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  SpaceX said this week that it will build natural gas power plants to supply electricity to the Terafab semiconductor factory it plans to build in Texas, according to a report from Bloomberg.  Riley Trettel, who leads energy and data center development for SpaceX, said in a public meeting on Wednesday that his company will be “bringing our own power” for the project, which will also include “very large battery arrays.” Notably absent from the Bloomberg report — and other SpaceX announcements related to Terafab — is any mention of terrestrial solar power for the facility. Tesla, which is also a solar developer, is a partner in the project. Despite his investments in solar power, SpaceX and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has bet heavily on natural gas lately. The xAI data centers in Memphis run almost exclusively on the fossil fuel . Musk also recently bought a company that specializes in natural gas power plants, and SpaceX has said it plans to buy $2.8 billion worth of gas turbine...

  Sila has landed a $1.4 billion loan from the U.S. Department of Defense to help the U.S.-based startup expand production of its silicon-carbon battery material.  The loan, which was announced Friday, arrives as U.S. battery buyers, from automotive companies to defense contractors, struggle to procure battery materials that are made outside of China. Most of today’s lithium-ion battery anodes use graphite, and the supply chain for the material is dominated by Chinese companies . Many companies, including Group14 and Amprius, are pursuing silicon anodes. The material promises to store 20% to 40% more electricity than graphite anodes. The improved energy density could pave the way for longer-lasting cells or smaller, lighter batteries. Both are appealing traits for defense and mobility applications, including drones and EVs. Sila makes its silicon-carbon material at its factory in Moses Lake, Washington , making it one of the few sources of anode material that isn’t encumbere...

  In the fusion power world, most of the attention gets lavished on the reactors themselves, where atoms fuse to unleash enormous amounts of energy. But a fusion reactor can’t run for long without a lot of other equipment, and building a fusion reactor is expensive enough on its own. Plenty of startups are happy to let someone else  handle the rest . Among the dozens of companies in the emerging fusion-power supply chain,  few specialists are bigger  than  Kyoto Fusioneering . The Japan-based company has raised $121 million in committed capital, according to FusionX. Now it has landed grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the state of Tennessee to build a prototype fuel breeding device at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).  Alongside the announcement, Kyoto Fusioneering exclusively told TechCrunch that it’s moving its U.S. headquarters to Oak Ridge. The startup has emerged as a key player in the fusion power industry. Over half of fusion startups...

  It’s hard to imagine a home appliance more forgotten — yet more consequential — than the water heater. Most people only think of water heaters when their shower runs cold, but they represent about 18% of a household’s total energy budget and are one of the main causes of residential water damage. To Luke Winston-Almanzar, water heaters are in clear need of an upgrade. “The typical water heater is devoid of intelligence, it’s using a god-awful amount of energy, and my air fryer is smarter than it,” he told TechCrunch. “I was using more energy to heat my water than it takes to drive my electric car.” So Winston-Almanzar, who was previously chief business officer at 3D printing startup Formlabs , co-founded Reservoir along with Gabriel Parisi-Amon and Jake Felser to make a water heater that they would want to buy. Reservoir announced Wednesday that it has raised $8 million in a seed round led by Asymmetric Capital Partners with participation from Founder Collective and MCJ. The f...

  Any dog owner would tell you that their canine companions are attuned to their humans’ emotional state and respond accordingly. Scientists have performed fMRI scans on dogs and identified a specific brain region that processes happy human facial expresses, like a smile, according to a new paper published in the journal iScience. They also found that dogs can tell the difference between negative facial expressions, specifically anger, sadness, and fear. “Humans are really good at picking up small details on the face, and so are dogs,” said co-author Raúl Hernández-Pérez of the University of Vienna. “This makes dogs very interesting. By studying their brains, we can understand what adaptations have developed to support their remarkable social and emotional understanding of humans.” Prior behavioral studies have shown that dogs are sensitive to emotion in human faces. Dogs will, for example, choose a box their human has identified with a happy expression over one the human treats...

  When station wagons headed for the same retirement home as the vinyl roof and the opera window, Subaru looked at its sensible Legacy wagon and had a different idea. Raise it a few inches, wrap the lower body in plastic cladding, name it for the Australian bush, and suburban families would drive to soccer practice while imagining themselves fording streams and climbing sand dunes. In giving birth to the Legacy Outback in 1995, Subaru more or less created the template for the modern, adventure-minded, off-road-themed crossover. By the 2000 model year, the Outback had graduated from trim level to standalone model, and it has been paying the bulk of Subaru’s bills ever since. Today, the 2026 Outback marks a new era in the model’s history. The wagon silhouette that defined six generations has given way to a sharpened two-box shape that’s much more at home parked next to an upright Forester or Ascent. Tall, square, and profusely SUV-like, the new edition won’t win any beauty contests, ...