Jon Foster

I find it hard to believe that with millions of EVs entering the market and the proliferation of AI compute that PGE is actually going to have excess capacity in 2040 without any additional generation from 3rd parties. I am also curious if there are enough transmission lines and if PGE views that as someone else’s problem. Maybe they are planning on AI and ACTUAL figuring it all out! https://lnkd.in/gybsMmaw

10

5 Comments

Excited for DCVC portfolio co Alta Resource Technologies to emerge from stealth! The design space of biology is many orders of magnitude larger than inorganic chemistry, and Alta uses it to massively reduce the cost of extracting rare earth metals. https://lnkd.in/g_q5UwRF

69

1 Comment

This is just incredible. Neal Ghosh's demonstration of how #VentureIQ takes deeply technical and complicated content across a range of industrial use cases and ages/stages through an AI-generated conversational podcast (a la #notebookLM) is really mind-blowing. Check out his post, below, and if you haven't seen VentureIQ, yet, let's get you set up to learn more. You can visit VentureIQ.ai or DM any of us over here to book a demo!

2

New Tesla Patent Reveals Clues to an Exciting Future of Humanoid Robots and AI Integration In a interesting discussion, Herbert Ong and Scott Walter dive deep into Tesla's recently published patent application WO2024072984A1 (link in comments). Entitled "Actuator and actuator design methodology," the patent primarily focuses on controlling robot movement through strategic actuator placement. However, the document also unveils important clues about the potential for end-to-end neural net training of humanoid robots, reminiscent of Tesla's approach to training its vehicles with FSD. Ong and Walter explore the concept of personalized humanoid skills. Imagine purchasing a bot with built-in capabilities, then having the option to augment and customize those skills through a "Skills Store" akin to Apple's App Store. This opens up a world of possibilities for tailoring robots to specific tasks and preferences. The discussion also touches on the potential for various robot form factors, each designed to excel at particular skills. Picture a tennis-playing robot that comes pre-trained with basic volleying instructions, but requires a "Skills Upgrade" to perform at a master level. This raises questions about the need to manufacture and train a diverse range of robot body types and sizes, mirroring how humans possess ideal physiological characteristics for different activities. Later, Ong and Walter discuss a scenario in which Tesla builds the hardware – including automobiles, humanoids, and other bot form factors – while xAI develops the brains. This arrangement opens up opportunities for licensing agreements between the two companies, that may help the companies navigate future antitrust concerns as these technologies are deployed at scale. The convergence of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence holds the potential to catalyze a profound societal transformation. As Tesla and xAI continue to push the boundaries of what's possible, I can envision a future where intelligent, adaptable robots become integral to various aspects of our lives – from manufacturing and transportation to healthcare, recreation, and beyond. The seamless integration of cutting-edge hardware and software will revolutionize the way we live and work, ushering in an era of unprecedented efficiency, productivity, and innovation. While there are still challenges to overcome and ethical considerations to address, the prospect of these combined technologies driving positive change on a global scale is awe-inspiring. #FrontierFrontier #Humanoids #AI #Robots

