Research, thesis, and field intelligence.
How we think about Essential AI, where we see structural opportunity, and what we learn from operating alongside portfolio companies.
Shield AI's $2B Round Proves the Physical AI Enabling Layer Is the Investment
Shield AI raised $2B and immediately acquired a simulation company. The pattern is clear across Physical AI: platforms buy their enabling layers. The early-stage opportunity is building the components the platforms can't grow fast enough internally.
Read more →Humanoid Robots Will Cost $13,000 by 2035. The Investment Opportunity Isn't the Robot.
Bank of America projects humanoid robot costs falling from $35,000 to $13,000 within a decade. The chassis is a commodity. The value accrues to the orchestration layer: sim-to-real pipelines, vertical skill libraries, and fleet management software.
Read more →The Three Pillars of Essential AI
AI has already proven it works. The question now is where it becomes impossible to remove. We invest across three pillars: sovereign infrastructure, physical AI, and biology. Each connects directly to a substrate the world already runs on.
Read more →Essential AI
Essential AI is intelligence woven so deeply into physical systems that removing it means the system stops. Energy, transport, biology: the infrastructure the world runs on.
Read more →Unlock Intelligence Brief
An irregular newsletter sharing the best of our research across Essential AI, plus a “what we're watching” section that doesn't appear on the public site.