GP @swellvc—@LoftOrbital @ScienceDotIO @aretraasdahl @credal_ai @ArrayLabs @modern_ai @exodysenergy @nandux_mining Rybodyn Deepnight GodelaAI OnavaBio IronGrid
Joined September 2008
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Energy, satellites, bio, defense. The founders we back are taking on the hardest problems of our time, and we're proud to stand behind them.
Patrick/Arc are showing genome models can surface functional RNAs in the stretches called junk. It’s the surface the RyboDyn team is mining - except one layer further: dark transcriptome → cryptic proteins → cancer targets conventional sequencing misses. Link in comments
Delighted to share a landmark preprint from our lab, using genome language models and AI agents for biological discovery and genome mining!
The stretches of DNA between protein-coding genes are often called the genome’s “dark matter,” but they are far from empty. They encode RNA molecules that sense metabolites, regulate genes, and control some of molecular biology's most important tools (such as programmable genome editors e.g. CRISPR/bridge)
Much of this biology is unexplored. One reason is that RNAs can retain similar structures and functions even as their DNA sequences change dramatically, making their relationships difficult to recognize with conventional computational tools
If the dark genome is signal, the hard part is still turning it into antigens you can drug. That's a platform.
rybodyn.com/
Pumped to join @MiguelArratia and Sebastian on their mission to find copper! @nandux_mining
30 days of Hard Tech series: Day 2
Talking copper with Miguel, co-founder of NanduX.
Miguel is stacking a lot of early wins
✅ Strategic Investment from Rio Tinto (announced today!)
✅4k acre Greenfield copper mining project in Chile
"The easy copper is completely gone"
"If you unlock a new way to find copper you can change the world... the world economy runs on electricity and copper"
"One of our first products that we already have deployed is a new type of sensor that allows you to find copper hundreds of meters below ground."
"The basic infrastructure that is needed for AI is really power and power distribution... power alone doesn't help you. You need power distribution and to use and transform the electricity. And that is copper"
Systems that run the world
swell.vc/swellthesis/
The Swell thesis: AI for critical infrastructure. Shaped by our learnings across Funds I and II. Fund III is already at work.
If you’re building here, I’d love to connect
Jay Patil retweeted
NanduX signed an earn-in and joint venture agreement with Carpala Minerals to acquire a 25% stake in Placeres, an undrilled 4,000-acre copper project in Chile’s Antofagasta Region.
Starting in October 2026, NanduX will use its sensors and artificial intelligence technology to guide the project’s first diamond drilling program.
This milestone marks NanduX’s first step toward building a portfolio of copper assets. #FindCopper
#copper #nandux #carpalaminerals
This was the day @rusty_ralston and I knew we had to join @MiguelArratia and Sebastian on their journey to find cooper, when they took an hour to meet us from the mines in Atacama. Proud to be an investor!
BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: El Segundo startup takes a 25% stake in a 4,000-acre copper project in Chile.
@nandux_mining, which develops subterranean sensing technology for mineral exploration, secured a 25% stake in the 4,000-acre Placeres project in Chile.
The company told Atoms Not Bits its technology could improve exploration efficiency by up to 10x and cut timelines from years to months, enabling mining firms to identify where to drill before committing millions.
ALT NanduX team at the mining site.
Greatness can be sensed. Rusty and I made it our life’s work.
We shipped a new product for our portfolio companies at Swell VC
Archetype now helps founders interview and evaluate hard-tech engineers. Robotics, aerospace, defense, industrial, embedded, mechatronics
It generates a custom interview script from the candidate’s background and job description, then scores the transcript afterward with cited evidence. It covers everything outside the technical screen, including obsession, ownership, first-principles reasoning, systems thinking, startup DNA, and whether their work ever made it out of simulation
archetype.swell.vc/
Jay Patil retweeted
Really good post from John Alvarez and Lucas Burgett from @parametricpbc on how to get actual signal out of real-world robot evaluations. Parametric (founded by Cody Swain & John Newsom)
Jay Patil retweeted
Strong piece from @rebeccakaden on the new physical world data loops that AI, sensors, and cheap hardware are unlocking
One follow-up: what survives when AI makes all that tacit knowledge and proprietary data explicit and copyable?
Physical moats are real and worth digging (data is harder to get, capital intensity, regs/licenses). What’s changing is the half-life
My bet: what survives is the loop. The advantage goes to whoever eats their own moat fastest, converting it into an owned capability before it decays, then doing it again
I wrote about this last week: xitter.cf/rusty_ralston/status/2…
Jay Patil retweeted
Today, we’re excited to share that @AskariDefense has raised a $9M seed round led by @BuildersVC to accelerate our work building hand-launched, autonomous interceptors for the operators closest to the fight.
Our focus is simple: give dismounted teams a lightweight, kinetic, fire-and-forget capability against hostile drones without waiting on a vehicle, a fixed site, or a perfect RF environment.
We’ve already secured major contracts, delivered systems to demanding government customers, and proven that small teams can move fast in one of the most urgent defense categories in the world.
The future of counter-UAS is not just bigger systems. It’s smaller, faster, more autonomous, and carried by the people who need it most.
We’re grateful to @BuildersVC for leading the round, with participation from @SovereignsCap, @swellvc, Rule 1 Ventures, WaterStone Impact Fund, and a syndicate of defense leaders including @dominocielo, @DanMagy, @naweed, James Kubik, and others.
We’re also grateful to the early believers who followed on and doubled down on Askari’s mission: @BlackwingVC, @KnollVentures, @OverlineVC, Georgia Tech Foundation, and Teamworthy Ventures.
Back to work.
#AskariDefense #CounterUAS #SeedRound
Jay Patil retweeted
Margs & Moonshots is back for year four
Swell VC’s annual AI mixer during NY @Techweek_ . B2B pre-seed and seed founders, investors, and builders under one East Village roof. No panels, no small talk, just the conversations that matter when AI meets critical infrastructure. Oysters and strong margaritas included
partiful.com/e/G0vIARHkSQNe1…
Alex, Pierre and the Loft team have always been years ahead, quietly building next gen capabilities before the hype cycle catches up
Loft is all in on Space-based AI.
Today, satellites are passive sensor platforms. Human operated. Collectors of raw data that gets downlinked, processed on the ground and distributed to users.
Our vision is to turn satellites into flying inference engines. Autonomous nodes, connected to the ground by real-time data relays.
Satellites were not designed to work this way. Try asking any satellite operator to run a third party provided AI application onboard their satellite....not going to happen.
For the past several years, we've been quietly building the software layer onboard that solves this problem, allowing any first or third party AI application to deploy and run on a Loft satellite. This is the key unlock for how we transform our satellites into AI-enabled decision-making nodes.
More to come....
the exact problem @credal_ai is solving in production today: permission-sync'd agents across Slack/GSuite/Salesforce/etc, auto PII redaction, human approvals on risky actions, full immutable logs
Multiple specialized agents, governed and compliant.
When Rusty and I started investing as a team 14 years ago, we decided to put two constraints in place to stay disciplined - fund size (stay small, laser focused) and check size relative to fund size (high conviction, concentration)
How about multiple agents — all accessing information across your work in a compliant, secure way — @credal_ai
Huge congratulations to @thatbergness, Pierre, and the @LoftOrbital team for staying audacious, humble, and obsessed with driving value for their customers. The insane complexity they've abstracted to simplify space access demonstrates their determination to solve the hardest problems first and build a machine around things that do not scale. Honored to be on this journey.
loftorbital.com/news/announc…