companies building the future
We are one of the earliest and most active investors in Robotics, Computer Vision, AI, and Hardware in Silicon Valley. We will support wildly ambitious founders regardless of what or how they’re building. Those we’ve been fortunate to partner with include:
Tenyx (AI) - acquired bY SalesforcE (NYSE: CRM)
Apprente (AI) - acquired by McDonald’S (NYSE: MCD)
Spiketrap (AI) - acquired by ReddiT (NYSE: RDDT)
Text IQ (AI) - acquired by RelativitY
Antares Industries is building rapidly deployable nuclear energy systems.
Antares is led by a multi-disciplinary team from SpaceX, MIT, Rigetti Computing, and the Air Force.
Co-Investors: Alt Capital (Series A), Caffeinated Capital (Seed), Susa Ventures, Rogue, Shrug, Uncommon, Banter, Shine, Box Group
Acquired by McDONALD’s
(NYSE: MCD)
Apprente built conversational AI agents for restaurant drive throughs. This team of senior AI PhDs and engineers from Stanford & Google formed McDonald’s new McD Tech Labs based in Mountain View.
Co-investors: Ame Cloud, Morado, Greylock, StageOne Ventures, Point 72, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, Zach Coelius, Georges Harik
AptEdge is enabling the 20 million global customer care reps with AnswerGPT™ to resolve issues immediately. More here.
Its founders helped scale AppDynamics from $20 million to $200 million in ARR prior to its $3.7 Billion acquisition by Cisco. More here.
Co-investors: Unusual, Stage 2 Capital, National Grid
Acquired by SILO
Bandit ML built a machine learning platform for e-commerce.
Its founders were three machine learning engineers from Facebook, Uber, and Twitter.
Co-Investors: Haystack, Webb, YCombinator
Beyond View builds digital twinning technology for commercial real estate sales. More on product.
It’s led by senior engineering & product leadership from Wikimedia, Warner Bros, Linden Lab, Dreamworks, & SAP. More on team.
Co-investors: Peter Chou: former CEO of HTC, Stanford, Presence, Cherubic, 7 Percent, Liquid 2, strategic angels
Biobot Analytics provides population health analytics powered by sewage to identify & track Covid-19, influenza, opioids, and new public health risks. More on product.
It’s led by a team of PhDs & experts in computational biology, epidemiology, and urban science from MIT, Harvard, and Google. More on team.
Co-investors: Valor Equity (Series A), Thursday Ventures (Series A), The Engine (Seed), Ekistic, DCVC, Homebrew, Hyperplane, Refactor, Pioneer, Liquid 2, Soma
Burnbot builds and operates autonomous systems that safely scale vegetation management to prevent destructive wildfires. More on product.
It’s led by Dr. Anukool Lakhina, founder & CEO of Guavus (acquired by Thales, France: THLLY), Dr. Lee Haddad from Lawrence Livermore Labs, and Simon Weibel, US Forest Service. More on team.
Co-investors: Regen (Series A), AmFam, Toyota, Lowercarbon, Convective, DCVC
Catalog is building the world’s first DNA-based platform for digital storage and computation. More on product.
It is led by Executives & PhDs from IBM, MIT, and Harvard. More on team.
Co-investors: Hanwa Impact (Series B), Horizons (Series A), Airbus (Series A), NEA (Seed), OS Fund, DCVC, Anorak, 50 Years, Civilization, Cantos
CompScience provides an Intelligent Safety Platform that improves workplace safety and reduces workers’ compensation premiums upfront. More on product.
It’s led by senior computer vision engineers, PhDs, and insurance executives. More on team.
Co-Investors: Valor Equity (Series A), Hustle Fund, Preface, Draft, Basecamp, City Lights, and angels
Delivery Collective provides restaurant owners with tools to lower the costs of delivery.
Its founders are the former Head of Product and Director of Engineering @ Instacart. More on team.
Co-Investors: Defy, Bling, GTM, 640 Oxford
Diligent Robotics builds socially intelligent service robots that support and empower patient care teams in hospitals. More on product.
Its founders are Professors & PhDs in Human Robot Interaction & Computer Science from UT Austin and Georgia Tech. More on team.
Co-investors: Canaan (Series B), Tiger (Series B), DNX (Series A), True, Ubiquity, Boom, Promus, Grit, Next Coast, E14, Plum Alley, Gaingels
Esper builds powerful cloud tools for developers to securely deploy, monitor, and optimize edge devices. More on product.
It's led by senior product, engineering, and partnerships leaders at Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, and Huawei. More on team.
