Type One Ventures is a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Malibu, California, with one of the most distinctive theses in venture: it invests exclusively in technologies that move humanity toward a self-sufficient, interplanetary Type 1 civilisation, inspired by the Kardashev Scale. Founded in 2019, the firm describes itself as being run by visionaries and explorers, backing the technologies, infrastructure and industrial systems it believes will define humanity's next chapter.
Investment thesis
Type One's fundamental mission is the enabling infrastructure of a scalable space economy — not space tourism, but the plumbing of an off-world future: in-space manufacturing, orbital servicing, lunar infrastructure and the industrial systems around them. The firm says it has a 50-to-100-year vision while investing in traditional 10-year fund lifecycles, and in practice it targets returns on the usual 3-to-5-year horizon. Unusually, the thesis weaves space, biotech and human performance together: it treats human longevity and performance as critical enablers for long-duration habitation, so health and longevity technologies sit inside the same fund as rockets and rovers.
Sectors and stage
The firm invests across six verticals: space technologies, artificial intelligence and automation, robotics, future of mobility, nanotechnology and human longevity. It is multi-stage but concentrates on seed and Series A rounds, usually co-investing with other major deep-tech firms. The firm has not publicly disclosed its fund size, and no official cheque size is stated — the portfolio page lists investments from pre-seed through Series D and growth, reflecting a follow-on strategy behind its early entries.
Notable portfolio
The firm's own portfolio page lists 37 investments, led by space names: Gravitics, the orbital manufacturing and artificial-gravity station company; Space Forge, the UK in-space manufacturer whose $10.2 million seed round Type One led; Lunar Outpost, building lunar rovers and infrastructure; Hubble Network, connecting Bluetooth devices globally via satellite; Orbit Fab, developing "gas stations in space"; Radian Aerospace, pursuing a horizontal take-off and landing spaceplane; Cosmic Shielding Corporation; and Argo Space, working on lunar water and infrastructure. The non-space book includes RoboTire, Coco Robotics, Daanaa Resolution, Emerge, Esusu Financial and Plaid.
Partners
The firm is led by founding partner Tarek Waked, a former Morgan Stanley financial advisor who returned to the US in 2019 to focus on space investing; he sits on the boards of Argo Space, Space Forge and Gravitics. He is joined by co-founder and managing partner Abdo John Hajj. The firm also runs a Type One Ventures Fellowship Program and hosts the Frontier Summit, an annual space-investing gathering most recently held in Tokyo.
How to apply for funding from Type One Ventures
Type One publishes its contact email, [email protected], on its official website, type1ventures.com, alongside an invitation to industry leaders to partner with the firm in rewriting the future. The strongest pitches are technical products with a credible path to commercial scale: visionary founders combining technical expertise with commercial pragmatism.
Why it matters for founders
Type One is one of very few VCs whose entire identity is the interplanetary economy. For Indian space-tech founders — a sector the country has been deliberately opening to private capital — it offers patient, thesis-committed capital alongside operators who sit on the boards of the sector's emerging leaders.