Most Active Physical AI Investors - Future50 Report

F50 × Physical AI Builders

This document is the public teaser and methodology introduction to the Physical AI Venture Capital Landscape 2026 — F50 Capital's annual structured database of every venture capital firm, corporate investor, family office, and institutional fund actively deploying into physical AI in the United States.

The complete database — 78 firms, 15 data fields per firm, ranked by investment activity since July 2025, with named partners, deal submission contacts, and post-July 2025 investment highlights — download link is available exclusively to subscribers at end of the article.

The complete Physical AI VC Database 2026 is a structured Excel file containing every firm that made a verified investment in physical AI — robotics, autonomous systems, drones, space tech, advanced manufacturing, semiconductor equipment, or physical AI software — since July 1, 2025.

Every firm entry includes:

The twelve months ending June 2026 produced the most active investor environment in the history of physical AI. Here is what the data shows:

Full rankings with all data fields in the downloaded files at end of this article. Preview below.

Rankings with full data in the subscriber database.

The most important story in this database is not the firms you already know. It is the 34 investors who were not actively investing in physical AI twelve months ago and are now.

This is the fastest expansion of the physical AI investor universe ever recorded. These new entrants fall into five categories:

1. Mega-funds entering for the first time Kleiner Perkins ($3.5B AI-exclusive fund), Coatue Management, DST Global, and Index Ventures all made their first or largest physical AI commitments in 2025–2026. Their entry signals that physical AI has graduated from a specialist category to a mainstream institutional allocation.

2. Corporate arms racing into hardware LG Technology Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, T-Mobile Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and RTX Ventures (Raytheon) all made their first humanoid or industrial robotics investments in this period. The pattern is consistent: chip companies, telecom carriers, defense primes, and appliance manufacturers all recognizing that physical AI will define their next product generation.

3. Sovereign and family office capital at scale Bezos Expeditions, Temasek, Capricorn Investment Group, and Premji Invest all deployed $100M+ into US physical AI companies — a category of investor that barely appeared in the 2024 landscape. This capital is patient, strategic, and willing to write large checks without requiring immediate profitability.

4. Specialist deep-tech funds launching at scale Eclipse Ventures ($1.3B across two new funds), Lux Capital ($1.5B Fund IX), Radical Ventures ($650M Fund III), and Matter Venture Partners all closed dedicated physical AI or hard-tech vehicles. These are not generalist funds with a robotics thesis bolted on — they are purpose-built for the physical AI era.

5. Climate-manufacturing crossover investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Prelude Ventures, and Capricorn are now investing at the intersection of clean manufacturing and physical AI — a convergence that did not exist as a coherent category in 2024.

Firm names are not enough. In physical AI, individual partners make the call — and knowing which partner inside a firm owns the hardware thesis is worth more than a cold email to the firm's general inbox.

The full database includes named partners for every firm where that information is public. The individuals identified as the primary physical AI decision-makers at their firms include:

Full partner-level data for all 78 firms in the subscriber database.

This database was designed to serve three distinct users. Here is the recommended workflow for each:

Step 1 — Filter by stage and check size. Every firm in the database has a Stage Focus and Typical Check Size field. Filter to your current round size. If you are raising a $30M Series B, you want firms whose check size range includes $5M–$15M and whose stage focus includes Series B.

Step 2 — Filter by sub-sector. The Sub-sector Focus field maps each firm to specific physical AI categories. A firm that writes robotics checks may have zero interest in semiconductor capital equipment. Match carefully.

Step 3 — Sort by Notable Investments (Post-Jul 2025). Firms with recent deals in your category are actively deploying into your sector right now. Firms without recent deals may have capital but no active thesis in your space.

Step 4 — Target the named partner, not the firm. Use the Key Hardware Partners field to identify the individual to reach. A warm introduction to the right partner converts at 10–20x the rate of a cold email to a general inbox.

Step 5 — Check the Status field. New Addition firms (34 of 78) are often more accessible than entrenched firms with full pipelines. A fund that just entered physical AI is actively building relationships and may be more receptive to first meetings.

