Space Cargo Unlimited books an entire Starfall flight for in-space manufacturing — The company reserved all 1,000 kg of capacity on a 2028 mission, with roughly a third already sold to customers. (Payload)

DIU and Space Systems Command push cheaper commercial spacecraft into the “kill web” — GHOST-R is testing whether proliferated commercial vehicles can perform military sensing and targeting missions at a lower cost and higher tempo than exquisite platforms. (Payload)

NASA adds $946M to its SpaceX crew contract — The modification covers Crew-15 through Crew-17 and brings the contract’s value to $5.92 billion. (Payload)

How to Dominate Manufacturing in the US | Chris Power, Hadrian — Manufacturing’s emerging advantage is turning factories into flexible pools of standardized capacity, where shared capex, software, and modular production let manufacturers spread risk across multiple programs instead of betting entire factories on single demand forecasts. (Relentless)

Anduril warns procurement dollars need to arrive before FY27 — Anduril says it can keep assets moving through production before 2027, but even its manufacturing system cannot scale indefinitely ahead of actual procurement funding. The Pentagon can create industrial capacity with demand signals, but factories eventually need funded orders rather than promises. (Breaking Defense) (Riffs)

Why ISRO is handing its commercial empire to private industry — India is deliberately pushing more launch and commercial-space activity out of ISRO and toward private industry. (Finshots)

Australia’s MQ-4C Triton reaches initial operating capability — The milestone expands persistent ISR coverage across Australia’s primary military operating area. (Breaking Defense)

New radar-absorbing film reportedly blocks 99.99% of radar waves — Researchers are working on a thin material with obvious potential applications in stealth and electromagnetic management. (Damn Interesting/IE)

Saab looks to expand in space sector with new partnerships — Saab signed cooperation agreements with SSC Space, OHB Sweden, and Ericsson to combine technologies and services into integrated satellite systems. No financial details disclosed. (Reuters)

EnerVenue abandoned a $264M Kentucky battery factory and built its first plant in China instead — The company says China offered a denser supplier base, engineering talent and lower costs; its new Changzhou plant is roughly 95% automated. (Reuters)

U.S. manufacturing output weakened in August while metalworking machinery orders rose — Industrial production was flat even as machine-tool demand improved, leaving a fairly mixed read on the factory economy rather than a clean slowdown. (Manufacturing Dive)

Stratasys wins patent dispute against Bambu Lab in the US — Stratasys won the latest round of its US patent fight with Bambu Lab, keeping intellectual property squarely in the competitive battle around desktop additive manufacturing. (3DPJ)

Agility says Digit is now the “first cooperatively safe humanoid” — The announcement landed alongside new robots from Universal Robots and FANUC at IMTS. (Manufacturing Dive) 

International brought in an automotive sourcing veteran to run global procurement — Sebastian Leger will oversee strategy and supplier partnerships for the truck and bus manufacturer. (Supply Chain Dive)

Ohio manufacturing-extension funding has been restored — The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association will administer the program instead of the state, keeping a piece of the small- and mid-sized manufacturing support infrastructure alive under a different operator. (IW)

OwlCAD is trying to make AI-generated 3D models actually manufacturable — OwlCAD is trying to preserve the parametric logic underneath it so holes, wall thicknesses, dimensions and mounting points remain editable. (3D Printing Journal)

Boston Dynamics opens a Metaplant Application Center for Atlas — Boston Dynamics is training Atlas humanoids inside Hyundai’s Georgia manufacturing ecosystem. The transition from controlled demos toward plant-specific training is the part of humanoids that matters. (Robot Report)

Nexus Minerals lifts Wallbrook resource 108% to 631,000 ounces — Wallbrook's reported gold resource more than doubled. Still an exploration/development story, but a 108% resource increase is enough to keep it on the mining radar. (MNN)

Mt Malcolm opens a new copper-gold exploration corridor — Early-stage exploration, but copper plus gold makes the newly identified corridor worth logging as another potential addition to future mineral supply. (MNN)

