VC Collaborators: Lux Capital
I mainly talk about a16z and to a lesser degree, the PayPal Mafia, in this blog. After all, this is a pretty straightforward conspiracy and the consolidation of money and power in VC, means that it’s pretty hard to miss because you only have a few major players. As Marc Andreessen, the “King of Silicon Valley”, recently affirmed, about 15 ventures account for 97% of VC returns.
This may leave us thinking, well, what is the point of all of the smaller firms then? Do they even matter?
Over the past technology cycle, a16z and Founder’s Fund, primarily, built up a small group of smaller venture firms that are essentially orbiting them, going in on cornerstone deals together, and perhaps most important, spreading the a16z ideology across firms so it looks like this is all happening from the venture capital or tech community as a whole, rather than just very obviously emerging from the same two firms. It is these smaller firms that, for example, when a16z wants to spread its new “American Dynamism” category out, cheerily pick up the task and go to work as marketing and community managers and general cheerleaders.
Who are these firms? What are they up to? I keep an eye on a lot of things, so I can’t provide a full picture — rather, this is to introduce some of them, and see what their relationship and orientation is, towards salient issues such as weapons manufacturing, crypto and the sovereign VC state.
First first first. Lux Capital!!!
Lux first came on my radar because of their participation in weapons manufacturing that a16z has been ramping up extraordinarily, often in conjunction with Founder’s Fund.
This is a New York firm that was founded in 2000. They have a lousy 5 billion in assets under management, so I would normally skip them by, however, their ongoing appearance as a a16z lap dog, means we must at least give them the courtesy of recognizing their role in this unfolding human rights disaster.
They have a pretty broad portfolio, most VCs invest in a whole bunch of different verticals, there’s some emphasis on biotech and natural sciences as differentiators here. They seem to be betting on a discontinuous innovation that might be unearthed by one of their startups. And after all, the conditions are right for it: cold wars, hot wars and space races, all historical hotbeds for discontinuous innovations. As an overall trend, there’s been a big focus on discontinuous innovation coming to the fore, something we see in the AI field re: AGI and something we are seeing in the context of all this defense spending, something we see in VC’s ongoing worshipping at the shrine of Oppenheimer.
The pedigree of these folks is pretty ugly.
One of the founders is from Lehman Brothers, that’s Peter Herbert. The advantage of that is you have someone who already has tons of experience committing large scale financial fraud, as well as someone who is familiar with the prosecutorial strategies levied at novel financial criminals. More firms and startups should benefit from dipping into the talent pool of Wall Street crooks now that a few years have softened the blow to the global economy.
Another is out of Merrill Lynch, that’s Josh Wolfe, who seems to be the face of the company. He’s very Brooks Brothers, very Ivy League, communicates clearly, confident and composed, isn’t poisoned by memes or Twitter, which is becoming rarer and rarer in these folks. He kinda gives me branch manager in an upper middle class suburb vibes. You really hate to see a good looking white man in tech who can’t quite pull the charisma together, waste of a face. Unlike Adam Neumann where you really see what the combination can do for someone, when an executive is able to marry personal good looks to a compelling interpersonal communication style. Bravo, Adam. You deserve all the cults you have had and will have. And even in Marc you see him leveraging his height to great effect. Maybe Josh is short or something. I don’t know, I would consider changing up the look Josh and take some improv classes, you’re a bit stiff and starched. You can’t buy this, and you can’t learn it, but you might be able to fake it for the 10 minute intervals of stage time that comprise your new gig as an a16z stage pony.
A profile earlier this year recounts how, in 2019, Wolfe accompanied American soldiers for training in the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and others, on a mission for the Pentagon where he was observing in order to consult on the state of war technologies. He later briefed the commander of US Special Operations Command on how everything was all well and good… except that the technology was hugely out of date and wouldn’t you know it, here Josh is, our little Boy Scout, to offer some solutions. VCs are great like that.
And the commander came to work for Lux Capital. Double bonus!!
The Lux head of marketing came over from, you guessed it, a16z. One of their big public faces, Bilal Zuberi, is from General Catalyst, another VC firm associated with a16z. He and Josh seem to be the ones on the hook for a16z-by-proxy evangelizing. Another one from GC as well. There’s some TechCrunch DNA in there — VC-backed tech news site that has covered up for VCs for decades now. Pfizer. McKinsey. Oh and they have a former CIA director in there. Recently, one of their partners came in from OpenAI. Keeping it in the family.
This is a real nice mix to see at a firm, some intelligence agency, some financial crime, just a dash of public relations talent, and a little big pharma mixed in there for the medical experiments I mean, startups. This is undoubtedly part of what attracted a16z to them: two psychopaths at the helm, interest in medical experimentation, total openness to ethical failures of all sizes, and best of all, very submissive and non threatening, very vanilla. I’m bored already.
