Andrew Ogawa

Honored and excited to partner with Drew Baglino and the incredible team at Heron Power as they re-imagine the electric grid for the modern world. Power in America is not zero sum. We deserve access to cheap and abundant electricity and we should win the AI race. And we must build the capacity to manufacture critical technology here at home. When faced with existential challenges, we deploy technology against them. And we win.

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🚀Initiation of Coverage Agility Robotics 🚀 We’ve initiated coverage on Agility Robotics for IPO CLUB’s flagship fund, America2030, within the robotics sector covered by me, with the help of Helen Zhou. Headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon, the company builds bipedal humanoid robots designed to operate in human-centric environments. Its mission is to solve labor shortages and automate dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks across logistics and manufacturing. 🔍Why we like Agility Robotics Commercial first-mover advantage: Achieved the industry’s first revenue-generating humanoid deployment with GXO Logistics, Inc., proving real-world value while competitors remain in pilot mode. Differentiated biomimetic technology: The Digit platform uses dynamic bipedal locomotion, passive dynamics, and a unique backward-leg design for efficient, human-like mobility across stairs, cables, and uneven terrain. Manufacturing scale readiness: The RoboFab facility in Salem— the world’s first dedicated humanoid robot factory—gives Agility a production runway toward 10,000 units/year, a 12–18 month lead over peers. 💡Notable Investors DCVC, Playground Global, WP Global Partners, Amazon, Schaeffler,Sony, SoftBank Investment Advisers, MFV Partners, TDK Ventures ⚔️ Competitive Landscape Primary competitors include Figure, Tesla, Apptronik, Boston Boston Dynamics, and Sanctuary AI. Agility differentiates through logistics-first commercialization, proven deployments, and factory-scale readiness, while others emphasize demos, internal R&D, or general-purpose manipulation capabilities. 🌍 With hundreds of robots planned for production in 2025 and RoboFab scaling toward 10,000 units annually, Agility is emerging as one of the most commercially advanced humanoid companies globally. By focusing on brownfield automation and real-world logistics workflows, it is building the backbone of next-generation warehouse automation and mobile manipulation. #Robotics #Automation #Humanoids #LogisticsTech #DeepTech #VentureCapital #America2030

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I’m lucky to work alongside colleagues like Richard Fruehauf, who constantly push my thinking. His latest piece unpacks why U.S. robotics and drone manufacturing faces uphill economics, and how public policy can help turn the tide. One key takeaway: 232 tariffs on robotics imports could help reset the economics that are holding back U.S. investment and production. It’s a sharp perspective on how policy can shape the future of advanced tech here at home. Well worth a read: https://lnkd.in/edMPTQPQ Richard Fruehauf, Robert J. Szczerba, Michael Lutzky, Edward Ovando, Karl Sanchack, Herman Herman, Jeff Legault, Phil English, Richard Fruehauf, Ryan Aument, Michael Guido, Sheila Fitzgerald Sterrett, David McCormick

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We are very excited to announce our investment in Vatn Systems. The Vatn team is led by industry veteran Nelson Mills, a lifelong sailor and serious geo-strategic thinker. He saw early on that the United States would not be able to maintain its maritime edge relying exclusively on our submarines, surface ships, and long range aircraft. His answer was to build artritable and extremely long endurance/range undersea unmanned vehicles that can be deployed en masse. That represents some very serious bang for the deterrent buck. This investment is a perfect example of the role venture capital can play in national security. Veteran Ventures Capital joined an outstanding group of investors, led by Joe Musselman at BVVC (and includes corporate investors such as Lockheed Martin) to bring the capital needed to design paradigm-busting hardware and build the factories needed to churn these systems out at scale, enabling our warfighters and allies to buy these systems quickly and easily. We are looking forward to the great things Vatn Systems will do in the coming months and years! #USN #UWDC #PACFLT #SUBPACFLT Justin Fanelli

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Excited to finally share what we’ve been building over the past year. Today we’re announcing the first investment from ARKITEKT EQUITY. Over the past year, we have been closely observing the structural shifts occurring within semiconductor ecosystems. As manufacturing systems become more complex, the infrastructure enabling those systems becomes increasingly strategic. These environments demand operational clarity, coordination, and long-term alignment. ARKITEKT was built around a simple idea: durable value is created where frontier technology meets pragmatic execution. Our investment in BBTech reflects this conviction. This is just the beginning of what we aim to build at ARKITEKT EQUITY. Stay tuned! https://lnkd.in/g_pQiBZY

