Daily Brief : July 13: Space Force, fusion capital, and geothermal go big

HEADLINE

U.S. Space Force, German fusion, and geothermal energy all landed nine-figure checks in the past week as infrastructure capital floods early-stage hard tech.

THE BIG PICTURE

The venture market is rotating hard toward atoms: this week's largest deals are financing physical infrastructure, launch vehicles, fusion reactors, and subsurface drilling, rather than software or consumer platforms. What ties them together is that each fills a critical gap where legacy providers have underdelivered or left capacity on the table. The Space Force is explicitly building an alternative launch bench. European fusion is scaling past the proof-of-concept phase. Geothermal is moving from pilot to industrial deployment. These are not bets on novelty; they are bets on capacity and redundancy.

WHAT HAPPENED

The U.S. Space Force awarded Impulse Space and Relativity Federal a combined $5.6 billion ceiling contract for National Security Space Launch Phase Three Lane One on July 7. This is a multiple-award, indefinite-delivery structure, meaning the two companies will compete for task orders as payloads materialize. The DoD obligated $10 million at award time; the rest will flow as launches are scheduled. Neither company is ULA or SpaceX. The Pentagon is explicitly building a third-party option for small-to-medium national security payloads, a structural hedge against launch-provider consolidation or supply disruption.

Proxima Fusion closed a €411 million Series A on July 7, valuing the Munich-based stellarator company at €2.4 billion. The round was led by XTX Ventures and East X Ventures, with RWE and Google as strategic backers. RWE, a major German utility, committed to an earlier partnership to build Proxima's first commercial plant at a decommissioned nuclear site in Gundremmingen, Bavaria. Proxima is a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and is the best-funded fusion company in Europe. CEO Francesco Sciortino framed the raise as proof that 'Europe can not only invent breakthrough technologies, but also build globally competitive companies around them.'

Quaise Energy announced a $134 million Series B on July 7, targeting ultra-deep geothermal drilling to reach economically viable heat at depths of 10+ kilometers, well below conventional geothermal reach. Quaise is commercializing millimeter-wave drilling technology, which uses focused heat instead of mechanical friction to bore through rock. The funding accelerates Quaise's path to its first demonstration well and a commercial deployment timeline.

Zeroth AI raised $73.6 million in Series A funding on July 6 to scale humanoid robotics for industrial and logistics environments. The company is building full-body mobile manipulators designed for tasks like warehousing, light assembly, and material handling, verticals where labor shortages and wage pressure are acute. Zeroth's focus is on deployable robotics rather than research platforms, a meaningful departure from earlier-stage humanoid companies.

Wavespace announced the wavecard on July 2, a physical debit card backed by a self-custodied Lightning Network node. The card is now MiCA-compliant under EU law, settling payments instantly to a user's own wallet rather than intermediating through an exchange or payment processor. The product targets European users who want crypto payments without counterparty risk.

WATCHING

Watch for the first task order under the Impulse-Relativity NSSL contract, that will signal whether the Pentagon is genuinely distributing launch work or whether this is a symbolic reserve capacity play. Proxima's next milestones are the design freeze for the Gundremmingen plant and a construction timeline from RWE. Quaise's first deep well drilling test will be the real validation event for millimeter-wave rock penetration at commercial scale.