In the fusion power world, most of the attention gets lavished on the reactors themselves, where atoms fuse to unleash enormous amounts of energy. But a fusion reactor can’t run for long without a lot of other equipment, and building a fusion reactor is expensive enough on its own. Plenty of startups are happy to let someone else handle the rest.

Among the dozens of companies in the emerging fusion power supply chain, few specialists are bigger than Kyoto Fusioneering. The Japan-based company has raised $121 million in committed capital, according to FusionX. Now it has landed grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the state of Tennessee to build a prototype fuel breeding device at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). 

Alongside the announcement, Kyoto Fusioneering exclusively told TechCrunch that it’s moving its U.S. headquarters to Oak Ridge.

The startup has emerged as a key player in the fusion power industry. Over half of fusion startups have said they plan to work with external suppliers like Kyoto Fusioneering on fuel cycle technologies, according to a recent Fusion Industry Association survey.

Kyoto Fusioneering’s forthcoming device, called Unity-3, is being developed with ORNL and will test a fuel cycle technology known as a breeding blanket. Breeding blankets harvest energy from the fusion reactor while also generating fresh fusion fuel. 

One breeding blanket design will use liquid lithium, which will absorb both heat and neutrons. As the lithium atoms in the blanket are bombarded with neutrons, they split into helium and tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that’s an important fuel for many reactor designs. The tritium is then separated from the blanket and sent to the reactor, while heat is extracted to generate power.

All of this requires heat-resistant materials, bespoke pumps, and other specialized equipment, and it’s just one slice of a fusion power plant that needs to be developed before it can connect to the grid. Kyoto Fusioneering is also developing systems to heat fusion fuel into a plasma, recycle unburned fuel from the exhaust, and harvest heat to generate electricity.

Unity-3 will test the performance of not just liquid lithium, but a range of other breeding blanket materials, Kyoto Fusioneering told TechCrunch. The device will help researchers and startups validate the data they’ve been generating, so far mostly through computer models.

Other fusion startups, including Realta Fusion, Thea Energy, Type One Energy, and Xcimer Energy, will use data from the Unity-3 experiments to design their reactors. It’s a range of startups — and approaches to fusion power — that should help position Kyoto Fusioneering as a go-to supplier when fusion power is ready for the grid.

Bumble is officially giving up on the rule that made it, well, Bumble.

The dating app announced Tuesday that anyone in a match can now send the first message, ending the women-message-first requirement that has been one of the company’s defining features for more than a decade. 

Bumble is also giving matches 72 hours to respond, up from 24, in an effort to take some of the pressure out of coming up with a response in a short time frame. The longer window gives people more flexibility to reply, rather than feeling like they need to check the app constantly or risk a match disappearing.

The change marks a pretty significant shift for Bumble, which built its brand around putting women in control of heterosexual dating conversations. When the app launched in 2014, Bumble was positioned as the more considerate alternative to Tinder, with women deciding whether a conversation would begin and, ideally, avoiding some of the unsolicited messages and general weirdness that had become synonymous with dating apps.

Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd framed the new update as an evolution rather than a retreat from the company’s original mission.

“While women making the first move was a radical idea, being women-first was never about prescribing just one way to connect. It was about designing an experience with women’s needs in mind to create better outcomes for everyone,” Herd said in a statement. 

And, apparently, plenty of women are ready for this change. According to Bumble’s survey data, 66% of women surveyed said they prefer men to send the first message, with many saying it would make dating feel less stressful. Additionally, more than half of members surveyed said the longer response window improved their experience.

“Today, our community is asking for more flexibility, less pressure, and more opportunities to create real, meaningful connections, and that is what this new experience provides. This evolution isn’t a departure from our founding vision, but the realization of it,” Herd added. 

The change also isn’t coming completely out of nowhere. Bumble began loosening its original rules in 2024 with “Opening Moves,” a feature that allowed women to set a question on their profile that a man could answer. 

The change also arrives as Bumble tries to turn around a business that has been struggling to regain its footing. The company’s second-quarter earnings report last week showed revenue dropping 15.2% year over year to $210.5 million, while the company expects its number of paying customers to decline in the third quarter.

Over the past several quarters, Bumble has tried to address a broader slowdown in online dating, as the industry wrestles with user fatigue, an increasingly crowded market, and the reality that swiping through hundreds of profiles isn’t necessarily anyone’s idea of a great time. The company recently revealed it’s exploring a swipe-free future, along with more in-person events and AI features to garner more traction, especially among Gen Z users. 

The FBI is reportedly investigating how a North Korean was hired to work for a U.S. federal government agency.

News of the investigation was first reported by Federal News Network, citing a senior FBI official speaking at a conference on July 28 in Washington, D.C.. The official confirmed to Federal News Network that the FBI is investigating a North Korean working for an unnamed federal agency.

It’s unclear how the North Korean was hired, but the regime is known for its coordinated and long-running campaigns aimed at fraudulently obtaining employment at private organizations and multinationals. The case marks a rare confirmed instance of a sanctioned North Korean working for a government agency.

There are thought to be thousands of North Korean IT workers who have gained employment with U.S. and European organizations in recent years by exploiting weaknesses in the hiring process. The goal is to use fraudulent identities to gain employment with remote positions and to earn a wage that gets funneled back to the regime, all the while stealing intellectual property and other data, then using that information to extort the companies when they are inevitably caught.

But strict vetting and security clearance practices have largely kept the regime’s hackers out of government — though, not without incident. The Justice Department brought charges in 2024 against a Maryland man who assisted a North Korean hacker to pose as an American to get a remote job as a contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FBI did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment on Tuesday, and it’s unclear which federal agency was affected, and if any data or funds were stolen during the incident.

The U.S. has long warned about the risks posed by North Korean IT workers’ schemes. U.S. authorities have taken several enforcement actions and sanctions to stymie both the networks that operate from Pyongyang, as well as neighboring Russia and China, as well as the American facilitators who set up fleets of laptops that allow the North Koreans to work remotely as if they were in the United States.

North Korea operates more like a transnational criminal gang than a government, and relies on hacks, including thefts of cryptocurrency, to fund its globally sanctioned nuclear weapons program. The Kim Jong Un regime is reportedly responsible for 76% of cryptocurrency thefts, per blockchain forensic firms, netting the regime at least $2 billion during 2025 despite being banned from the global financial system.