UP.Partners @UPPartnersVC

A change to how the state’s sovereign wealth fund approaches venture capital has brought a gusher of money to Silicon Valley—and allows New Mexico to seize a piece of the AI boom. Full story: thein.fo/4d7KltU

The state of New Mexico is putting $2 billion into getting startups to build there. I flew out with @UPPartnersVC and their New Mexico-focused fund, UP.Abundance, to see what that actually looks like. We went inside a $1B fusion facility breaking ground with @_Pacific_Fusion, cloud-seeding drones with @RainmakerCorp, and autonomous aircraft with Reliable Robotix . New Mexico state has the second-largest sovereign wealth fund in the US with $75B under management. Silicon Valley might be where you raise, but that doesn’t mean it has to be where you build. New INSIDE Startups episode out now.

My first conversation with @adamgrosser, a Silicon Valley OG. Adam has had a front row seat to what Silicon Valley is today from being at the centre of personal computing in the early days of Apple in the 1980s as Director of Engineering to directing products at LucasFilm in 1990s and investing in the still early internet days in the 2000s at @FoundationCap. Adam went on to be a Managing Director at prominent technology focused private equity firm SilverLake and created the Up Summit, an exclusive annual event for the future of transportation. He was also a part of building and scaling two multibillion dollar companies in the 1990s. He is also a 4x Forbes Midas list investor. He now runs @UPPartnersVC which he founded six years ago around the thesis of future of transportation enabled by software. Up Partners has been an investor in companies like @hermeuscorp (founded by @AJ_Piplica), Reliable Robotics, @Axiom_Space , @SkydioHQ , @westmagco , Pacific Fusion and Beta to name a few. What makes him unique and extremely hard to bullshit to is the fact that he builds cars, airplanes and boats in his workshop in San Carlos which I had the chance to check out, this is where the technical knowhow of founders gets tested. It is not a team of 10 technicians working on these projects, it is a team of just Adam plus a couple of contractors here and there. For investors in frontier tech, this would be the equivalent of touching grass. Adam is one of the kindest and most generous humans I have come across in the industry, still a student at heart who is insatiably curious and genuinely interested in other people. Perhaps one of the reasons he has been so successful. In this wide ranging conversation we cover a bit of Silicon Valley history, what it was like working with Steve Jobs, his time in media through LucasFilm and Sony, how venture capital has changed, how Adam keeps up and how to build a successful lasting venture firm. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 02:52 – Early Days at Apple and Meeting Steve Jobs 03:29 – Innovation and the History of Printing at Apple 05:37 – Early User Interfaces and Working at Xerox PARC 07:29 – Technological Breakthroughs at LucasFilm 11:56 – Corporate Acquisitions and Maintaining Founding DNA 14:43 – "Stake vs. Rank" in Corporate Structures 17:19 – The Ephemeral Nature of Success in the Film Industry 21:15 – Two Approaches to Creating Great Products 22:22 – Spotting Breakthrough Innovations Early 27:35 – How the Venture Capital Industry Has Changed 31:56 – Rebuilding the Cottage Model with Up Partners 38:19 – The Mobility Thesis and Stagnation in the Physical World 42:18 – His San Carlos Workshop 48:48 – Why Hardware Innovation Took Decades to Evolve 54:36 – The True Job of a Venture Capitalist 57:28 – Basic Research and the Return of the Polymath 01:04:12 – The Chasm Between Tech and Business and the Value of Finishing Things 01:10:53 – The "996" Work Culture 01:17:34 – Choosing to Stay Nimble in Business and Investment 01:23:00 – Building Alignment and Generational Stability in a VC Firm 01:45:00 – Decision-Making Processes and Governance 01:49:41 – Building Brand Equity Through Community Ecosystems 02:02:42 – Archetypes of Successful Venture Partners 02:11:15 – The Case for Investment Committees and Conviction-Driven Bets 02:24:33 – Closing Questions

The venture model is evolving. As AI reshapes software economics, investors are increasingly backing business models like holding companies, PE rollups, forward-deployed engineering, and full-stack hardware/software platforms that were once considered outside the scope of traditional venture. In The Kinetic Age, we share data on why these models are gaining momentum and what they mean for the next generation of founders and investors. Download your copy of The Kinetic Age here: up.partners/the-kinetic-ag…

Congratulations to the team at Coram AI on their $35M Series B raise! Coram is applying advances in computer vision and AI to help organizations get more value from the security infrastructure they already have — turning cameras and sensors into systems that can surface insights, identify incidents, and improve response times. When visiting Coram's office, we saw firsthand how powerful the technology has become. As our partner Ally Warson shared in @BusinessInsider: “I told the product in French to pull up all the people who had entered the office that morning wearing white shoes with a blue stripe. And we watched it translate the French into English, and pull up photos of us entering the office.” We are proud to participate in this round and are excited to continue supporting Ashesh Jain, Peter Ondruska, and the entire team at Coram! Read more here: businessinsider.com/coram-turn-sec…

There’s been a rupture in the rules-based international order. As a result, middle-power countries are forming new coalitions to secure sovereignty across four major industries: 1. AI 2. Energy 3. Space 4. Manufacturing Nations are building domestic AI stacks to reduce dependence on U.S. hyperscalers, investing in chipmaking and industrial capacity to compete on their own terms, and forging new allegiances to secure the resources and infrastructure they can't yet build alone. Meanwhile, electrification is disrupting the historic power dynamics between petrostates and the nations that depend on their oil. And the LEO economy is raising new questions of sovereignty for nations that have long depended on others for satellite access. Download The Kinetic Age and head to Section 2 for a deep dive into how nations across the globe are reorganizing their economies and allegiances in response to recent geopolitical moves: up.partners/the-kinetic-ag…