Gina Rinehart is rapidly diversifying Hancock beyond iron ore — A new 13.5% White Cliff Minerals stake is part of a nine-deal run spanning rare earths, copper, gallium, antimony and precious metals. That is a hell of a portfolio-level vote on where mineral scarcity is heading. (Northern Miner)

Russia bans exports of sulphuric acid — The restriction matters directly to mining and processing because sulphuric acid is a basic industrial input across leaching, fertilizer and mineral-processing chains. Any sustained tightening can move costs well beyond the chemical market itself. (MNN)

The US tungsten investment structure deserves a much closer look — The same CMJ issue found a government investment that appears as 24.84% in the securities filing but 19.9% in the company release, both apparently correctly depending on the denominator and instrument. (CMJ)

International Graphite secures construction finance for Collie — Financing moves the Australian graphite processor another step toward actual plant construction. Processing capacity matters more than another graphite discovery if the objective is reducing dependence on Chinese conversion capacity. (MiningNews)

Saudi-to-China crude freight has reportedly jumped from roughly $4.5M to $63M per voyage, while VLCC day rates have exceeded $1.2M/day — Freight now represents roughly one-fifth of some refiners’ crude cost. (Semafor Gulf)

Trans-Pacific container rates are almost back to pandemic-era records — Far East-to-U.S. East Coast spot rates hit $11,259 per FEU, up 325% since late February and only 11.2% below the January 2022 record; West Coast rates are up 324%. (FreightWaves)

Old Dominion is raising its general rates 4.9% — The LTL carrier is pushing through another increase even with freight demand hardly booming, an indication that cost inflation and pricing discipline are still doing work underneath a soft volume environment. (Trucking Dive)

The Supreme Court’s Montgomery ruling may actually make human freight brokers more valuable — AI may compress brokerage labor without eliminating the accountability layer. (FreightWaves)

Greenbrier booked 3,400 railcars worth about $600M in fiscal Q4 — Orders span multiple car types and end markets, including 780 railcars for Saudi Arabia Railways. (Railway Age)

Chewy’s COO lays out its last-mile playbook — Chewy is treating final-mile fulfillment as an operating capability rather than simply handing the problem to parcel carriers. (Retail Dive)

Saudi Arabia orders 780 Greenbrier railcars — The order includes tank cars for phosphoric acid and molten sulfur, tying Greenbrier directly into the Gulf's expansion of industrial and commodity freight capacity. (Semafor)

EnerVenue moved a battery factory originally planned for Kentucky to China — The startup says skills and supply-chain depth drove the decision. (Semafor Energy)

U.S. battery deployments could grow roughly 30% annually — RMI expects rapid storage growth despite tariffs, Treasury rules and restrictions on foreign-made electrical components. (Utility Dive) 

Meta signed a 144-MW Texas solar PPA with Apex Clean Energy — Meta receives the environmental attributes and renewable-energy credits associated with the project as large technology loads continue locking up generation directly. (Facilities Dive)

Amazon’s Generac agreement could reach $8B — The deal calls for roughly $2.4B of backup generators in each of the next two years and includes warrants covering nearly 1.7M Generac shares. (T&D World)

Duke Energy is using AWS AI agents on interconnection studies — The point is not sexy generative AI; it is attacking the paperwork-and-engineering queue standing between proposed load and physical grid capacity. (T&D World)

Bechtel is exiting TerraPower’s nuclear project and filing a roughly 200-worker layoff notice — Whatever the company-specific dispute, it is a useful reminder that the nuclear buildout ultimately depends on EPC execution and specialized labor, not reactor renderings. (Construction Dive)

Small plug-in home batteries are emerging as “permissionless DERs” — Pila Energy is selling 1.6-kWh batteries that plug into ordinary outlets, back up appliances, mesh together and can potentially participate in virtual power plants without the electrician/permitting mess of a Powerwall. (Volts)

