Omni Ventures Closes $33M Fund I for Manufacturing Tech Startups
The oversubscribed debut fund will back pre-seed startups digitizing factories with AI, robotics, and automation software.
A new venture capital firm with deep roots on Apple's manufacturing floor just closed its first fund — and investors wanted in more than expected. Omni Ventures, a San Jose-based VC firm focused exclusively on manufacturing technology, announced it has closed an oversubscribed $33 million Fund I dedicated to startups modernizing how things actually get made.
The firm is led by general partners Simon Lancaster and Sabrina Paseman, both former Apple product and manufacturing engineers who later became founders themselves. That hands-on factory experience is a core part of the pitch: they're not just writing checks, they're betting on a corner of tech they've literally worked on from the inside.
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Omni's investment sweet spot sits at the pre-seed stage, with individual checks ranging from $700,000 to $1 million. The target companies are building tools across software, artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, and connected industrial systems — basically, anything that helps factories stop running on spreadsheets and gut instinct and start running on real-time data and smart machines.
The oversubscription is a notable signal. Manufacturing tech doesn't always grab the same headlines as consumer apps or fintech, but the sector has been quietly drawing serious investor attention as supply chain vulnerabilities and labor shortages push companies to rethink how their production lines operate. A fund that closes above its target in this environment suggests limited partners see real urgency — and real returns — in helping factories catch up to the digital age.
If you're building in the industrial software or robotics space and looking for backers who've actually stood on a factory floor, Omni Ventures just put $33 million on the table. Continue reading at Yahoo.
