The VC firm behind Shopify is doubling down on robotics and defense

Hard tech utilized to beryllium a difficult waste successful Silicon Valley. Now, a awesome task patient is staffing up to put successful it.

Felicis, the Bay Area task superior patient champion known for bets connected Shopify, Notion, and Mercor, has hired Graham Littlehale arsenic a partner to put successful aerospace, defense, energy, manufacturing, and robotics, the patient told Business Insider.

Littlehale joins from Point72 Ventures, wherever he was an early personnel of its nationalist information investing team. His investments location included Stoke Space, which is processing reusable rockets, and Rune Technologies, which builds package for subject logistics.

The prosecute signals that Felicis is doubling down connected companies building for the beingness world. The patient has already backed CoreWeave, which provides AI companies pinch entree to precocious chips; Crusoe, which develops AI information centers; and Skild AI, which is building a general-purpose "brain" for robots.

"The beingness world is entering its ain package moment," said Aydin Senkut, an early Google worker who founded Felicis 2 decades ago. "Graham has spent his profession backing founders astatine the forefront of difficult tech transformations, making him a earthy fresh to thief deepen Felicis's committedness to the founders redefining the beingness economy."

Across the valley, investors are paying renewed attraction to hardware arsenic AI moves from chatbots into machines, costs fall, labour shortages grow, and geopolitical pressures push companies to reshore proviso chains.

Robotics and beingness AI startups, which build machines that run successful the existent world, raised $16.3 cardinal crossed 492 deals successful the first 4th of 2026. It was the strongest 4th connected grounds for some superior invested and woody count, according to PitchBook.

Littlehale has been making bets connected beingness exertion agelong earlier it became fashionable. He began his profession a decade ago, investing successful earthy resources and power infrastructure.

"When I was 22 and investing successful energy, and my friends were investing successful SaaS, I was like, 'I get to spell spot an lipid rig, and I deliberation that's measurement much cool,'" Littlehale said. After moving connected commercialized description astatine self-driving startup Nuro from 2021 to 2022, Littlehale realized he missed investing and joined Point72 the pursuing year.

At Felicis, Littlehale plans to attraction connected "manufacturing instauration models," aliases AI systems that could return a merchandise from conception done production. He is besides willing successful integer devices that accelerate hardware improvement and robots designed for industries, including construction.

Littlehale thinks robotics instauration models whitethorn travel the reverse trajectory of ample connection models. Chatbots started pinch broad, general-purpose models that were later specialized. Robots, he said, whitethorn person to statesman by mastering individual tasks, past harvester those skills into much wide intelligence.

"The thought is, 'Let's fold a bunch of laundry and make a bunch of coffees, and past we will person capable things that are adjacent to each different that we tin generalize,'" he said.

Littlehale will besides prosecute investments successful abstraction and undersea technology, 2 areas he considers captious to US economical resilience and nationalist security. Both sectors person go crowded and, astatine times, overhyped, he said, though opportunities stay for investors consenting to return a longer view.

He pointed to his caller finance successful Endurance Energy, a startup processing exertion to make geothermal power from power beneath the water floor.

"That is not thing you tin put successful based connected a hype cycle," Littlehale said. "It is simply a decadeslong bet."

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