Weekly Dose of Optimism #194

⚠️ Sponsorship

This issue is sponsored by Lightwork — a concierge in-home environmental health assessment service that tests air/water quality, light sources, mold, electromagnetic exposure, and household products, then produces a science-backed report plus remediation help. Packy gives a personal endorsement (says it identified issues in his own home: poor air quality, VOC-laden shower water). Treat the Lightwork content as paid placement; the editorial five items are not sponsored.

Why this is in the vault

Three of the five stories in this issue are directly load-bearing for active RDCO investing positions or personal-health tracking:

1. SpaceX S-1 dropped Wednesday May 20 — Packy confirms publicly and links the SEC filing. This is the explicit trigger condition the founder set when deferring the [[2026-05-18-elon-verse-v1]] paper-trade decision on the morning of 2026-05-22 ("until SpaceX IPO"). External corroboration: IPO target date June 12, 2026 at $1.75T valuation, ticker SPCX on Nasdaq, Goldman lead-left of 21 banks, ~$75B raise targeted, 30% of float earmarked for retail (3x mega-cap norm).
2. Retatrutide TRIUMPH-1 Phase 3 readout — 28.3% bodyweight loss at 80 weeks on the 12mg dose, 70.3 lbs average, bariatric-surgery-territory. No cardiac or liver signals. Directly relevant to the [[2026-05-21-lilly-glp1-longevity-thesis]] (LLY-longevity-v1) AND to the founder's personal MASLD-treatment tracking interest. Note: NDA expected late-2026 / early-2027; FDA approval window late-2027 to early-2028. A dedicated MASLD Phase 3 readout is expected later this year.
3. SendCutSend $110M at $1B — directly cites Austin Vernon's "Speed Can Reindustrialize America" essay (now filed at [[2026-05-22-austin-vernon-american-manufacturing-essay]]) as THE explanation of why SCS matters. Patrick Collison was Vernon's sole acknowledged feedback-giver and led the round alongside Sequoia (Andrew Reed) and Paradigm (Matt Huang). Validates the Missing Middle thesis in real time — bootstrapped 8 years to $200M revenue / 100% YoY growth / $275K rev-per-employee, now institutional money is in.

The other two (Colossal artificial-egg chick hatch, OpenAI GPT-5.5 Pro proving Erdős unit-distance conjecture wrong) are interesting-but-tangential — Colossal is a Not Boring Capital adjacent story (Neion Bio portfolio company gets a nod), the OpenAI Erdős result is a frontier-AI capabilities datapoint without an obvious RDCO investing hook.

Issue contents

(1) Retatrutide Stuns In Phase 3 Obesity Trial — STRONG SIGNAL

Eli Lilly released TRIUMPH-1 topline results on May 21, 2026:

• 28.3% bodyweight lost on 12mg over 80 weeks (avg 70.3 lbs / 31.9 kg)
• 45.3% of patients hit 30%+ weight loss (bariatric-surgery territory)
• 30.3% weight loss (85 lbs) at 104 weeks in higher-BMI patients
• 65.3% of 12mg patients dropped below the obesity BMI threshold
• 19% loss on 4mg over 80 weeks (47.2 lbs); fewer dropouts than placebo (4.1% vs 4.9%)
• Significant drops in BP, triglycerides, non-HDL cholesterol, waist circumference, hsCRP
• No cardiac or liver signals
• Side benefits: osteoarthritis knee pain -75.8% on average; 1-in-8 patients fully knee-pain-free at EOT; LDL -20%; 72% of prediabetics returned to normal blood sugar
• Seven more Phase 3 readouts expected this year: diabetes, sleep apnea, chronic back pain, cardiorenal outcomes (and per external sources: type 2 diabetes with CVD, knee OA, MASLD)

Reta is the first triple hormone receptor agonist (GIP + GLP-1 + glucagon). Topline-only; not yet peer-reviewed. Packy comp: Zepbound (tirzepatide) tops out 20-22%, Wegovy (semaglutide) ~15%. Packy: "This is Lebron-level."

Cross-link to thesis: confirms the [[2026-05-21-lilly-glp1-longevity-thesis]] retatrutide bull case. Combined with no liver signal + dedicated MASLD readout expected this year, this is the most important LLY datapoint in the last quarter.

(2) Colossal Biosciences Hatches Chick From Artificial Eggs — MEDIUM SIGNAL

Announced Monday: 26 healthy chicks hatched from a fully artificial egg (printed oval shell + oxygen-permeable membrane, no biological eggshell). Real engineering advance is the membrane (lets the embryo pull ambient oxygen, no supplemental gas needed). Previously demonstrated by others (Japanese group 1998, Katsuya Obara 2024) but with high mortality.

Stated goal: de-extinct the 12-foot 500-lb South Island giant moa (4L eggs, no living surrogate possible). Near-term: substrate for transgenic chickens producing therapeutic proteins in egg whites at fraction of mammalian cell culture cost (Neion Bio, Not Boring Capital portfolio).

Up next per Colossal: artificial wombs for marsupials.

