Mid-Year Review

For Californians, $7 gas has become the latest reminder of supply chain erraticism. A growing dependence on foreign systems has proven quite corrosive. As entrepreneurs and technologists rush to help the West re-industrialize, an opportunity emerges for venture capital to fund these new rails. We’ve been backing this theme since 2016, through Zetwerk (floor-less manufacturing) and Watoga (operational intelligence for mining), and are excited to power the growth ahead.

As entrepreneurs around the world raise foundries, design resilient products, and pioneer nascent robotics applications, we’ve been struck by how many founders are going full-stack—not merely forging the robot’s core intelligence but also its commodity components, such as motors for locomotion. This decision is a direct consequence of the lack of access to the Chinese supply chains that dominate component production.

Realizing the demand for novel supply chains, we recently made a seed investment in Atlas Propulsion Systems, alongside Homebrew, Also Capital, and Sunflower Capital. Atlas is building a new international supply chain for the motors and actuators that power automation’s most critical applications. Co-founders—Christian, Tom, and Carlo—came together to solve this problem after working at Mach Industries and Shield AI, where they saw how scarce these parts were, even for the best companies. Within weeks of launching, the team has secured demand for tens of thousands of motors, entered joint-design programs with customers, and begun developing new motor chemistries less reliant on rare earths. Atlas’s first target market is drones—an area on which the U.S. Department of War will spend $70 billion in 2027, after its drones proved ineffective in the Ukraine-Russia battlefield.

Atlas planned its first factory in the Philippines months before Washington unveiled plans to turn the same ground into a high-tech manufacturing hub. It’s a great reminder that the best teams skate to where the puck is going, not where it is.

Portfolio company Rome AI, a logistics intelligence AI platform, has raised an additional $2M to meet customer demand. The round was led by insider General Catalyst at a ~2x valuation cap relative to our original SAFE investment.

Solea AI, a voice platform for the services trades, raised an $8M Seed round co-led by two institutional investors (unannounced) at 4x valuation cap.

Among our prior investments, Zetwerk has filed to go public. This year, the company is on track to cross $450M in cash-flow-positive U.S. domestic manufacturing revenue, buoyed by the rapid datacenter build-out. Its exit will bring our DPI to over 3x. Zetwerk co-founder Srinath Ramakkrushnan is also a Venture Partner at ODDBIRD.

Among Ashkan’s prior angel investments, automated commodity and currency hedging company Pillar raised a $20M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, and go-to-market agentic platform Default raised a $20M Series A led by 8VC.

Co-hosting Dinner with Accel

Building strong relationships with top investment firms has always been a priority for us. Just this May, we co-hosted a dinner with Accel in San Francisco for technical founders and a few of our portfolio founders. Relationships like this often follow genuine engagement — in the weeks prior, an introduction we made had led to a new investment by Accel.

Teaching at Stanford

Earlier this year, we were invited to teach a session at Stanford as part of the RootedIn Fellowship, where students from diverse backgrounds (CS, MechE, EE, MD, MBA, JD) came together to learn about investing. We participate in select programs to stay connected to student builders and build an investor talent pipeline.

Speaking at Human[X]

In April, we were invited to speak on a panel at Human[X] in San Francisco. Here, we shared insights on investing 101 and early-growth playbooks with an audience of mostly current and prospective founders.

European Founders

To deepen relationships with Europe’s most talented engineers, Ashkan co-hosted an evening for Finnish founders at Spark Social SF in March, alongside one of our stealth companies. Several founders were curious how we’d support EU companies building stateside—like Rome, Solea, and Blok. We were happy to share experiences.

Recently, we’ve updated our website to better reflect our growing network, investments, and field perspectives. Additionally, we’ve also published our Manifesto, which dives into the original thinking behind starting ODDBIRD and our vision for it. Elements of that thinking are sprinkled throughout this letter, but laid out far more fully on our website’s perspectives page.

Most importantly, the redesign let us celebrate the people who matter most to us:

• Our founders, who enable us to believe in and invest in the exceptional—and who refer us to others with the same spark

• Our foundational LPs who believed in us from the very start

• Our co-investors who back our founders and echo our early convictions

We're excited to see what the rest of the year brings, and we hope you'll continue to join us!