Northwood Space is an El Segundo–based startup building a new ground layer for satellites, focused on phased-array technology that can replace traditional dish farms. The company just raised $100M and secured a $50M contract to help upgrade the U.S. Space Force’s Satellite Control Network, with backing from Washington Harbour Partners and a16z. It’s the second raise in under a year, underscoring growing investor confidence that the biggest bottleneck in the satellite boom isn’t orbit, but ground infrastructure.

Northwood’s systems are designed to handle hundreds of simultaneous satellite links by 2027, aiming to make ground operations cheaper, denser, and easier to scale. If it delivers, the company could put pressure on incumbents like KSAT, AWS Ground Station, and Viasat, while lowering barriers for mid-size constellations. The Space Force deal helps validate demand and de-risk early revenue, but execution will depend on managing heavy capital costs, spectrum coordination, and translating government-grade tech into reliable commercial products.

ShotSpotter promised AI-powered gunfire detection to make cities safer.
Instead, it put millions under constant audio surveillance, triggered countless false alarms, and became one of the most controversial police tech contractors in the U.S.

In this video, we go to Chicago to see how ShotSpotter really works, why so many alerts don’t match real crimes, and how a safety tool turned into a legal and ethical nightmare.

This is the story of flawed data, lobbying, and surveillance tech—and why cities struggle to walk away once they buy in.

f your sales or support team spends more time toggling between apps than talking to real humans, CloudTalk fixes that.

It centralizes calling, CRM workflows, AI-powered summaries and smart automation so you handle more conversations with fewer hassles.

OpenAI rolled out a new research workspace that brings AI directly into how academic papers are written—built on familiar tools like LaTeX, but without the usual friction. Included with a ChatGPT account, GPT-5.2 can help check claims, rewrite sections, and find related research, all while understanding the full paper.

What makes this different is the workflow. The AI works across the entire project, not just snippets of text, and can even turn rough whiteboard sketches into clean figures. It’s less “AI that writes for you” and more “Cursor for scientists.”

This could put pressure on tools like Overleaf and publisher software, while creating room for add-ons around compliance, citations, and lab notebooks. Whether it takes off will depend on journal rules around AI use, university data policies, and research security.