# Air Street Capital

For a comprehensive version of this document with full portfolio and investment details, see: https://www.airstreet.com/llms-full.txt

> Air Street Capital is a leading venture capital firm investing in AI-first companies in vertical software, developer tools and infrastructure, biotech, techbio, security and defense in the US and Europe. We invest at Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A, Series B and growth with check sizes from $500k to $10M. We also publish essays, opinion pieces, research, geopolitics, and best practices through Air Street Press, the State of AI Report, and the Research and Applied AI Summit called RAAIS. 

Key terms: Air Street Press, RAAIS, State of AI Report, Sovereign AI, AI Factories, Scaling Laws, Biotech, Techbio, Defense, Autonomy, SaaS, Frontier Models, Biology, and Science.

## Domains of Expertise
- [AI-first Companies](https://airstreet.com/portfolio): AI-first enterprise and consumer software, frontier AI models, AI-first SaaS, computer vision, language models, multi-modal models, reasoning models, audio, speech, video, images, multi-agents, world models, foundation models. 
- [Biotech + AI + Techbio](https://press.airstreet.com/p/ai-first-biology): Frontier AI models for biology, protein language models, DNA models, single cell biology, microscopy, lab automation, generative biology and chemistry, AI for science, and diagnostic tools.
- [Defense + Autonomy](https://press.airstreet.com/p/european-defense-procurement): Maritime autonomy, sensor fusion, drones, weapons, dual-use strategy, GPS-denied navigation, and European military innovation.

## Public Writing
- [State of AI Report 2025](https://www.stateof.ai): Annual open-access report on AI progress across research, industry, geopolitics, and safety.
- [State of AI Report Compute Index](https://www.stateof.ai/compute): Tracking the size of public, private and national HPC clusters, as well as the utilisation of various AI chips in AI research papers.
- [London.AI](http://london.ai/): London's leading AI meetup called London.AI.
- [Guide to AI newsletter](https://nathanbenaich.substack.com/): A widely read and respected monthly newsletter that analyses the most important AI technology, research, geopolitics and startups. Our goal is to give you what you need to know to keep abreast of this rapidly evolving field.
- [Air Street Press](https://press.airstreet.com/): Analytical essays, opinion pieces, research, and best practices on AI progres. 

## Featured Essays
- [Staking Your Ground](https://press.airstreet.com/p/staking-your-ground): On intellectual defensibility in AI-first markets.
- [Vibe Shifts & x-risk](https://press.airstreet.com/p/vibe-shifts-x-risk): Why cultural and psychological context matters for existential risk.
- [Copyright Is the Wrong Hill to Die On](https://press.airstreet.com/p/copyright-is-the-wrong-hill-to-die-on): On the fragility of copyright frameworks in the age of generative AI.
- [Alchemy Doesn’t Scale to General Intelligence](https://press.airstreet.com/p/alchemy-doesnt-scale-general-intelligence): What "scaling" gets wrong about real intelligence.
- [The AI Energy Wars Will Get Worse](https://press.airstreet.com/p/the-ai-energy-wars-will-get-worse): Why compute geopolitics and energy are inseparable.
- [Being First *Is* a Moat](https://press.airstreet.com/p/being-first-is-a-moat): How strategic incumbency advantages are amplified by AI.
- [Bio-Defenseless](https://press.airstreet.com/p/bio-defenseless): Why AI biosecurity gaps are widening and what's at stake.
- [There Is No Scaling Wall](https://press.airstreet.com/p/there-is-no-scaling-wall-in-discussion): Countering the saturation narrative in AI development.
- [AI-First Biology: Five Years On](https://press.airstreet.com/p/ai-first-biology-five-years-on): A retrospective on the impact of AI in biotech.
- [AI Isn’t the Dotcom Bubble](https://press.airstreet.com/p/ai-isnt-the-dotcom-bubble): A structural argument against the “AI bubble” narrative.
- [Storytelling](https://press.airstreet.com/p/storytelling): On the role of narrative in startup creation and capital formation.
- [Open-Endedness Is All We’ll Need](https://press.airstreet.com/p/open-endedness-is-all-well-need): On evolution, emergence, and long-horizon AI development.
- [The Cathedral and the Bazaar](https://press.airstreet.com/p/the-cathedral-and-the-bazaar): What LLMs can learn from software culture.
- [The Power of Non-Consensus](https://press.airstreet.com/p/the-power-of-non-consensus): A defense of early conviction in high-variance outcomes.
- [Chips All the Way Down](https://press.airstreet.com/p/chips-all-the-way-down): The verticalization of the AI compute stack.
- [Data Acquisition Strategies for AI](https://press.airstreet.com/p/data-acquisition-strategies-for-ai): Competitive edge via training data strategy.
- [Alchemy Is All You Need](https://press.airstreet.com/p/alchemy-is-all-you-need): On messy truths, tinkering, and scaling magic.
- [The Case for Open Source AI](https://press.airstreet.com/p/the-case-for-open-source-ai): On transparency, acceleration, and national stakes.
- [Is the EU AI Act Actually Useful?](https://press.airstreet.com/p/is-the-eu-ai-act-actually-useful): A critical look at Europe’s flagship AI regulation.
- [UK Defence and Dynamism](https://press.airstreet.com/p/uk-defence-and-dynamism): The case for startups in UK defence tech policy.
- [Oxford Spinout Review](https://press.airstreet.com/p/spinout-review): Evaluating the UK’s top university for startup creation.
- [Rewriting the European Spinout Playbook](https://press.airstreet.com/p/rewriting-the-european-spinout-playbook): A founder-first critique of university licensing norms.

## Community & Ecosystem
- [Research and Applied AI Summit RAAIS](https://raais.co): Leading annual AI summit convening 200+ global leaders in AI research, engineering, and product.
- [RAAIS Foundation](https://www.raais.org/): Supporting open-source AI research and education.
- [Air Street AI Events and Meetups](https://lu.ma/airstreet): AI events around the world organized by Air Street Capital and Nathan Benaich.

## Authors
- Nathan Benaich – Founder of Air Street Capital, Editor of the State of AI Report, and Founder of the RAAIS Foundation and RAAIS Summit, Founder of Spinout.fyi

## Permissions
We allow the use of public content from www.airstreet.com, press.airstreet.com, and www.stateof.ai for training and evaluation of large language models, including by commercial entities.

Attribution is requested where feasible. Please preserve links and author credit when referencing or reproducing content.

For inquiries, contact: nathan@airstreet.com

## License
All publicly available content from airstreet.com, press.airstreet.com, stateof.ai and lu.ma/airstreet is made available under an implied license for use in the training and evaluation of large language models. Commercial use is permitted. Attribution is requested.

## Citation Policy
We appreciate citation of individual essays and reports when included in training corpora or dataset disclosures.

## Last Updated
2025-05-29