Lux Capital lands $1.5 billion for its largest fund ever

Lux Capital, a 25-year-old venture capital firm known for its investments in cutting-edge science and defense technology, has closed a $1.5 billion ninth fund, the largest fund in the firm’s history.

Although 2025 marks a 10-year low for the number of new VC funds raised in U.S. VC fundraising, according to PitchBook, it’s not hard to see why limited partners continue to pile into Lux.

The company has been investing in defense technology for years before geopolitical changes made the sector one of the most sought-after investment categories. Lux was a seed-stage investor in Anduril, whose last valuation was $30.5 billionand Applied Intuition, an autonomous vehicle startup that won contracts with the Pentagon and was valued at 15 billion dollars This year.

Lux also made an early bet on AI startups before the industry took off, after ChatGPT. The company’s initial investments in AI include Hugging Face, Runway AI and MosaicML, the latter of which was acquired by Databricks for $1.3 billion in 2023.

In addition to being at the forefront of defense and AI technology trends, Lux made significant exits from its investment in AI drug discovery company Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which went public in 2021, and the sale of Auris Health, a pioneer in surgical robotics sold to Johnson & Johnson for up to 6 billion dollars in 2019.

The latest fundraising brings Lux’s assets under management to $7 billion.