Ten years ago Panthalassa asked me to believe that a bobbing metal sphere full of GPUs, cooled by the actual ocean, was a real company — and this week The Information reported they're raising $225 million more at something like a $2 billion valuation, doubling in three months flat. Unicorn? I'm going with narwhal. And that's before we even get to a decade-old idea I started myself, that's now bigger than I ever meant it to be.
From there: Portland Startup Week — the thing I started a decade ago before handing it off to Josh Carter — is becoming Oregon Startup Week, 40-plus events statewide, home base at Big Pink, May 10–15, 2027, and I'm oddly happy watching my own creation outgrow me. Renée James, who ran Intel and then sold Ampere Computing to SoftBank for $6.5 billion, just launched a Lake Oswego startup fixing pay-to-play youth sports recruiting — especially for the girls and women getting priced out of travel baseball and softball. Plus a California company buys an OSU spinout, Oregon State throws a party for five semiconductor spinouts at once, Ray King's Porkbun crosses 4 million domains, Rose City Robotics wins $200K to recycle lithium-ion batteries, Brad Attig's got a guide for supporting rural Oregon founders hit by wildfires, and Silicon Florist quietly turned 19 this week — with a 20th-anniversary save-the-date already on the calendar. And, as always, secrets.
00:00 Oregon startup new intro
00:20 Quick news stories
04:44 Panthalassa
09:43 RIP Portland Startup Week
11:55 Rule42
15:08 Secrets
LINKS:
Panthalassa rides the AI wave to $2B — https://siliconflorist.com/2026/08/06/panthalassa-rides-the-ai-wave-to-a-purported-2b-valuation/
Panthalassa — https://panthalassa.com/
Portland Startup Week is no more — https://siliconflorist.com/2026/08/03/portland-startup-week-is-no-more/
Oregon Startup Week — https://www.oregonstartupweek.com/
Rule42 sets sights on recruiting — https://siliconflorist.com/2026/08/04/a-new-kind-of-processor-rule42-sports-technology-group-sets-sites-on-improving-recruiting/
Rule42 Sports Technology Group — https://rule42.com/
Tandem PV acquires nexTC — https://siliconflorist.com/2026/08/05/californias-tandem-pv-acquires-nextc-oregon-state-university-spinout/
Tandem PV — https://www.tandempv.com/
OSU celebrates semiconductor spinouts — https://siliconflorist.com/2026/08/05/osu-celebrates-semiconductor-spinouts/
OSU Today — https://today.oregonstate.edu/all-stories/discovery-industry-oregon-state-spinouts-are-building-future-semiconductors
Porkbun passes 4 million domains — https://siliconflorist.com/2026/08/05/portlands-porkbun-passes-4-million-domains-under-management/
Porkbun — https://porkbun.com/
Rose City Robotics wins DOE prize — https://siliconflorist.com/2026/08/03/rose-city-til-batteries-die-rose-city-robotics-lands-lithium-ion-recycling-prize/
Rose City Robotics — https://rosecityrobotics.com/
Supporting rural Oregon entrepreneurs impacted by wildfires — https://siliconflorist.com/2026/08/07/supporting-rural-oregon-entrepreneurs-impacted-by-the-wildfires/
How to support rural Oregon businesses — https://reinventingrural.substack.com/p/how-to-support-rural-oregon-businesses
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