# Venture Capital, Autonomous Driving, and Solar Thermal Propulsion

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-04-10

## Transcript

this is techrunch amaton beat at aluskbat and eltn indian logistic center an extra familion bonon an born to amhld iglusen is gar de ldist hey bin vosters to test to manum ukostrom richt vasper wen kanst then youer in ukostrom de beelina stadtwererben test to mean wigen meinsam for unsrstattun then the balina stadtwerke invest in directia for art and an zuubrsthtrom for zorgon zbj bil enzola and lagen ofen dehan unsrastadt on the infila vital grun in theki proector bina stadtwerke good for d good for bin the founder of portal space systems helped build spacex's most powerful rocket engine now he's building a fighter jet for orbit i'm imron shake and your friday daily crunch starts right now collide capital founded by brian hollands and aaron samuels announced thursday the close of a ninety five million dollar fund two now the firm founded in twenty twenty one backs early stage companies in fintech supply chain and the future of work it's backed seventy five companies to date after closing its inaugural sixty six million dollar fund one all the way back in twenty twenty two hollands said it took them around thirteen months to raise this latest fund which they hope to deploy over the next three and a half years now the landscape for many emerging fund managers is well tough but the collide capital team comes with a track record and strong pedigree you see hollands spent a decade at goldman lightspeed and slow while samuels worked at bane lightspeed and co founded afrech one of the largest tech conferences in the world limited partners in fund two include the university of california endowment which anchored their last fund accolade partners fairview capital goldman sachs and good old jp morgan the average check size well that's going to be between one million and three million dollars and the team is hoping to back at least thirty companies having already cut checks to five other companies in the firm's portfolio include kalina health and helios count two alphabet owned businesses are teaming up to find potholes and share them with the cities they're in on thursday waymo and waze announced a data sharing pilot program that'll funnel pothole data collected by robotaxis to a free waze platform designed for cities you see any city or state where waymo operates will be able to access that data as the program expands waymo is already operating commercially in eleven cities and it's testing in well even more for now the pilot will focus on five initial markets austin atlanta los angeles phoenix and the san francisco bay area where waymo says it has already identified about five hundred of those rim wrecking suckers the partnership is expected to expand to more cities over time now cities won't be the only recipients of that data no no no anyone with a waze app in the cities where waymo operates will also have access to that data and by the way help verify those pothole locations are actually there now if you're already a wazer you know you already have the ability to report potholes to the app the pilot program aims to augment and expand that reporting and make it readily available to cities get that fresh asphalt chernen boys jeff thornberurg now see he helped turn a government research project into spacex's most powerful rocket engine what's he up to now well he's trying to do the same thing at his startup portal space systems which is taking an idea set aside by n nasa and turning it into high powered propulsion for the next generation of spacecraft portal founded way back in tw thousand and twenty one announced a fifty million dollar series a funding round thursday that values the company at two hundred fifty million dollars the round was led by geodesic capital and machxtyii alongside booze allen ventures ark invest alicorp and fuse you see the company is developing a technology called solar thermal propulsion today's standard satellite engines either burn chemical fuel or convert the sun's energy to electricity using that to power efficient but low powered thrusters while portal's engines would instead concentrate the heat of the sun using that to heat the propellant and move the spacecraft along at high speed the technology has been the subject of investigation in government research labs since the nineteen sixxties most recently as a concept for sending a probe into interstellar space but has yet to make it into orbit thornberurg along with his co founders plans to change the that in the next two years and folks that's your daily crunch today's stories were reported by tim fernholz dominic madori davis and more awesome techrunch journalists have a great day folks we'll see you tomorrow same tech time same crunch channel and until then find us at techrunch com every sunday we cover the week's tech news on this week in tech hi this is leah laporte inviting you to join us for this sunday's episode with ian thompson abraar alhidi and patrick peja we talk about outlook crashing in space openai spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a podcast and the return or maybe not of zombo com join us every week for this week in tech you'll find it at twit tv and wherever you get your podcasts