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Back to Why a Chemist Left $7B to Bet on Physical AI Before Everyone Else | Bilal Zuberi, Red Glass Ventures, with Bilal Zuberi.

Why Is Hardware Still Hard?

Bilal Zuberi says hardware is still hard, and in some ways it has become harder. Supply chains in China have been cut off. A product designed here used to be made in China. Now the builder has to do everything alone. Firms are reinventing motors and actuators that used to be bought in bulk in China and rebuilding them here.

The shift is the founder set drawn to hardware. Silicon Valley is more familiar with founders in the space, and the new founders understand how to build fast-moving companies. Technology is a great differentiator for a startup, but speed is the real differentiator. Move fast and a relatively commodity product can still become an interesting company, because rival sellers of the same commodity are stale and will not move fast. Uber showed it with a car ride when hundreds of millions of cars already existed around the world. Every photo-taking app could have created an app that also deletes photos, but Snapchat did it and did it fast. Everybody could have added filters, but Instagram did it and had already established a lead and a community before others tried.

Grokipedia·Silicon Valley·China

Transcript

Why a Chemist Left $7B to Bet on Physical AI Before Everyone Else | Bilal Zuberi, Red Glass Ventures ·

The Peel with Turner Novak

More from this episode

  1. What Is Physical AI?Bilal Zuberi says physical AI is the third bucket on the chart Jensen Huang put up in January 2025, next to AI and energetic AI.
  2. Why Must Venture Founders Get Customers to Pay?Bilal Zuberi says founders need to be commercial and know how to get customers to pay them, because a company is started to be commercial.
  3. Why Is Physical AI a Venture-scale Business?Bilal Zuberi says physical AI is a more venture-like model because one model can do a job and hundreds of other things, so the solution generalizes.
  4. What Is Dyna's Scaling Law?Bilal Zuberi says Dyna recently put forward a scaling law: when the company gets 1 million hours of data, real scaling starts to happen.
  5. Why Do Founders Have to Chew Glass?Bilal Zuberi says founders chew glass because the path is hard and there is no easy way through it.
  6. What Are Bilal Zuberi's Four Core Values?Bilal Zuberi set four core values for his fund before he had a name or an office: curiosity, intensity, integrity, and humility.
  7. Why Can't Bilal Zuberi Get Paid for Advice?Bilal Zuberi cannot get paid for sharing intelligence every now and then, so he built a business model that pays him for that work.
  8. What Does Red Glass Ventures Look for in a Founder?Bilal Zuberi says Red Glass Ventures looks for a first check at the earliest stage, whatever the round is called, and a founder with a missionary belief that…
  9. Why Do Technical Founders Still Have to Pitch?Bilal Zuberi says technical founders still have to pitch because most investors are not technical enough for the product to sell itself.
  10. Why Do Investors Now Talk About Hundred Billion Companies?Bilal Zuberi says a unicorn is a quaint word now because the target has moved past 10 billion to 100 billion.
  11. Is 2021 the Best Vintage in Venture?Bilal Zuberi says the 2021 vintage is not the best vintage in venture, and what the 2026 vintage will look like stays unknown.
  12. Why Did Bilal Zuberi Take a 90% Pay Cut?Bilal Zuberi took a 90% plus pay cut when he left Lux because he treats the job as a mission he already holds with conviction.
  13. Why Do Venture Funds Keep Raising More Money?Bilal Zuberi says the extra fees from raising another $2 billion, $40 million a year, go mostly straight into the managing partner's pocket.
  14. Can Venture Fund Fees Make Someone a Billionaire?Bilal Zuberi says a partner in one of the big venture funds can become a billionaire on management fees alone, without having to show investment returns.
  15. What Are Founders Buying Besides a Venture Capital Check?Bilal Zuberi stays on many Lux boards with no compensation, no equity vesting, and no salary because his reputation matters and because the pledge he made…

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