After years helping Apple bring products from prototype to production, two former executives are betting the next AI boom won’t happen on screens but rather on on factory floors.
Simon Lancaster and Sabrina Paseman’s new firm, Omni Ventures, has raised $33 million to write $700,000 to $1 million checks into pre-seed manufacturing-tech startups, Lancaster and Paseman told Business Insider. The fund is backed by Allocator One, an investment firm that backs emerging fund managers, as well as other investors from 14 countries.
“Manufacturing is not just one industry,” Paseman said. “It is the layer underneath every strategically important industry, including semiconductors, defense, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, robotics, and energy — and all of them leverage the same digitization stack that we’re investing in,” she added, referring to the software, sensors, AI, and robots that make factories run better.
The fund is launching as investors pay renewed attention to the physical world, driven by AI’s move from chatbots into machines, falling hardware costs, labor shortages, and geopolitical pressure to reshore supply chains. As the software boom has cooled, investors are shifting their attention to bets including robotics, chips, manufacturing, and “physical AI”, a term popularized by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to describe AI systems that can act in the real world.
Venture capital investment in global robotics and physical AI has grown from around $4 billion in 2019 to $26 billion in 2025, according to PitchBook data. So far this year, companies in the space have raised more than $23 billion.
Omni has already backed startups including Uptool, an AI quoting platform for machine shops; Cargo Robotics, which builds robotics tools for industrial logistics; and Dystr, an AI platform for hardware, mechanical, and electrical engineers. Khosla Ventures, Eclipse, Kleiner Perkins, and Bessemer Venture Partners have also invested in some of Omni’s portfolio companies.
Lancaster and Paseman began developing the thesis for Omni Ventures several years ago, when venture dollars were still flowing primarily into software. They both left Apple in 2019, in the same month, by coincidence: Lancaster after 12 years and Paseman after six. Lancaster went on to help scale a robotics company, while Paseman worked on a device to improve the seal of surgical masks.
The two started angel investing together and running an incubator for hardware startups. That work convinced them they had the network and expertise to start a venture fund and make bets others might avoid.
“Three years ago, when we started developing this thesis, everyone thought manufacturing was too small,” Paseman said. “But now all of these bigger funds are saying, ‘Oh shoot, this is actually going to change the next decades of power globally. Who can be the next Taiwan?'”
Even last year, Lancaster said, prospective backers of the fund were skeptical.
“They’d say, ‘This is cool, but it’s a little niche, guys,'” Lancaster said. “And now absolutely no one is saying that.”
The name Omni Ventures is a nod to the firm’s thesis. “It’s a constant reminder for us that everything in this world is manufactured, and our fund has applications across many, many verticals,” Lancaster said.
Most of Omni’s investments will focus on the US, but Lancaster and Paseman said the same technologies could help modernize manufacturing in other countries. They described the thesis as “global dynamism,” a broader version of “American Dynamism,” the term popularized by venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz to describe investing in companies that support the national interest across aerospace, defense, manufacturing, and critical infrastructure.
Lancaster and Paseman said they back founders who are deeply technical but also commercially minded, and who often have five to 15 years of experience in manufacturing.
“We are investing into founders that are solving the biggest pain points of their own careers, so we know that there’s product-market fit,” Paseman said.
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