"Not everything is venture-backable at the growth stage. If you're raising huge amounts of capital, it shouldn't always come as equity. We have companies using equipment financing, asset financing, and financing tied to purchase agreements.

The key is that it's never one sleeve of debt. It's a variety of different options depending on what you're servicing. If you're backed by bankable purchase agreements and developing in different parts of the country, there are creative alternatives to equity."

“The years since the second world war have been good to American science. The country's researchers sent men to the moon, invented the modern computer and led the sequencing of the human genome. Its government funded basic research in academia and national labs, which could then pass on findings with commercial promise to firms.

Now there are signs the innovation machine is breaking down. The system's critics fret that America's scientific infrastructure encourages groupthink, since a small number of committees distribute a large share of funding for basic research. They worry that universities are ill-suited to the interdisciplinary work that much of 21st-century science requires. And America is no longer an undisputed scientific superpower: China's research and development (R&D) spending has caught up with Uncle Sam's in purchasing-power terms, and is growing faster. In 2024 China overtook America in the Nature Index, a measure of publications in the most prestigious scientific journals.

Advocates of "metascience", the study of scientific discovery, have spent years pointing out the foibles of the system. Lately they have been putting their ideas into practice. Private institutions, many of which were founded within the past five years, say they are building the future of science. The history of American innovation suggests they may be right."