Middle Tech

Silicon solar is close to its efficiency limit, and the AI build-out needs more power than ever. Blake Martin (CEO) and Jack Manzella (COO) of Sofab Inks are working on what comes next: perovskite solar layered on top of silicon.The catch is lifespan. Perovskite already performs, but it hasn't proven it can last the 25 to 30 years lenders need to see to finance it. Sofab, which closed a $6M seed round this summer, makes tin-oxide inks that replace C60, an off-the-shelf layer that is one of the main reasons perovskite cells don't last yet.This week's episode comes from Mission Critical, our series on the industries American prosperity runs on. We recorded it in person at Sofab's lab in Louisville. Blake and Jack explain why perovskite stacks on silicon instead of replacing it, why lenders care more about lifespan than record efficiency, and the test result they were sure was an error. Peter Armstrong, their CTO, closes the episode with a tour of the lab.Get new episodes in your inbox: middletech.com/subscribeMission Critical is hosted by Logan Jones and Alex Mercer.Mission Critical is proudly supported by:Valent → getvalent.comAbel Construction → abelconstruct.com

Everyone's waiting on new nuclear, new grid connections, even data centers in space to power AI. Abhi Sastri thinks some of the fastest capacity is already built: the roughly 5,000 data centers in North America, where every watt saved is a watt for compute.This week's episode is from Mission Critical, our series on the industries American prosperity runs on. We recorded this one a few hours down I-75, in Knoxville.Abhi, co-founder and CEO of Bay Area-based FLUIX AI, joins Logan on the floor of TenHats, a Knoxville data center where FLUIX's software predicts how AI workloads will heat the room and adjusts the cooling before it happens. In a deployment supported by TVA EnergyRight, it cut the energy spent on everything but the servers by about a quarter.We also get into cold calls on a lunch break, why cooling runs up to 40 minutes behind the workload, and the data center backlash. The episode closes in the control room with TenHats' Wade Orloski.Mission Critical is hosted by Logan Jones and Alex MercerMission Critical is proudly supported by:Valent → getvalent.comAbel Construction → abelconstruct.com

The automated steel line S&K Industrial built for one of its customers does work that used to take eight to ten operators. Now it takes one. But ask the man who builds these systems whether AI is transforming manufacturing, and you'll get a more grounded answer than the headlines suggest.This week's episode is from Mission Critical, our series on the industries American prosperity runs on: energy, manufacturing, defense and space.In this episode, Matt Klein joins Logan on the floor at S&K Industrial's headquarters in Winchester, Kentucky. Matt is COO of the 65-year-old systems integrator, which consolidated with Bluegrass Tool & Industrial in July 2025 to deliver turnkey automation — supply, engineering, fabrication, and controls — for manufacturers across the Midwest.The conversation is a map of where AI is (and isn't) in manufacturing today: why its capability isn't overhyped but its advancement on the floor is, the black box problem that makes AI nearly impossible to root-cause, and how technology actually reaches the factory floor: from hardware makers like Fanuc, through integrators, down to general industry. Reshoring runs through the integrators — the companies that turn components from all over the world into production lines that work.Mission Critical is hosted by Logan Jones and Alex MercerMission Critical is proudly supported by:Valent → getvalent.comAbel Construction → abelconstruct.com

There are 40% fewer small businesses in America's defense industrial base than there were 20 years ago. The machining, welding, and fabrication that turn a program into an actual weapon happen three tiers down from the primes - and that's where the capital has stopped flowing. In Louisville, a veteran-owned holding company is buying those shops and keeping them.This week's episode is from Mission Critical, our series on the industries American prosperity runs on: energy, manufacturing, defense and space.In this episode, Patrick Malcor (Founder & CEO) and Wesley Sparks (Chief Strategy Officer) of Ajax Defense join Logan and Alex at Whelan Machine & Tool in Louisville - a shop that has machined parts for the Naval Strike Missile since the first prototypes in 2018 - to share how Ajax is buying and permanently holding the tier-2 and tier-3 manufacturers that build the defense industrial base from the bottom up.The conversation covers Patrick's thesis that defense has a capital problem rather than an innovation problem, why a trillion-dollar industry running on one-year continuing resolutions can't make long-term investments, and what happens when multi-year commitments reach the primes but never flow down to the subcontractor who owns the machines. They also get concrete about AI on the shop floor, where new tooling has taken CNC programming on a new part from six hours to thirty minutes, and about the retiring owner with no successor who can't simply shut the doors because he's a single source on a live program.Anduril and the neo-primes still need the 110-person welding shop that makes the part. Keeping that shop alive is its own kind of building.Hosted by Logan Jones and Alex MercerMission Critical is proudly supported by:Valent → getvalent.com

There are already 700 to 800 FDA-approved AI devices on the market, yet a busy oncologist still has nowhere trustworthy to learn which ones are worth their time.In this episode, Dr. Doug Flora joins us to share how he is closing that trust gap. He is the Executive Medical Director of Oncology at St. Elizabeth's Yung Family Cancer Center and co-founder of Tensor Black, a clinician-led education platform he calls "the GPS for oncology."We discussed the three layers of AI in cancer care, from ambient note-taking to the "co-pilot" that supports physicians, and why detection is moving upstream to the "pre-patient" stage. Dr. Flora unpacks St. Elizabeth's screening program, which has caught roughly 900 stage-one lung cancers across 65,000 patients screened, and why keeping physicians "at the wheel" matters. From a region often called the epicenter of cancer in America, this is a founder using better tools to fight a very local fight.Hosted by Logan JonesMiddle Tech is proudly supported by:KY Innovation → kyinnovation.comAwesome Inc → awesomeinc.org