Investing in founders transforming the foundational categories of society at @pax_ventures https://xitter.cf/t.co/3SwYati6g9
SF bay area
Joined October 2011
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Excited to officially announce the launch of Pax Fund I, a $50M early stage vehicle dedicated to founders transforming the foundational categories of society. 🇺🇸🚀
Wrote a bit about my journey and the thinking behind Pax below:
Michelle Volz 🇺🇸🚀 retweeted
Lumaril is backed by @eladgil, @generalcatalyst, @Lux_Capital, @felicis, @DisruptiveKoch, @pax_ventures, @forward_deploy and @BoxGroup, alongside early believers like @bobmcgrewai.
Read about our Series A and what we’re building here: xitter.cf/lumaril/status/2115097…
Reindustrialization is often framed as a need to start over and build from scratch. But there's enormous untapped potential in the plants we already have. Many plants in this country have huge ambitions to grow. They want to bring idle facilities back online, but they can’t do that without stretching their current plants too thin. Imagine what would happen if every one of these plants was operating at full capacity and could actually scale.
As a software company, it can be easy to become disconnected from the real-world work you’re supposed to improve - you have to own the outcome and have real skin in the game. When your customers are up, you’re up. When they’re down (dealing with a bad season, tariffs, etc) you feel it too. From their pricing model to the fact Ben/Mark + team are on the ground at these facilities on a near weekly basis, Lumaril is one of the few companies I’ve seen align its economics so directly with outcomes.
Bringing AI into the physical world can create enormous value across the real economy, and most importantly, make American businesses grow and scale their legacies. Proud to back @_markelliot, @bbavardage, and the @lumaril team. 🏭
Today we’re launching Lumaril.
We’re an industrial autonomy company helping America’s existing factories run at their true capacity, with more production and less waste.
The US is home to hundreds of thousands of plants, run by senior operators with decades of tacit knowledge. Much of it is unwritten, and a growing wave of retirements is taking it out the door.
If we let these facilities go dark, we don't just lose great companies and the towns that depend on them. We lose the living blueprints for making the goods and materials this country can’t afford to do without.
Reindustrialization won’t come from new factories alone. The plants we already have are great American businesses, built over generations, with enormous potential to grow. We believe helping them scale is the fastest path to restoring industrial capacity.
Michelle Volz 🇺🇸🚀 retweeted
a two-year-old mining company has raised $400M. @a16z, @khoslaventures and the CIA's venture fund are all on the cap table.
@jclozano9897 co-founded @MarianaMinerals with @tbc415 and @baker_tilney, two friends from stanford. it's now worth $1.6B. they buy mines after the market gives up on them, then run them with software and AI.
i asked him how you actually buy a mine, why AI's real bottleneck is metal, and whether he'd hire me for being good at claude code.
nontechnical, episode 3.
00:00 $400M and the CIA's venture fund
02:19 you can just buy a mine
04:41 2 years, $400M, $1.6B
08:58 cold emailing VCs vs. their first check
13:46 when to buy a mine (right after the market gives up)
19:54 every mining truck is a robot without a brain
25:08 everything human-made is grown or mined
26:15 the cheapest AI company wins
28:31 AI's real bottleneck is metal
30:55 america doesn't have enough miners
33:27 space mining and asteroids
43:13 how a $1.6B founder hires
46:17 would he hire me for claude code?
48:43 "slop cannon"
Michelle Volz 🇺🇸🚀 retweeted
Woo! 3 for 3 baby! Today, the @USNavy selected Radiant to power critical infrastructure at Crane. There is not an organization in the world with more experience in nuclear power than the U.S. Navy. We are honored to be selected by the U.S. Navy for this important work and we thank the Navy and the Army’s Dr. Waksman for their confidence in Radiant to deliver reliable, resilient nuclear power wherever their mission demands.
Our mission of Atoms for Prosperity is today strengthened by the support of the Navy and the State of Indiana. LET’S BUILD REACTORS!
The @USNavy has selected Radiant to deploy our Kaleidos microreactor at Naval Weapons Station Crane, Indiana.
With this selection, Radiant is now the only nuclear microreactor company with partnerships across the Army, Navy and Air Force.
The Navy has more than 70 years of safe reactor operations. It wrote the playbook on reactor safety. Earning its confidence is powerful independent validation of Kaleidos.
This milestone moves us closer to our goal: reliable, resilient nuclear power wherever the mission demands. Through our work with all three branches, we’re building a clear path from military deployment to nuclear energy at scale for government and commercial customers.