To be fair, their team except for the strong core seem like reasonable people who at least nominally care about human life; they have a focus on healthcare, biotech, etc. The thing about VCs in healthcare and biotech is it makes it really easy for them to say “well we’re trying to CURE (WORST DISEASE EVER)”, even if other parts of the portfolio — like Lux weapons startups — sole purpose is to kill a bunch of people. And guess which one of them produces actual results.
To any Lux employees reading this: get out. You are well on your way to being an accomplice in mass death. Your firm builds weapons. Period. You are the hook for this. This is your responsibility. Stop immediately.
Your boss Josh Wolfe is a bloodthirsty animal, picked especially by Marc Andreessen to help lead you all into hell. You people don’t know the game you are playing in. If ANY of you care about human life, leave. Stop funding bloodshed. Yes, you fund other things. But what do you think will be remembered? Usually, it’s the thing that kills lots of children. You are collaborators. “Well I killed some kids, but look at this health care startup for social medicine!” Doesn’t fly. Usually you are remembered for the number of children you kill more than say, yet another flop startup from a crew of Genentech layoffs. Your work is going to go directly into war zones to kill innocent people.
Also, please do something about the website jesus christ. What is with the ven diagram pointer? Fire someone, this is unusable.
My biggest issue here is that Lux is one of the firms that has been funding Anduril, which is the massive weapons company put together by a16z and Founder’s Fund. Its CEO, Palmer Luckey, and one of the most underrated strategic minds in the industry, was funded by both entities in his previous startup, Oculus. Anduril is a cornerstone company. It is designed to establish a monopoly in a sector, it is designed to roll up other weapons companies, and it is designed to be the foremost and most important entity in a16z’s forays into forever war.
The depth to which Lux is kissing ass is in how all their VCs on Twitter are nattering on about “American Dynamism” and defense, which it turns out, is mainly interesting to other VC hawks. Lux has also been seen at conferences and meetups alongside a16z driving shared agendas. So, they’re in the circle.
Hadrian is another big company in the weapons build out that Lux has gone in with, with a16z and Founder’s Fund again of course. Here you see the venture capital mechanism wrap itself around and incubate multiple weapons startups. Hadrian is building factories in the defense sector, manufacturing rockets, satellites, jets and drones at great efficiency and speed and viability. Lux got a board seat which is kindof a big deal for a firm with such a modest piggybank. Katharine Boyle from a16z has a board seat here — she is former Founder’s Fund, the one who came up with a lot of the framing for American Dynamism, and she has been one of the main faces promoting the hawk agenda, very Hillary Clinton-esque, a raving psychopath who also likes to dabble in sick, weird, perverted talking points like the birth rate in San Francisco, where women are chased out of the industry sometimes under great threat, all the time.
Here we see the situation of the VCs constructing entire ecosystems to pursue their agendas. Anduril builds drones, Hadrian builds factories for drones. OpenAI launches the first true AI platform, and Palantir is right there to implement it. (Yes, Palantir is already implementing battlefield AI and has been for some time.) Lux Capital and Founder’s Fund have co-invested in Varda, a space manufacturing startup, so this whole weapons/space race affinity continues to play out.
Earlier this year, Lux Capital launched the “Lux Wargaming Initiative”. Apparently, war gaming is a great way to build team spirit and a sense of camaraderie, and to think strategically about complex problems!! Alternatively, you are acting this out as some perverse and fetishistic ritual that inculcates Lux deeper and deeper into a violent, military mindset.
With absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever, Lux says of the initiative:
“We’ve already operated the scenario three times in the Lux office with friends. It’s been incredible to watch seemingly normal people transform into power hungry local politicians, fame-seeking journalists, and legacy-preserving Navy leaders in sometimes as short as 10 minutes”.
What a success!!
They are even planning on hosting public events in their offices for others to come in and do war gaming.
As much as Lux tries to make it sound like this is just normal and a creative application of war gaming, the fact that they are literally giving money for weapons manufacturing that is CURRENTLY IN USE in war and combat zones, means we can safely discard any caution that this somehow ISNT, war criminals strategizing war crimes. Tsk, tsk.
That won’t look good at the tribunals!!
Anyways, there’s a couple other little shit firms here who have been orbiting and collaborating with this posse, I’m gonna try to get through a few of them if only as a record for the future in coming days.
Under a16z’s wing, Lux Capital will continue to grow, bathing in the money that spills from a16z. So, we’re probably stuck with them.
And they are stuck with me :) Nice to meet you all, its great to see some new faces around here and some new strains of psychopathy too.
LEAVE YOUR FIRM IT IS YOUR SOUL ON THE LINE. HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT???