Managing Partner at Agfunder VC (top 100 by @TIME). Building a monster firm with my partners, Rob and Michael. Otherwise, I am reading. Above all, Family First!
San Francisco
Joined February 2015
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Advanced Energy’s revenue grew 50% and beat the top of its guidance. Data-center computing grew 49%.
Everyone is watching the chips. I’m also watching the companies that convert and control the power they need.
US private data-center construction rose 90% year on year in September. Exclude data centers, and private nonresidential construction fell about 4%. The spending boom is concentrated. I’m watching who can deliver the power and cooling.
US private investment in business assets reached $4.4 trillion in 2025.
That includes equipment, buildings, software and R&D. These are investments that can help people produce more with the time and resources they have.
This is a big reason I’m a capitalist. People and companies putting capital at risk, building things and trying to make them work better.
Microsoft spent $116 billion on property and equipment in its fiscal year ending June 2026, up from $65 billion a year earlier.
These are worldwide figures and cover more than AI. Still, the scale of capital going into physical infrastructure is striking.
As an investor, I want to know who can supply the power, cooling and equipment that make those assets productive. How quickly can they deliver? What margins can they keep? Will customers come back?
Those questions connect the AI spending boom to businesses we can actually evaluate.
US real GDP grew 3.4% annualized in Q3. Consumer spending plus private fixed investment grew 4.9% annualized. Government also contributed. That investment needs to earn its keep through higher productivity. That’s what improves living standards.
Vertiv bought UIG to help data centers get power and ThermoKey to manage the heat. Expensive chips need electricity, and the heat has to go somewhere. The cloud has a very physical shopping list.
Most dogs bring back a tennis ball. ANYbotics’ robot dog brings back inspection data. The company says it has started shipping ANYmal X to Equinor and DSM-Firmenich for inspections in explosive atmospheres.
Formic raised $50m in equity and debt to put more robots in factories. Installation and maintenance included.
The company reports 750,000+ production hours across 100+ facilities and 99.6% fleet uptime. These are company-reported figures.
Installation, maintenance and financing can limit adoption even when the robot works. I’d examine service costs and margins alongside uptime.
When will these replace my roomba?
businesswire.com/news/home/2…
Robots are now building parts for other robots at Schaeffler.
I can’t wait until they can do my laundry. Folding a fitted sheet should be the real benchmark for physical AI.
schaeffler.com/en/media/pres…
Why would an agrifood investor back data-center cooling?
Because food factories have heat problems too. And AI infrastructure can pay for R&D that thin food margins can’t.
That’s part of our bet on Phasic Energy at AgFunder.
#DeepTech
Manuel E. Gonzalez retweeted
Your AI agent might be negotiating worse deals than a smarter version of itself. And you would never know.
Anthropic ran Project Deal where 69 employees gave Claude a $100 budget to buy and sell items in Slack. The same ruby sold for $65 when negotiated by Claude Opus 4.5, but only $35 when negotiated by Claude Haiku 4.5. People using the weaker model did not report being less satisfied. They had no idea.
type0.ai/articles/the-same-a…
Manuel E. Gonzalez retweeted
Turning Atinary's vision into reality!
The #AtinaryLabs bring together human imagination + AI closed-loop experimentation + robotics + precision instruments to create Self-Driving Labs™.
Huge thanks to our partners @ABBRobotics, @MettlerToledo, @AgilentTech + the Atinary team!
Another great race for the guy who was angry because he could drive faster than Checo. Well done @LiamLawson30 hahaha never waste the chance to shut your mouth
Checo Perez singing “Don’t you miss me baby, don’t you miss me oh oh oh oh” @redbullracing
Manuel E. Gonzalez retweeted
Hitting the nail on the head. 🍻
Wokeism (Post-Modern Progressivism) is merely the latest manifestation of the Far Left "Utopian Collectivist" ideologies that preceded it: Jacobinism (French Revolution); Marxism; and, Fascism (yes, Fascism was Far Left, not Far Right). Putting lipstick on a pig changes not the animal that it is.
Manuel E. Gonzalez retweeted
We're excited to announce what may become one of our most important investments to date, but first some context.
Electricity + water - > hydrogen. So it’s no surprise that hundreds of billions are being spent on green hydrogen plants.
BUT hydrogen's expensive to store and transport.
HOWEVER by taking nitrogen from air and adding a single atom (N) to three Hydrogen atoms (H) you get another, more stable, zero-carbon fuel: NH3.
NH3 is the fuel of the future. It has 3x the energy density as compressed hydrogen, it can be stored and transported like propane and at 1/5th the cost, and there’s already 5,000 miles of NH3 pipeline in the US and 120 ports globally capable of handling NH3. It can be burned directly as a fuel or converted back to hydrogen.
You may be surprised to learn that NH3 is actually the SECOND most produced chemical in the world and it’s used in everything from agriculture to refrigerants.
Typically NH3 goes by another name: ammonia.
Ammonia typically gets it's hydrogen from another rich source: methane (CH4), which inconveniently releases a LOT of carbon. Green hydrogen from water (H2O) changes all that.
Today we at @AgFunder and our friends at @DCVC announced our investment into Nium, which cheaply converts air and hydrogen into ammonia to unlock a new zero emissions fuel.
agfundernews.com/nium-raises…
Our annual Global AgriFoodTech Investment Report, putting numbers to the highs, lows, trends, troughs & bright spots in agrifoodtech funding. Download this FREE report. bit.ly/AGFUNDERGLOBAL23 #AgFunderGLOBAL23 @AgFunder
The dispute between Miyoko Schinner and the company she founded has grown uglier!!! agfundernews.com/miyokos-acc…
The range of financing tools on the market today were not designed with the complexities of food and agriculture or social and environmental impact in mind. agfundernews.com/new-food-or…🎙-finding-new-ways-to-finance-planet-and-people-friendly-food-ag