We’ve been working on something really special that we’re excited to share with you today: UP.Partners has entered into a strategic relationship with TWG Global. What that means is, with TWG Global’s support, we’ll be expanding our platform and resources to do more of what we do best: backing entrepreneurs and companies rebuilding the physical world through hardware and software. TWG Global is a diversified holding company whose portfolio includes Guggenheim Investments, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Cadillac Formula 1 Team. Their trust means the world to us. And we’re still UP.Partners. But we’re now better equipped to back and support founders from seed stage all the way through IPO. Learn more about our plans here: up.partners/up-partners-an…

We live with science fiction, but it’s far from evenly distributed. To analyze this, we used three lenses: 1. Access: Geography and income still determine who lives in the future and who waits for it. 84% of humanity has never interacted with AI. 2. Unequal benefits and harms: Innovation is not neutral. Productivity gains and wealth creation accrue disproportionately, and so do job displacement, surveillance risks, and environmental costs. 3. Geopolitical gaps: In several critical industries, the frontier is no longer centered in the United States. The map of technological leadership is being redrawn as products develop and scale faster elsewhere. We talk about the technological era as if it's a singular moment. The reality is we’re living in multiple tech timelines at once. This is where The Kinetic Age 2026 kicks off. Read the full report here: up.partners/the-kinetic-ag…

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Most venture capital is chasing software and AI. But some of the most important companies are being built in the physical world. I went behind the scenes with @UPPartnersVC to see it firsthand. In this episode: - @SkydioHQ ($110M Series F, $4.4B valuation) building autonomous drones for defense and public safety - @RangeEnergy ($23.5M Series A) electrifying truck trailers in the $900 billion freight industry - UnitX ($46M Series B) using AI to detect defects in manufacturing at scale New INSIDE STARTUPS episode live now.

Physical AI is moving from concept to necessity, with global labor dynamics accelerating this shift. In a recent article in @FortuneMagazine, Ally Warson shared her perspective on how robotics are stepping into roles that are increasingly challenging and dangerous for humans to fill. “The reality is, no one wants to do these jobs,” Warson told Fortune. “There are something like 600,000 unfilled jobs in the industrial space. No one’s raising their hand and signing up for it.” This thesis is reflected in portfolio companies like Noble Machines and WakeCap, where AI and robotics are already helping reduce risk and improve outcomes on job sites. “The economics works the most for jobs where human lives are at risk,” Warson said. Read the full piece here: fortune.com/2026/04/06/jap…

At the UP.Summit, Andrew Duggleby, Co-Founder & CTO of @VenusAerospace, shared how rotating detonation engines could represent the first true architectural leap in aerospace propulsion in decades. youtu.be/PMGqWn8CIMw?si… #Aerospace #Innovation #Hypersonic #SpaceTech

Traditional factories are optimized for one product. In today’s fast-paced business environment, is there a way for companies to build multiple products on the same hardware? Enter @Divergent3D Watch Kevin Czinger's UP.Summit presentation here: youtu.be/Krk-BWIZmQY?si…

We’re proud to share that @BeyondMathLtd, an UP.Partners portfolio company, has completed their Seed Round at $18.5 million. Founded in 2022 by AI industry veterans Alan Patterson and Darren Garvey, BeyondMath has developed the world’s largest foundational physics AI model, which is capable of simulating complex physical phenomena, from aerodynamics to thermal management. BeyondMath takes a fundamentally new approach to design with a foundational AI model trained directly on first-principles physics. This enables engineering-grade simulations to be created in minutes rather than hours or days, delivering results up to 1000x faster than traditional supercomputing methods. A key example of this impact is STRATA, a $19 million, 3-year project with @honeywell, where BeyondMath enables the simulation of thousands of iterations for complex aircraft components in seconds rather than days. The funding from this Seed Round will be used to scale up the commercial deployment of BeyondMath’s generative physics technology and increase its research capacity. Congrats to the BeyondMath team on this milestone! Join the waitlist to try their new interactive demo at beyondmath.com and read the full press release here: beyondmath.com/news/seed-roun… #BeyondMath #DeepTech #ArtificialIntelligence #Engineering #Innovation #AI #Aerospace #Physics

Why is maritime autonomy moving so slowly? At UP.Summit, Joe Turner (@HavocAi_USV), shared his view on what it will take to scale autonomous systems in the maritime domain and why the bottleneck isn’t the vessel, it’s software. Full session here: youtu.be/kAuAdCWLshY?si…

Who’s moving mobility forward this month? The February 2026 edition of UP.Pulse is here, our monthly look at the latest momentum across the UP.Partners portfolio. This month’s highlights span new leadership, electric aviation partnerships, AI-powered logistics tools, and platform launches moving from beta to market — all displays of progress from concept to scale. Take a look at the February edition of the UP.Pulse to see how our portfolio companies continue to shape the future of mobility. #UPPulse #FutureOfMobility #Innovation #VentureCapital #AI #Aviation #CleanTech #DeepTech #Mobility #Startups #Tech #MobilityTech