Friday’s wire leaned hard toward capital going into physical things. Reactors, cathode plants, industrial printers. The AI announcements were there too, but they had a different shape than they did a year ago, and that shift is the more interesting story. Hardware got the big cheques Antares picked up a $161 million Strategic Breakthrough Award to demonstrate a space reactor. That is a demonstration contract, not a production one, and the gap between those two things has swallowed plenty of nuclear programs before.