Read more details here: radiantnuclear.com/news/navy…
ALT A landscape image showing a truck hauling a large container marked "Radiant" across a desert landscape at sunset. In the sky above the scene, logos for "America's Navy," "U.S. Army," and "U.S. Air Force" are prominently displayed.
US Navy 🤝 Radiant Nuclear
The @USNavy has selected Radiant to deploy our Kaleidos microreactor at Naval Weapons Station Crane, Indiana.
With this selection, Radiant is now the only nuclear microreactor company with partnerships across the Army, Navy and Air Force.
The Navy has more than 70 years of safe reactor operations. It wrote the playbook on reactor safety. Earning its confidence is powerful independent validation of Kaleidos.
This milestone moves us closer to our goal: reliable, resilient nuclear power wherever the mission demands. Through our work with all three branches, we’re building a clear path from military deployment to nuclear energy at scale for government and commercial customers.
Read more details here: radiantnuclear.com/news/navy…
ALT A landscape image showing a truck hauling a large container marked "Radiant" across a desert landscape at sunset. In the sky above the scene, logos for "America's Navy," "U.S. Army," and "U.S. Air Force" are prominently displayed.
Big day for @pax_ventures companies announcing rounds, thrilled to be part of the @AirSpaceIntel journey.
One of the most important and relentless companies out there, working hard to power our critical institutions (and making a big dent in aviation!) ✈️
Our mandate at Pax is quite simple: we back founders building a future where technology strengthens America at its foundations and drives prosperity for everyone.
It’s hard to think of a more vital (and broken) pillar of society than housing. This country was built, in part, on the promise that you could own a piece of it. Housing underpins everything from family formation to middle-class wealth creation. A mortgage is the largest, cheapest loan most Americans will ever get, and they’re being locked out of it.
Startups have spent years trying to tackle housing and every one has failed. Not necessarily because of bad ideas, but because of structural roadblocks like permitting, fragmented markets, mismatched capital, etc.
Some of those barriers are finally coming down, and a new wave of startups like @americanhousing, @buildwithcuby, @ReframeSystems, @Permitflow and other are building around the category’s failure modes. I wrote up some thoughts on whether this might be the moment homebuilding startups finally work. 🏡
Link in comments.
Michelle Volz 🇺🇸🚀 retweeted
We love Pax! Thanks for supporting us at the seed, @MichelleVolz!
Arda is ripping and recruiting some of the best talent out there. If you’re looking to work on hard modern problems around scaling American manufacturing with an ELITE team, they are hiring a ton in SF!
@pax_ventures is a proud supporter 🚀
We started Arda in 2025 to speed up American manufacturing. We have spent the last year building with Anduril as our design partner. Today we are launching the company publicly on CNBC and announcing our Series A: $160M at a $1.5B valuation.
Our platform helps manufacturers design and operate manual assembly lines, putting designs into production faster now. Next we'll build automated lines that can be reconfigured as quickly as human workers, letting America make products that now require armies of workers in Asia.
I’d like to believe that United did this for me 🛰️
How can the internet on @united flights be consistently so bad? Can we please get Starlink on every flight already
Worth the read (even if written by Marines 🙃).
@scott_sv and Josh are two of the best operators I've come across in defense. And Forterra is a great example of doing vs. being - probably why they dominate the ground autonomy space today. Endlessly grateful to have Scott as a venture partner for Pax.
Over the last 4 years, lots of people have asked me "why Forterra" or "why do you care about the ground domain so much."
Well, we came from the infantry and despite the hype around drones/maritime, wars are still decided on the ground. It is the dirtiest, most dangerous layer of warfare where human beings have always had to be the blunting force.
So @JoshAraujo and I wrote a paper about it (yes, ex-Marines can write.)
forterra.com/why-we-build
How can the internet on @united flights be consistently so bad? Can we please get Starlink on every flight already
Huge for securing our critical infrastructure 🤝
Method and Palantir are announcing the Cardinal Program: a consortium of AI, infrastructure, and security partners to strengthen national cyber resilience.
America’s municipalities, water and power utilities, and critical infrastructure operators now face cyber adversaries armed with AI.
Their defenders should not have to stand alone.
Cardinal will provide select municipalities, utilities, and critical infrastructure operators with free, opt-in, continuous autonomous security assessments - with expert operators and human oversight.
If your organization protects critical systems or public services, we want to hear from you.
Let the lithium flow
Today we're celebrating the first concrete pour at Lithium One! The foundation is underway in advance of going vertical next month.
Read more about Mariana Lithium One here:
marianaminerals.com/news/lit…
