VC experts on why Physical AI funding is heating up | E2333

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
Physical AI companies now have raised almost 50 billion in venture funding. Wait for it, in the first half of 2026, up 80% from 2025 Six months of this year, out-raised 2022, 2023, and 2024 combined.

**Katelin Holloway** (0:15)
Jensen very famously predicted that every industrial company will become a robotics company. 10 years ago, the smartest engineer I met, they wanted to work on ads. Today, that engineer, she wants to build rocket engines in Moses Lake, Washington.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:29)
They just told us, don't do hardware. They'll run out of money. There's no margin. The Chinese will just copy it. $450 deals and $45 billion in physical AI in the first half of 26
Back in 23, it was not even five.

**Katelin Holloway** (0:46)
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**Jason Calacanis** (1:15)
All right, everybody, welcome back to This Week in Startups. It's our VC roundtable. We call it This Week in VC. I'm getting very creative with the names around here. We've got This Week in Startups in year 17, This Week in Venture Capital, This Week in AI, New Offerings, trying to tighten those up with roundtables with great guests who are actually doing those jobs. Something happened in media. I started my career in zines and magazines, and then I did Weblogs Inc. And then I did podcasting. And along that journey, it was 100% journalists. Then in blogging, it became like half journalists were blogging and half actually domain expertise. And now in this latest third era of media, there's no dig to journalists. They don't want to hear from journalists. They want to hear from people in the field actually doing the job. And they want to hear from them directly. So hey, that's where we are today. And we are super lucky to have two great practitioners of venture capital. Paige Doherty is back on the program. She's the founding partner of Behind Genius Ventures, BGV. Started her fund at 22 years old. I think she's 26 now. She's getting very old.
You are a Gen Z. You are a Gen Z investor.
You're still in your first fund or you're on your second, right?

**Paige Doherty** (2:33)
We're currently investing out of our third fund.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:35)
Third fund.

**Paige Doherty** (2:36)
Look at you.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:37)
By the way, making it to fourth fund means like that's when it gets real. You know why, Paige? Yeah.

**Paige Doherty** (2:44)
Three, four more years, it's going to be real.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:47)
You know why it gets very real?

**Paige Doherty** (2:48)
Why?

**Jason Calacanis** (2:48)
Because you have a track record.

**Paige Doherty** (2:51)
Oh boy.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:53)
Now you've got to explain the first three funds. This one did great.
This one was during peak ZERP, and this new one is very promising. Here's our latest offering, but you've got a lot of track record. You're in year six or seven of investing? Where were you?

**Paige Doherty** (3:07)
Five, yeah.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:08)
Year five, wow. So moving along nicely. Any particular investments that the audience might know or that you would want to share with them that are particularly doing well?

**Paige Doherty** (3:20)
Yeah, I would say Nox Metals is one of the companies in our portfolio that's growing the fastest. They are a next-day metal servicing platform.
The founder is Zane Hengsberger. It's a great Twitter follow.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:34)
Nox Metals.

**Paige Doherty** (3:35)
Yes.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:37)
Nox Metals. Spell that for me? Oh, there it is.

**Paige Doherty** (3:40)
Yeah, that's it.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:41)
That's it. Nox Metals, N-O-X Metals, metal at the speed of software. So explain to us how that works.

**Paige Doherty** (3:48)
Oh, I don't have my aluminum block on the desk. I usually do. So basically Nox is an intermediary between the steel mills and then downstream manufacturers in aerospace, defense and other manufacturing companies. And it's a $200 billion market.
And there's less than 40 software engineers currently employed in the industry. So they are modernizing this, yeah, incredible sector.

**Jason Calacanis** (4:16)
So yeah, if I need a brick of some super strong aluminum, I can go grab it and have a brick and put it on my desk.