7

1 Comment

Just finished reading "The Next Giant Leap" by Space Capital - a pioneering VC investing in the emerging Space Economy. The report speaks to how SpaceX’s Starship is more than just the most powerful rocket ever built—it is poised to reshape the global space economy in profound ways. With its immense payload capacity, reusable design, and lower cost per launch, Starship will unlock entirely new industries and transform existing business models. But how should industries and businesses evolve to align with this paradigm shift? 📈 Rethinking Business Strategies & Supply Chains - For businesses, Starship represents an era of mass-production over precision engineering. This means moving away from the focus on mass efficiency toward cost-effective, redundant, and scalable production. - In terms of supply chains, this opens opportunities for new players in manufacturing, materials, and space components. The demand for off-the-shelf parts and non-aerospace suppliers will rise dramatically. 💡 New Use Cases & Opportunities   The opportunities Starship unlocks go beyond launching satellites. - In-space manufacturing of high-value products like pharmaceuticals and advanced materials that cannot be created on Earth. - Mega-constellations of satellites for global broadband, expanding on what Starlink has already begun. - In-orbit assembly and servicing, allowing for larger space structures like telescopes or even habitats to be built in orbit, radically reducing costs. - Lunar infrastructure and resource extraction will become more viable, paving the way for sustainable human presence on the Moon and, eventually, Mars. 📊 What Should Businesses Do Now?   1. Embrace Redundancy & Scale – Instead of focusing on one-off, high-cost solutions, businesses should embrace redundancy and mass production.    2. Simplify Design – With Starship’s payload capacity, there is less pressure to optimize for mass efficiency. Simplified, scalable designs will allow for faster production and iteration cycles, akin to how SpaceX rapidly tests and evolves Starship itself. 3. Develop Strategic Partnerships – Collaborating with forward-thinking space startups, suppliers, and even non-aerospace sectors will be essential to capitalize on the opportunities Starship provides. 🌌 A New Era of Innovation   Starship will democratize access to space, lowering the barriers for businesses to create and scale. The next decade will witness breakthroughs in scientific exploration, energy production, and in-space transportation that we can only begin to imagine today. #SpaceEconomy #Starship #Innovation #SupplyChain #Manufacturing #SpaceTech #Entrepreneurship #FutureOfSpace https://lnkd.in/gNdbwXdq

8

2 Comments

Will co-opetition bring driverless cars to market faster? Uber and Lyft have abandoned their own self-driving car initiatives in favor of partnerships. They are saving billions of dollars in R&D investment to focus on their core competencies. And they are partnering with Waymo, May Mobility and other driverless car companies to deliver robotaxis to the market faster. Is this a long-range prediction? In San Francisco, you can already find yourself in a self-driving car. You will see these robotaxis in Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Austin, and other markets in the coming year. Sometimes the best innovation comes from rethinking your core business. And other times, it comes from narrowing your focus and picking best of breed partners. 2025 will be a year of continued innovation in transportation technology! https://lnkd.in/eDssNeTU

25

6 Comments

Excited to announce our investment in Alta Resource Technologies alongside Leonardo Banchik (Voyager Ventures) with participation from Orion Resource Partners, Overture Ventures, and WovenEarth Ventures. Rare earths are critical in products from magnets to ceramics and it's important for the US to develop its own supply chain. While the US has some of the best rare earth resources, separating them has historically proven expensive and environmentally unfriendly. Alta through it's computationally designed and optimized proteins allows the US to bring back rare earth production with a cleaner, lower capex, and lower opex solution - and that's just the beginning. Congrats to Nathan Ratledge and the entire Alta team. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gbGnAJn3

60

4 Comments

PE - AI & Scarcity of Software Engineers Robert F. Smith of Vista Equity compared the scarcity of software engineers to resources rarer than gold, underscoring their high demand. However, today AI's growing ability to write code will transform Tech PE by accelerating software development and creation. Key impacts include: • More scalable software • Improved code quality • Shift in developer roles • Faster development cycles • Reduced development costs • Faster innovation and prototyping • Custom solutions for larger customers • Risk mitigation with AI-assisted debugging • Competitive advantage for early AI adopters • Lower barriers for scaling software development AI will amplify developer productivity, not replace them, and PE firms integrating AI into portfolio workflows can unlock the next wave of growth. ------------------ #pe #privateequity #investing #ai