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Ten years of Seraphim Space. From launching the world’s first SpaceTech VC fund to backing 145+ companies that have raised $8.9B, it's been a decade of driving innovation in defence, climate, and infrastructure from orbit. Explore the journey, timeline, and our latest podcast series with Candace Johnson: https://lnkd.in/eXf5ChiA #SeraphimSpace #DualUse #SpaceTech #VentureCapital #NewSpace #DeepTech #SpaceEconomy

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"Build the event you wish existed" That's what we at Monadical did last week at #NYTW. We wanted an AI Engineers discussion for Engineers. There's always a lot of events out there for VCs to network, or for startups to learn about G2M, but very little on lessons learned from actual engineers in the field. So that's the event we hosted. Big thank yous to our awesome panel, Roy Pereira, Ben Cohen and Corey J. Gallon. Here's the key takeaways and the AI tools we're using. 🚀 All three panelists independently called AI Agents the most transformative LLM application they’ve used. They specifically called out Claude 3.5 Sonnet for its accuracy and reliability. 🪨 We dug into how LLMs are “jagged”, not general. They can be shockingly good at some tasks and completely fail at others. Everyone agreed: good evaluations are critical (and hard.) 🧪 Corey noted how public benchmarks and reality are two different things. Most public evals are saturated or gamed. ♊ Ben emphasized that AI projects are actually two projects: building the tool and building the evaluation process. 🧱 We explored how falling dev costs may impact startup defensibility and labor demand. Roy shared that founders are already shifting strategies in response. ⚒️ In a world of daily AI launches, the panel discussed how they decide what’s worth attention, and what’s just noise. They called out tools like Goose, Aider, Claude Code, and Monadical’s own Cubbi, which helps run agentic workflows safely in dev environments. (links in the comments). CTA: What would you want to hear in an AI Applied Engineering talk you attended?

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"We are excited to add Swift Navigation as our 5th portfolio company in the EnerTech Global Strategic Mobility Fund. Our investment in Swift fits squarely in our autonomy investment focus area,” said Wally Hunter, Managing Partner at EnerTech, “Their precise Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technology provides locational accuracy within one centimeter to improve the driver safety for autonomous driving and automated driver assistance systems (ADAS). The technology is also a key component in the industrial robotics space as the need for precise locational positioning becomes more important for rapidly expanding automation markets.”

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HawkEye 360’s Series E financing and strategic acquisition mark an important milestone. HawkEye 360, a Seraphim portfolio company, has closed the acquisition of Innovative Signal Analysis (ISA), adding significant depth in signal processing and engineering and further strengthening a mission-critical, end-to-end platform. This is supported by a $150m Series E preferred equity and debt financing round, providing the capital to integrate ISA and continue scaling with discipline in a demanding dual-use market. More details here: https://lnkd.in/eAHtFfCJ Congratulations to John Serafini and the entire HawkEye 360 team on a strong step forward. John’s latest letter is also well worth a read: https://lnkd.in/e6bU-59W #SeraphimSpace #DualUse #SpaceTech #DefenceTech #NationalSecurity #SignalsIntelligence #RF #SpaceEconomy

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Excited to share that LB Investment joined Whizzo’s USD 15M Series A round. This marks another step in LB’s active expansion into India, and we’re proud to support Whizzo as a long-term partner from Korea https://lnkd.in/gQgydHzm #Whizzo #LBInvestment #Korea #India #Beenext #Lightspeed #VentureCapital

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#AmTech Weekly Roundup: Senra Systems raised $25 million in Series A funding from CIV, Dylan Field, General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, and 8VC. Senra Systems is onshoring and automating the manufacturing of wire harnesses, a critical component in aircraft, automobiles, and spacecraft.   Jordan Black, Benjamin Shanahan     Applied Intuition raised $600 million in Series F funding at a $15 billion valuation from BlackRock, Kleiner Perkins, Franklin Templeton Venture Capital, Stripes , Greycroft, and 137 Ventures. Applied Intuition builds autonomy solutions and simulation software for automakers, defense contractors, and other vehicle companies in industries like trucking and construction.   Qasar Younis Mach Industries raised $100 million in Series B funding at $470 million post-money valuation from Khosla Ventures, Bedrock, and Sequoia Capital. Mach develops advanced unmanned systems, such as a high-altitude glider and loitering munitions, while vertically integrating the manufacturing process. ethan thornton #VC #Startups #Manufacturing #Defense #Autonomy

