From Palantir to Pax: Michelle Volz Bets $50 Million That America's Industrial Future Won't Be Built by "AI Slop"

When Michelle Volz told her limited partners that she wanted to invest in lithium mining and liquid-propulsion rockets instead of the latest chatbot wrapper, some raised their eyebrows. But the former Andreessen Horowitz partner's conviction paid off: her debut fund, Pax Ventures, closed oversubscribed at $50 million — a vote of confidence in her thesis that the next era of American power will be forged in factories, not just in data centers [1].

The launch of Pax Ventures is more than one investor's career move. It marks a crystallization of a broader trend reshaping Silicon Valley: a generational pivot from software to the physical world, from bits to atoms, from consumer apps to cruise missiles and microreactors.

The Thesis: "Pax Technica"

Volz has coined a term for her investment philosophy: Pax Technica — a deliberate echo of the historical concept of Pax Americana, the period of relative geopolitical stability underwritten by U.S. military and economic dominance after World War II [2].

The argument is straightforward. For decades, venture capital overwhelmingly favored software — the margins were higher, the capital requirements lower, and the exits faster. But that allocation left critical physical infrastructure to atrophy. Supply chains became brittle, energy systems stagnated, manufacturing moved offshore, and the defense industrial base consolidated into a handful of legacy prime contractors ill-suited to the speed of modern warfare.

"I bet on people more than anything — people who want to work on the hardest, most important problems and actually have a mission underlying what they're working on," Volz told Newcomer in an exclusive interview. She added a pointed jab at the current AI frenzy: "There are a lot of ways to make money. I want to make money on people actually doing important things rather than AI slop" [1].

Pax Technica, then, is a bet that the pendulum is swinging. That the next generation of venture-backed companies will build lithium extraction facilities, autonomous naval vessels, portable nuclear reactors, and next-generation rocket engines. And that the investors who understand these sectors — with their long development timelines, regulatory complexity, and government customer bases — will be rewarded.

From Palantir to a16z to Solo GP

Volz's career arc reads like a roadmap of the American Dynamism movement itself. She started at Palantir Technologies, the Peter Thiel-backed data analytics company that became the template for dual-use technology — software built for government intelligence agencies that later expanded to commercial markets. Her husband, Ryan Solis, is a Marine officer who also works at Palantir [1][3].

From there, Volz moved through a series of venture-backed startups. She worked at Synack, a cybersecurity platform, and was on the founding team of Haus, a real estate marketplace backed by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, where she ran product and built the marketplace from scratch. She earned an MBA from MIT Sloan and a BS from the University of Minnesota, where she ran cross country and track [3].

Volz joined Andreessen Horowitz roughly two years before launching Pax, where she became an investing partner on the American Dynamism team — the practice that a16z has positioned as one of its signature initiatives. There, she focused on the intersection of software and hardware in sectors where government plays a major role: defense, aerospace, energy, and the industrial supply base [3][4].

But large firms have structural limitations at the earliest stages of company formation. As Volz explained: "It's very hard for a big firm to spend time on the earliest stages. It's not worth the time relative to the check sizes" [1]. Pax Ventures is designed to fill that gap — writing seed and pre-seed checks to founders building deep-tech companies that the megafunds will follow on later.

The Portfolio: 21 Investments and Counting

Despite launching as a solo GP with a $50 million fund, Volz has already assembled a portfolio of 21 investments spanning the core sectors of her thesis [2]:

Defense and Security: Method Security (cyberdefense for government), Chariot Defense, Galadyne (liquid-propulsion rockets), and Plix.

Energy and Nuclear: Radiant (portable microreactors), Standard Nuclear, Aalo, and Arbor — reflecting the resurgence of nuclear energy as a critical component of both grid reliability and defense infrastructure.

Manufacturing and Infrastructure: Matter, Senra Systems, Nominal (business software for hardware companies), and Atalanta.

Space and Aerospace: Northwood Space and Astro Mechanica.

Materials and Mining: Mariana Minerals, which operates a lithium production facility — a direct bet on securing the domestic supply of critical minerals essential to batteries, electric vehicles, and military systems.

Other: Cape, a privacy-first mobile carrier, and CX2, an autonomous drone company.

The breadth is notable. This is not a defense-only fund. It's a fund that views defense, energy, manufacturing, space, and critical minerals as interconnected pillars of national resilience — sectors that have been systematically underinvested by mainstream venture capital for a generation.

Source: Crunchbase / Defense News

Data as of Jan 20, 2026CSV

Riding the American Dynamism Wave

Volz is not operating in a vacuum. Her fund launch comes amid an unprecedented surge of capital into what the industry now broadly calls "American Dynamism" — a term popularized by her former employer.

In January 2026, Andreessen Horowitz announced a record $15 billion fundraise — its largest ever — with $1.176 billion earmarked specifically for its American Dynamism practice [5][6]. The firm's American Dynamism 50 list, published in 2025, highlighted companies across aerospace, defense, public safety, education, housing, supply chain, industrials, and manufacturing [7].