The database doubles as a co-investment and syndication map. Filter by:

The Notes field flags any China-linked capital concerns — critical for deals involving ITAR-relevant technology, DoD contracts, or CFIUS-reviewable assets.

If you are evaluating the physical AI acquisition landscape, this database shows you who has invested in which companies — and therefore who the likely sellers (VCs needing exits) and bidding competitors (strategics building portfolios) will be in any given sub-sector. The Investor Type field distinguishes financial investors (who need exits) from strategic investors (who may prefer to hold or block).

July 1, 2025 — June 2026, with comparison baseline from the F50 Capital Future 50 VC List (October 2025 edition).

A firm was included if it met all three of the following:

Primary: Crunchbase, PitchBook, CB Insights, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, The Robot Report, Robotics & Automation News, SEC EDGAR Form D filings, firm websites and press releases, BuiltWorlds, Bessemer Atlas, and OpenVC.

Secondary: Peony, Failory, Waveup, DakotaMarketplace, and VCSheet for partner-level and thesis-level detail verification.

All investment amounts listed in the Notable Investments field are drawn from official press releases, SEC filings, or Tier-1 news coverage (Bloomberg, Reuters, TechCrunch, WSJ). Unconfirmed amounts are prefixed "Est." Deal participation without confirmed amounts is listed as "Participated — amount undisclosed."

The research behind this database surfaced five structural patterns that anyone deploying or raising capital in physical AI needs to understand.

The largest physical AI rounds of 2025–2026 were not led by traditional VCs. They were assembled by corporate strategic investors acting in coordinated syndicates. Figure AI's $1B Series C included Nvidia, Intel Capital, Samsung, LG Technology Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, T-Mobile Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures alongside Parkway VC. Dyna Robotics' $120M Series A included NVentures, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, LG Technology Ventures, and Samsung Next alongside NEA.

The implication for founders: your corporate investor relationships are now as important as your VC relationships at the growth stage. The 14 CVCs in this database should be mapped against your product roadmap for strategic fit, not just treated as financial capital sources.

The implication for VCs: if you cannot bring CVC co-investors to a physical AI round, you may be priced out of the best deals. The firms ranked 1–15 in this database all have documented CVC co-investment relationships.

In 2023–2024, physical AI rounds clustered in the $5M–$50M range. In 2025–2026, the distribution split into two distinct populations: rounds below $10M (seed and early Series A, hardware-first companies) and rounds above $100M (growth-stage companies with commercial traction). The $50M–$100M middle market thinned significantly.

For founders, this means the growth-stage funding gap is real — companies that have passed early proof-of-concept but have not yet reached the commercial scale required for a mega-round face the most competitive fundraising environment. This is precisely the gap F50 Capital was built to fill.

Physical AI capital is no longer uniformly distributed across US tech hubs. The data shows three dominant poles forming:

San Francisco Bay Area remains the center of gravity for physical AI software, foundation model companies, and early-stage robotics. Playground Global, Lux Capital, Eclipse Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and most of the top-15 VCs are Bay Area-based.

Texas (Austin / Dallas corridor) is emerging as the primary hub for manufacturing-tethered physical AI — companies with supply chain relationships, contract manufacturing partnerships, and enterprise industrial customers. Capital Factory, Ironspring Ventures, and F50 Capital are building an Austin-centered physical AI investment ecosystem, reinforced by TSMC's Phoenix facility and Foxconn's Wisconsin-to-Texas supply chain migration.

Washington DC / Virginia is the defense-tech and government-contract physical AI cluster — In-Q-Tel, Construct Capital, 8VC's DC presence, and RTX Ventures all anchored here. DoD robotics and autonomous systems contracts are increasingly the most capital-efficient route to revenue for physical AI hardware companies.

Across 78 firms and $500B+ in combined AUM, the number of individual partners who are truly expert in physical AI hardware investment is surprisingly small. The same 15–20 names appear repeatedly as co-investors, board members, and reference networks. This creates both an opportunity and a constraint.

The opportunity: reaching one well-connected partner opens a network effect across multiple firms. A warm introduction from Katherine Boyle (a16z) or Bilal Zuberi (Lux) will move your process at every firm they co-invest with.

