Lux Capital

Lux Capital is an American venture capital firm, founded in 2000 by Josh Wolfe, Peter Hebert, and Robert Paull, that invests in emerging science and "deep technology" startups across artificial intelligence, defense, robotics, biotechnology, and space.^[1][2] Based in New York City with a Silicon Valley office, the firm manages roughly $7 billion in assets as of early 2026 and is one of the best known backers of companies that depend on hard scientific or engineering breakthroughs rather than incremental software.^[2][16] Lux closed its ninth and largest fund, Lux Ventures IX, at $1.5 billion in January 2026, and its portfolio includes Anduril Industries, Hugging Face, Runway, and Physical Intelligence.^[2][8][9]

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. 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 describes itself as "a venture capital firm devoted to bridging the gap between science fiction and science fact, investing in people inventing the future."^[6] Co-founder Josh Wolfe has framed the firm's mandate around the idea that "the gap between science fiction once imagined and science fact now realized is ever shrinking."^[10]

Who founded Lux Capital?

Lux Capital was founded in 2000 by Josh Wolfe, Peter Hebert, and Robert Paull.^[1] 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.^[6]

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.^[16] 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 44 people, many with technical or scientific backgrounds.^[2]

What does Lux Capital invest in?

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."^[6] 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.^[6][7] 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.

How big are Lux Capital's funds and assets under management?

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 Ventures VIII closed at $1.15 billion in April 2023. Reported as the firm's fastest raise at the time, the fund was oriented toward biotechnology, manufacturing, aerospace, and AI.^[3][4][5] Its close pushed Lux's total assets under management above $5 billion.
• Lux Ventures IX closed at $1.5 billion on January 7, 2026, described by the firm as oversubscribed and the largest fund in its 25-year history.^[2][18] The fund was raised in roughly three months despite tighter capital markets, and its close brought Lux's total assets under management to about $7 billion, managed by a team of 44 people.^[2]

Lux Ventures IX is focused on investments at the intersection of science, technology, and national security, including artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, energy, biotechnology, and defense-related technologies.^[2] 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.

The table below summarizes Lux's flagship funds and assets under management over time.

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What AI, robotics, and defense companies has Lux Capital backed?

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 AI video and creative tools.^[7] 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.^[9] 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.^[13][14] 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.^[2]

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.^[8][2] 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.

Who are Lux Capital's notable partners?

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.^[10] 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.^[10] 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.

What are Lux Capital's notable investments and exits?

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.^[15] 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.^[11][12] 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.

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References

1. Lux Capital, Wikipedia ↩
2. Lux Capital lands $1.5B for its largest fund ever, TechCrunch (January 7, 2026) ↩
3. Lux Capital Raises $1.15 Billion for Science, Deep-Tech Venture Capital Fund, Bloomberg (April 13, 2023) ↩
4. Lux Capital Closes Lux Ventures VIII at $1.15 Billion, Cooley (April 20, 2023) ↩
5. Lux Capital is betting on science-focused A.I. startups with its latest, and largest, fund, Fortune (April 19, 2023) ↩
6. About, Lux Capital ↩
7. Companies, Lux Capital ↩
8. A Serious Investment in a Serious Company: Anduril, Lux Capital ↩
9. Physical Intelligence, Lux Capital ↩
10. Josh Wolfe, Wikipedia ↩
11. Vibe coding startup Cognition more than doubles valuation in new $1B round, SiliconANGLE (May 27, 2026) ↩
12. Funding, growth, and the next frontier of AI coding agents, Cognition (September 8, 2025) ↩
13. Jeff Bezos, OpenAI Lead $400 Million Investment in Robotics Startup Physical Intelligence, Shelly Palmer (November 2024) ↩
14. Robot Brain Startup Physical Intelligence Raises $400M At $2B Valuation, Crunchbase News (November 2024) ↩
15. Palo Alto Networks to Acquire Chronosphere, Next-Gen Observability Leader, for the AI Era, PR Newswire (November 19, 2025) ↩
16. Lux Capital, Crunchbase Company Profile ↩
17. The Renaissance Man of Venture Capital, Institutional Investor
18. Lux Capital completes fundraising for oversubscribed Fund IX with $1.5bn, Venture Capital Journal (January 8, 2026) ↩