Lux Capital, a 25-year-old VC firm known for its investments in frontier science and defense technology, has closed its ninth fund worth $1.5 billion, the largest in the firm’s history.
Despite the number of new VC funds raised in US venture fundraising in 2025 hitting a 10-year low, according to PitchBook, it’s not hard to see why limited partners are still piling into Lux.
The company has been investing in defense technologies for years, even before geopolitical shifts made the sector one of the most desirable investment categories. Lux was a seed-stage investor in Anduril, which was last valued at $30.5 billionand Applied Intuition, an autonomous vehicle startup that won a contract with the Pentagon and was valued at $15 billion This year.
Lux has also made early bets on AI startups before the industry took off after ChatGPIT. The company’s early-stage AI investments include Hugging Face, Runway AI, and MosaicML, the latter of which was acquired by Databricks. $1.3 billion In 2023.
In addition to being an early adopter of defense tech and AI trends, Lux has realized significant exits from its investments in Recursion Pharmaceuticals, an AI drug discovery company, which went public in 2021, and the sale of Oris Health, a surgical robotics pioneer, which was sold to Johnson & Johnson. $6 billion In 2019.
The latest fundraise brings Lux’s total under management to $7 billion.
