UP.Partners

The greatest opportunity in humanoid robotics is taking on the dangerous and physically demanding work that still depends on people. Getting there requires both an industrial machine and a platform that can learn new skills quickly and adapt to real-world conditions. That’s what Noble Machines is building. Their approach brings together three things we think matter enormously: cost, physical capability, and accelerated learning. And they’re moving quickly. It took the team just 18 months to build and ship their first robot. We’re big fans of their approach and the commercial progress they’re already making. Take a look at noblemachines.ai.

Enterprise freight is full of AI pilots that never make it into daily operations at scale. Today we're announcing $5.5 million led by UP.Partners with participation from EIC Rose Rock, 1834 Ventures, Tulane Ventures, and others. We took a different path. We built Overroute inside real operations, with real data and real operators. Our AI agents are deployed across the freight network of J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc., where the product was collaboratively developed, and they've worked on millions of loads. The funding goes into the product roadmap and the team, so we can serve more large fleets and keep building toward broader freight planning and asset optimization. Grateful to our investors, our customers, and especially the operators who continue to shape what we build. We’re excited for what comes next.

Adam Grosser, Chairman and Managing Partner at UP.Partners, joined CNBC's Squawk Box to discuss the progress of humanoid robotics globally and the most productive role it can play today. https://lnkd.in/gYE3C_JX

80% of designers' time is wasted on manual iteration loops between engineers and manufacturers. The problem is that design, engineering, and manufacturability all happen in separate tools. Teams can spend months optimizing a design, only to discover it can't actually be manufactured. This siloed workflow is wasting billions of dollars and a lot of time. InfinitForm has built a single space for design, engineering, and manufacturability to work in parallel. The result is: companies create the best design in minutes, not months. It's a fundamentally different way to design real products, and that's what caught our attention. Trial the platform: https://infinitform.com/

72% of everything America buys moves by truck, but the economics are tough. Trailers are one of the biggest reasons why: they're essentially dead weight. Every mile they travel with this weight costs fleets money in fuel, which adds up quickly across hundreds or thousands of trucks. Range Energy makes the trailer feel weightless, helping fleets cut operating costs by 20-40% on day one. Follow the link in comments to see how they're doing this with equipment customers already have. #supplychain #logistics #freight

Congratulations to the Overroute team on today's launch with J.B. Hunt. Built alongside one of North America's largest supply chain solutions providers, Overroute's AI agents are already helping operators coordinate millions of loads by automating the complex work behind freight. We're looking forward to what's ahead!

The venture model is evolving. As AI reshapes software economics, investors are increasingly backing business models like holding companies, PE rollups, forward-deployed engineering firms, and full-stack hardware/software platforms that were once considered outside the scope of traditional venture. In The Kinetic Age, we share data on why these models are gaining momentum and what they mean for the next generation of founders and investors. Download your copy of The Kinetic Age here: https://lnkd.in/dNWcjrts