06-reference

not boring wdoo 198

2026-06-19·reference·source: Not Boring·by Packy McCormick

Weekly Dose of Optimism #198

Source: notboring.co Issue date: 2026-06-19

⚠️ Sponsorship

Paid sponsor: Mercury (Mercury Command) — AI-powered natural-language banking interface for founders. Full sponsor block with CTA. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC-insured bank.

Structural disclosure: Packy notes Not Boring Capital is an investor in Standard Nuclear (mentioned in item 5, Reindustrialize notes). This is a portfolio-disclosure — enthusiastic coverage of a company where NBC holds a position. No disclosure flagged on other items; Valar Atomics and Anduril coverage appears independent but Packy's angel/LP positions are not always disclosed in WDoO.

Issue contents

(1) Midjourney Scanner / Midjourney Medical

Midjourney (the AI image company, profitable, no VC) announced their first hardware product: a whole-body ultrasonic CT scanner. A person steps into a shallow pool, descends through a ring of underwater ultrasound sensors, and gets a 3D body map in ~60 seconds. Built in partnership with Butterfly Network (ultrasound-on-chip). Packy frames it as a realization of a vision he wrote about in an Ezra deep dive — a casual, spa-like full-body scan. CEO David Holz has hardware and neuroimaging background (Leap Motion, NASA). First of eight planned 2026 announcements. Skeptics noted; Ezra co-founder Emi Gal's measured breakdown linked. Third-party.

(2) Laser Phase Plate — CZ Biohub & UC Berkeley

Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and UC Berkeley published papers in Science and Nature Communications on a "laser phase plate" for electron microscopy. Solves a long-standing contrast problem: proteins inside living cells are nearly invisible under electron microscopes because anything placed in the beam gets destroyed. Solution: a Fabry-Perot cavity that bounces a laser ~10,000 times, reaching ~100 million times the brightness of the Sun's surface — brightest continuous-wave laser in the world. Result: dramatically better imaging of proteins inside intact cells. Also unlocks cryo-electron tomography (3D reconstructions of protein interactions inside cells). Third-party; CZ Biohub is Zuckerberg-funded but no Not Boring Capital relationship noted.

(3) Valar Atomics Goes Critical

Valar Atomics' Ward 250 reactor in Emery County, Utah achieved criticality — second new advanced reactor to go critical before America's 250th birthday (July 4, 2026). Founder Isaiah Taylor is self-taught (no college degree), first-principles thinker who approached nuclear from a market-back lens. Packy covered Taylor in "Age of Miracles." Next milestone: power operations by July 4, then mass-scale printing of reactors. Third-party; no NBC investment disclosed.

(4) Anduril Wins U.S. Air Force CCA Production Contract

Anduril's FQ-44 "Fury" selected as one of two uncrewed fighter jets (CCAs) going into production for the Air Force — autonomous wingmen flying alongside human pilots. Companion win: General Atomics. Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop were resolicited and passed over. Fastest fighter from prototype to production in 50+ years; first new entrant to win a fighter program since the 1970s. Air Force wants 150+ FQ-44s by end of decade. Packy tracked this from Dose #91 (April 2024). Third-party.

(5) Notes from Reindustrialize

Packy attended Reindustrialize 3.0 in Detroit — described as the best yet. Shift from "we should build things again" (v1) to "here's how companies are actually building" (v3). Packy moderated two panels. Key moment: at Reindustrialize 1.0, panelist Isaiah Taylor (Valar) and Tommy Hendrix (who later founded Standard Nuclear) both sat on a pro-nuclear panel — this week, Valar went critical and Standard Nuclear filed an S-1. Not Boring Capital is an investor in Standard Nuclear. Friendly-network and portfolio-disclosure apply here.

Why this is in the vault

This WDoO captures a notable cluster of hardware/deep-tech milestones in a single week: whole-body ultrasound scanning, protein-level live-cell imaging, nuclear criticality, and autonomous fighter aircraft. The Reindustrialize framing (execution momentum > ideological argument) is a useful signal for tracking industrial policy and manufacturing sentiment. The Standard Nuclear S-1 + NBC investment disclosure is worth noting for investment context.

Mapping against Ray Data Co

Medium. The direct RDCO mapping is modest — none of these five items is in data engineering, AI agents, or prediction markets. However:

Not actionable near-term for RDCO, but useful as macro/trend signal.

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