Father | Investor | Entrepreneur | Mech Eng CEO, Madala Software. Physics Informed Solutions for Unconventional E&Ps. Prev. Co-Founder @TerrestrialMSR

Calgary, AB
Joined August 2015
Chris Popoff retweeted
Quantifying the Future This is what a $2 trillion economy will look like by 2040… + 1x port facility with 3x8km lay down area + 1x robot fab plant producing 100 bots / hr + 1x 1GW datacenter running inference + 1x 3GW nuclear power station = 2 million robots labouring 24/7 We know enough today to model the thermodynamics and the market economics of such a site already. The numbers above are the ballpark numbers you end up with, feel free to challenge or change for your own assumptions. Embodiment is the ceiling for both the thermodynamics and economics, as compute (and intelligence) pretty much trends towards zero under Moore’s Law. Assuming a robot is 500W of Newtonian motion, as humanoids are, then 2,000,000 robots working 24/7 is 1GW of demand for the robots’ actuators. Let’s also assume a 1GW datacenter is required for inference for 2m robots, supervised by a central monolithic superintelligence. That’s 2GW total. Then for the sack of maintenance and replacement, we assume 500MW robot fab can produce 100 robots an hour (only ~ 5 ton of product / hr, below a car plant, but includes chips). That’s now 2.5GW site total. For 2,000,000 robots to create $2T of value, each bot needs to add $1m of value each year Seems a lot, but each robot is assumed to work 24/7 and only last ~2 years before it is defunct. 24x365 =8,760 hrs/yr =>$114/hr Seems high at first, but this is a hyper collaborative hive mind marshalled by 2040 superintelligence. $114/hr is what you pay for a car mechanic in 2026, and we are using 2026 dollars here. We can even look at the thermo and economic density and the total footprint of this economy is just tiny. 3x8km is 24km^2 (about 6,000 acres). = 83,000 robots / km^2 = 12m^2 per robot Thermal dissipation = 500W / 12m^2 = 41.7W/m^2 (just 2-3% of solar insolence) Value add density =$1m / 12m^2 =$83k / m^2 <- Wow!! This is $2T GDP from just 8km of coastline Or $500bn of GDP per km of dockside The entire economy can be compressed into the 3km deep dockyard behind the dockside. That’s an economy the size of Australia or Mexico in a land area the size of San Francisco Airport. This is absolutely where the future economy is going, nothing can compete with the capital efficiency of this setup. Nothing. Docks are also crucial as it’s simply not possible to handle the prerequisite volume of cargo and goods for such an economy using anything other than isomodal freight handling systems. If your nation state is interested in adding $2 trillion to its tax base… my DMs are open.
98
112
34
1,548
65,442
.@1SuperCritical has an exclusive licence from the US Department of @Energy for a patented system to extract #uranium from the world's oceans. Founder and CEO Canon Bryan outlined the company's plans to the World #Nuclear News podcast world-nuclear-news.org/artic…
2
5
12
1,443
Chris Popoff retweeted
Celebrating a historic first! 🇫🇮⚛️ With Finland granting the operating license for the world's first deep geological repository, here’s a throwback to Mark Nelson (@energybants) showing how spent fuel is safely stored in a repository and designed for retrieval if needed.
21
1
88
2,282
This would be an awesome job. Go for it!
I am looking for a special projects engineer. You will design stuff that is on our never-ending “we should redesign this some day” list. Things like designing a lifting mechanism for a 1000lb blast door. Or coming up with a better heat resistant material for a battery testing enclosure. Or designing an acoustic test. Or or or…all sorts of weird shit associated with the business of protecting people in the space and aerospace industries from things that go boom. This will be remote. I don’t care where you work. Hours are flexible. Not full time. Or Full time. You must be a US Citizen. You must be efficient and highly proficient in SolidWorks CAD. You must be smart. You must be dedicated to winning 🇺🇸 Note: @totalshield_llc has a strict no-asshole policy. DM me if you are interested.