The next data center bottleneck isn’t power. It’s public support. — The constraint stack is expanding from transformers and generation into land use, rates, water and the winningless of local communities to host the buildout (Construction Dive)

Homebuilders are pulling every lever they have to keep buyers engaged — August remained sluggish despite builders leaning harder on discounts and incentives as borrowing costs and consumer caution kept demand soft. (BUILDER) 

O’Hare’s infrastructure overhaul has reached $8.8 billion — Construction Dive profiles the unusual management structure behind one of the country’s largest active airport programs, where Chicago’s project lead came from law rather than construction. (Construction Dive)

Apple opens a 600-seat music venue inside Battersea Power Station — Adaptive reuse keeps turning former heavy-industrial real estate into high-value mixed-use assets; Battersea may be the cleanest global example of industrial infrastructure becoming a premium destination. (Dezeen)

Construction begins on the world's tallest jail — The HOK-designed Manhattan tower in Chinatown is one of four boroughs-based replacements for Rikers Island now breaking ground. (Dezeen) 

The final contract is coming for the $6.97 billion Second Avenue Subway extension — The MTA issued an RFQ for the remaining package, with three new Q-line stations planned for East Harlem by fall 2032. (Construction Dive)

Lennar is choosing volume over near-term margin — The builder is accepting lower profitability while working through higher-cost land and competing more aggressively with resale inventory. (BUILDER)

1 in 6 projects are data centers, construction backlog survey finds — Associated Builders and Contractors reported its Construction Backlog Indicator rebounded to 8.5 months in August, up 0.5 months from July and unchanged year over year. (Woodworking Network)

Whole Foods says supply constraints could determine whether organic reaches its next $24B — U.S. organic sales hit $76.6 billion in 2025, but producer economics, supply availability and consumer price perception remain the limiting factors to reaching $100 billion. (FoodNavigator)

Taco Bell traffic remains down double digits despite aggressive promotions — Placer.ai data suggests visits are still recovering from the chain’s cyclospora outbreak even after the outbreak itself was declared over. (RB)

High beef prices are colliding with fast-food discounting — Restaurant Business points to Meritage Hospitality Group’s bankruptcy as a reminder that franchisees can get squeezed between commodity inflation and promotions dictated by brands trying to protect traffic. (RB)

Ninety Nine Restaurants could change hands — Sale speculation around the Cannae Holdings-owned chain has intensified after sister brand O’Charley’s closed all of its corporate restaurants. (RB)

Mondelēz named cocoa veteran Zakaria Dahkoun chief procurement officer as cocoa availability improves — Procurement leadership is changing just as one of the company’s most important commodity inputs begins to normalize. (Supply Chain Dive)

Domino’s remains the strongest perceived brand in a battered pizza category — Restaurant Business looks at why the brand has held up better than Papa Johns and Pizza Hut even with some recent closures. (Restaurant Business)

McCormick is leaning into global and premium flavors as consumers stretch food budgets — Spices and sauces let households change inexpensive base ingredients without materially increasing ticket size. (FoodNavigator)

Wegmans is investing $110M in its supply chain — The grocery chain is putting another nine-figure slug of capital behind the physical infrastructure that gets food from suppliers to stores. Grocery distribution continues to behave more like an industrial network than a conventional consumer business. (SCD)

Kikkoman is spending $560M on new U.S. soy-sauce production — The Japanese manufacturer is adding domestic capacity as American demand for international flavors keeps expanding. It is another very literal example of foreign manufacturers responding to U.S. consumption by putting more plant and equipment inside the country. (Food Dive) (Riffs)

BlackRock-backed Vanguard Renewables is buying Generate Upcycle’s U.S. and Canadian digesters — Vanguard will emerge with 19 operating facilities and another 10 in development, while Generate Capital exits its organics investments. (Waste Dive)

