Arvana

Augustus is building the global dollar bank. Moving dollars across borders still runs on correspondent banking, a chain of intermediaries that is slow, opaque, and expensive. Augustus replaces it with programmable USD and EUR accounts, direct clearing and settlement, and an AI-native core banking platform built from scratch. The moat is the license. Augustus holds OCC conditional approval for a US national bank charter, which is rare and very hard to replicate, and euro clearing is live today for customers including Kraken. $180M Series B at a $1B valuation, led by Tiger Global with QED, plus operators from Nubank, Ramp, Circle, Revolut, and Coinbase. Fewer than 50 people, in NYC and Berlin.

Aurelius Systems is the autonomous laser company. It combines AI, robotics and directed energy to defeat drones at scale. Its flagship system, Archimedes, detects, tracks and neutralizes Group 1-2 UAS autonomously: a robotic, low-SWaP, ground- and power-agnostic laser weapon deployable on land, sea and air platforms. The full stack is built in-house, from perception, autonomy, controls, optics, power and embedded systems to fire control, C2 and AI software. Aurelius builds its own software stack. The company is also standing up U.S. production of high-power fiber lasers, the most cost- and supply-constrained component in any directed-energy system.

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