in a browser via mybinder.org without installation.
github.com
· 2026-10-01
A Show HN submission introduces 'Doom or Bloom,' a web tool that asks users a series of questions to plot their views on AI's future along two axes: civilizational versus incremental change, and outcomes ranging from doom to bloom. The site also displays example results from simulated users and lets visitors explore how others' responses are plotted.
doom-or-bloom.com
· 2026-09-25
Oracle sent a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter, a Stargate data center campus in New Mexico, according to Bloomberg. The notice would let Oracle delay payments if the facility fails to meet its 2028 launch target, though the company says it isn't trying to exit as the site's main tenant. Both Oracle and Blue Owl Capital, whose unit received the notice, say the project's financial commitments remain unchanged and construction is on schedule.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-24
Australian PC builder Aftershock PC has launched the Cherry Bloom, a liquid-cooled gaming desktop featuring 70 handcrafted titanium-alloy cherry blossoms that mechanically unfurl as the system heats up, with no motors or electronics involved. The system, built in an APNX V2 case, includes an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, 64GB of DDR5 memory, a 1300W power supply and an RTX 5080 GPU, and sells for roughly $14,150 (about £10,650), excluding shipping.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-23
Aftershock, working with Zotac, has released the Cherry Bloom PC, a prebuilt gaming computer priced at roughly AU$19,995 (about $14,200). It pairs an RTX 5080, Ryzen 9800X3D, 64GB of DDR5-6000 RAM, a 2TB PCIe Gen4 SSD and a 1300W Platinum PSU with 70 handcrafted titanium-alloy cherry blossoms that open when the system heats up and close as it cools, all visible through a 270-degree case window.
techspot.com
· 2026-09-23
Rhizomatica, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit founded by Peter Bloom, has open-sourced HERMES, a digital shortwave radio system paired with its Mercury modem, to help connect remote and indigenous communities in places like Bangladesh, Brazil, and Ecuador. The system uses the ionosphere to bounce signals across 400 to 600 kilometers using just 20 watts of power, letting users send files such as photos, emails, and voice memos over high-frequency radio.
spectrum.ieee.org
· 2026-09-21
TurboKV is a newly released open-source embedded key-value database written in Rust, designed for asynchronous use with Tokio. It supports atomic write batches, ordered range and prefix scans, configurable durability levels, compression, and background compaction, and can be added to a project via Cargo.
github.com
· 2026-08-29
The Family Fund's invite-only Founderland event brings together roughly 1,000 founders, retail buyers and investors from the food, beverage, beauty and wellness sectors at Calamigos Ranch in Malibu. Past attendees include founders of Bloom, Happy Dad and Ghost alongside buyers from Sprouts, Target and Kroger, with the next edition scheduled for October 1. The gathering originated from a private annual summit The Family Fund had run since 2021 for its own investors and network before opening it up more broadly.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-08-27
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