Enabling Hyper-Techno Industrialization
About Steel Atlas.
Steel Atlas invests in the future monopolies of this accelerating wave of hyper-techno industrialization. Grounded in research, the partnership selects ten companies per fund. Steel Atlas is supported by a global network of industrial conglomerates.
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Hyper-Techno-Industrialization
We are entering the age of hyper-techno-industrialization — when the cost of manufactured goods rapidly converges to the cost of energy used to produce it. The winners of this age will designs system optimized for constant evolution.
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A Hardware Investor's (Optimistic) Perspective On Software
As long as intelligence has a marginal cost and reality remains fiddly, SaaS will be bigger than ever for the companies that can adapt to the new ways software gets built.
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Bonsai & The Art of Growing a Firm
On what bonsai can teach us about why greatness can’t be planned but can be cultivated. Where conviction comes from and how MongoDB is actually an extension of Dilbert (the comic strip). Why we will be betting on radios and radioisotopes as a natural extension of our Fund I portfolio.
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Finally, The Long Beginning of AI
Since the release of ChatGPT (enabled by GPT 3.5) in 2022, the default narrative has been one of AI takeoff and divergence. The imagined scenario is one where a leading AI lab develops a recursively self-improving model. In doing so, there is an intelligence explosion. That leading lab
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Embedded Advantage – Services as the AI On-Ramp
The next AI frontier in industrials won’t be software-first startups — it’ll be service providers using workflow access to build software moats.
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Data Gushers — A Framework for Finding the New Oil
Like the 1901 Spindletop gusher that launched the oil era, we're witnessing the rise of "data gushers" - untapped streams of information waiting to be sensed and refined into value through advances in AI and sensing technology.
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The Hydrogen Investment Blindspot
Today, green hydrogen production accounts for only 1% of the entire $100bn hydrogen production market. The reason for this is simple - green hydrogen is far too expensive even with government subsidies and decreasing solar energy costs.
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Why Valorize Waste Now?
In our interactions with public and private industrial entities, waste valorization, the process of transforming waste materials into valuable products, has become an increasingly common topic of conversation. This is driven by two factors, climate awareness and national security. These two factors are putting a "premium" on technologies
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Venture Opportunities in Critical Mineral Volatility
Special shout out to Kara Rodby PhD (Technical Principal @ Volta) whose research at MIT provided the backbone of this thesis. Please let us know if you would like to be connected with her. She is brilliant. — Fund Developments — NY #TechWeek Event: Investing in Resilience with Steel Atlas + AlleyCorp + EIF Thank
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The Triad: Our General Framework for Investing
Introduction This memo was supposed to be a simple summary of the reasons behind our biggest investment in 2023 — a $23.2M round into Transmutex, a nuclear infrastructure company. We co-led this round with Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures with significant participation from At One Ventures (led by
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Investing in the Tailwinds of Public-Private Partnerships
Acting as an “Atlas” for Our Western Companies in the Middle East From meeting Ray Dalio to H.R.H. Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al Saud (Saudi Ambassador to the US), we witnessed first hand the effectiveness of aligning our investments with public industrial capital deployments as we supported our
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Investing in a Supply Chain Resilience Platform
Announcement: Backing the Foundational Freight Intelligence Platform
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The Resilience Matrix
We are often asked, “what is resilience?” when talking about the Steel Atlas thesis. We love this question. In this update we will share a framework for how we think about the different types of resilience and how they each drive value creation. We have found this framework is both
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A Tale of Two Countries & The New Nuclear Future
In this piece, we are going to look at the geopolitical tailwinds that are driving our investment into Transmutex. Namely, how nations can get electrons when they need them and where they need them at reliable prices now and credibly decades into the future.
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Lessons Working for Kevin Ryan (The Godfather of NYC Tech)
Another request we have been receiving with increasing frequency from both our LPs and our founders is to learn more about Kevin Ryan, the Founder & CEO of AlleyCorp (one of, if not the top venture studio in the world). As LPs and friends of the fund, it is important
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Building Resilience in a Multipolar World
In today's interconnected global economy, the resilience of supply chains has emerged as a paramount concern. Recent disruptions, from pandemics to geopolitical tensions, have starkly highlighted the vulnerabilities of over-reliance on a single nation or region.
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Portfolio Construction with Earthshots & Moonshots
In our last update (“Sourcing Resilience”), we shared how we identify which sectors to invest in using a quantitative method for assessing total vulnerability to volatility and thus opportunity size. Now, we would like to share more on what we think about portfolio construction and in particular our desire to
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Sourcing Resilience
The purpose of Steel Atlas is to invest in the technologies that will enable economic resilience across the value stack. We believe we are living in an increasingly volatile world and therefore the companies deploying resilience-enabling technologies will generate outsized returns. Going forward, each of these updates will provide