City Labs nails a first: nuclear power in orbit — Miami-based, privately funded

City Labs, a Miami-based company, has achieved a first for commercial nuclear power in space. The reactor they built is now operating in orbit — the kind of thing that used to take NASA years and billions to pull off.

The company is small. They built the reactor themselves and raised capital through the private markets rather than going public or chasing VC rounds. That path is the one most people actually use: raise quietly, build quietly, launch quietly.

Nuclear in space matters because it gives satellites and stations a power source that doesn't depend on the sun. No more charging cycles. No more shadowed regions going dark. For anything living or operating far from Earth — lunar bases, deep-space probes, orbital factories — it is the right answer.

Why this matters for us: the companies pulling this off are the same kind — lean, private, building real hardware — and they prove that we don't need to be in Silicon Valley to do the kind of work that matters.