4
203
Chris Popoff retweeted
On Tuesday, October 13th, 2026, @CanadiansEnergy and the Canadian nuclear community suffered a tremendous loss with the passing of my dear friend of 25 years @jules_besseling. Jules played a critical role in the development of our CNSC license extension submission for @opg Pickering, with his decades of expertise in pressure tube design and aging informing the main points of the article. Jules was an active member on the @BWXT Community Liaison Committee here in Peterborough, his presence and vitality will be sorely missed. facebook.com/lisa.besseling/…
3
15
728
Just valued a niche small business that's really wrapped around the owner who is a unique combination of: - expert drone pilot - engineer - hydroelectric dam expert If you're all 3 of those things... you might be a fit as the buyer. 😅
12
1
35
4,510
Chris Popoff retweeted
I read Terrestrial Energy’s newest NRC filing so you don’t have to. TR-26-02 hit the public docket this week, 34 pages that change how to think about the timeline. $IMSR The ask, in their words: TEDI “intends that the Thermal & Electric Facility... be fabricated and installed on a schedule that precedes issuance of a construction permit for the Nuclear Facility.” Build the turbines, steam systems, and power block first, while nuclear licensing runs in parallel. And the sentence that makes it a business model: the TEF “may be operated independently of the NF, for example using an auxiliary heat source... before the NF is connected. Such operation is outside NRC jurisdiction.” A customer’s plant generating power and revenue on gas, legally, during nuclear licensing. That’s what’s being asked for. The physics does the legal work (scientific explanation): The IMSR has no scram, power follows heat removal through the fuel salt’s temperature coefficient. So when the filing addresses “what if the turbine hall fails,” the answer on the docket is: “that response is the inherent operating characteristic of the plant, not a scram.” For every initiating event category: “No TEF SSC is relied upon, no reactor trip or safety-related actuation is required, and no radionuclides are released.” Is this a moonshot request? No. The NRC has approved this exact question class twice: 1. TerraPower’s Natrium interface report (2023) 2. Blue Energy’s resequencing topical (submitted May 2025, approved December 2025, about seven months). Terrestrial cites both. The difference here: no exemption requested. A generic, fleet-wide determination, written to carry into Part 53 without re-adjudication. Watch the clock: the cover letter asks the NRC for an acceptance review and formal schedule within 60 days. The precedent arc says an approval could land by mid-2027. Conclusion: A mid-2027 approval (plausible on the Blue Energy precedent) would be a structural change, because pre-construction is where the company’s own revenue model begins: the July deck prices pre-construction services at $98M per plant at a 23% gross margin (management estimates at Nth-plant status), and titles the slide “starts before construction.” Approval alone doesn’t start the meter and that takes a signed definitive customer agreement, which doesn’t publicly exist yet. But the sequence is now concrete: SER plus first definitive customer equals the first plausible services-revenue window. The gas bridge architecture now has a docket number.
5
2
2
38
2,966
Chris Popoff retweeted
Nox Metals is hiring a stellar Director of Engineering to rearchitect America's metals supply chain. Up to $350k + equity. Looking for LA based (or open to relo), has built frontier technology at an organization that won, and is seeking extreme agency and responsibility. If this happens to be your friend, $10K referral bonus if we hire! Dm me or apply here: jobs.ashbyhq.com/nox-metals/…
4
6
54
4,131
Chris Popoff retweeted
I’m visiting the People’s Democratic Republic of El Segundo this week. Think of me as a Primary Integrator. I guess I’m a buyer (not investor) of: • all types of balance of plant • all types of heavy power electronics • all types of transmission • all types of switchgear • all types of power to synthetic molecules • industrial control software • forgings and forging equipment • automated welding and inspection • primary energy sources, such as nuclear reactors I’m a worldwide seller of: • sovereign scale power infrastructure (GW) • national transmission backbone • transoceanic telecom • 5yr contracts of 50MW - 1.500MW power • whitespace • jurisdiction arbitrage (eg US jurisdiction servers in Japan/EU on local latency) • clean water Happy to meet anyone who can figure out an intro. Genuinely, if anyone wants to talk about anything to do with heavy industry, or ask any esoteric questions happy to meet up. Happy to offer specifications, boundaries and interfaces, strategic direction. What is he talking about? Think of me as a program originator for trade deal allocations: • $600 billion US-EU • $900 billion US-Japan-South Korea • $1,400 billion US-UAE • $950 billion US-KSA • $250 billion US-Taiwan • $200 billion US-Switzerland/Liechtenstein That’s $4.5 trillion of commitment looking for projects. Stop sending InMail and just meet me for a coffee.
14
9
5
186
25,377
Chris Popoff retweeted
OK, here's the future of manufacturing in the US. This is how we will Reindustrialize. - MCP servers become standardized and as ubiquitous as web pages - MCP servers fully define shop capabilities, materials, etc. - Every shop has an owned API that provides real-time, first principles, shop-specific DFM, prices, and lead-times - AI agents design and source by searching for shops with the right combination of capability, speed, and price Because all of the above requires savvy most legacy shops don't have, they either fade away or pivot. There will be fewer shops, and they'll be at billion-dollar scale. This will be an ultra-connected, automated, agent-friendly network of shops. It will completely eliminate the need for brokers and marketplaces - the marketplace is the internet, and information is distributed uniformly via MCP and imminently discoverable by AI agents, who handle almost all sourcing and, eventually, design. Every design becomes manufacturable by default. Prototyping and production speeds skyrocket. Economies of scale reduce costs as a smaller subset of extremely large shops aggregate enough volume to create meaningful efficiency. This future is created by the organic, inevitable evolution of information-dense MCP servers and the AI agents that use them. Shops that don't have them become irrelevant, and demand concentrates among the shops that do. This doesn't require new software, or new marketplaces, or shop-to-shop collaboration tools. Not even a little. It requires 1) maturation of agentic physical design, and 2) a small number of highly competent direct manufacturers who lean in and serve this new ecosystem as it develops.
