UP.Partners

Today we're releasing our annual report: The Kinetic Age 2026, formerly The Moving World Report. It’s our most ambitious one yet. AI is moving beyond the screen and flowing into factories, vehicles, energy grids, defense systems, and national strategies, triggering the largest industrial reorganization since the post-war era, and the biggest single-year capital deployment in the history of capitalism. This year’s report defines eight forces reshaping the global economy from autonomous transportation equity to America’s race to reindustrialize. We invite you to use it as a guide and share it with those who may find it as useful as we do. Welcome to The Kinetic Age. up.partners/the-kinetic-ag…

The venture model is evolving. As AI reshapes software economics, investors are increasingly backing business models like holding companies, PE rollups, forward-deployed engineering, and full-stack hardware/software platforms that were once considered outside the scope of traditional venture. In The Kinetic Age, we share data on why these models are gaining momentum and what they mean for the next generation of founders and investors. Download your copy of The Kinetic Age here: up.partners/the-kinetic-ag…

Congratulations to the team at Coram AI on their $35M Series B raise! Coram is applying advances in computer vision and AI to help organizations get more value from the security infrastructure they already have — turning cameras and sensors into systems that can surface insights, identify incidents, and improve response times. When visiting Coram's office, we saw firsthand how powerful the technology has become. As our partner Ally Warson shared in @BusinessInsider: “I told the product in French to pull up all the people who had entered the office that morning wearing white shoes with a blue stripe. And we watched it translate the French into English, and pull up photos of us entering the office.” We are proud to participate in this round and are excited to continue supporting Ashesh Jain, Peter Ondruska, and the entire team at Coram! Read more here: businessinsider.com/coram-turn-sec…

There’s been a rupture in the rules-based international order. As a result, middle-power countries are forming new coalitions to secure sovereignty across four major industries: 1. AI 2. Energy 3. Space 4. Manufacturing Nations are building domestic AI stacks to reduce dependence on U.S. hyperscalers, investing in chipmaking and industrial capacity to compete on their own terms, and forging new allegiances to secure the resources and infrastructure they can't yet build alone. Meanwhile, electrification is disrupting the historic power dynamics between petrostates and the nations that depend on their oil. And the LEO economy is raising new questions of sovereignty for nations that have long depended on others for satellite access. Download The Kinetic Age and head to Section 2 for a deep dive into how nations across the globe are reorganizing their economies and allegiances in response to recent geopolitical moves: up.partners/the-kinetic-ag…

We’ve been working on something really special that we’re excited to share with you today: UP.Partners has entered into a strategic relationship with TWG Global. What that means is, with TWG Global’s support, we’ll be expanding our platform and resources to do more of what we do best: backing entrepreneurs and companies rebuilding the physical world through hardware and software. TWG Global is a diversified holding company whose portfolio includes Guggenheim Investments, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Cadillac Formula 1 Team. Their trust means the world to us. And we’re still UP.Partners. But we’re now better equipped to back and support founders from seed stage all the way through IPO. Learn more about our plans here: up.partners/up-partners-an…

We live with science fiction, but it’s far from evenly distributed. To analyze this, we used three lenses: 1. Access: Geography and income still determine who lives in the future and who waits for it. 84% of humanity has never interacted with AI. 2. Unequal benefits and harms: Innovation is not neutral. Productivity gains and wealth creation accrue disproportionately, and so do job displacement, surveillance risks, and environmental costs. 3. Geopolitical gaps: In several critical industries, the frontier is no longer centered in the United States. The map of technological leadership is being redrawn as products develop and scale faster elsewhere. We talk about the technological era as if it's a singular moment. The reality is we’re living in multiple tech timelines at once. This is where The Kinetic Age 2026 kicks off. Read the full report here: up.partners/the-kinetic-ag…

Most venture capital is chasing software and AI. But some of the most important companies are being built in the physical world. I went behind the scenes with @UPPartnersVC to see it firsthand. In this episode: - @SkydioHQ ($110M Series F, $4.4B valuation) building autonomous drones for defense and public safety - @RangeEnergy ($23.5M Series A) electrifying truck trailers in the $900 billion freight industry - UnitX ($46M Series B) using AI to detect defects in manufacturing at scale New INSIDE STARTUPS episode live now.