The numbers at the sector level are even more striking. Defense tech startups had their best funding year ever in 2025, with equity funding more than doubling to $17.9 billion from $7.3 billion in 2024, according to Crunchbase data. At least ten funding rounds of $200 million or larger went to defense startups that year [8][9]:

• Anduril Industries raised $2.5 billion in a Series G, doubling its valuation to $30.5 billion
• Saronic raised $600 million for autonomous naval vessels
• Helsing (Munich) closed a $694 million Series D for defense software modernization
• Chaos Industries raised $500 million in a Series D

Nearly 8% of all VC funding globally now flows into defense tech, up from a fraction of a percent just five years ago [9]. World military expenditures rose 9% in 2024 to reach $2.7 trillion — the sharpest increase in over 30 years — providing a massive and growing customer base for these startups [8].

The Solo GP Gamble

Launching as a solo general partner is one of the hardest paths in venture capital, and Volz was candid about the difficulty. "It was very hard. It was harder than I thought, but it ended up really coming together," she said of the fundraising process [1].

The challenge is acute for women. According to Venture Capital Journal, 127 women-led venture capital funds closed on a combined $2.45 billion in 2025 — meaningful progress but still a fraction of overall VC fundraising. Women now lead 19% of solo-managed funds, while the Female Venture 50 initiative has set a target for 45% of new manager firms to have at least one woman managing partner by 2026 [10].

In Europe, solo GP fundraising timelines have stretched to 15 months on average, with first-time fund announcements dropping 50% from 2022 to 2024 [10]. Against this backdrop, Volz's ability to raise $50 million — and close oversubscribed — is a notable achievement that reflects both her personal track record and the strength of the thesis.

For now, Pax Ventures is a one-person operation. Volz has said she ultimately hopes to expand beyond a single-partner model, but the solo structure gives her the agility to make fast decisions at the earliest stages — precisely the advantage she identified as missing at a megafirm like a16z [1].

The Reindustrialization Context

Pax Ventures is launching into a macroeconomic environment that is unusually receptive to its thesis. Goldman Sachs estimates that real U.S. manufacturing construction spending has more than doubled since 2021, with cumulative investment exceeding $300 billion through Q1 2025 [11]. Yet the manufacturing workforce tells a different story.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Data as of Mar 10, 2026CSV

Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that durable goods manufacturing employment has been on a gradual decline since peaking in early 2023, falling from approximately 8,036,000 jobs in January 2023 to 7,801,000 in February 2026. This paradox — rising capital investment alongside falling employment — reflects the capital-intensive, automation-heavy nature of modern manufacturing. The factories being built today require fewer workers but far more sophisticated technology, creating precisely the kind of opportunity Volz's portfolio companies are designed to address [12].

The U.S. Small Business Administration has also moved to support this trend, finalizing reforms to the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program in January 2026 to incentivize private capital investment in critical industries [13]. Meanwhile, interest rates have been declining steadily — the federal funds rate fell from 5.33% in mid-2024 to 3.64% by early 2026 — creating a more favorable financing environment for the capital-intensive startups in Pax's portfolio [14].

The Bull Case and the Risks

The bull case for Pax Ventures is compelling. Volz has deep domain expertise in precisely the sectors she's investing in. She has a rolodex built across Palantir, a16z, and the broader defense-tech ecosystem. Her thesis is aligned with massive tailwinds: rising defense budgets globally, bipartisan support for reshoring critical supply chains, growing demand for clean energy, and the mainstreaming of defense technology as a venture asset class.

But the risks are real. Deep-tech startups have notoriously long development cycles and high capital requirements. A $50 million fund can only write so many checks before portfolio companies need follow-on capital from larger funds — creating dependency on the continued enthusiasm of growth-stage investors. Hardware companies face manufacturing risk, supply chain disruptions, and regulatory hurdles that pure software companies never encounter.

There's also the question of market timing. With nearly 8% of all global VC now flowing to defense tech [9], some observers worry about overcapitalization — too much money chasing too few proven business models. The sector's explosive growth from $7.3 billion in 2024 to $17.9 billion in 2025 [8] raises questions about whether returns can match the capital deployed.

And then there's the geopolitical variable. Much of the thesis depends on sustained government spending on defense and industrial policy. A shift in political priorities, budget sequestration, or the resolution of major conflicts could dampen demand for exactly the technologies Pax is backing.

What Pax Technica Means for the Venture Landscape

Whatever happens to any individual portfolio company, the launch of Pax Ventures reflects something larger: a structural change in how Silicon Valley thinks about value creation. The era when a two-person team could build a billion-dollar company from a laptop is not over, but it is now complemented by a parallel universe of venture-backed companies that build physical things — rockets, reactors, factories, and weapons systems.

Volz is one of a growing number of investors who have concluded that the most consequential companies of the next decade will not be found in app stores. They will be found in missile silos, on factory floors, in lithium mines, and in low Earth orbit.

"There are a lot of ways to make money," Volz said. She's betting that the hardest way is also the most important one [1].