18
Future arenas
McKinsey Global Institute's high-growth industries reshaping the economy.
Artificial intelligence, robotics, space, quantum computing, digital infrastructure, nuclear at its core, and the landscape runs wider still, through synthetic biology, advanced manufacturing, autonomy, defense and energy. Redrock Ventures invests in the companies building it.
“The next great investment cycle will extend far beyond the digital economy. It will be defined by the convergence of intelligence, machines, energy, biology, and physical infrastructure, creating entirely new industries and reshaping the foundations of the global economy.”
Gary LaDrido, Founder, Redrock VenturesWe seek to identify the infrastructure, enabling technologies and scarce resources required for the adoption of frontier technologies at scale.
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
President John F. Kennedy · Rice University, 1962Kennedy's words united a generation behind the original frontier. Sixty years later, that frontier has moved from the Moon to Mars, and from government programs to private capital. Its spirit remains unchanged, and Redrock invests where it leads next.
Start with the broad landscape, concentrate on the flagship opportunity, then zoom back out to the model driving it all.
A dozen trillion-dollar arenas span AI, robotics, space, nuclear, and defense, alongside McKinsey's 18 "future arenas," projected at $29–48T of revenue by 2040.
The companies founded and acquired by Elon Musk, read as one ecosystem rather than a list of names. Power, AI, autonomy and space, with the output of each feeding the next.
One compounding system of energy, compute, AI, robotics, and space, in which each layer unlocks the next. It is the mental model behind every position.
McKinsey Global Institute's high-growth industries reshaping the economy.
Projected by 2035, up from ~$630B today (WEF / McKinsey).
Electricity demand roughly doubling to ~950 TWh by 2030 (IEA).
Market by 2035, with trillions longer-term (Goldman Sachs).
Founded by Gary LaDrido, Redrock sources allocations through more than 25 years of relationships across the deep-tech, energy, and venture ecosystems. These opportunities are simply not available on the open market.
Sourced through partners and colleagues, relationships held for decades.
A five-point late-stage growth-equity screen on every opportunity.
Positions taken alongside institutional partners, on the same terms.
Every deal vetted one at a time.
Redrock invests in frontier technology across energy, compute, AI, autonomy and space. It also invests in the operator building in every one of those layers at once.
Energy, compute, AI, autonomy and space. Each layer is a customer of the one beneath it, so the base layers carry the whole economy above them.
See the modelThe companies founded or acquired by Elon Musk span the full stack and feed one another. Big Watt sits underneath them, building the power the rest of it runs on.
See the ecosystemMost portfolios pick a layer. The stack pays when the layers connect, and connection is an operator problem before it is a technology problem.
"Neil deGrasse Tyson, John Logsdon and more explain why humans are so obsessed with going to Mars."
National Geographic · September 2018National Geographic put the question to the people who have spent their careers on it. Charles Elachi, who ran NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium. Space historian John Logsdon.
The pull runs back through the telescope era and the first spacecraft to reach the planet, long before any company was built to go there. It still sets the destination, and Redrock invests along the way.