129
76
35
981
107,921
Chris Popoff retweeted
Does anyone know a logistics company that can pre-position aviation fuel drums (Jet A-1) in Antarctica via ship, helicopter, or aircraft? This is for an independent flight expedition, looking for fuel caching/pre-positioning rather than a full resupply contract. Any recommendations or introductions would be greatly appreciated.
41
10
10
168
24,231
Chris Popoff retweeted
As near to the sky as I can get in Calgary. Just 15 minutes until Albertan @Astro_Kutryk launches to space! Weather permitting. Watch live: youtube.com/live/7ZiUbT1-djA… @csa_asc @NASA
3
10
266
33,628
Patience feels like failing when you’re ashamed.
2
6
302
Luna is beautiful right now!
1
4
261
Chris Popoff retweeted
I am actively recruiting security people for many of my portfolio companies. If you or someone you know are looking for the next rocket ship, let me know.
23
19
4
171
22,656
Chris Popoff retweeted
Replying to @chickengenius
$IMSR “is doing the mission-impossible thing nobody believes is achievable”. Most capital efficient SMR and no active dilution mechanism. I’ve done extensive research for months and I can confidently say it’s imo, the best play in the nuclear space.
1
1
17
1,914
Chris Popoff retweeted
I'm hiring a former founder for a very important role here at RMFG Head of Factory Software. In person at our factory in Fort Worth, TX. This is an individual contributor role and you will be spending the vast majority of your time building software, not managing others. What are we doing? We're building the fastest contract manufacturer for robotics and advanced hardware companies. We're getting there by launching multiple online-first manufacturing capabilities and letting customers combine those into much more valuable assemblies, eventually full robots. We have a crazy roadmap and we've accomplished a ton with an insanely small non-production team (Me, one mech engineer, one former hardware founder leading growth, and one customer support person). It's very important to me that we keep this lean / scrappy DNA as we scale. Some reasons why you would want to work with us - We're growing incredibly fast. Revenue up ~10x since start of year. All important charts going up and to the right at a compounding m/m rate - We're growing (physically) incredibly fast. More than doubled factory floor space from 17k to 40k sq ft. This time last year we were in 4.5k sq ft. - We have cool customers. People putting stuff into outer space, nuclear technology, countless robot companies, guys making great money selling weird niche components that we make, public companies, and everything in between. - Your work will be immediately impactful and important. There will be days where you will push code changes that you physically can see the effects propagated to the floor quickly. Some days I know that I just made a multi-million dollar commit, seeing how much money it saves us on a process, or what rework it prevents, etc. - Your work will help make the American dream possible for hundreds of factory workers here at RMFG. Today we have ~20 production staff, and multiple are starting families and buying homes because of the work we provide. - Meaningful amounts of equity - We are a venture-backed hardware startup that is making more money than it burns (highly unusual) - A ton of incredibly smart people have backed us. (YC, Patrick Collison, Kyle Vogt, etc). - You will work on hard real world engineering challenges What I'm looking for - evidence of extraordinary software ability - someone who has touched grass - relentless, killer, ambitious founder mindset send me an email w/ evidence of your skills kenneth at domain name
41
33
19
363
51,607
Chris Popoff retweeted
Can someone introduce me to someone at SRI ??
12
2
1
29
11,492
Bro is smoking a full on cigar by himself in the Corolla in front of me at a red light. Take your luxuries where you can get them I guess
6
343
Chris Popoff retweeted
I’m hiring a Director of Engineering (software). $280k-$400k range. You’ll be one of a handful of people that shape SendCutSend’s future - kinda a big deal. - help us grow our engineering team 10x - build and deliver the best possible product to our internal and external customers - manage a world-class team - build teams to develop cool shit that has never been done I’m looking for: - a SendCutSend customer - experience building teams - startup experience as well as larger org experience (we have 650 people now and will get to a couple thousand soon) - natural leadership traits - someone who wants to win and loves competition
49
48
10
654
57,947