NVP’s Vaughn Crowe on how manufacturing and industrials hit their venture moment

Vaughn Crowe doesn’t talk about manufacturing like a spreadsheet exercise. He grew up in Newark, near the airport and the port, in a city that used to run on industry. Longshore work wasn’t some distant abstraction in that world; it was a real, respectable path. That background matters to how he now thinks about venture investing. He cofounded NVP Capital with Dan Borok, and the firm has been backing manufacturing and industrial companies since it launched in 2020.

What changed was less a single breakthrough than a series of hard reminders. COVID exposed how much of the economy depends on supply chains, logistics, power, travel and the rest of the physical machinery most people only notice when it breaks. Then geopolitical tension around aerospace and defense pushed the government to support mission-critical sectors so they could rely less on others. Crowe’s view is that these businesses stopped looking optional and started looking essential.

AI has added fuel to that shift. Crowe sees the real action at the point where AI meets the physical world, across space, robotics and manufacturing. That is the pitch for a lot of the money flowing into the space now: software is no longer just sitting on top of the economy, it is moving into factories, machines and supply chains.

NVP’s portfolio reflects that bet. The firm has backed Vulcan Elements, Reaxiomatic, Laborup, Outlast Power, Human Archive, Haptica Robotics, Class8, Optimal Dynamics and Upwell. Crowe says exits could come through IPOs, M&A, or even roll-ups among legacy manufacturers. The point, he argues, is that these companies can now produce venture-like returns if they prove how important they are and how well they can perform.

NVP closed its second fund at $80 million in 2025, and Crowe says the firm got into the area early because it understood the language. That includes a little more than pattern recognition. It also includes having seen an industrial city up close. In a market where manufacturing and defense are suddenly fashionable, that may be the least flashy edge and the most useful one.