Co-investors: Insight (Series C), Scale (Series B), Madrona (Series A), Root, Haystack, Ubiquity
Exia Labs generates warfighting strategies beyond human limits.
It’s led by engineers and product leaders from the U.S. Army, Amazon, Meta, and Riot Games.
Co-investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Space Capital, Anorak, Mana
Fathom Radiant is building a new type of computer to enable the future of safe machine intelligence More on product.
It's led by a highly technical team of PhDs, senior researchers and engineers. Join the team.
Co-investors: Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Playground, Jeff Bezos, Scott Gray, Tom Brown
First Bite provides a data platform food manufacturers use to maximize food service sales. More on product.
It’s CEO spent 9 years @ Impossible Foods and served as VP of Business Operations, Strategy, & Analytics. More on team.
Co-Investors; Bread & Butter, Leadout
FoxGlove builds the tools needed to eliminate the inefficiencies in how robotics & autonomous vehicle companies manage and collaborate over their data. More on product.
It is led by the former Director of Infrastructure @ Cruise and a senior team of former Cruise engineers. More on team.
Co-investors: Eclipse (Series A), Amplify
Framework builds modular, right-to-repair laptops that are affordable, powerful, and better for the environment. More on product.
It’s led by Nirav Patel, the former Head of Hardware & co-founder @ Oculus, also previously at Apple. More on team.
Co-investors: Buckley (Series A-1), Anzu, Spark (Series A), Coolermaster, Anorak, Formic, Linus
Frec makes it simple for anyone to borrow against their stocks at the industry’s lowest interest rates. More on product.
It’s led by senior software developers, machine learning engineers, and PMs from Twitter along with finance execs. More on team.
Co-investors: Greylock, Angel investors from Google, Stripe, Brex, AngelList, Affirm
General Galactic creates fossil-free fuels and chemicals — working toward energy abundance on Earth, and ultimately fuel stations on Mars. More on product.
It was founded by former SpaceX and Varda Space Industries engineers Halen Mattison and Luke Neise. More on team.
Co-investors: Refactor, Harpoon, BoxGroup, Seraphim Space, Impact First
GrayMatter Robotics builds software to allow for robotic surface treatments — sanding, polishing, buffing, and spraying — in U.S. manufacturing. More on product.
It is led by PhDs and Professors in robotics from the Realization of Robotics Systems Lab @ USC. More on team.
Co-Investors: Wellington (Series B), Bow Capital (Series A), Calibrate Ventures, B Capital, OCA, Stage
Hyphen builds robotic makelines to increase efficiency in the kitchen with fewer errors and lower costs. More on product.
Its team built robotics and engineering systems for Instacart, Sweetgreen, L2F, SpaceX, Middleby, Pizza Hut, Cruise, and Apple. More on team.
Co-investors: Chipotle (Strategic), Tiger Global (Series A), Morado, Compound, Lemnos
Inevitable Technologies builds clean propagation & automation solutions for global agriculture – field, indoor, and nurseries. More on product.
It’s led by David Lee, former COO/CFO of Impossible Foods and SVP of Del Monte Foods where he ran the $2 Billion food business. He leads an experienced team from Apple, Tesla, Impossible Foods, Proctor & Gamble, USDA, and Amazon. More on team.
Co-investors: R7, At One, Breakthrough Energy, Prime Movers Lab, Rethink Capital
Ingest provides all-in-one restaurant intelligence without all the logins. More on product.
It’s led by AI product and engineering leaders from IBM Watson, CapitalOne, Handy, and Google. More on team.
Co-investors: Acronym (Seed), Rubicon, SOSV, FoodX
Invisv provides completely secure video communication that prevents conversation metadata from being exposed to the server. More on product.
Its founders are security experts and PhDs from Princeton, USC, and Google. More on team.
Co-investors: Atypical Ventures
K2 Space uses the full capacity of launch vehicles like F9 and Starship to break the correlation between spacecraft mass and cost.
It’s led by SpaceX engineers with Advisor Lori Garver, former Deputy Administrator of NASA.
Co-investors: Altimeter (Series A), First Round Capital (Seed), Republic Capital (Seed), Earthrise, Countdown, Boost, SpaceCadet
Koobz provides domestic manufacturing capabilities for the shoe industry.
It’s led by engineers, product designers, and executives from the additive manufacturing and shoe industries.
Co-investors: Anorak and Antler
Acquired by
BIG HEALTH
July 14, 2023 — BigHealth Expands Into Adolescent Mental Health through Limbix acquisition
Limbix Health built digital therapeutics to treat adolescent depression & mental health.
