#5 JMoon Newsletter - March 2024 II

Highlights (15 Mar to 31 Mar)

1. Finished 16 months of mentoring amazing founders from various exciting sectors at Business in the Streets
2. Attended the NVIDIA GTC 2024 Keynote remotely which was amazing!
3. Spent time talking to 6 individual LPs, 1 CVC, 1 Fund of Fund, 3 Family offices, 5 GPs, 4 Angel investors, 5 leaders of investor communities, 2 startup community leaders, 3 domain experts, and advising 7 early stage founders.
4. Finally got around to chatting with and getting to know Zécca Lehn
5. Attended the 1st ever gathering of South-Asian Venture Capital Association of Canada (SAVCA) at the Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP office
6. Attended the speed networking event of Gildre members
7. Got to update and work on the pitch deck of my next venture and various fund modelling scenarios on THE ABSOLUTELY BEST platform I found out recently
8. Got to review the startups applying for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Challenge at FastForward U at Johns Hopkins University
9. I will be in the Bay Area for 2 weeks in April-end early-May and am looking forward to connecting with everyone in the region soon. If you're an investor in Hardware, or want to know more about how you could diversify your portfolio by investing in the Physical AI sector, I would love to meet and chat.

Physical AI Applications: AI x Hardware

Tips for Physical AI Founders

If you are building within this space, Canada recently became a major market for change in the retail sector. Canada's student visa cap will start to impact international students submitting their study permit applications. Majority of retail in the country is run by these students as international students make up 4.6% of the 1.1 million workers in the food service industry in Canada, with other common jobs of - Retail/sales, Customer service roles, Cashier, Personal tutor, Translators, Freelance writers/ web designers/ graphic designers, Uber/ Lyft rideshare and delivery, Security. So the time is ripe for automation using Physical AI and other types of AI to fill this new gap being created.

Physical AI Startups Fundraising

Secret Location : Produce, license, and distribute highly scalable, digitally-forward immersive exhibitions for venues worldwide. Reach out to Ryan Andal for the derisked deal of debt agreement that converts to royalty agreement, with regular payments from royalty revenue

DiffuseDrive creates a developer tool for computer vision devs to solve expensive data acquisition, so they can develop vision that is paramount for robotics to understand the world. connect with Balint Pasztor to know more

Joule Labs Inc creates automated charging for electric vehicles to solve expensive infrastructure unavailability, so they can enjoy greater availability, coverage & utilization. Reach out to Ritvik Chauhan for details

Hardware Research, Startups, and Market

A new report on Consumer Robotics Market shows that the sector of Autonomous and Semi-autonomous Robots is set to grow 5x by 2030 and 8x by 2032: https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/consumer-robotics-market

AI-powered robotics will fuel jobs disruptions in ways we don’t realize: https://www.semafor.com/article/03/15/2024/ai-powered-robotics-will-fuel-jobs-disruptions-in-ways-we-dont-realize

Material that can go from solid to liquid and back to solid again that may find a lot of applications in robotics: www.unilad.com/technology/terminator-robot-turns-into-liquid-escape-cage-863912-20240314

AI and Robotics working together: https://theproducenews.com/headlines/trenches-ai-and-robotic-technology-produce

Hug-ready robot picks up items with its entire body: https://www.foxnews.com/tech/forget-hands-toyotas-hug-ready-robot-picks-up-with-entire-body

Collaborative Robots: https://www.therobotreport.com/odense-robotics-culture-of-collaboration-can-overcome-economic-challenges-says-ceo/

Nvidia's GR00T: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/18/nvidia-enlists-humanoid-robotics-biggest-names-for-new-ai-platform-gr00t and its efforts to pair AI with general-purpose humanoid robots: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/03/nvidia-announces-moonshot-to-create-embodied-human-level-ai-in-robot-form/

AI-powered humanoid robot can serve you food, stack the dishes — and have a conversation with you: https://www.livescience.com/technology/robotics/ai-powered-humanoid-robot-figure-01-can-serve-you-food-stack-the-dishes-and-have-a-conversation-with-you

Restaurant robots are revving up amid labor shortages: https://news.crunchbase.com/robotics/venture-funding-startups-restaurant-automation/

Using LLMs, MIT engineers enabled robots to self-correct after missteps and carry on with their chores: https://news.mit.edu/2024/engineering-household-robots-have-little-common-sense-0325

Companion robots haven't been able to be deployed in eldercare: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/03/robots-have-not-revolutionized-caregiving-elder-care/677820/ and if you want to know why it may never work, read my predictions: https://jasmeet.me/predictions-in-hardware-and-ai/

Impact of AI and Robotics in Manufacturing: https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2024/03/27/transforming-the-factory-floor-the-impact-of-ai-and-robotics-in-manufacturing/81908/

"Research-intensive sectors such as deep-tech and life sciences require talented investors with deep domain expertise and a specialized understanding of the characteristics associated with these sectors such as longer investment horizons and scaling needs": https://esgdata.it/document/4Z0FgY4BuogmiR3eQqer/science-38-technology-venture-capital-fellowship

Hardware and Venture Capital Funding

A new VC Fund targeting Hardware startups in large rounds of Series A and Series B: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/28/wen-hsieh-matter-venture-partners-300m-fund is leveraging the power of operating partners (which is the ideal approach) but still leaves a significant gap at early stage startup investments that I am aiming to fill

Dutch-based DeepTechXL fund secured €110M to support promising deeptech startups https://siliconcanals.com/crowdfunding/deeptechxl-secures-110m/

Mercedes-Benz testing Apollo humanoid: https://www.therobotreport.com/mercedes-benz-testing-apollo-humanoid/

U.S. Steel invests in Freespace Robotics, a Pittsburgh-based robotic storage and retrieval systems manufacturer: https://technical.ly/startups/us-steel-freespace-robotics-pittsburgh-money-moves/

Deep Tech Claims a 20% Share of Venture Capital, Surging Two-Fold in the Past Decade: https://www.bcg.com/press/21november2023-deep-tech-claims-20-percent-venture-capital-surging-two-fold-in-past-decade

Apple acquires an AI startup that helps with manufacturing efficiency: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-acquires-ai-startup-specializing-040605041.html

1500 robotics startups have raised $90 billion since 2019 with 20 of them now unicorns but investment in robotics fell to a 5-year low in 2023: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2024/03/18/1500-robotics-startups-have-raised-90-billion-but-investment-just-cratered/?sh=36cb4c8dc2bd more details on the original FPrime report: https://fprimecapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/State-of-Robotics-2019-2023.pptx.pdf

European Innovation Council (EIC) announced that their portfolio companies have surged from €20B to €70B in value in just a year: https://sciencebusiness.net/news-byte/european-innovation-council/eic-announces-eu70b-valuation-deep-tech-portfolio

Sustainable and affordable homes using AI and robotics: https://techfundingnews.com/uk-startup-lands-2-6m-to-build-sustainable-and-affordable-homes-using-ai-and-robotics/

OTB Ventures will invest $185M into European deep tech: https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/20/otb-ventures-deep-tech/

India's Deeptech investments are also picking up: https://inc42.com/features/from-core-ai-to-deeptech-how-pi-ventures-funding-focus-shifted-to-bolster-disruption/