Ray Blanco:

Mirrors in Space? The FCC Just Approved a Sun-Reflecting Satellite

A space tech company called Reflect Orbital wants to bring sunlight to the dark side of Earth courtesy of satellites equipped with giant mirrors. The FCC approved a single satellite as a test demonstration on Thursday.

The approval green-lights Reflect Orbital to send its Eärendil-1 satellite into orbit. It's a relatively small spacecraft, weighing 313 pounds. Housed in its body is a thin-film square mirror measuring about 60 feet by 60 feet. The satellite is scheduled to launch into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 later in 2026.

Eärendil-1 promises to reflect sunlight onto Earth in a three-mile circle that can be aimed basically anywhere that doesn't have sunlight. The company has a web tool that shows you what this would look like, and it's wide enough to light up entire neighborhoods, making it appear like daytime when it's actually night.

Ostensibly, this would be used to power solar panels at night, thus bypassing their one big drawback: They can collect power only during the day.

Reflect Orbital wants to deploy 50,000 of these satellites if the tech demonstration proves successful. That would put 16.2 million square meters of mirrors in low Earth orbit to light up large portions of the Earth on demand.

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Chris Campbell:

OpenAI’s First Hardware Device Is Reportedly a Screenless Speaker That Can Move

OpenAI’s first foray into hardware devices is reported to be a mobile smart speaker with integrated AI capabilities that can sync with ChatGPT and provide other home AI services.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the device – which is still currently under development – is designed to be screen-free and is being pitched internally as a “humanlike AI companion that lives in the home.”

OpenAI has long claimed that it wants to launch a hardware product – with some rumors being that it wants to launch its own phone, a move that would put it in competition with Apple.

OpenAI’s newly surfaced device sounds like something of a departure from traditional smart speakers – as sources described the device to Bloomberg as having a “personality” and being able to proactively learn about its owner over time, providing more personalized service. The machine would have access to a user’s digital life, drawing off things like emails, sources said. 

The device is also described as involving “mechanical elements that can move on their own” and the Bloomberg report includes the detail that the device is designed to “feel like a companion and become a physical manifestation of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.”

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Davis Wilson:

DeepSeek Eyes $74B Valuation With IPO Plans, Lifting Chinese AI Sector

The Hangzhou-headquartered artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek is gearing up to secure additional investment and pursue a listing on China’s domestic equity market.

The company is pursuing a capital injection of up to 50 billion yuan during this latest financing round, targeting a corporate valuation in the neighborhood of 500 billion yuan – equivalent to approximately $74 billion. This initiative arrives merely weeks following its $7.4 billion fundraising effort completed in June, which assigned the company a 450 billion yuan ($66 billion) valuation.

Additionally, DeepSeek has initiated preliminary conversations regarding a prospective initial public offering on Shanghai’s STAR Market, the technology-focused exchange modeled after Nasdaq. Company leadership has established an internal objective to submit IPO documentation before the year concludes, although these preparations remain in preliminary phases.

The IPO announcement triggered upward momentum across Chinese artificial intelligence equities on Wednesday. MiniMax Group experienced a jump of almost 15%, while Knowledge Atlas Tech climbed approximately 9%. These companies belong to China’s “AI Tigers” cohort, a collection of startups regarded as frontrunners in the nation’s AI advancement initiative.

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