Its founders led teams at Oculus, Facebook, and Google & previously founded Karma Science (acquired by Facebook in 2012). More on team.
Co-investors: GSR Ventures (Series A), Sequoia, Storm, Jazz, Maverick
Material is building novel 3D-printing solutions to produce batteries in any size and shape at scale.
The team is led by a Mercedes 7x Formula 1 world champion Design Engineer and a PhD in Materials Chemistry / ex-Senior Device Scientist @ X-Celeprint.
Co-Investors: SOSV
Mountaintop Studios is a new, independent studio building games for teams who love a challenge.
It’s led by Nate Mitchell, Co-founder & Chief Product Officer @ Oculus, and a senior team from Oculus, Apex Legends, PopCap, Naughty Dog, Age of Empires, and Double Fine.
Co-investors: Anthos (Series A), Andreessen Horowitz (Series A), Spark, Founders Fund, Anorak
Mux builds video streaming and analytics APIs. More on product.
It is run by the founders of Zencoder (acquired by Brightcove in 2012). More on team.
Co-investors: Coatue (Series D), Andreessen Horowitz (Series C), Evolution Media (Series B), Accel (Series A), Lowercase, Susa, Advancit, Liquid2, Haystack, YCombinator
nTopology builds next generation design & engineering software for advanced manufacturing. More on product.
It's led by a specialized team of designers, mathematicians, and engineers from the CAD & 3D printing industry. More on team.
Co-investors: Insight (Series C), Canaan (Series B), Data Collective (Series A), Root, Tuesday, Haystack, 1517, Notation
OptimoRoute builds novel people routing and fleet management software for mobile work forces. More on product.
Its founders were early engineers at Google and built machine learning products for Yelp. More on team.
Co-investors: Prelude (Series A), Congruent (Seed) Mike & Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp, Hoxton, Anorak, 7 Percent
Orderful provides an API to simplify EDI transactions at scale within a supply chain. More on product.
It’s led by a team of EDI industry experts & engineering leaders who’ve spent 10 years building EDI solutions for Fortune 500 companies. Learn more about More on team.
Co-investors: GLP Capital (Series B), Andreessen Horowitz (Series A) Initialized, Liquid 2, Anorak
Oway is a rideshare freight platform, shipping pallets up to 50% off, overnight, with the click of a button.
It’s led by a team of experienced engineers and shippers.
Co-investors: Y Combinator
PaintJet builds autonomous systems to paint & protect commercial buildings and U.S. infrastructure. More on product.
PaintJet is led by engineers, PhDs, and painting executives from CertaPro Painters, Exxon Mobil, and Renault Nissan. More on team.
Co-investors: Outsiders (Series A), 53 Seasons, Dynamo Ventures (Seed), Metaprop, VSC, Builders
Parkade makes it easy for apartment building tenants, condo owners, and companies to share & rent parking. More on product.
It's led by the first product manager at Lyft and Getaround's head of mobile engineering. More on team.
Co-investors: Charles River (Seed), Heartland
Piñata Farms is the fastest video meme maker. More on Product / Get the App.
It’s led by a senior team of engineers, creators, producers, and company builders. More on team.
Presso is reimagining clothing care — creating a robotic dry cleaning system for enterprise & home users. More on product.
It’s led by a team of specialized engineers & hospitality industry executives. More on team.
Co-investors: Uncork Capital (Seed), Cherubic, Ame Cloud, VSC, Yeti Capital
Rangeview makes aerospace parts faster, cheaper, and with half the waste.
Its founders are champion roboticists and engineers from Berkeley and USC.
Co-investors: Calibrate, Shield, Ten One Ten
Reliable Robotics believes in a future where all aircraft, big and small, fly themselves, are everywhere, and are available to everyone. More on product.
Its founders are mission-driven engineers from Space X, Tesla, & Google with experience in aviation, space, robotics and self-driving cars. More on team.
Co-investors: Coatue (Series C), Eclipse (Series B), Lightspeed, Teamworthy, Stanford
Remedy Robotics is building robotics and AI to save lives.
It’s led by Medical Doctors and PhDs in Computer Science from Stanford. More on team.
Co-investors: Blackbird, DCVC, Future Shape, KDT
STEALTH
Row64 is building GPU-accelerated spreadsheets and dashboards for deep analysis of massive datasets. More on product.
It’s led by senior leaders from Autodesk, Microsoft, Activision, and Caltech. More on team.
Co-investors: Differential, Anorak, Verissimo
Safely You detects and prevents falls in elder care facilities using AI. More on product.
It is led by PhDs, professors, and executives from UC Berkeley, MIT, Doctor on Demand, and GE. More on team.
