Omni Ventures Closes $33M Fund I to Back Manufacturing Tech Startups
The oversubscribed debut fund will back pre-seed startups digitizing manufacturing with AI, robotics, and automation.
San Jose-based Omni Ventures on Sunday announced the final close of its oversubscribed $33 million Fund I, a debut vehicle dedicated entirely to startups accelerating the digitization of manufacturing technology. The firm said investor demand exceeded its original target, signaling strong institutional appetite for the manufacturing tech category at a moment when U.S. industrial competitiveness is under intense scrutiny.
The fund is led by general partners Simon Lancaster and Sabrina Paseman, both former Apple product and manufacturing engineers who later became founders themselves. Their hands-on experience designing and scaling physical products positions Omni as an operator-led firm, a profile increasingly favored by founders seeking VCs who understand factory-floor realities rather than purely financial models.
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Omni plans to write checks ranging from $700,000 to $1 million into pre-seed companies building across five technology vectors: software, artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, and connected industrial systems. The pre-seed focus means the firm is entering companies at their earliest formation stages, where deep technical mentorship and manufacturing domain expertise can carry outsized influence over a startup's trajectory.
The oversubscription of Fund I is a notable signal in a venture environment where many first-time managers have struggled to close their debut vehicles. Manufacturing tech has drawn growing interest as supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and reshoring initiatives push industrial companies to accelerate their digital transformation spending, creating a larger addressable market for the startups Omni intends to back.
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