Balerion Space Ventures

We are a devoted team of investors, founders, and operators dedicated to supporting the global ambitions of trailblazing innovators. We invest primarily at the seed stage, enabling pioneering and mission-driven innovators to solve critical problems at the intersection of enterprise and national security. We bring a wealth of expertise in navigating these venture capital markets and opportunities. Areas of Focus Salus is looking for meaningful partnerships with innovators who are redefining our technological capabilities in critical areas. We have unique experience in identifying commercial technologies with high potential application, or 'dual-use', within large but difficult-to-access government markets. Aerospace and Autonomy: New capabilities to access and thrive in the skies, on land, at sea, and in space. AI, Machine Learning and Data Intelligence: Cutting-edge technologies helping to unlock the potential of our digital age. Automation and Advanced Manufacturing: Technological innovations to improve our production capabilities for entirely new products and enhance the way we make existing products. Cybersecurity and Enterprise Software: New technologies to build a more robust digital infrastructure and mitigate against the growing threats in the cyber landscape. Defence and National Security: Nurturing disruptive technologies across critical areas that will evolve our strategic autonomy capabilities. Supply Chain and Public Wellness: Novel technologies building vital capabilities onshore, reducing our dependencies and improving sustainability. What we bringGuidance: Support and mentoring across areas of operational excellence, governance, lifecycle strategy and experience with understanding the journey. Community: We have an extensive network of local and global leadership, talent, customers, investors and government to build around our portfolio companies. Capital: In addition to our strong relationships with global venture funds, we have an experienced community of Salus investors handpicked to provide support beyond pure financial capital. Insight: Our experience with dual-use technology provides unique access and understanding to unlock both industry and government engagement.

Mission driven, Starburst’s goal is to advance technology in the Aerospace sector. We support innovation by leveraging the expertise and novel ideation found in large and small businesses, government organizations, and academic institutions. Over the last decade, Starburst has proven that this future-focused, diverse ecosystem of collaborators can bring our partners to the forefront of innovation. Connecting visionary founders in our Aerospace accelerators to our extensive network of global aviation, space, and defense leaders–fostered in our parallel consulting practice–has changed the industry. Today, we are seeing an unprecedented boom in startup creation, new strategic opportunities for commercial success, more technological advances that are transformational as opposed to incremental, an industry being disrupted. Past Aerospace revolutionary concepts have resulted in not only game-changing military capabilities such as precision weapons and stealth technology, but also such icons of modern civilian society such as the Internet, automated voice recognition and language translation, and Global Positioning System receivers small enough to embed in myriad consumer devices. The aerospace technologies currently being developed hold the promise of solving the most difficult challenges facing humanity; Starburst is dedicated to supporting the aerospace innovators transforming the world.

Since 2015, we have been dedicated to providing entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and government game-changers a viable path to transition breakthrough technologies to real-world impact. Our commitment to unlock the benefits of technology for all is possible with our deep relationships and collaboration that spans across the DoD, NASA, DoE, NIST, VA, federal labs, research institutions, universities and corporations. Through our startup studios, accelerators, internal innovation and corporate venture programs, we work with individuals, companies, and government agencies to stay at the bleeding edge of innovation.

We fuel transformative change by investing in visionary entrepreneurs and commercializing path-breaking technologies from the world’s leading innovation ecosystems, with a high potential to disrupt and redefine strategic sectors of critical national importance.​ ​Together we build globally competitive ventures to deliver these innovations at optimal cost, impact and scale, while generating superior returns for our investors. ​In the process we help address critical challenges, technology gaps in national security and mission capability, through cross-border collaboration and innovation. We find, fund, and scale. We're dedicated partners, supporting our companies from early-stage to cross-border growth and successful exits. We’re venture builders and growth catalysts. We look beyond investing, seasoned operators with a hands-on approach, global execution and scale up experience with a clear focus on building the next generation of emerging technology companies, in high priority sectors. Unparalleled access to dual-use technology. We make highly selective investments and partner with companies with critical emerging, field-proven technology at the inflection point of growth. WHAT WE LOOK FOR Addressing trillion dollar segments with path-breaking innovation and opportunities to scale via an India-centric low-cost co-development and manufacturing model. We invest in mission-critical technologies with dual-use applications, for national security and strategic self-reliance.

