Filed under: hardware
22 storiesThe archive, indexed. Every story carries its tags at the foot of the page.
School-run fumes led to a $50m electric bus business
Duncan McIntyre noticed a bus tailpipe level with his son's face. Eight years on, Highland Electric Fleets runs buses in more than 100 US cities and, on the company's figures, turns over $45m to $50m a year.
A calculator for when a local LLM rig pays for itself
Sunk Cost takes a machine, a model and a daily token count, and works out how long the hardware takes to beat renting the same model by the token.
Two-month-old nuclear startup raises $50m after $10m pre-seed
Bluecore Energy closed an oversubscribed seed round in eight weeks. What investors are buying is two barges, a reactor and a regulatory review that has barely started.
UK government backs Shetland spaceport with £30m for two launchpads
The grant is conditional on due diligence, and SaxaVord says it triggers a matching £30m from private investors. No rocket has yet reached orbit from Unst.
Heart Aerospace flew a 25,000lb electric aeroplane on $5 of power
Seven years ago Anders Forslund had computer renders and a 3D-printed model. On 12 August 2026 his full-scale demonstrator lifted off from Plattsburgh and stayed up for 27 minutes.
Newlight raises $9m seed after 8,500-mile hydrogen test voyage
A Bay Area startup injects hydrogen into cargo ship diesel engines. It ran the system from Singapore to Ghana before taking investors' money.
Picnic's collapse leaves Moto Pizza with two idle $160,000 robots
A supplier shutting down in May turned a Seattle restaurant's pizza machines into cabinets. It is the latest in a run of robotic-pizza failures that includes Zume, Pazzi and Basil Street.
Hugging Face's robotics team prices a 25cm walking duck at $399
Pollen Robotics opens pre-orders for Microduck on 27 August 2026, with 15 motors, a grasping beak and an hour of battery life. First deliveries are targeted before Christmas.
Fitbit's founders return with a $300 LTE care band
James Park and Eric Friedman are selling a screenless wrist device that calls for help without a phone. It ships in early 2027, and the pitch is aimed at family caregivers rather than runners.
Coco's robots make 1,000 food deliveries a day in Los Angeles
Two UCLA engineers asked why a 5,000-pound car was moving a five-pound bag of food. Six years on, a Shake Shack regional manager calls their robot his favourite courier.
Boldr raises €4.2m to sell heating tech through US contractors
The London company will spend a pre-Series A round on North American expansion and software for the HVAC installers it treats as its route to market. Unconventional Ventures led.
Oshen raises $5m after one-metre robot sailed into a Category 5 hurricane
The Times reports a $5m round for the Plymouth firm whose sailing robot recorded 955 millibars inside Hurricane Humberto. Three years ago its founders were living on a 25ft boat at the cheapest marina in Britain.
Ohio startup raises $15m to put out fires with 20 Hz sound
Sonic Fire Tech says its ceiling-mounted sound generator smothers flames in seconds and leaves nothing to mop up. It now has to convince the body that writes America's fire codes.
Essex robotics spin-out raises £1m from three funding sources
Versatile RobotX has assembled just over £1 million from a private fund, Innovate UK and Defra. The package, not the amount, is the story for hardware founders.
DRIVE35 hands £47m to 33 projects, with £26.9m to five
The government's zero-emission vehicle programme has made its latest awards. More than half the money goes to five scale-up projects, and the early-stage stream splits £2.7m sixteen ways.
$350m vertical farming pioneer runs out of money
One of indoor farming's best-funded companies could not raise again. The economics of growing lettuce under lights did the rest.
Duramax built for 3.39m bins, sold 1.2m, filed Chapter 7
New York City's official supplier of wheelie bins says the pace of the city's own rollout left it holding a factory built for three times the orders it got.
Hacker turns 31 million surveillance tests into a clothing line
Bill Swearingen ran his anti-surveillance patterns through 31 million tests before putting them on garments. The testing came first; the product came second.
Cambridge Aerospace raises $300m at $3.4bn valuation
The UK interceptor-missile maker has closed a €259.7 million Series C and says the money goes into manufacturing capacity to deliver contracts it already holds.
GoPro's best reviews in a decade arrive as founder lends it money
The product press spent June praising a $599 8K camera. The business pages spent it reading a 26% revenue fall and a founder financing his own company.
FuVeX raises €3m to put Spanish drones on power lines and borders
The Pamplona-founded firm says it has inspected more than 36,000 kilometres of power line. It now wants 70% of Spain's distribution grid by 2027, and a defence business alongside it.
Water-from-air machine goes on sale in Ibiza at £150,000
UK climatetech firm Ahbstra says its ARK unit pulls up to 500 litres of drinking water a day out of the air. Its first buyers are off-grid property owners in the Balearics whose wells have stopped working.