Anorak Ventures: Partner Meeting 2025
- charlie85994
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
On November 5th we held our 9th annual LP event on the 42nd floor of One Sansome street in San Francisco. The firm brought together the most impressive collection of leaders, LPs and co-investors to celebrate the amazing work of our founders. Robots, Drones, 3D reconstruction, Health monitoring, Lab automation, Personal electronics and Mission simulation - our founders gave attendees a real insight into a better future for the US, its allies and the world.
Across three hours of conversations, keynotes, founder stories and one of our liveliest mixers yet, we explored a central theme: we are entering a new technological revolution, and the founders building at the edge are driving it.
Founder Spotlights: Building the Future in Real Time
Our lineup of founders this year spanned a number of critical sectors showing why DeepTech has moved from niche to necessary.
Brendan Iribe — Sesame
Fresh off the company’s exceptional early momentum, Brendan shared how Sesame is reimagining the feel of personal computing. His conversation with Greg touched on what it takes to sh ip products that feel magical, not just functional - magical demo included.
Ula Rustamova — Level Zero Health
Ula took the audience through the very earliest days of founding Level Zero and the challenges of innovating across the lab, clinical grade hardware and software. Her fireside chat made clear that the future of healthcare will be driven as much by data and automation as by clinical expertise.
Keith Miao — Birdstop
Keith walked us through the evolution of autonomous sensing and the realities of deploying hardware intelligence in the field. Keith explained the thinking behind moving the company to Detroit, drones as first responders and the protection of critical infrastructure.
Silas Adekunle — Reach Industries
After receiving a term sheet for Reach's latest round the morning of the event, Silas presented Lumi, the first visual AI Copilot for science. The company is building for an automated future and started with the most fundamental space for human innovation - science and the lab.
Jonathan Pan — Exia Labs
Jonathan gave a masterclass in explaining the potential of gaming technology when applied to mission planning and decision making in defense. Having partnered with multiple brigades, Jonathan showed how Exia builds world models to ensure better decision making using spatial reasoning on critical missions.
James Brown — Schemata
James showed how his team are creating virtual training and simulation through Schemata's creation of interactable 3D digital assets of real-world objects and environments. James gave a glimpse into the future of full 3D scene understanding and how it can be used across both the defense sector and enterprise.
Nirav Patel — Framework
Closing out the founder sessions, Nirav discussed the resurgence of American manufacturing and what it takes to build modular consumer hardware that users genuinely love. A highlight was Nirav's ambition to have consumers 'Outraged' at other consumer electronics brands who cannot offer them a device that works for them and actually lasts.
A Look Back at an Extraordinary Year
Charlie's reflection's after 1 year at the firm starting with showing just how rapidly the landscape is shifting. Silicon Valley’s historical innovation cycles—semiconductors, personal computing, the internet, social—are giving way to a broader revolution in industrial technology, reindustrialization, and AI-native hardware.
His rumination on the history of industrial revolution highlights what makes this moment so special: the chance to partner with founders using deep technology to solve real-world, physical problems across key infrastructure in healthcare, robotics, materials, manufacturing, sensing, and more.
The results speak for themselves. In his first year alone, the team has backed teams building world-class breakthroughs across the Anorak “sweet spots” - commercializing novel technology and creating industry-shifting applications.
Anorak's Performance
Greg closed the day with an overview of fund performance from Funds I and II as well as early Fund III portfolio highlights from our first nine investments. A particular highlight was announcing 2 new unicorns in the portfolio in Sesame and Onebrief. We finished up the event with 100 people attending our evening event at the Amador Club. Guests included investors from almost every major firm and inspiring founders and operators in our network.
Till next year...
A massive thank you to our sponsors and continued support from, UBS, Perlson and VentureBest. To all the founders and friends who presented, we thank you for your time. We feel lucky every day to be supported by such a strong community and are incredibly excited to continue our work backing those building the future.