Molten Salt Solutions, a New Mexico-based company, has raised $7 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round led by Dolby Family Ventures. Other participants included Vanedge Capital Partners, Alumni Ventures, Gaingels, True Ventures, and Future Ventures. The company produces enriched lithium-6 and lithium-7 isotopes for fusion and advanced nuclear reactors. The US currently lacks commercial-scale production of these isotopes, which are critical for next-generation energy technologies. The funding will enable Molten Salt Solutions to scale from laboratory-validated technology to pilot-scale production and fulfil active customer agreements. The company will also expand its team and develop additional enriched isotopes for emerging markets. This round follows a $3 million pre-seed and over $5 million in grant funding.

SiFly Aviation has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Shield Capital, with participation from Qudit, BBK Capital, and Alumni Ventures. The Santa Clara-based company will use the investment to scale production of its Q12 long-endurance electric aircraft and advance its DronePort multi-drone infrastructure system. The Q12 flies four times longer and up to 10 times farther than leading enterprise drones whilst carrying payloads of up to 10 pounds. SiFly holds the Guinness World Record for the longest electric multirotor aircraft flight in its weight class at 3 hours, 11 minutes and 54 seconds. The company is targeting public safety, utilities, infrastructure inspection and agriculture markets. SiFly will expand manufacturing capabilities, fulfil customer deliveries and support deployments with the new funding.

Apollo Atomics, an MIT spinoff backed by Y Combinator, has raised $31 million in a substantially oversubscribed seed round to commercialise factory-built pressurised water reactors. The funding, led by FCVC with participation from Y Combinator, Telesoft Partners and others, will accelerate testing, manufacturing and regulatory approval with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company has redesigned the steam generator to achieve power density an order of magnitude higher than conventional designs, reducing reactor footprint by roughly 40 times. This enables factory construction, truck transport and deployment in under 24 months. Apollo is developing three reactor systems ranging from 10 to 300 megawatts electric for data centres, industrial facilities and utilities. The company reports over 20 gigawatts of signed letters of intent in its commercial pipeline.