Michelle Volz 🇺🇸🚀

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:

A Utah copper mine is coming back online with advanced tech. Domestic production of critical minerals in rural Utah means greater economic strength and a safer nation. This is how we build what America needs, right here at home. 🇺🇸 More here: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@makematterco Huge 🔥🔥🔥

@dan__kelly Honored to be on your cap table 🤝

We've been lucky to work with Michelle since day one at Method. Hard to think of a better first investor for founders building in defense. Excited to see Pax come together!

Time to mine ⛏️

@LubaYudasina Loved sharing my story with you @LubaYudasina! 🤝

Thrilled for Michelle to publicly announce Pax Fund I, she's been working so hard to make it happen this past year! A couple of months ago I talked to Michelle about her journey into becoming a solo GP. Lots of nuggets about how she's picking winners in there: youtu.be/BIQ6xtkwm1c

Rapidly reducing the time it takes to build, test and evaluate platforms is the key to building low cost, disturbed mission systems. Stoked to partner with @CameronLMcCord on making the warfighter safer and more lethal.

𝐂𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝟎𝟒.𝟐𝟕.𝟐𝟔

@CatOrman1 Go dress shopping now!

is five months a crazy fast timeline to plan a wedding

You can't vibe code an airplane. Co-founders @CameronLMcCord and @jrshoch sat down with @Alfred_Lin and @sonyatweetybird at @sequoia to go deep on what it takes to bring AI to hardware development. In software development, AI works because the feedback loop is tight. Write, test, ship, iterate. Seconds, not months. Hardware doesn't work that way. Physics gets a vote. A test campaign takes weeks. A failure costs millions. There is no rollback on a rocket engine. So the teams actually winning with AI in hardware aren't starting with models. They're starting with test. Structured data. Full traceability. Every run contextualized, every result queryable, every decision auditable. That's the unlock. Not AI as a novelty. AI that reasons across your entire test history, surfaces anomalies at scale, and identifies which test priorities actually move the needle. 🔗 Full conversation in the replies.

Any founder would be incredibly lucky to have @MichelleVolz on the cap table

Michelle is an incredible investor and an incredible human. Thrilled for her and the founders who are lucky enough to have her on their cap table.

I had a great time working with Michelle at a16z, and was all too stoked to get her back on the cap table with Pax. You're going to crush it Michelle!

@scott_sanderssb Couldn’t do it without my Pax Council!

Stoked for Pax, Michelle is a top tier human and couldn’t be more excited she launched this.

New Funds, New Aircraft, New Reactors Daily Hard Tech Headlines: - @pax_ventures has raised its Fund I, a $50M fund. The firm invests in critical industries such as nuclear, mining technology, forward-deployed energy for defense, and more. The firm was founded by Michelle Volz, a former Andreessen Horowitz partner. - Qunnect, the New York–based quantum networking company, worked with @Cisco to run an entanglement swapping experiment across existing fiber infrastructure in New York City. The test linked quantum nodes across boroughs using live telecom lines, showing how urban fiber networks could support future quantum communications. - @IsembardGroup, the European distributed manufacturing startup, has raised a $50M Series A, which will push the company toward its target of opening 25 factories in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, France, and Ukraine. The firm enables component manufacturing for critical hard tech sectors. @usv led the round. - @nscale, the AI infrastructure firm, has raised a $2B Series C led by 8090 Industries and Aker ASA, bringing Sheryl Sandberg and others onto its board. The company builds GPU compute, networking, data infrastructure, and orchestration software supporting AI deployments worldwide. - Shintech, the chemical manufacturer that leads the world in polyvinyl chloride production, which enables end products such as PVC pipes, is deploying $3.4B to expand manufacturing in Louisiana. - @aureliuslasers, the San Francisco C-UAS startup, partnered with Echodyne to integrate Echodyne radar into its Aurelius laser C-UAS system, enabling detection, tracking, and laser engagement of drone threats during DiDEX 2025. - Aecon Group Inc. and Pomerleau, the Canadian construction firms, have partnered to build Arctic long-range radar infrastructure supporting Canada’s defense surveillance - PlusAI, the Bay Area autonomy firm, has released new trucking autonomy software built for commercial trucking that enables more complex operations such as nighttime driving and navigating active construction sites. - Mirai Robotics, the Italian maritime security startup, has raised a $4.2M pre-seed round led by Primo Capital. - @AaloAtomics has shipped its newest nuclear reactor vessel after completing final factory acceptance tests, with the unit now headed to Idaho. - Biomemory, the DNA compute and data storage firm, has purchased Catalog Technologies, expanding its intellectual property in molecular data systems and establishing a Boston presence. - @voyagertech_ is investing in Max Space to further the development of space infrastructure capabilities. - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (@DARPA) has unveiled its X-76 plane, which enables high-speed aerial operations without runway dependency. The plane is being developed by Bell Textron in partnership with SOCOM and DARPA. The plane has passed its critical design review, with the end goal of hovering capability and speeds of 400+ knots (pictured below).

@hari_arul Thanks Hari!!!

truly great investor and partner to entrepreneurs. congrats !

Michelle is amazing and any founder would be lucky to have her on their cap table

In the age of AI slop, @MichelleVolz only backs founders building what matters.