We invest in
Essential AI.
AI woven into the operating layer of physical systems so deeply that removing it means the system stops. Not software on top. The substrate itself.
$1 trillion went into AI. Almost none of it reached physical systems.
In 2024, VC funding into AI cleared $100B in a single year. Every fund in the world claimed an AI thesis.
Two years on, the results are in. The early-stage market is flooded with copilots, wrappers, and agents that are really just prompts. The wave that was supposed to find the next Atlassian funded the 400th AI-enabled CRM instead.
A significant share of that capital flowed straight back to Nvidia and the hyperscalers as compute costs.
A trillion dollars went into building the models, the chips that run them, and the software layer on top. Almost none of it went into the physical systems the world actually runs on.
Could you remove it, or would the system cease to exist?
Vaclav Smil spent his career asking what the world actually runs on. Not metaphorically. Physically. His answer: energy, food, materials, transport. The load-bearing columns. Everything else rests on them.
Close every ChatGPT tab, delete every copilot, kill every SaaS wrapper: the world keeps running. AI 1.0 sits on top of physical systems. It does not replace the substrate beneath them.
We think AI is now crossing that line. We back the companies making it happen.
March 2026 · 12 min read
Where essential meets investable
Our investments map directly onto the substrates civilisation runs on.
Sovereign Infrastructure
Intelligence is capped by the energy that runs it. It's a physical limit no software engineers around. We invest in the technology that unlocks energy, materials, and compute as linked systems.
- Compute architectures
- Edge inference
- Simulation software
- Critical minerals technology
Physical AI
The robot economy is arriving. Growing, mining, manufacturing, and moving physical goods is being divorced from human labour entirely. We back the full stack.
- Specialised robotics platforms
- Simulation and digital twins
- Fleet operating systems
- Physical-system data infrastructure
Bio AI
AI is designing biological function that could not exist without it: proteins with no natural equivalents, drug molecules at a pace human chemistry cannot match, crop traits conventional breeding could never produce.
- Computational protein design
- AI-native diagnostics
- Precision agriculture
- Real-time biosensor networks
Domain experts who were here before the hype
Researchers with decades in computational memory systems. Physicists who authored foundational plasma models. Engineers who have spent careers building for environments where failure is not a UX problem.
They were working on these problems before generative AI. What changed is that AI capabilities multiplied their possibilities 10x, 100x, 1000x.
First cheque syndication
We write the first cheque assemble a syndicate of Australia's best investors.
Global capital pathway
Direct connections to US venture capital for follow-on funding at scale.
Focus on the build
An AI operating harness (infra, skills, improvement loops) that lets founders run lean and stay focused on what matters.
The most structurally advantaged launchpad for Essential AI
Australia produces 1.22 unicorns per USD $1B of VC deployed, the highest ratio in the world and nearly double the US rate.
The same land, political stability, and renewable energy abundance that powered Australia's export economy now underpins sovereign AI infrastructure.
Capital efficiency
Seed rounds price 30–60% below US peers. World-class founders at a fraction of the cost.
Research depth
Top-tier AI research quality per capita. Internationally cited researchers with PCT-filed patents, priced as if they're in Canberra rather than Cambridge.
Live testbeds
The world's most automated mining operations, precision agriculture systems, sovereign defence infrastructure, and a healthcare system willing to pilot at speed.
Government incentives
43.5% R&D cash rebate. ARENA grants. Australia Economic Accelerator funding. Non-dilutive capital that extends your runway without touching your cap table.