Packaging composition has changed faster than recycling infrastructure — Household carton generation has risen substantially since 2020 while mixed paper volumes declined, according to Recycling Partnership data. (Packaging Dive)

Robinson Lumber is entering industrial biochar — The company plans to process 100,000 metric tons of wood waste annually into biochar, targeting roughly 40,000 tons of carbon removal. (Heatmap)

Savannah River says a process change is increasing runtime at a radioactive-waste processing facility — DOE is treating operational uptime inside cleanup infrastructure like any other industrial bottleneck: find the process constraint and squeeze more throughput from existing equipment. (DOE)

Containerboard producers finally got part of their latest price increases recognized — Fastmarkets RISI partially accepted the third attempted North American hike of 2026. (Packaging Dive)

FAA awards $1.1B for airport infrastructure upgrades — The Airport Improvement Program money will fund projects across critical airport infrastructure. (Construction Dive) (Notes)

Oura is heading toward an IPO with a surprisingly industrial story underneath the wearable — Huddle Up says the company expects $1.215B of revenue this year, up 74%, alongside 5M paying members and a teased U.S. manufacturing plant. (Huddle Up)  

Finance teams at Honeywell, NCR Voyix and others are using Stuut as an AI coworker for order-to-cash — The company claims customers are improving cash flow by an average of 40%. (Exec Sum)

P.F. Chang’s extended its ArrowStream partnership for inventory, purchasing and contract management — The restaurant operator will continue using the software to monitor inventory, supplier contracts and spending. It is exactly the kind of invisible white-collar infrastructure sitting behind physical restaurant operations that belongs in professional services coverage. (SCD)

AI agents are attacking the economics of customer-service friction — The Neuron cites an example where an AI agent reportedly secured a $250 airline credit and rebooking in about five minutes after a long delay. (The Neuron)

Manufacturing ransomware incidents are up 39.7% year over year — Black Kite counted 1,183 incidents through late July versus 847 a year earlier, with companies between $10M and $100M of revenue representing 70.2% of victims where revenue was known. (Fog Signal)

Toast now serves roughly one in five U.S. small and midsize restaurants — Five years after going public, Toast’s estimated U.S. penetration has risen from roughly 1 in 20 restaurants to 1 in 5, while revenue per restaurant has increased from about $8,000 to $13,000. (Expedite)

Cameco lands a CA$2.6 billion uranium supply agreement with India. Beginning in 2027, Cameco will supply nearly 22 million pounds of uranium concentrate over nine years for India’s civilian nuclear program. Separately, Cameco became the exclusive buyer and seller of future uranium products from the planned Global Laser Enrichment facility in Kentucky, giving it another potential choke point in the Western nuclear-fuel chain.

Neutron is moving from PowerPoint toward hardware. Rocket Lab completed pre-flight testing of Neutron's reusable Hungry Hippo fairing and installed a 10-meter second-stage test stand in Virginia as it advances toward full-vehicle testing. Meanwhile, its Electron program completed the company's 96th mission, deploying Synspective's 12th StriX satellite.

Costco opens every U.S. warehouse to DoorDash. Costco is now available through DoorDash from all U.S. warehouses, with more than 4,000 products eligible for same-day delivery. DoorDash says Costco had been one of its most-searched unavailable retailers; with the addition, DoorDash now works with eight of North America's ten largest food retailers.

Toast plugs voice AI directly into the restaurant operating stack. Presto joined Toast's partner ecosystem with an integration allowing QSR franchisees to connect AI drive-through ordering directly with Toast POS infrastructure. This is a clean example of restaurant automation moving from standalone experiments toward integration with the system of record actually running the restaurant.

Robinhood puts down physical roots in Canada. Following its WonderFi acquisition, Robinhood opened a Toronto headquarters supporting engineering and operating teams that already total more than 200 people. WonderFi brought roughly 300,000 customers and regulated crypto platforms Bitbuy and Coinsquare, making Canada increasingly look like Robinhood's first serious international operating beachhead rather than an app-only expansion.