I just got home after two weeks on the road in California, Austin, Atlanta, and NYC.

RiskHedge co-founder Dan Steinhart and I were meeting founders and innovators creating the next generation of disruptive tech.

Here we are touring defense tech disruptor Anduril. Behind us, you can see its flagship Roadrunner drone. It can intercept drones for a fraction of the cost of multimillion-dollar Patriot missiles.

Anduril’s “Roadrunner” drone fighter.

I’ll admit, it was a strange time to be on the road. Iranian missiles and drones continue to threaten Abu Dhabi, where my family lives. Oil’s above $100. Turn on the news, and you’ll hear a lot of fear: energy crisis, artificial intelligence (AI) bubble, recession.

But the builders we met aren’t panicking about geopolitics or the economy. They’re hiring. They’re shipping products and designing new ones. They’re raising capital to expand production.

The vibe on the ground couldn’t be more different from what you read in the news.

• Among others, we visited several space startups.

Expect this industry to get a lot of attention this year with the upcoming SpaceX IPO. Elon Musk wants to take SpaceX public as early as June. With a valuation in the trillions, it will be the largest IPO ever by a significant margin.

SpaceX is an extraordinary company. By launching multiple rockets a week, it has single-handedly created a new space economy. Companies wanting to do business in orbit can hitch a ride on its rockets.

Like Varda. It’s making drugs in space.

Varda loads its capsule onto a SpaceX rocket and sends it into orbit. Inside the capsule is a mini drug laboratory. In zero gravity, Varda can grow perfect crystals for drugs like the HIV treatment Ritonavir, which is impossible to do on Earth.

 We also visited Reflect Orbital, which aims to produce sunlight on demand. Its satellites will orbit near the day/night line of Earth, catching sunlight, and reflecting it to a chosen dark spot on the planet.

It will light up areas for rescue missions… provide sunlight to solar panels… light up nighttime events… or a number of other things we haven’t even thought of yet.

 At Reflect Orbital with co-founder and CEO Ben Nowack.

We also toured Viridian Space, which is creating an “air-breathing satellite.”

Satellites must constantly adjust themselves to stay in the right place by releasing little bursts of propellant. When it runs out of propellant, the satellite must be decommissioned.

Viridian Space is building a thruster that scoops air from the atmosphere and turns it into propellant. If it works, satellites could stay in orbit much longer. It would flip the economics and increase what’s possible in space.

 With Viridian Space co-founder and CEO Slava Spektor.

• One thing every startup we visited had in common?

AI.

Whether it was a space, robotics, advanced 3D printing, or defense startup, everyone is embedding AI into everything. Many of these startups are only possible because of new AI models. They couldn’t have existed even three years ago.

We’re always working to bring you insights into the latest new innovations. Most of the companies we visited are private. A lot of them will be great investments years down the road.

But if you’re interested in making money now, focus on the great megatrend that is AI.

Every metric I look at across the AI space—from GPU demand to AI capital expenditures (CapEx) to the revenue of leading AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic—continues to surge higher.

This year, five American tech giants will spend $700 billion building out their AI data centers. For comparison, the entire oil and gas industry invested just $570 billion into exploration and production last year.

Geopolitical strife guarantees the acceleration of AI investment even further, given its growing importance in warfare and the equivalent of a global AI arms race.

AI is the mother of all unstoppable megatrends. To make money in public markets, it’s the main thing to focus on now. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the financial opportunity in AI.

Stephen McBride

Chief Analyst, RiskHedge