Angel investing is a lens into the future. After two years of checks, a pattern has shown up in my own book.
My investments keep clustering in a few places: AI infra and compute, physical AI and robotics, aerospace and dual-use hardware, and vertical software that collects real revenue. Different surfaces. Same through-line.
1. Intelligence is becoming infrastructure
The durable winners look less like model makers and more like the picks and shovels — training data, inference, chips, edge compute — that make intelligence cheap, reliable, and close to the work. As AI shifts from a feature into capacity, the economics start to resemble energy more than apps.
2. The hard problems moved back into the physical world
Software already ate what it could. What’s left is factories, yards, roads, airframes, warehouses. Robots and industrial automation show up there as margin, throughput, and labor where the spreadsheet ends. If it doesn’t work in the real world, it doesn’t work.
3. Space and defense are becoming normal markets
Launch, sensing, autonomy, counter-drone — still hard, less exotic. Capital is following capability that can be manufactured, contracted, and reused. Sovereign demand now comes with a budget and a procurement process.
4. Vertical AI has to survive the renewal
The test for “AI for X” is a clear buyer, real usage, and unit economics that hold. The question that matters: do customers keep paying after the demo?
The through-line for me: the next decade of returns will come less from smarter chat and more from companies that put intelligence into systems that move atoms, secure borders, and run businesses.
Still optimistic. Just more selective about where the optimism goes.