Startup that builds other startups raises $100M and goes all-in on physical AI

Four years ago, Startup Lab, which is neither an incubator nor an accelerator program nor a venture company, was launched. UP.Labs, as it was called at the time, created a startup aimed at solving problems outside the company as well as for corporate customers like Alaska Airlines and Porsche.

Despite important additions to its approach, a new name, and a $100 million investment from Silversmith Capital Partners, the company still has the same mission. The company, now called Vantra, continues to work with corporate customers, including new customers in the industrial manufacturing and oil and gas sectors, which it declined to name.

But the company is now focused on building a startup that caters exclusively to enterprise customers, rather than a broader market.

Founder and CEO John Kurt told TechCrunch that Vantora is moving toward “its own M&A pipeline.” This means that Vantora will continue to build startups for our partners, who will invest in those ventures and become our first customers. But these corporate partners can now incorporate startups into their core businesses, essentially keeping them in-house.

Kuolt said this change is influencing Vantora’s increased focus on physical AI startups.

In the past, Vantora would spike ideas that were strategic to corporate partners but too sensitive to take outside the company.

“We missed the biggest values ​​issue, but it also had the biggest upside,” Cuorto said in a recent interview. “Imagine you’re a Fortune 100 industrial company and you have to retrofit all your hardware and machines to achieve autonomy. You have to own it, you have to have sovereignty, and you can’t rely on a third party to do it. You have to own that intelligence layer. They’ll never allow us to sell it to a competitor.”

According to Kuolt, this change allowed Vantora to “unlock a larger use case for physical AI,” including with existing customers.

For example, the company came up with the idea of ​​using AI to drive business for its partner JB Hunt. “They said we can’t take this out into the world, so we took it over,” he said, adding that this unique model allowed Vantra to pursue it.

The company was launched in 2022 with Porsche as its first corporate partner. Since then, Vantra has launched several startups for Porsche and signed deals with Alaska Airlines, JB Hunt, Wabash, and TDG, the parent company of Ashley Furniture.

In the early days, UP.Labs was affiliated with the venture company Up.Partners, although it was never tied to it financially. Although Vantora still shares office space with the California-based VC, it is its own entity, Cuorto explained, noting that the $100 million from Silversmith is the company’s first outside investment.