SpaceX Alums Target $550M for Deep Tech Fund

Interlagos is a venture capital company started by former top executives at SpaceX

It wants to raise $550 million for its first venture fund, according to regulatory filings and a confidential deck sent to potential LPs that TechCrunch saw.

TechCrunch was the first to report on the company’s presence in April, but until now, almost nothing had been made public about its possible investment thesis. Someone who knows about Interlagos’s plans said that the company, based in El Segundo, California, is looking for startups in all “deep tech” fields. The company will give money from the start-up phase through Series B. The deck says the $550 million will be spread out among 26 to 32 investments.

The team knows that it’s a very big goal for a first-time fund. The pitch deck says, “We are sized to lead and be persistent capital partners to leading companies.”

But the filing doesn’t say how much money the partners have gotten so far. However, someone who knows about the situation says that the company has already closed on a chunk of its $550 million goal.

Potential LPs are likely interested in the founding team’s reputation. It includes Achal Upadhyaya, who worked as a senior engineer at SpaceX for ten years before managing investments in space and defense at Cantos Ventures; Tom Ochinero, who was a high-level executive at SpaceX for ten years before leaving in March; and Spencer Hemphill, who is Interlagos’ CFO and used to be the finance leader at Sequoia.

This is how most VC companies are set up, so the general partners will also have a stake in the business. The deck says they have each promised to spend a 2% general partner “commit.” This means they will put their own money into the fund as investors. The rest of the fund’s rules also seem standard for the business: 20–25% carry, which means how much of the gains the fund will keep, looking for deals that give it 18–25% stakes in the startups it backs.

A biography written in 2023 says that Ochinero, who worked directly for SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell, was “personally responsible for over a billion dollars of annual revenue” at the business.

According to the deck, Upadhyaya has a long history of investing in deep-tech startups as both an angel and a venture capitalist. As CEO of Cantos, he led the seed rounds for Shinkei Systems and Pilgrim. He first invested in Neros Technologies, a company that makes unmanned defense systems, and SoloPulse, which works with quantum mechanics.

Base Power, the materials startup Layup, and Oxide Computer are some companies in which he has invested personally. In the past few years, venture capitalists have become more interested in deep tech, an umbrella term for fields like manufacturing, space, robots, biotech, AI, and more.

Because deep tech businesses need more money upfront and usually have longer exit timelines, there are more specialist funds, usually made up of technical partners. Still, if Interlagos can raise the total amount they want, it will be an exception to the recent drop in venture capital that has made it harder to raise money. Large funds like Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz have rushed into the early stages of deep tech VC deals, making it possible that this will help the firm compete with them.