Our investment focus this year

As volatility becomes the new normal, the mandate for our critical industries is clear: we must radically improve productivity and strengthen the resilience of our supply chains and cyber defences while decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions .

We are looking for the technological architects of this transition.

We are seeking founders who are moving beyond incremental improvements to build the core infrastructure of a more productive, resilient, and decarbonised industry landscape. If you are building in the following eight domains, we want to hear from you.
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1. The Agentic Industrial Stack

The era of software that merely records or visualises data has reached its natural conclusion. We are moving toward agentic operations -systems that don't just alert a human to a problem but can autonomously solve tasks of varying complexity.

• Vertical AI & Actionability: We are looking for purpose-built "Vertical AI" that understands the specific physics and logic of industrial sectors. We prioritise "Control Towers" that orchestrate fragmented workflows, from autonomous inventory management and supplier negotiation to intelligent, real-time pricing models.
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2. Physical AI: Embodied Intelligence

The bottleneck in robotics has shifted from hardware limitations to cognitive ones. We need machines that can reason through the chaos of a construction site or a dynamic shop floor.

• Dexterity & Edge Reasoning: We are investing in tactile intelligence—robotics capable of manipulating a wide range of materials with human-like nuance. To solve for safety and latency, this intelligence must live at the "Edge," utilising Small Language Models (SLMs) that process and act locally without relying on the cloud.
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3. Infrastructure for Next-Generation Compute

Scaling industrial AI requires a fundamental rethink of our compute architecture. The "Industrial Renaissance" cannot happen on generic, overstretched infrastructure.

• Compute Rationalisation: We are looking for tools that help enterprises balance the financial and security trade-offs between on-premises and cloud processing.
• Novel Architectures: We are interested in neuromorphic computing that mimics biological efficiency, as well as the middleware needed to make quantum sensors and communications commercially viable.
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4. Low-Carbon Energy & Grid Resilience

A competitive Western industrial base depends on abundant, affordable, and carbon-free baseload power. Sustainability and energy security are now the same mission.

• Baseload Maturity: We are focused on geothermal and nuclear fission -technologies that have reached the technical maturity to provide 24/7 firm power to industrial clusters.
• The Modern Grid: We seek hardware solutions, such as solid-state transformers, that allow legacy grids to manage the decentralised loads and surges of a high-tech domestic manufacturing base.
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5. Pre-emptive Cybersecurity

As autonomous agents take over critical workflows, the "attack surface" of a company expands exponentially. Reactive defence is no longer an option.

• Autonomous Defence: We are looking for Agentic Security Operations Centres (SOCs) that proactively hunt threats and negotiate enforcement across secure interfaces.
• Sovereignty & Identity: In a world of machine-to-machine communication, verifying non-human identity and ensuring data provenance are the new pillars of industrial trust.

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6. Bio-based Materials & Circularity

The built environment is becoming a biological frontier. We are shifting toward manufacturing processes that treat carbon as a feedstock rather than a waste product.

• Industrial Biomanufacturing: We are tracking platforms that leverage synthetic biology and enzymes to convert bio-waste into high-performance construction materials.
• Compliance as a Moat: We need the "trust layer"- likely blockchain-enabled - to guarantee feedstock origins and ensure compliance with tightening European regulations like the EPBD.
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7. Optimising the Trades

A shortage of skilled labour is the single greatest ceiling on industrial productivity. Technology must serve as a force multiplier for the human workforce.

• Institutional Knowledge Transfer: We are seeking platforms that capture, distil, and transfer the specialised "tribal knowledge" of a retiring workforce to the next generation of technicians.
• The Modern Tech Stack: We want to see agentic tools that automate the "administrative tax" of the trades—scheduling, reporting, and compliance—allowing workers to focus on the task at hand.
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8. Governance: Reliable & Auditable AI

For AI to be integrated into high-stakes industrial environments, it must move from a "black box" to a verifiable asset.

• Enterprise Oversight: We are looking for real-time auditing tools that ensure autonomous systems stay within defined physical and ethical tolerances.
• Regulatory Readiness: Founders who build with the EU AI Act and similar global frameworks in mind will be best positioned to scale within the enterprise.

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Let's build the future of industry!
If your team is solving these challenges, KOMPAS wants to provide the capital and the domain expertise to help you scale.

Contact us at contact@kompas.vc
Discover the people in our investment team or pitch us!
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