We back dropouts, renegade students, and deep tech scientists at the earliest stages, before anybody else. Want to chat? Reach out:👇
Investing across North America
Joined July 2015
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1517 is more than just vibes & techno-retrocool! We back people who want to build the future. We are the first believers & the last doubters.
For startups:
📜 Thesis: Sci-Fi tech (passes the Kubrick test), dropouts & renegade scientists
🌱Stage: Angel/preseed — seed
🌎 Geo focus: NA w/ rare EU + SA investments.
💰 Check-size: $50K - $500K
For builders:
$1k. No strings attached. For makers, students, and/or dropouts. Strongly prefer HW over SW.
Want to build the impossible? We also offer $100K to do R&D for 6 months.
To get in touch, drop us a line, [email protected]
ALT The image depicts an engine being fired in an lab
1517 Fund retweeted
“If history is any guide, smaller funds dedicated to embracing uncertainty are the ones to watch.”
A handful of firms which fit @ganeumann’s description particularly well:
— @1517fund
— @BoostVC
— @EarthlingVC
— @cantos
— @CapitalAlso
— @VashonCompany
— @AlmostMedia
These investors, and many others like them, will be the primary driver of progress and returns in the new era of VC.
LPs which miss this opportunity will end up stuck with investments in the back-half of the current cycle.
Venture capital is dead (again).
More money is being raised by fewer investors. So far in 2026, funds over $1 billion have taken 72% of all venture money raised. Last year it was 34%. Ten years ago, it was 16%.
Even firms famous for staying small, like Benchmark and Union Square Ventures, have caved. Benchmark’s five partners raised $425 million in 2024. This June, they raised $2 billion.
When a fund has too much money per partner, they are forced to cope by either making bad deals or by taking on less uncertainty. The former is bad business, the latter is not venture capital.
The last time this happened was the 1980s. A decade when money per venture investor tripled, median returns fell from above 30% to 8%, and firms moved into buyouts and rollups. Even Sequoia dabbled in LBOs. By 1994, Marc Andreessen called Silicon Valley “dead in the water.”
In his latest essay, Colossus contributing editor @ganeumann explains what happened next, what’s likely to happen now, and which firms are best placed to win.
colossus.com/article/venture…
on May 25, 2022, michael sent an email to our team.
he'd just awarded a $1,000 grant to a teenager in texas.
that teenager was ethan thornton. the grant doubled his project budget.
four years later, the company he founded, Mach Industries, reached a $3.7B valuation.
we still have the email.
after reviewing 10,000+ Thiel Fellowship applications, Michael and Danielle developed some pretty unusual ideas about what makes a great founder.
edge control. hyperfluency. the toilet plunger. Danielle's "Friday Night Dyson sphere."
none of these are a personality test.
we're just looking for tricky bastards who always find a way.
in 2019, @Atom_Computing trapped its first atom.
2021: 100 qubits.
2023: 1,180 qubits.
2026: selected for DARPA's final quantum benchmarking stage.
we found some photos of their early lab in our archives.
pretty cool watching a 1517 portfolio company go from one trapped atom to this.
The Medici Project: $1,000+ grants for young people working on things they can't stop thinking about. No equity.
1517fund.com/medici
1517 Fund retweeted
Exceptional talent is widely distributed. Permission to use it is not.
We started the Thiel Fellowship to find extraordinary young people and give them the freedom to pursue ambitious ideas.
Fifteen years later, see what they’ve built.
1517 Fund retweeted
That's our girl @DStrachman and our boy Michael Gibson (@William_Blake), now doing the same work but at @1517fund
1517 Fund retweeted
Thrilled to announce the general availability of
@positron_ai's Atlas Inference Appliance on
@OracleCloud, making Positron the first AI chip startup to be deployed at scale with a hyperscaler. Look out for more announcements this week at Oracle Cloud World! blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infra…
1517 Fund retweeted
Record setting 1517 founders, now building a fusion reactor in SF!
Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10.
Last week, we enriched isotopes in the world’s most powerful plasma centrifuge, beating the Soviet record that stood for 40 years.
Now, we’re building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to achieve record power density.
1517 Fund retweeted
Isaac Newton spent decades huffing mercury fumes in a Cambridge cellar, grinding lead into a worthless sludge while praying to the gods of alchemy. Now Marathon can use its reactor blanket to turn mercury-198 into stable gold by the ton. The alchemist will lose to the atom.
Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10.
Last week, we enriched isotopes in the world’s most powerful plasma centrifuge, beating the Soviet record that stood for 40 years.
Now, we’re building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to achieve record power density.