The constraint: reputation travels instantly in a thin network. A poorly prepared pitch, a missed data room commitment, or a cap table with unflagged complexity will be known across the top-20 active investors within days. Founders raising in this market should treat every interaction — including preliminary calls — as permanent reputation-building.

The single most predictive factor for whether a firm will actively lead a new physical AI deal right now is whether they recently closed a new fund. Firms that closed new vehicles in 2025–2026 — Eclipse ($1.3B), Lux ($1.5B), Radical ($650M), Kleiner Perkins ($3.5B AI fund), GFT Ventures (~$200M) — are in active deployment mode and incentivized to put capital to work.

Firms that have not raised a new fund since 2022–2023 may have strong physical AI portfolios and genuine sector expertise, but their deployment pace is constrained by reserve requirements for existing portfolio companies. The Notes field in the full database flags fund vintage and estimated deployment status for each firm.

This database focuses exclusively on venture and institutional equity investors. The following categories of physical AI capital are intentionally excluded and covered in companion F50 Capital research assets:

All four companion research assets — the VC Database, Investment Transaction Database, M&A Brief, and the State of Physical AI World 2026 flagship report — are included in a single subscription at 50builders.ai.

You are raising a Series A, B, or growth round. You need to know which of the 78 firms in this database will take your category seriously, which partners to target, what check size to request, and how to frame your outreach. The database tells you all of this — organized, verified, and ready to filter.

You are building a physical AI portfolio and need to map your syndication network. Which firms are most active in your stage and sector? Who has co-invested with whom? Which CVCs add the most strategic value in your portfolio company's specific market? The database answers these questions at a field-by-field level.

You are allocating to a physical AI fund and want to understand the competitive landscape your GP is operating in. How many active funds are targeting the same stage? Which firms have the strongest recent deal flow? Is the market getting crowded or is there still white space? The rankings and activity data answer this directly.

You are a corporate innovation or M&A team evaluating the physical AI investor ecosystem. Understanding who has invested in which companies tells you who the likely sellers, co-bidders, and blocking parties will be in any acquisition process. The Investor Type field distinguishes financial investors (who need exits) from strategic investors (who may hold or block).

You are an operator, academic researcher, government official, or physical AI ecosystem participant who needs to understand where the capital is coming from and what it is funding. This database is your map.

The complete Physical AI VC Landscape 2026 database — all 78 firms, all 15 fields — is available free to subscribers of the Physical AI Report newsletter.

What you receive immediately upon confirming your subscription:

📊 Physical AI VC Database 2026 78 firms · 15 fields · Excel format Ranked by investment activity · Filterable · Printable 📄 Physical AI VC Landscape 2026 — Full Introduction Brief Methodology · Findings · 5 Key Patterns · Partner Intelligence PDF format · 28 pages 📑 State of Physical AI World 2026 — Flagship Report 10 sections · 150+ investment transactions · 25+ M&A deals F50 Physical AI Index · Top 20 Predictions · Glossary 🖥️ Physical AI Summit Keynote Deck 30 slides · Shareable · Designed for LP and board presentations

Subscription is free. No credit card required. Instant access.

We publish this database openly because we believe transparent capital markets make better companies.

Founders who know which investors are active, what they look for, and how to reach the right partner build better fundraising processes. VCs who understand the competitive landscape make better syndication decisions. LPs who see the full investor landscape make better allocation decisions. Everyone benefits from better information — including F50 Capital, which sources deals and co-investors from exactly this kind of ecosystem mapping.

We also publish it because thought leadership is part of our investment thesis. The Physical AI Builders platform — this newsletter, the annual summit, the Future 50 Report series — is how we earn the right to see the best deals before they are widely marketed. If you are a founder building in physical AI and you found this database useful, we want to hear from you.

Free subscription · Instant access · No credit card required

78 Firms · 15 Fields · Named Partners · Deal Contacts · Post-July 2025 Investment Activity

Everything you need to navigate the physical AI capital landscape in 2026.

© 2026 F50 Capital & Physical AI Builders. All rights reserved.