"It only took solo venture capitalist Zal Bilimoria five phone calls to raise his latest $50 million fund. The former Andreessen Horowitz partner, who left the firm a decade ago to start VC firm Refactor Capital, said the new fund brings his total assets under management to nearly $300 million and will allow him to keep writing $1 million to $2 million checks into pre-seed and seed-stage startups."
"Bilimoria describes himself as a generalist hard-tech investor, with an interest in startups tackling big physical-world problems. He is looking at biotech companies working on fertility and immunity, as well as companies building in robotics, energy, aerospace, critical materials, and AI infrastructure. The renewed investor interest in hard tech and AI in the physical world comes after years of venture capital flowing primarily into software."
"In April alone, physical AI startups raised around $5.3 billion in VC funding, according to Crunchbase data. Bilimoria said Refactor has been investing in the category long before it became fashionable. "I've been doing hard-tech investing for a dozen years," Bilimoria told Business Insider. "It's nice to welcome all these other investors to the party, because there are a lot of huge businesses to be built.""
"Bilimoria moved into investing after stints as a product manager at Google, Netflix, and LinkedIn. He helped launch Andreessen Horowitz's first bio fund in 2015, a departure for a firm then best known for its software bets. Soon after launching the fund, he left to start Refactor, named for the process of restructuring existing computer code so it works the same way but is cleaner and easier to build on. Bilimoria's goal, then and now, he said, is to back founders "refactoring the real world.""
A solo venture capitalist raised a $50M fund in a short time, bringing total assets under management to nearly $300M. The fund supports $1M to $2M investments in pre-seed and seed-stage startups. The investor focuses on hard-tech and physical-world problems, including biotech work on fertility and immunity. He also targets robotics, energy, aerospace, critical materials, and AI infrastructure. Renewed venture interest follows years when capital favored software. Physical AI startups have recently attracted large amounts of funding, and a major physical AI company has reached a high valuation. The investor has pursued hard-tech for about a dozen years and aims to back founders improving real-world systems.
Read at www.businessinsider.com
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