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$670 billion in one year. That’s how much U.S. tech invested in AI in 2025. That’s a quarter of all military spending, globally. By 2030, an additional $7 trillion will be needed just to keep up with demand. By 2027, 40% of data centers could be constrained by power shortages. China can build a power plant in under 2 years. In the U.S., it can take a decade. This is the defining bottleneck of the AI era. And the solutions are more interesting than the problem: - Pacific Fusion raised $900M for pulsed magnetic fusion. - LineVision is ensuring grid reliability through real-time virtual monitoring. - Zanskar is using AI to discover overlooked geothermal resources. - Aionics, Inc. uses an AI material discovery engine to make batteries more efficient and 10x less flammable. We cover this and more in section 6 of The Kinetic Age 2026. Read the full report at https://lnkd.in/dNWcjrts.

We’ve been working on something really special that we’re excited to share with you today: UP.Partners has entered into a strategic relationship with TWG Global. What that means is, with TWG Global’s support, we’ll be expanding our platform and resources to do more of what we do best: backing entrepreneurs and companies rebuilding the physical world through hardware and software. TWG Global is a diversified holding company whose portfolio includes Guggenheim Investments, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers, and the Cadillac Formula 1 Team. Their trust means the world to us. And we’re still UP.Partners. But we’re now better equipped to back and support founders from seed stage all the way through IPO. Learn more about our plans here: https://lnkd.in/gY72-hEE

We live with science fiction, but it’s far from evenly distributed. To analyze this, we used three lenses: 1. Access: Geography and income still determine who lives in the future and who waits for it. 84% of humanity has never interacted with AI. 2. Unequal benefits and harms: Innovation is not neutral. Productivity gains and wealth creation accrue disproportionately, and so do job displacement, surveillance risks, and environmental costs. 3. Geopolitical gaps: In several critical industries, the frontier is no longer centered in the United States. The map of technological leadership is being redrawn as products develop and scale faster elsewhere. We talk about the technological era as if it's a singular moment. The reality is we’re living in multiple tech timelines at once. This is where The Kinetic Age 2026 kicks off. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/dNWcjrts

Will Phillips from INSIDE STARTUPS spent a day in our world, touring three of our hard tech portfolio companies and asking us the questions we like answering. Watch it here.

Today we're releasing our annual report: The Kinetic Age 2026, formerly The Moving World Report. It’s our most ambitious one yet. AI is moving beyond the screen and flowing into factories, vehicles, energy grids, defense systems, and national strategies, triggering the largest industrial reorganization since the post-war era, and the biggest single-year capital deployment in the history of capitalism. This year’s report defines eight forces reshaping the global economy from autonomous transportation equity to America’s race to reindustrialize. We invite you to use it as a guide and share it with those who may find it as useful as we do. Welcome to The Kinetic Age. https://lnkd.in/dNWcjrts

Physical AI is moving from concept to necessity, with global labor dynamics accelerating this shift. In a recent article in Fortune, Ally Warson shared her perspective on how robotics are stepping into roles that are increasingly challenging and dangerous for humans to fill. “The reality is, no one wants to do these jobs,” Warson told Fortune. “There are something like 600,000 unfilled jobs in the industrial space. No one’s raising their hand and signing up for it.” This thesis is reflected in portfolio companies like Noble Machines and WakeCap, where AI and robotics are already helping reduce risk and improve outcomes on job sites. “The economics works the most for jobs where human lives are at risk,” Warson said. Read the full piece here: https://lnkd.in/ewnVuPt9 

At UP.Summit 2025, Andrew Duggleby, Co-Founder & CTO of Venus Aerospace, shared how rotating detonation engines could represent the first true architectural leap in aerospace propulsion in decades. In this talk, Andrew explains why advances in manufacturing, testing, and modeling are finally unlocking technology that researchers first explored in the 1980s. The result: engines that can significantly improve efficiency and potentially reshape high-speed aviation, defense systems, and access to space. Watch the full talk on the UP.Summit YouTube channel to learn how next-generation propulsion could transform aviation, defense, and the emerging space economy: https://lnkd.in/gM_AMaKt #VenusAerospace #Aerospace #Innovation #Hypersonic #SpaceTech

Traditional factories are optimized for one product. In today’s fast-paced business environment, is there a way for companies to build multiple products on the same hardware? Enter Divergent. Founded by Kevin Czinger, who gave this presentation at the 2025 UP.Summit, Divergent’s Adaptive Production System (DAPS) replaces capital-intensive, single-purpose factories with software-defined, distributed production. By combining in-house additive manufacturing, AI-driven design, and robotic assembly, Divergent delivers production-grade structures across automotive, aerospace, and defense. This session connects the dots between digital design, small, localized factories, and what it actually takes to reindustrialize at speed. Watch the full presentation here: https://lnkd.in/e-FJXKaA #UPSummit #Divergent #Manufacturing #AI #3DPrinting #Defense #Aerospace #AdditiveManufacturing

We’re proud to share that BeyondMath, an UP.Partners portfolio company, has completed their Seed Round at $18.5 million. Founded in 2022 by AI industry veterans Alan Patterson and Darren Garvey, BeyondMath has developed the world’s largest foundational physics AI model, which is capable of simulating complex physical phenomena, from aerodynamics to thermal management. BeyondMath takes a fundamentally new approach to design with a foundational AI model trained directly on first-principles physics. This enables engineering-grade simulations to be created in minutes rather than hours or days, delivering results up to 1000x faster than traditional supercomputing methods. A key example of this impact is STRATA, a $19 million, 3-year project with Honeywell, where BeyondMath enables the simulation of thousands of iterations for complex aircraft components in seconds rather than days. The funding from this Seed Round will be used to scale up the commercial deployment of BeyondMath’s generative physics technology and increase its research capacity. Congrats to the BeyondMath team on this milestone! Join the waitlist to try their new interactive demo at beyondmath.com and read the full press release here: https://lnkd.in/e4qdphMF #BeyondMath #DeepTech #ArtificialIntelligence #Engineering #Innovation #AI #Aerospace #Physics

Why is maritime autonomy moving so slowly? Software, not hardware, is the limiting factor for deploying thousands of unmanned vessels. At UP.Summit, Joe Turner, COO & Co-Founder of HavocAI, shared a clear-eyed view of what it will take to scale autonomous systems in the maritime domain and why the bottleneck isn’t the vessel, it’s the software. HAVOC is building collaborative AI that allows one operator to command multiple unmanned vessels working together as a coordinated team. In this session, Joe walks through real-world deployments, a live demo, and how HAVOC is moving faster by focusing on orchestration, communication, and autonomy at scale. Watch the full talk on the UP.Summit YouTube channel: https://lnkd.in/eHv7quX8  #UPSummit #HAVOC #Autonomy #MaritimeInnovation #DefenseTech #AI #FutureOfMobility