Google commits to buying power generated by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power

It’s not real funding, it’s a power purchase agreement from something that may never be built! No different from Microsoft’s previous fusion power purchase agreement. The Goog may as well announce they’ve reserved office space in a building to be built on Proxima Centauri B.

Just tech virtue signalling: Google/Microsoft trade the impression that they’re relevant leaders for some legitimacy for a blue sky startup.

A power purchase agreement is critical to getting investment. The US aviation industry is wouldn’t exist if not for the UK and French governments making a purchase agreement for planes at the start of WW2

Uhh . . . source on that claim?

This is a very far cry from the claim, which is that the American aviation industry would not exist were it not for some orders by Britain and France.

That one is hard to support, given that the American aviation industry was the first such industry, anywhere, and was doing quite well for itself prior to the outbreak of the war.

Did the orders help? Um. Yes? I mean they stopped paying for the planes after Lend-Lease so, mixed bag there, there was a war on and all. But I don't see how the gulf between "Without Britain and France paying for a few planes before the war started" and "$50 Billion in materiel provided free of charge with most of the debt written off and most of the production destroyed in combat" gets bridged. I'm calling shenanigans.