7

Introducing the 2024 LA Hard Tech 50! 🚀 The momentum has become unstoppable for the ecosystem of entrepreneurs and engineers building in the hardware industrial ecosystem in Southern California. The story goes back over 100 years to the days of early aviation pioneers Glenn Martin, Allan Lockheed, Jack Northrop, and Howard Hughes, and to the founding of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory just before World War II. The macroeconomic, geopolitical, and technological tailwinds have been brewing for years, and the talent pool that accumulated in the legacy primes and subs became a tinderbox, where SpaceX served as a match and lit the industry on fire. The Algorithm, hardcore work ethic, and sense of responsibility and ownership instilled in SpaceX engineers built a uniquely entrepreneurial culture that is churning out new startup founders, and we’re now seeing second-order centers of excellence like Anduril and Hadrian. New startups are being founded almost every week in LA across space, defense, manufacturing & industrial automation, and energy & critical resources. The list was harder to write this year as the ecosystem has grown. The 2024 LA Hard Tech 50 includes 30 companies that were on last year’s list, and 20 new entrants who made a big impact this year. Nick Kim and I also give shout-outs to 5 key ecosystem builders and 10 exceptional operators in the community. There’s also a link to a more comprehensive Airtable list and a map of the companies. Let us know who we missed!

213

16 Comments

Friends, Q2 was a quarter of progress and learning for us at HawkTower, where we invest in early-stage startups applying breakthrough computing technologies to maximize California's natural resource markets. Our focus is on technology-enabled interventions (e.g., AI-enabled geospatial radars for lithium-ion batteries in the waste stream) for critical, market-level imperatives (e.g., disaster prevention) that can drive rapid commercial adoption (e.g., placed on every recycling truck in the world). Our current investment priorities are: - Agricultural productivity and efficiency - Biomanufacturing - Labor and mobility automation - Waste stream optimization and decarbonization - Disaster prevention and management Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve been up to: Milestones and Investments: - In late April, we officially launched our fund, filing with the SEC. Yay. - By June, we completed our first fund close ahead of schedule, with backing from family offices, foundations, high-net-worth individuals, and organizations aligned with California's future. - Our portfolio now includes three early-stage investments (Farm-ng, Agriful Software, and Nexstera Tech). Strategic Partnerships: - We believe that startups operating closer to their customers and resources, especially in agriculture and biomanufacturing, have a strategic advantage. For instance, the Salinas Valley, a major agricultural hub, is less than an hour from Silicon Valley and serves as a center of thought leadership in the convergence of agriculture and AI (from Western Growers, Taylor Farms, and others). - Similarly, the North San Joaquin Valley is emerging as a biotech and agtech innovation hub, and we are proud to support BEAM Circular, a startup hub for the circular bioeconomy. Key Relationships: - Karen Warner, CEO of BEAM Circular, joined HawkTower as a strategic advisor. - Jackie Cruz, Ed. D. Cruz, Hartnell College’s VP of Advancement, advises on Salinas Valley and workforce development. - Ben Palone from Western Growers, with his technical background in agriculture, became a trusted advisor. - Matthew Hoffman from Driscoll's Global R&D team provides insights on global agriculture, product positioning, and investment strategy. - We collaborated with Monterey Bay DART for workforce development and automation in agtech. - Dominic Milano and the Milano Technical Group from Merced collaborated on key initiatives and advised us on investments. - HawkTower is participating in Santa Cruz Works's accelerator cohort as a mentor and advisor. Thank you Doug Erickson. - We published an overview of entrepreneurship across the UC system with input from across the University of California system. Moving into the fall, we remain deeply committed to supporting founders shaping California's future natural resource markets. Stay tuned and be in touch! : ) Db

