industrial-tech
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The Small New York Fund Betting the Next Tech Boom Will Be Built in Concrete, Code and Salt Water
Danu Venture Group is assembling an unusually literal infrastructure portfolio: robots that wash buildings, boats that map oceans, software that audits cyber controls and machines designed to cut underground power corridors. Its wager is that the next technology cycle will be measured not only in model parameters, but in what gets built, secured and kept running.
The Venture Firm Betting AI Is About to Leave the Screen
UP.Partners built a venture firm around a stubborn idea: the hardest technology does not live neatly inside a screen. Its portfolio, venture lab and private summit are designed to move capital, machines and incumbents in the same direction.
The Tech Bank That Knows Every Exit Is Really a Border Crossing
Drake Star built a global investment bank around one narrow premise: technology deals need specialists who can read both the code and the room. More than 500 transactions later, its compass still points across borders.
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.
The Venture Firm Betting the Next Tech Boom Will Wear Steel-Toed Boots
Construct Capital raised $740 million across three fundraising cycles by arguing that factories, freight networks and energy systems deserve the same software ambition once reserved for the screen. Its wager is now colliding with the age of physical AI.
Nick Haase
Nick Haase is co-founder of MaintainX, the AI-powered CMMS and connected worker platform that reached a $2.5B valuation after its $150M Series D in July 2025. Leading go-to-market strategy, Haase has helped grow MaintainX to 11,000+ enterprise customers across manufacturing, food & beverage, and facilities — while separately angel-investing in 40+ startups including Anduril, Hadrian, and Figure. A former mobile marketing founder turned industrial software builder, he's spent years on factory floors helping maintenance teams ditch paper checklists and embrace digital workflows.
Luke Day
Luke Day is Co-founder and General Partner at MAGIC Fund, a $30M seed-stage venture firm built on the conviction that the best founders want money from people who've built things themselves. Focused on gaming, metaverse, and sports investments, Day came up through engineering recruiting at Discord and Roblox before co-founding one of the few truly decentralized VC funds - a 12-partner, multi-continent operation where each GP invests autonomously from their own domain expertise. MAGIC Fund's portfolio spans 250+ startups across 30+ countries with one unicorn (Retool) and a reported 5x return on its debut fund.
Jim Kim
Jim Kim is the Founder and General Partner of Builders VC, a San Francisco-based venture firm deploying capital into the unglamorous corners of the economy - agriculture, industrial technology, healthcare IT, and real estate - where pen and paper still govern billion-dollar decisions. A product of MIT and Columbia Business School, Kim has logged stints at GE Capital (where he built the company's venture arm), Khosla Ventures, and Formation 8 before launching Builders with a thesis that the most interesting returns live in sectors most investors won't touch. Three funds and $368M+ later, his portfolio spans synthetic biology (Bolt Threads), precision cattle data (Performance Livestock Analytics), construction tech (Fieldwire), and de-extinction biotech (Colossal). He practices kung fu, tends a Cabernet vineyard, and has been waiting his whole career for the U.S. soccer team to win a World Cup.
Upal Basu
Upal Basu is a General Partner and Managing Member at NGP Capital, a Nokia-backed venture capital firm in Palo Alto. A three-time wave rider of mobile transformation - first as an engineer, then as the founder and CEO of Mformation Technologies (which became the world's largest mobile device management company, managing 500M+ devices before being acquired by Alcatel-Lucent), and now as a lead investor in the 5G and connected enterprise era. With an engineering degree from Imperial College London, an MS from Stanford, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Basu brings a rare blend of operator grit and institutional rigor to backing founders in cybersecurity, AI, autonomous robotics, satellite navigation, and industrial technology.
Cornelius Menke
Cornelius Menke is a former Partner at Sequoia Capital, where he spent roughly three years building the firm's European investment portfolio from London. A German national educated at the Stockholm School of Economics, Menke moved from management consulting at Boston Consulting Group to venture capital after an earlier stint inside Klarna's CFO office - one of Sequoia's landmark European bets. At Sequoia, he backed companies across industrial automation, AI infrastructure, and enterprise fintech, co-investing in Robco, Tacto, LangChain, Flow, Pennylane, and Rillet while also running the firm's Arc accelerator cohorts for European pre-seed and seed founders. He departed Sequoia in 2025/2026 and his next move remains to be announced.
Brian Potter
Brian Potter is a structural engineer turned writer who publishes Construction Physics, a Substack newsletter with 72,000+ subscribers covering industrial technology, manufacturing productivity, and why buildings still cost so much to build. A Senior Infrastructure Fellow at the Institute for Progress, he spent 15 years in construction - including a front-row seat to the $2B collapse of Katerra - before channeling his frustration into some of the most rigorously researched long-form writing on industrial systems published anywhere. His first book, The Origins of Efficiency, was published by Stripe Press in October 2025.