A startup that builds other startups raises $100M, pivots to physical AI

A company that began four years ago as UP.Labs has rebranded as Vantora and landed its first outside investment — $100 million from venture firm Silversmith Capital Partners. The firm was never a traditional incubator, accelerator, or venture fund; instead, it builds startups designed to solve specific problems for large corporations.

Vantora continues working with corporate customers, including new partners in industrial manufacturing and the oil and gas sector, whose names it declined to disclose. But its approach has shifted significantly: going forward, the startups it builds will be created solely for individual corporate partners rather than for the broader market.

Founder and CEO John Kuolt said the company is moving toward what he calls a proprietary M&A pipeline. Corporate partners still invest in the ventures Vantora creates and serve as their first customers, but they now have the option to fold those startups directly into their core businesses, keeping the resulting technology to themselves.

That shift has pushed Vantora toward a stronger focus on physical AI. In the past, the firm had to abandon ideas that were strategically valuable to partners but too sensitive to bring to the wider market. Kuolt pointed to Fortune 100 industrial companies that need to retrofit their hardware for autonomy as an example of technology that must remain fully proprietary. A similar case arose with trucking company J.B. Hunt, where an AI-driven idea was previously shelved because it could not be taken to the outside world — the new model now allows Vantora to pursue it.

Vantora launched in 2022 with Porsche as its first corporate partner, and has since built several startups for Porsche while striking deals with Alaska Airlines, J.B. Hunt, Wabash, and TDG, the parent company of Ashley Furniture. The firm still shares office space with California-based venture firm Up.Partners but operates as a fully independent entity.