Defense, energy, robotics and government have historically been classic no-go areas for VC investment. These 'hard' industries have slow procurement cycles, tight regulatory oversight and high-friction customer migration in common. Legacy software vendors serving them have benefited from a barrier of complexity to innovate slowly without facing the risk of customer churn. This made the victims of this year's AI anxiety-driven sell-off all the more dramatic. Software juggernauts serving heavy industries ' IBM, SAP, ServiceNow, Schneider Electric ' have gone from safe bets to being the subject of investor scrutiny. While headlines have attributed that sell-off to quick-fire Anthropic launches of tools for vertical industries, there's more at play. The macro trend is a newfound founder enthusiasm to build AI-native entrants in legacy industries, and the backing they're enjoying from VCs that can see the once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt entire industries. Be it the U.S. or across Europe, policymakers are prioritizing investment in grid upgrades, transportation networks and public sector infrastructure, while also re-examining procurement and compliance systems that have slowed the adoption of emerging technologies that could bring said industrial resilience about quicker....

The clock, described today in Nature, is based on an analysis of gene activity in more than 25 tissues across four species: mice, rats, the monkeys called crab-eating macaques (Macaca fascucularis) and humans. Although it is not ready for medical applications, the clock could eventually be a boon to biologists keen to learn which drugs or lifestyle changes might mitigate ageing's myriad effects on the body. 'Even if you want to do an experiment in mice, to test the lifespan of mice takes a very long time,' says Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, a biologist at the University of Birmingham, UK, who studies the genetics of ageing and was not involved in the study. 'If you had something that would give you a quicker indication of whether your treatment is going to work or not, that would be very advantageous.' Age is typically measured by the steady passage of years, but the ticking of the clock in a person's cells can stutter, stall and restart depending on the individual's health and environment. In recent years, researchers have developed a variety of molecular clocks that assess biological ageing ' the body's decline with time. These clocks are based on different measures: the composition of metabolites or proteins found in the blood, brain scans or the presence of chemical groups on DNA (methylation) that can affect gene activity. This last type, called an epigenetic clock, is generally the most accurate and widely used....

Over the past seven days, Donald Trump has adopted two contradictory positions on the Strait of Hormuz. A week ago, he wrote that a 'whole civilization' would 'die' if Iran didn't make certain concessions'among them, allowing ships to resume their normal courses in and out of the Persian Gulf. This weekend, though, after marathon peace talks between the United States and Iran ended without an agreement, Trump announced a blockade of Iranian ports, essentially doubling down on restrictions in the waterway. Why blockade the blockaders' The tactic is all but guaranteed to aggravate the ongoing energy crisis, which has been a pain point for Trump since the start of the war. But it also inflicts a new level of punishment on Iran: a trade-off that, for the president, appears to be worth making. Since late February, Iran has been threatening to attack most ships passing through the strait, and the resulting drop-off in traffic has created the worst threat to global energy security in history, per the International Energy Agency. American gas is averaging $4.12 a gallon, and prices for commodities such as fertilizer and helium are way up. But Iran's threat to the Strait of Hormuz has always had a few carve-outs. Its own ships can pass safely, as can foreign ships that comply with the country's terms for passage, which include the payment of tolls (reportedly in cryptocurrency or Chinese yuan) and the use of new shipping lanes closer to Iran's coast. The U.S. blockade, which went into effect yesterday morning, is intended to prevent Iran from exporting its oil, choking the country economically....

'ALTERRA represents a strategically aligned partner for us in this investment, reflecting a shared conviction in the long-term value creation potential of scalable technologies within the energy transition,' said Gabriel Caillaux, Co-President and Global Head of Climate at General Atlantic. 'The addition of ALTERRA to its investor base should stand to accelerate its growth trajectory.' Subscribe to our Newsletter to increase your edge. Don't worry about the news anymore, through our newsletter you'll receive weekly access to what is happening. Join 120,000 other PE professionals today....