Co-investors: Omega Healthcare (Series B), Eclipse (Series A), Founders Fund, Foundation (Seed), Data Collective (Seed), Anorak, 7 Percent, House Fund
Sidework automates drink-making for restaurant groups with point-of-sale integration. More on product.
It’s led by engineers from Georgia Tech and the University of Michigan who worked at Amazon, Microsoft, and Stratasys. More on team.
Co-Investors: Finistere, Outlander, Cherubic, & SOSV
Simbe Robotics automates capture and analysis of data that powers a $12 trillion global system. More on product.
Its led by senior engineers & executives from Willow Garage, Silver Spring, Target, Advantage, Nielsen, IRI, & Zebra. More on team.
Co-investors: Goldman Sachs Growth (Series C), Eclipse (Series B), Venrock (Series A), Future Shape, Valo, Tectonic, Lemnos, SOSV
Slip Robotics offers automated trailer loading without modification to a warehouse or loading dock. More on product.
Its team is led by engineers, roboticists, and PhDs from Tesla, Waymo, Volley Automation, Cummins, and GE Aviation. More on team.
Co-investors: Engage, Hyde Park, Tech Square
Solideon is manufacturing systems that unlock high-performance capabilities for aerospace and defense. More on product.
It’s led by specialists in metal 3D manufacturing. More on team.
Co-investors: 8090 Industries, 1517 Fund, AIN, Stellar, Boost VC, Techstars
Acquired by ReDDit
NYSE: RDDT
September 1st, 2022 - Reddit Acquires Contextualization Company Spiketrap To Boost Its Ads Business
Spiketrap built AI to generate actionable insights from gaming & entertainment data. This senior team of PhDs, PMs, and industry experts from Amazon, Twitch, Goodreads, Uber, & Nielsen are now in AI leadership positions at Reddit.
Co-investors: Susa (Seed), 645, Oceans, 20VC, Anorak, Strategic Angels
Superhuman is the fastest email experience in the world. Message me for an invite.
Its founders started Rapportive (acquired by LinkedIn in 2012) and LiveRamp (acquired by Acxiom for $310M in 2014). More on team.
Co-investors: IVP (Series C), Andreessen Horowitz (Series B), KIA, First Round, Boldstart, Precursor, Zelkova, Rubicon, WTI, 500
Acquired by Salesforce
(NYSE: CRM)
Tenyx is developing the next-generation of intelligent machines based on proprietary neuroscience-inspired AI technology.
The Tenyx team previously co-founded Apprente, which built conversational agents for restaurant drive-thrus and was acquired by McDonald’s in 2019. More on team.
Co-investors: Point72, Morado, Ame, Cota, StageOne
Acquired by Relativity
May 27th, 2021 — Relativity acquires Text IQ! - Venturebeat
TextIQ built AI for Sensitive Information and served Fortune 500 customers. It was led by a team PhDs and Masters level machine learning engineers from Columbia University.
Co-investors: Firstmark (Series A), Sierra (Series A), Intel, Floodgate (Seed), former General Counsels at Apple, Oracle, and Verizon.
Think Orbital is building in-space construction tools, unlocking multi-capability space platforms for use in Low Earth Orbit. More on product.
Think is led by highly decorated military officers, government administrators, and SpaceX engineers who have participated in over 150 successful space missions. More on team.
Co-investors: TFX, 7 Percent
Tingono builds AI to increase Net Revenue Retention (NRR). More on product.
The Tingono team previously built Glimpzit, AI for marketers, which was acquired by Forrester Research in 2018. More on team.
Co-investors: Foundation, Xfund, Flying Fish, John Schoenstein (CRO, Momentive AI), Christine Mills (CRO, Dataminr), Colin Nederkoorn (CEO, Customer.io)
Treeswift builds forest inventories through robotics and AI. More on product.
It’s led by a team of forestry experts and computer science PhDs from the renowned GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. More on team.
Co-Investors: Inspired (Series A), Ten One Ten, Crosslink, Yes, Boom, Susa, Contour, Convective
Vergesense provides AI-powered workplace analytics for Fortune 1,000 companies. More on product.
It is led by senior sensor engineers who previously founded & built ByteLight, which was acquired by Acuity (NYSE: AYI). More on team.
Co-Investors: Scale (Series C), Tola (Series B), Allegion (Series A), JLL, Bolt, MetaProp
Zeroth develops the next generation of bioclimatic building products. More here.
The company is led by architect Octave Perrault. More on team.
Co-Investors: Yes
STEALTH
STEALtH 1
Generative AI in Product Development