(3) SpaceX Launches S-1 — STRONG SIGNAL / TRIGGER CONFIRMED

SpaceX filed its public S-1 with the SEC on Wednesday May 20, 2026 (confidential draft submitted April 1, 2026). Per Packy's summary:

• Revenue: $4.69B (run-rate ~$19B)
• Operating loss: $(1.94B); Adjusted EBITDA +$1.13B
• Starlink prints cash: $3.26B Q1 revenue, $1.19B Q1 operating income, growing ~50% YoY; profitability growing faster. 9,600 satellites, 10.3M subscribers across 164 countries, ~75% of all active maneuverable satellites in orbit.
• AI losing money: $818M Q1 revenue, $(2.47B) Q1 operating loss. Capex on AI alone $7.7B in Q1, more than Space ($1.05B) + Connectivity ($1.33B) combined.
• TAM (AI segment company-estimated): $26.5T
• Second Anthropic compute deal: Anthropic paying SpaceX $1.25B/month for Colossus 2. Orbital compute deployment planned for 2028, scaling to 100GW launched annually.

External corroboration (founder needs this for elon-verse-v1 decision):

• IPO target date: June 12, 2026 (pricing June 11, roadshow week of June 8)
• Target valuation: $1.75T (Bloomberg-rumored push above $2T)
• Ticker: SPCX on Nasdaq
• Lead underwriters: Goldman Sachs (lead-left), Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan — 21 banks total
• ~$75B raise targeted
• 30% of float earmarked for retail (3x mega-cap norm)

This is the load-bearing fact for the founder's deferred elon-verse-v1 paper-trade decision (deferred 2026-05-22 morning with "until SpaceX IPO" condition). Trigger condition is now date-certain: June 12, 2026 listing. Packy's closing line: "We'll find out in June."

Companion datapoint: Starship v3 launch scrubbed Thursday night, retrying today (Friday May 22).

(4) GPT-5.5 Pro Breakthrough on Erdős Planar Distance Problem — MEDIUM SIGNAL

An internal general-purpose OpenAI reasoning model produced a proof that disproves Paul Erdős's 1946 unit-distance conjecture. Burned an estimated ~$1,000 max in tokens. Found an infinite family of point arrangements that beat the grid polynomially.

Method: pulled in algebraic number theory (infinite class field towers + Golod–Shafarevich theory) to construct number systems with the right symmetries, then read geometric configurations off them. No human had tried this connection. Thomas Bloom expects it to unlock other long-stuck problems in discrete geometry.

Verified by Fields Medalist Tim Gowers and Will Sawin at Princeton with companion paper. Gowers: "if a human had written the paper and submitted it to the Annals of Mathematics, I would have recommended acceptance without any hesitation." Also endorsed by Noga Alon, Melanie Wood, Arul Shankar.

Notable for Packy specifically pivoting on AI skepticism in this entry: "I've been more skeptical about AI than I normally am about new technologies, and less excited than the average person in tech. Per the evidence that keeps coming out, I've been wrong."

(5) SendCutSend Raises $110M at $1B Valuation — STRONG SIGNAL (cross-thesis confirmation)

Jim Belosic, Reno-based, started in 2018 to get custom metal parts faster for the cars and motorcycles he was restoring. Bootstrapped 8 years on credit cards, savings, a PayPal loan, and bank-financed machines. Now:

• ~$200M revenue
• 100% YoY growth
• ~$275K revenue per employee
• Never took outside capital before now

Round: Patrick Collison + Sequoia (Andrew Reed) + Paradigm (Matt Huang). Collison reached out to Belosic after reading Austin Vernon's Feb 2026 essay "Speed Can Reindustrialize America" — Vernon thanked Collison as his sole acknowledged feedback-giver in the essay, right above the "Funding Opportunities Appendix." Collison apparently took the appendix literally.

Direct cross-link: Vernon's essay is filed at [[2026-05-22-austin-vernon-american-manufacturing-essay]]. SCS is the canonical case study in that essay — Vernon's thesis is that the US is great at high-volume but terrible at low-volume / short-lead-time custom work because soft costs (quoting, programming, billing) swamp small orders, and SCS's entire company is an attack on soft costs (instant quotes, one-click buying, software-routed production). This $110M round is real-time validation of Vernon's thesis with institutional money.

Companion datapoint in same item: Amca raised $300M at $1B+ from Caffeinated et al. — Jai Malik, 18-month-old El Segundo startup, builds and modernizes factories for critical aerospace/defense components (F-35 supplier; BAE, Airbus, Textron, Honeywell, GE Aerospace customers; 67% faster than legacy defense supply chain via their RAPID software platform).

Extra Doses (not detailed in plaintext body)

"Science Breakthroughs, Anthropic, Valar Atomics, Quantum Investment, Grindslop..." — likely worth a follow-up read in the web version if any of those need depth. Skipped here per the 2-deep-fetch cap.

Mapping against Ray Data Co

Related

• [[2026-05-21-lilly-glp1-longevity-thesis]] — LLY-longevity-v1, retatrutide is the bull-case drug; this issue's TRIUMPH-1 readout is direct confirmation
• [[2026-05-18-elon-verse-v1]] — paper-trade decision deferred 2026-05-22 with "until SpaceX IPO" trigger; trigger condition now date-certain
• [[2026-05-20-elon-verse-v2]] — newer iteration of the Elon-verse thesis, also affected by SpaceX IPO timing
• [[2026-05-22-austin-vernon-american-manufacturing-essay]] — Missing Middle thesis; SendCutSend is the canonical case study; Collison-led round is the validation in motion