Valor, Atreides Bet on AI Hardware Venture Flow Engineering

Valor Equity Partners and Atreides Management led a $50 million investment into agentic hardware company Flow Engineering, as the race to automate the physical world heats up.

The latest investment values Flow, which provides a platform where AI agents work on hardware problems, at $750 million. The company also received funding from Sequoia Capital, which led its series A round last year, and other backers included Human Capital, Evantic, EQT Corp., SV Angel and Odyssey, according to a statement.

The fundraising round is the latest drive by venture capital firms into hardware startups, as the AI boom leads to rising needs in infrastructure and robotics. Antonio Gracias, Valor’s founder and chief executive officer, who is also a SpaceX board member, and Gavin Baker, Atreides’ founder and managing partner, have both been at the forefront of the hardware push, having bet on several Elon Musk ventures, as well as other infrastructure firms such as data center developer Crusoe.

Roelof Botha, who’s also a SpaceX board member, personally invested in Flow and will join the board as an independent director, according to the statement.

“Hardware is the new frontier,” Botha said in an interview, pointing out how AI changed software and now is coming to change hardware. “Everyone’s in a race now and Flow enables you to do that. It holds together all the requirements a company needs.”

Flow, founded by engineer Pari Singh in 2023, is already working with a slew of hardware-heavy firms — both startups and legacy businesses — to help them transform their processes through AI agents. Among them are electric vehicle company Rivian Automotive Inc., rocket firm Stoke Space Technologies Inc. and defense tech startup Anduril Industries Inc., according to the statement.

“We’ve become the system of record for these companies,” Singh said. Flow is also working more with data center firms on the AI build-out, he said.

Botha said the fresh capital will allow the firm to expand engineering and marketing teams, as about 96% of the clients Flow has have been through inbound communications.

Other investors participated in Flow’s $50 million round, including Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf, Mercedes-Benz Chief Information Officer Jonas von Malottki, and Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg, according to the company.

The push for hardware investments has rippled across Silicon Valley, with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz raising $1.1 billion for its newest artificial intelligence infrastructure fund, Bloomberg reported. The fund will invest in AI computer infrastructure such as chips, memory, networking and storage, the firm said.