hardtech
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The Firm Indiana Built to Fund Its Own Future
For 15 years, Elevate Ventures has written the first check for Indiana startups from Gary to Evansville. In 2025, the state that helped create it started asking hard questions about the books.
R7 Is Betting the Next Great Software Company Will Have Moving Parts
The Chicago venture firm hunts where code meets atoms - backing lab robots, electric trailers, ocean maps and the stubborn machinery of everyday life.
Mohamed Badawy
Mohamed Badawy is the founder and CEO of Scalvy, an Austin-based hardware startup building modular 'Power Neuron' electronics that replace centralized inverters, chargers and DC-DC converters in electric vehicles, energy storage and AI data centers. A former tenured associate professor at San Jose State University who founded and directed its Center of Power Electronic Converters, he left academia in 2024 to commercialize the modular architecture he had been researching. In March 2026 Scalvy closed a $13.9M Series A co-led by Silicon Badia with Azolla Ventures, Climate Capital and SkyRiver Ventures.
Saurabh Ullal
Saurabh Ullal is the CEO of 6K, an advanced materials company in North Andover, Massachusetts that uses a microwave-plasma process called UniMelt to make battery cathode powders and metal powders for additive manufacturing. A chemical engineer by training with a PhD from UC Santa Barbara, he joined 6K as COO and stepped into the CEO role in September 2024 alongside an $82M Series E close, tasked with scaling a technology invented at MIT into industrial tonnage.
Aurelius Systems
Aurelius Systems is a San Francisco defense-technology startup building Archimedes, an autonomous, high-powered laser turret that detects, tracks and neutralizes drones in seconds for roughly the cost of electricity. Founded in 2024 by photonics veterans Michael LaFramboise and John Marmaduke, the company fuses commercial off-the-shelf hardware, advanced optics and AI-guided targeting into a compact, low-cost counter-UAS platform aimed at protecting soldiers and critical infrastructure from cheap, swarming aerial threats.
Aymerik Renard
Aymerik Renard is a General Partner at HCVC (formerly Hardware Club), a community-driven venture firm investing in hardtech startups out of San Francisco and Paris. With more than two decades in venture capital - including stints at Innovacom, Orange, PCH International, SanDisk and Western Digital Capital - he backs founders working on robotics, space, biotech, defense and climate technology in Europe and North America.