Lux Capital, a 25-year-old VC firm known for its investments in defense science and technology, has closed its ninth $1.5 billion fund, the largest fund in the company’s history.
Although 2025 marks a 10-year low for the number of new VC funds raised in US venture fundraising, according to PitchBook, it’s not hard to see why limited partners are still at Lux.
The company had been investing in defense technology for years before geopolitical changes made the sector one of the most sought-after investment categories. Lux was a seed investor in Anduril, which ended up being valued $30.5 billionand Applied Intuition, an autonomous vehicle startup that secured a contract with the Pentagon and a prize $15 billion this year.
Lux has also made an early bet on AI startups before the industry took off, post-ChatGPT. The company’s early-stage AI investments include Hugging Face, Runway AI, and MosaicML, the latter of which was acquired by Databricks for $1.3 billion in 2023.
In addition to being an early adopter of defense technology and AI trends, Lux has gotten out of an investment in AI drug discovery company Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which will go public in 2021, and sold Auris Health, a surgical robotics pioneer that sold to Johnson & Johnson. $6 billion in 2019.
The latest fundraising brings Lux’s management to $7 billion.