Natural Capital (Technology Venture Capital Firm)

Natural Capital and Shrug Capital co-led Varda Space Industries’ $187 million Series C, with participation from Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry, Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry, Khosla VenturesKhosla VenturesKhosla Ventures (KV) is an American venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, and headquartered in Menlo Park, California. It made heavy early bets on clean technology, became OpenAI’s first venture capital investor in 2019, and its portfolio also includes companies such as DoorDash, Block (formerly Square), Impossible Foods, and Rocket Lab.Open the full entry, Caffeinated CapitalCaffeinated CapitalCaffeinated Capital (known as Caffeinated) is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco and New York, founded by Raymond Tonsing in 2008. It mainly leads seed and Series A rounds and continues to invest throughout a company’s life; it originally operated as a single-partner fund, has invested in companies including Affirm, Airtable, Saronic and Virta Health, and led Varda Space Industries’ Series B.Open the full entry, Lux CapitalLux CapitalLux Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Josh Wolfe and Robert Paull, with offices in New York and Silicon Valley. Focused on emerging science and technology, the firm backs companies in fields including life sciences, artificial intelligence, robotics, manufacturing, aerospace and defense through fund investments and by helping to found companies.Open the full entry and Also CapitalAlso CapitalAlso Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in New York, founded and led as managing partner by Mike Annunziata, with Varda Space Industries chief executive Will Bruey as a co-founder. It makes concentrated investments in technical founders who choose “hard problems” and has invested in more than 30 companies since 2019, including Varda, Radiant Nuclear, Northwood Space and K2 Space.Open the full entry.⁠[1][2]

Natural Capital led the $310 million Series B of Odyssey, a Palo Alto–based AI lab developing general world models, at a valuation of $1.45 billion, with participation from Amazon, GV, AMD VenturesAMD VenturesAMD Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of semiconductor company AMD. It backs AI models, developer tools, cloud infrastructure, silicon and interconnect technologies, and provides portfolio companies with compute, engineering and market support. Its predecessor was the AMD Fusion Fund; AMD used the Ventures name in an official 2012 announcement.Open the full entry, EQT, IQT and others. Natural Capital general partner Jay Zaveri said the firm partners with ambitious technical teams building what comes next, had developed deep conviction in Odyssey’s research direction, technical leadership and execution, and made it Natural Capital’s largest investment to date.⁠[3][4][3][3][3]

Natural Capital and Lux Capital co-led Varda Space Industries’ $251 million Series D, with participation from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, 8090 Industries8090 Industries8090 Industries is an investment firm headquartered in New York that backs early- to growth-stage companies in industrial sectors including advanced manufacturing and supply chains, AI infrastructure, aerospace and defense, and energy. It was co-founded by Kerem Ozmen and Rayyan Islam, and its investors are mainly families and institutions around the world that operate major industrial enterprises; as of August 2026, it managed about $1.382 billion in assets.Open the full entry, Giant Step and Also Capital; the round valued Varda at $1.6 billion and brought its total funding to $598 million.⁠[5][6][5][7][7]