Physical AI is moving from concept to necessity, with global labor dynamics accelerating this shift. In a recent article in @FortuneMagazine, Ally Warson shared her perspective on how robotics are stepping into roles that are increasingly challenging and dangerous for humans to fill. “The reality is, no one wants to do these jobs,” Warson told Fortune. “There are something like 600,000 unfilled jobs in the industrial space. No one’s raising their hand and signing up for it.” This thesis is reflected in portfolio companies like Noble Machines and WakeCap, where AI and robotics are already helping reduce risk and improve outcomes on job sites. “The economics works the most for jobs where human lives are at risk,” Warson said. Read the full piece here: fortune.com/2026/04/06/jap…

At the UP.Summit, Andrew Duggleby, Co-Founder & CTO of @VenusAerospace, shared how rotating detonation engines could represent the first true architectural leap in aerospace propulsion in decades. youtu.be/PMGqWn8CIMw?si… #Aerospace #Innovation #Hypersonic #SpaceTech

Traditional factories are optimized for one product. In today’s fast-paced business environment, is there a way for companies to build multiple products on the same hardware? Enter @Divergent3D Watch Kevin Czinger's UP.Summit presentation here: youtu.be/Krk-BWIZmQY?si…

We’re proud to share that @BeyondMathLtd, an UP.Partners portfolio company, has completed their Seed Round at $18.5 million. Founded in 2022 by AI industry veterans Alan Patterson and Darren Garvey, BeyondMath has developed the world’s largest foundational physics AI model, which is capable of simulating complex physical phenomena, from aerodynamics to thermal management. BeyondMath takes a fundamentally new approach to design with a foundational AI model trained directly on first-principles physics. This enables engineering-grade simulations to be created in minutes rather than hours or days, delivering results up to 1000x faster than traditional supercomputing methods. A key example of this impact is STRATA, a $19 million, 3-year project with @honeywell, where BeyondMath enables the simulation of thousands of iterations for complex aircraft components in seconds rather than days. The funding from this Seed Round will be used to scale up the commercial deployment of BeyondMath’s generative physics technology and increase its research capacity. Congrats to the BeyondMath team on this milestone! Join the waitlist to try their new interactive demo at beyondmath.com and read the full press release here: beyondmath.com/news/seed-roun… #BeyondMath #DeepTech #ArtificialIntelligence #Engineering #Innovation #AI #Aerospace #Physics

Why is maritime autonomy moving so slowly? At UP.Summit, Joe Turner (@HavocAi_USV), shared his view on what it will take to scale autonomous systems in the maritime domain and why the bottleneck isn’t the vessel, it’s software. Full session here: youtu.be/kAuAdCWLshY?si…

Who’s moving mobility forward this month? The February 2026 edition of UP.Pulse is here, our monthly look at the latest momentum across the UP.Partners portfolio. This month’s highlights span new leadership, electric aviation partnerships, AI-powered logistics tools, and platform launches moving from beta to market — all displays of progress from concept to scale. Take a look at the February edition of the UP.Pulse to see how our portfolio companies continue to shape the future of mobility. #UPPulse #FutureOfMobility #Innovation #VentureCapital #AI #Aviation #CleanTech #DeepTech #Mobility #Startups #Tech #MobilityTech

At the UP.Summit, Adam Bry, CEO of @SkydioHQ, shared how drones are evolving from niche tools into core physical infrastructure. Watch the full session on the UP.Summit YouTube page here: youtu.be/8KteB34_BO8  #UPSummit #Skydio #Drones #Infrastructure #Aerospace

We’re excited to announce a key product launch from one of our portfolio companies — @InfinitForm. InfinitForm is for engineers who want to spend more time on high-value innovation and less time on rework. Too often, manufacturability issues only surface after simulations are complete, prototypes are built, or suppliers push back. This is driven by a structural disconnect between design and manufacturing — separate teams, separate incentives, and separate toolchains. InfinitForm changes that with an AI-powered engineering design platform which cuts design cycles by up to 80% to shorten time-to-production. After months of private beta testing with advanced engineering teams at companies like NASA, Google X, and Yamaha Motor Co, InfinitForm is now available to engineers who are ready to eliminate costly late-stage rework and compress design cycles from days to hours. Read the full press release here: infinitform.com/introducing-in… #Engineering #Manufacturing #AI #ProductDevelopment #InfinitForm

Carrie von Muench, Co-Founder & COO of Pacific Fusion, made a clear case at the UP.Summit for why fusion energy is no longer a distant science experiment, but an engineering problem with a near-term path to reality. Access the full presentation here: youtu.be/WmYZynvXkt8?si…