95

5 Comments

🚀 While the world grapples with access to baseload energy for compute, we've been proud to watch 8090 Industries portfolio founders Hannan P. and Jack Abraham of Exowatt quietly build. 🤯 Today, Exowatt unleashes a new dawn for the energy industry with unveiling P3s - with the ability to generate electricity at scale at just a $0.04 LCOE and with entirely baseload renewable tech. That’s lower than the cost of most fossil fuels and doesn’t account for subsidies. The company has already amassed a 1.2 GW backlog, worth $Billions from mega tech hyperscalers, energy giants and data center companies. Renewable energy can power the data centers of the AI era, and Exowatt founders Jack Abraham and Hannan P. are building that future. We're honored to be backing Exowatt alongside Sam Altman, Andreessen Horowitz, Felicis, Atomic, Overmatch Ventures and Climate Capital. Read more about their launch today here: https://lnkd.in/gZDKZdk8 cc Kerem Ozmen Wes Mendenhall Filip Vurdelja Haluk Sabanci Dincer Grant Brown Ishan Meswani Garuth A. Andrew Irwin Shilpa Patel

69

2 Comments

Check out my recent post on why President Trump is the forcing function for us to solve the “Missing Middle” and catch the industrial Tsunami of onshoring coming to the US!

84

9 Comments

🔥 🔥 🙌 🙌 🎆 🎆 I'm *fired up* to share this. #VentureIQ by the 9point8 Collective is officially live. We've heard from investors of every size and type that it takes too long and costs too much to evaluate deal flow; this limits the scale and speed at which these capital allocators can operate. To address this problem, we've created an innovative solution which delivers high fidelity diligence information near instantaneously. From a time and cost perspective, VentureIQ immediately creates leverage to look at more deals - and creates space to focus deeply on the most meaningful opportunities. To learn more, you can reach out to me directly or visit VentureIQ.ai. I'll close with some thoughts on my team, to whom I'm so grateful. Blair Merlino, Neal Ghosh and Evan Allen don't just talk about interesting concepts, point out problems or pontificate on what could be. Instead, they identify a problem, frame and validate the solution, and do the work to bring it to reality. VentureIQ is the best example I've seen of this, to date. #VentureCapital, #FamilyOffice, #PrivateEquity #CorporateDevelopment #Startups

9

2 Comments

ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at Stanford this week. Lots of nuggets here, but most interesting for the near term, Schmidt believes in the next year AI is set to make a big leap forward. He predicts AI will combine three important features: 1. Vast knowledge retention (1 million token models) 2. Text-to-action capability 3. Personal AI agent fleets While the full impact is unknown, everyone may soon command their own AI teams. Here's an example: Imagine you're developing new quantum computing algorithms. Your AI assistants could: - Continuously scan and synthesize global quantum research papers - Generate novel algorithm ideas based on this knowledge - Simulate and test these algorithms across various quantum architectures - Automatically document findings and prepare draft papers - Identify potential collaborators and draft outreach emails All initiated by a command like "Advance our quantum algorithm research." This could dramatically accelerate R&D cycles and scientific breakthroughs.. https://lnkd.in/eJbg6cnD #frontiertech #AI #futurefrontier

22

8 Comments

Exciting to see startups aiming to use AI to discover chemicals, materials, drugs, etc. Semi companies have taken notice: AMD is investing in and Cadence is acquiring them. Semi/EDA companies have broken out by becoming critical path, whether it’s through critical software, packaging, IP, design kits from foundries, or user communities. Aside from just making it easy to make new materials, these “AI for making X” companies also need to articulate a vision as to how they can establish monopolistic positions in their industries.

144

5 Comments

If you work in tech transfer this is a good read-in on how our diligence tech can assess and evaluate assets with minimal inputs. The best way to learn more is to see it live! Reach out to me directly to learn more!

2

another great piece by Jennifer Hiller regarding AI's seemingly insatiable demand for energy. Where does this take us? I predict a growing demand for "net new" clean baseload from Big Tech (and regulators). They want more power, but they would also prefer to get it the right way. Not taking it from today's pre-existing baseload, but instead finding net new sources like new-build nukes, geothermal, and more wind/solar + storage. Let's build! Carl Hoiland Joel Edwards Jonathan Webb Patrick Maloney Shayle Kann Jigar Shah Jennifer Granholm Daniel Shugar Chris Anderson Rebecca Kujawa Obvious Ventures

40

1 Comment