Lux Capital
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Lux Capital is an American venture capital firm based in New York City that invests in emerging science and "deep technology" startups. Founded in 2000 by Josh Wolfe, Peter Hebert, and Robert Paull, the firm backs companies working at the frontier of physics, biology, computing, and engineering, with a stated preference for businesses that depend on hard scientific or technical breakthroughs rather than incremental software. The name "Lux" is Latin for light, a nod to the firm's early focus on photonics and its broader thesis that scientific insight illuminates new markets. Lux has grown from a small science-focused fund into one of the better known deep-tech investors, managing roughly $7 billion in assets as of early 2026 and holding stakes in companies spanning generative AI, robotics, defense, biotechnology, and space. The firm closed its ninth and largest fund, Lux Ventures IX, at $1.5 billion in January 2026.
Lux Capital was founded in 2000 by Josh Wolfe, Peter Hebert, and Robert Paull. Wolfe and Hebert had met as students, and the pair set out to build a firm that would fund commercial companies emerging from university and national laboratories at a time when most venture money was concentrated in consumer internet and enterprise software. Bill Conway, a co-founder of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, was an early outside backer of the firm. Today Josh Wolfe and Peter Hebert serve as co-founders and managing partners, while Robert Paull is a co-founder and venture partner.
The firm kept a relatively modest profile for much of its first 15 years, raising comparatively small funds and concentrating on areas such as nanotechnology, advanced materials, and photonics that few generalist investors understood. Its assets under management were around $1 billion as of August 2019 and roughly $1.5 billion by mid-2021. Growth accelerated through the early 2020s as several of its bets reached scale and as deep tech, AI, and defense technology drew renewed investor interest. Lux is headquartered in New York City and also operates an office in Silicon Valley, and by 2026 its team had grown to more than 30 investment professionals, many with technical or scientific backgrounds.
Lux describes itself as a backer of founders "trying to change the world" and companies that "want to upend paradigms, not just chase incremental progress." Its investing thesis centers on what the firm and the wider industry call deep tech: businesses whose competitive advantage rests on a difficult scientific or engineering achievement that is hard to replicate. The firm's named focus areas include neuroscience, biology, defense, sensing, manufacturing, data and AI, robotics, and space. Rather than waiting for finished companies, Lux often forms a thesis about where a field is heading and then seeks out, or helps assemble, the teams to pursue it.
That approach has a formal vehicle. In 2024 Lux organized its long-running company-creation work into Lux Labs, a platform for spinning scientific ideas out of research settings and into operating companies. The firm has stated that it has helped create more than 20 companies since its founding through this incubation model. Lux has also taken public positions on science policy. In 2025, amid cuts to United States federal research funding, Wolfe said Lux would commit a minimum of $100 million to biotech and AI, and the firm launched an initiative to support affected academic researchers.
Lux invests across stages, writing checks that range from initial commitments of around $100,000 through later high-conviction investments of up to roughly $100 million. The firm's fund sizes climbed sharply in the 2020s:
Lux's investor base over time has included large institutions such as the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the New Mexico State Investment Council. By 2026 defense technology had grown to account for a substantial share of the portfolio, with the firm and press coverage describing it as roughly a third of holdings.
Lux has built one of the more visible deep-tech AI and frontier-hardware portfolios among venture firms. In artificial intelligence, the firm was an early investor in Hugging Face, the company behind a widely used open-source platform and model hub, and in Runway, a maker of generative video and creative tools. Lux also backed MosaicML, an AI training-infrastructure startup, and Together AI, an open-model cloud and infrastructure company, participating in Together's Series A in November 2023. Its AI agents exposure includes Cognition, the developer of the autonomous software-engineering agent Devin.
In robotics, Lux has stated that it was the first investor in Physical Intelligence, a startup building foundation models intended to control many kinds of robots. Lux co-led Physical Intelligence's roughly $400 million Series A in November 2024 alongside Jeff Bezos and Thrive Capital, a round that valued the company at about $2.4 billion. Lux has also backed Applied Intuition, which builds software and simulation tools for autonomous vehicles and machines and which was valued at roughly $15 billion in 2025.
Defense is a defining strand of the firm. Lux was a seed-round investor in Anduril Industries in 2017 and, by its own account, invested from Anduril's very first round and again in subsequent rounds; Anduril was last reported at a $30.5 billion valuation. The firm also backs Hadrian, which operates highly automated factories for aerospace and defense parts, and Impulse Space, an in-space transportation company, reflecting Lux's broader bet that frontier manufacturing, autonomy, and space are converging with national-security demand. Other deep-tech holdings span biotechnology and infrastructure, including Eikon Therapeutics, eGenesis, Benchling, and Saildrone.
The firm's public face is Josh Wolfe, its co-founder and managing partner, who has become one of the more prominent commentators in venture capital. Born in Coney Island, Brooklyn, around 1978 and raised by a single mother who taught in public schools, Wolfe graduated from Cornell University's Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management in 1999. He is a frequent media presence, a regular commentator on financial television, and is known for writing and speaking about science, markets, and what he calls "directional arrows of progress." In 2025 he was publicly active on AI-competitiveness questions, urging greater American investment in AI following the release of high-profile Chinese models, and he was among a group of technology investors who met with Israeli officials to discuss AI applications. A profile of Wolfe is maintained at Josh Wolfe.
Peter Hebert, the firm's other co-founder and managing partner, has been Wolfe's business partner since the firm's founding and shares leadership of Lux's strategy and operations. A profile is maintained at Peter Hebert. Beyond the founders, Lux has added partners and venture partners with technical, scientific, and national-security backgrounds, including general partners focused on data and AI and several advisers drawn from government and the military.
Lux has recorded a series of large exits and markups across its sectors. In software infrastructure, MosaicML was acquired by Databricks for about $1.3 billion in 2023, and Chronosphere, an observability company, was acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $3.35 billion in a deal announced in November 2025. In hardware and 3D capture, Matterport was acquired by CoStar Group for about $2 billion in February 2025. Earlier exits include Auris Health, a surgical-robotics company sold to Johnson & Johnson for up to $6 billion in 2019; Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which went public in 2021; and Kurion, a nuclear-cleanup technology company acquired by Veolia for $350 million in 2016.
On the growth side, Lux co-led Cognition's Series D in May 2026. The round raised more than $1 billion and valued the AI coding-agent company at $26 billion, with Lux co-leading alongside General Catalyst and 8VC; Cognition reported that its annualized recurring revenue had climbed from about $73 million in mid-2025 to roughly $492 million by May 2026. The investment built on Lux's earlier backing of the company, having previously been among the lead investors in a prior Cognition round.
The table below summarizes selected AI and deep-tech investments and Lux's reported role.
| Company | Round / Year | Lux's role |
|---|---|---|
| Anduril Industries | Seed, 2017 | First-round / seed investor |
| Hugging Face | Early-stage venture | Early investor |
| Runway | Early-stage venture | Early investor |
| MosaicML | Venture (exit 2023) | Investor; sold to Databricks for ~$1.3B |
| Together AI | Series A, Nov 2023 | Series A participant |
| Physical Intelligence | Series A, Nov 2024 | First investor; co-led ~$400M Series A |
| Applied Intuition | Growth venture | Investor |
| Hadrian | Venture | Investor |
| Cognition | Series D, May 2026 | Co-led ~$1B round at $26B valuation |
| Chronosphere | Venture (exit 2025) | Investor; sold to Palo Alto Networks for $3.35B |