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We are very excited to announce our newest investment, Extellis, a satellite imaging company dedicated to reliable, all-weather access with affordable, high-volume capacity. Extellis’ patented metasurface technology enables an unprecedented blend of wide-area scanning and reliable, high-resolution sensing. It builds on a decade of development in cofounder and Prof. David Smith’s lab at Duke University. Combining unique capabilities with sensible economics, Extellis will integrate satellite monitoring into vegetation management, pipeline assessment, precision agriculture, shipping route logistics, and more. We are excited to partner with our friends at Oval Park Capital as well as Duke Capital Partners, First Star Ventures, Blue Lake VC, Front Porch Venture Partners, New Industry VC, and others.

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We’re excited to announce that KUnicorn Investment has signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with TEDCO (Maryland Technology Development Corporation), a leading US-based innovation investment organization. Under this partnership, we will jointly: -Identify and evaluate technology-based startups -Pursue co-investment and fund linkage opportunities -Review technology valuation and commercialization feasibility -Collaborate on government/public R&D programmes -Support the global market entry of tech companies from Korea and the U.S. This collaboration opens up a bridge between Korea’s dynamic tech-startup ecosystem and the U.S. innovation infrastructure, providing a platform for accelerated growth and global expansion. We look forward to working with TEDCO and our portfolio companies to create transnational value and unleash innovation without borders. https://lnkd.in/gPDpmDtV https://lnkd.in/guXKbANS https://lnkd.in/g7_UMaPC https://lnkd.in/gtPwC3Zu

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As AI workloads eat up global computing supply, DRAM prices are surging like never before—creating major challenges for teams trying to plan out their data center spend. One of my portfolio companies, Mext, is addressing the largest cost component in the datacenter: server memory (DRAM). From being on the board of Redis for the last twelve years, I’ve learned a lot about the various aspects of this problem and approaches to solving them. Mext found a breakthrough, using new AI techniques, for dramatically reducing the amount of server-DRAM required to run applications, all while maintaining performance. It intelligently manages the server’s memory, keeping hot pages (i.e., those in use by applications) in fast DRAM and offloading cold pages (i.e., those less used) to a much less expensive memory tier (e.g., NVMe Flash). Key to the approach is ensuring cold memory pages that are about to be accessed by an application are back in DRAM before the application needs them or notices that they were gone. This is done without modifications to the application or the OS – so it can run in the cloud or on-premise. Mext thus allows applications to either run using less DRAM or keep their DRAM footprint but do more with it. They're hosting a webinar along with Fred Weber (former CTO of AMD) on Jan 22nd at 10am pacific time. You can register here: https://lnkd.in/gXe9GCeE

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When we met Mike, Dylan, and Max we were captured by their obsession to build the world’s best autonomous surface vessels that can be relied upon in the most difficult circumstances. After spending time at their production facility, it was clear that the entire Seasats team shared the vision to produce a product that gave our warfighters a technological advantage over our adversaries. Their products are not prototypes or demos, they are already in production use around the world by the U.S., our allies, and commercial partners. We are excited for all that is to come! #asvs #usvs #maritimetech #ISR

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Our Veteran Ventures Capital team is thrilled to welcome Vatn Systems to the VVC Fund II portfolio. Vatn is redefining undersea autonomy with low cost, modular AUVs that can be produced and deployed at scale, giving the United States and its allies a new level of capability in the maritime domain. Vatn's Press Release hit this AM: https://lnkd.in/eVMCShFW Round Highlights: $60 Million Series A To Advance Expansion In Autonomous Underwater Defense Technology: Vatn Systems has closed a $60 million Series A funding round that strengthens its position as one of the fastest-growing manufacturers of autonomous underwater vehicles in the United States. The round was led by BVVC, with additional participation from Hanwha Ocean, Geodesic Capital, Airbus Ventures, Dauntless Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, and Veteran Ventures Capital. Major existing investors also joined the round, including DYNE Ventures, Propeller Ventures, Decisive Point Ventures, SAIC Ventures, Centre Street Partners, Cubit Capital, and Lockheed Martin Ventures. The new investment marks one of the most significant financings to date in the AUV sector and reflects growing global demand for scalable undersea autonomy.

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