We’re an intensely curious, early to growth-stage VC firm independently supporting companies that are set to shift the future of aerospace. We invest in a full spectrum of fast-accelerating technologies addressing our planet’s greatest challenges. Airbus Ventures invests in autonomous mobility, electrification, low-carbon economy, advanced materials, manufacturing systems, next-generation computing, sensing, security, and beyond. Our firm uniquely operates across international borders to transform technology at the intersection of Earth and space. Our Network Airbus Ventures continuously fosters close and trusted relationships with other leading venture firms, actively offering hands-on expertise to our portfolio companies. We proudly leverage the richly dense networks of our mothership Airbus and its supply chain, as well as the wider ecosystem of our Limited Partners. We work with multiple LPs – including Airbus SE, Development Bank of Japan Inc., Mitsubishi HC Capital, Fuyo General Lease Co., Ltd., and McKinley Capital – to better enable our entrepreneurs to grow and succeed. Drawing on our own deep roots in aviation innovation, we believe it is a natural success that more than half of the species on Earth fly – it is the most successful adaptation this planet has known. With our entrepreneurs, we seek and develop new patterns of emergence, accelerating their synergies and ascent to new system capabilities.

We have invested in more than 90 companies since 2016, including Pinterest, Compass, Hippo, Ro, Carta, Dutchie, Anduril, Varda Space Industries, Ghost, Front, Esusu, OKCredit, and Unqork. Additionally, through our subsidiary fund, New Slate Ventures, we have financed films, documentaries, and limited series that have been acquired by Apple, Netflix, and Disney. Based in New York City, we invest globally. Backstory Sinai Capital Partners was founded in 2017. We raised $100 million and built a talented team of young investors with offices in New York, Palo Alto, and Los Angeles. We made over 90 investments, realized 11 exits, and achieved a 1X return on our first fund within two years. In 2019, we raised $100 million for a subsidiary of Sinai Capital called New Slate Ventures, with the goal of supplying the many players in the streaming wars with independent content. Our films, series, and documentaries won Academy Award nominations, Golden Globes, Grammy’s, and Emmy’s, and were acquired by the likes of Apple, Disney, and Netflix for multiples of their cost. As a solo GP, I believe boutique, disciplined, early-stage funds with effective managers will generate the best returns for investors in this forthcoming innovation cycle. Throughout my career I’ve nurtured relationships across Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Washington DC, and Hollywood, and aim to leverage this access on behalf of the founders I support. Where to Now? We’re currently in the midst of the greatest acceleration of technological progress since 2010 and the advent of mobile/social computing. New frameworks for problem solving are emerging daily aided by artificial intelligence, CRISPR technologies, climate manipulation, and several other radical new fields previously dismissed as science fiction. When we started Sinai, the prevailing wisdom in Silicon Valley was that “hardware was hard” and that software investments provided much better risk-adjusted opportunities. That assumption is becoming less credible in the current venture capital landscape, with space exploration, brain computer interfaces, driverless electric vehicles, autonomous warfare drones, and nuclear fusion companies all appearing to be increasingly within reach, with potentially transformational impacts on civilization. Sinai’s new focus will be on these harder technical problems, as we believe this is where the majority of the value creation for this next venture cycle will emerge. While we still welcome revenue generating SaaS businesses, its become clearer to us that the best returns come from the most non-obvious ideas in undefined markets and categories. Some of our latest investments include Anduril, Varda, Galvanick, Rangeview, Factory.AI, Science.IO, and several others. We seek to invest in 5-10 companies each year, with average check sizes ranging between $1-5M depending on stage. We’re happy to lead seed rounds where we have high conviction, but prefer to collaborate with our friends at top funds across the globe. We are geographically agnostic, but are most active in New York, San Francisco, Miami, London, and the South Bay of Los Angeles.