83 Ways to Stay in Control
When margins tighten, every move matters.
BELAY’s Small Business Survival Guide gives you 83 practical ways to cut costs, improve cash flow, and keep operations running smoothly without overextending your team.
Welcome to the latest issue of RVL
A weekly digest uncovering how design, technology, and capital are shaping the next generation of companies.
This week: humans went back to the moon and SpaceX filed for the largest IPO in history on the same day. Q1 2026 shattered every venture record. And Anthropic's source code leaked across 41,000 GitHub repos. We dig into where the industry is accelerating, what it means for founders, and what's working inside RNO1.
ON THE RADAR
What's making waves right now
Humans just went back to the moon. Next time, Silicon Valley is driving.
SpaceX launched its IPO on the same day the U.S. sent astronauts to the moon for the first time in 54 years. The timing is fitting: this is likely the last time NASA will send people to deep space without major assistance from the venture-backed tech scene.
Next time, the pressure will be on SpaceX or Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to put boots on the moon. Legacy government contractors built this mission. Private capital will build the next one.
STARTUP SPOTLIGHT
Funding news that matters this week
Coder. Enterprise AI development platform that gives companies secure, governed cloud environments for AI coding tools like Claude Code and Cursor. Raised $90M Series C led by KKR, which rolled out Coder to more than 500 engineers and moved from zero AI-assisted code to more than half of commits happening inside Coder-managed environments.
Censys. Internet intelligence platform used by over 300,000 security practitioners to map and monitor public-facing infrastructure. Raised $70M in a Series D led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, plus $30M in debt financing, to build AI-driven security solutions as internet infrastructure becomes the top attack vector into organizations.
Manna Air Delivery. Drone delivery network operating across Ireland, Finland, and Texas, having completed 250,000+ commercial UAV flights. Raised $50M Series B led by ARK Invest, with plans to launch up to 40 new US operational bases. Partners include Uber, DoorDash, and Deliveroo.
Alcatraz. Physical access control startup replacing badge-based security with privacy-first facial authentication, founded by a former Apple Face ID engineer. Raised $50M Series B, with customers including the world's largest AI data centers, major US airports, and Fortune 100 companies.
🔗 More early-stage movers: Alien ($7.1M pre-seed, identity infrastructure for humans and AI agents), Soma Energy ($7M seed, AI economy power infrastructure), Uniblock ($5.2M to operate blockchain infrastructure) and Rowan ($3.3M, AI for small business succession planning).
VC/PE WATCH
Where capital is flowing and what that means for founders
Q1 2026 just broke every venture record. Global startup funding hit $297B in Q1 2026, a 2.5x increase over the previous quarter. Just four deals: OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Waymo, accounted for $188B, more than 63% of the total. Outside the mega-rounds, seed valuations are rising fast too.
AI labs are buying, not just building. OpenAI acquired TBPN, a founder-led business talk show on track to pull in more than $30M this year, while Anthropic quietly purchased Coefficient Bio, a stealth biotech AI startup, in a $400M+ stock deal. Two very different strategies for owning the narrative and the science.
SpaceX files for the largest IPO in history. SpaceX confidentially filed with the SEC ahead of an IPO that could seek a $1.75T valuation, with plans to raise $75B, which would make it the largest public listing ever, surpassing Saudi Aramco's $29B raise in 2019.
🔗 Trend for founders: The IPO window is reopening at the top. If you're building in AI, autonomy, or space tech, the liquidity cycle is closer than it's looked in years.
RNO1 CASE STUDY
Challenge: The EOS Network Foundation, the organization coordinating growth and development of the EOS blockchain ecosystem, needed to reframe its entire digital brand and customer experience following a major separation from its founding entity, Block.one.
RNO1's Solution: RNO1 partnered with ENF's head leadership to rebuild the brand from the ground up — developing a new brand strategy, design language, and Web3 digital experience with a fluid, futuristic visual identity that reflected the decentralized nature and global ambition of the EOS ecosystem.
Result: A repositioned brand and digital platform that gave ENF a distinct identity independent from its origins, enabling deeper exploration of the EOS ecosystem and supporting ongoing innovation across the network.
Which topic would you like to see more of next issue?
