Atypical Ventures Research
Investment Thesis
Atypical Ventures is a New York-based venture firm founded in 2019 by Chris Wake, who operates as Founding Partner and Managing Partner. The firm's stated mission is to back "engineers with empathy" — technical founders with the intellect to build breakthrough technology and the people skills to inspire teams to execute on it. Atypical explicitly positions itself against consensus-driven, spreadsheet-style venture investing, arguing that the best ideas are the weird, early, or seemingly impossible ones that get ignored by investors who claim to like contrarians but rarely back them. The firm invests across three self-described domains: "atoms, bits, and cells" — meaning hardware/deep-tech, software, and biology — reflecting a generalist, thesis-driven rather than sector-locked approach.
Stage Focus
Atypical invests exclusively at pre-seed and seed, aiming to be the first institutional believer in a founder's vision rather than a later validator. The firm is explicit about being a "craft" investor rather than a volume shop.
Check Size
The firm states a check size of $500K–$1M at pre-seed and seed on its own site. Reporting from third-party sources suggests the firm's exposure can range higher via follow-on participation in later rounds of existing portfolio companies (e.g., a Series A follow-on in Ventaris Surgical).
Lead Tendency
Atypical frequently leads or co-leads the rounds it enters. Public announcements describe Atypical as having "led" the strategic funding round for Brooklyn AI Research (parent of Brooklyn Investment Group) and having led, alongside The Veteran Fund, the funding round for Lonestar Data Holdings. Founder testimonials on the firm's own site (Atomic Alchemy, Exa AI, Parallel Bio) emphasize Atypical's early conviction ahead of other investors, consistent with a lead-investor posture at the earliest stage.
Recent Activity
The firm has been active through early 2026: it participated in Ventaris Surgical's $30M Series A (announced January 2026, led by Longitude Capital, medtech for kidney stone treatment) and co-led a $6.6M round for Lonestar Data Holdings (January 2026, lunar/orbital data storage). In 2025, Atypical led a strategic funding round for Brooklyn AI Research, whose subsidiary Brooklyn Investment Group was subsequently acquired by Nuveen (announced June 2025), and saw portfolio company Atomic Alchemy acquired by Oklo (closed February 2025) for its radioisotope production business. A 2022 University of Minnesota regents filing references an LP commitment to "Atypical Ventures Fund II," indicating the firm is at least on its second fund vehicle.
Portfolio Highlights
Notable current and exited portfolio companies include:
- Exa AI — AI-native search infrastructure for agents, backed by Atypical prior to the current wave of interest in agentic search; now valued in the billions.
- Atomic Alchemy — radioisotope production for nuclear medicine and energy; acquired by Oklo in a $25M all-stock deal (closed February 2025).
- Parallel Bio — human-first drug discovery platform building immune organoid models to replace animal testing; YC S21.
- Twosense (Twosense.ai) — continuous, passive-biometric authentication for enterprise and healthcare.
- Brooklyn Investment Group (formerly Skopos Labs) — AI-driven direct indexing and multi-asset custom portfolio technology; acquired by Nuveen in 2025.
- Ventaris Surgical — next-generation surgical system for kidney stone treatment; $30M Series A, January 2026.
- Lonestar Data Holdings — sovereign, secure data storage in orbit and on the lunar surface; raised $6.6M in January 2026.
- Duro Labs — cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) SaaS for hardware and manufacturing teams.
Team
- Chris Wake, Founding Partner & Managing Partner — Founded Atypical in 2019; has led the firm's highest-conviction, non-consensus bets (Atomic Alchemy, Exa AI). Publicly discusses "technical illegibility" and backing founders before a market thesis is obvious.
- Matt Abrams, Co-Founder, Advisor & Board Member — Involved with the firm since July 2020; associated publicly with portfolio companies including Skopos Labs/Brooklyn Investment Group, Twosense, and Walrus.
Decision Process
Atypical presents as a small, high-conviction shop (LinkedIn lists 2–10 employees) built around Chris Wake as the primary decision-maker, consistent with a solo-GP or very small partnership structure rather than a committee process. The firm backs "roughly ten founders per fund" and goes "all-in" on each — a deliberately concentrated portfolio construction strategy rather than a spray-and-pray model.
Founder Preferences
Atypical looks for "engineers with empathy" — technically excellent founders who can also recruit and inspire teams, and who are pursuing ideas that look "batshit crazy" or illegible to the consensus market. The firm's public materials repeatedly emphasize backing founders working on hard, overlooked problems (e.g., domestic radioisotope supply, human-first drug discovery, lunar data infrastructure) rather than incrementally improving existing categories.
Geographic Focus
Atypical is based in New York City and its portfolio and public commentary do not indicate a hard geographic restriction, though its investments to date (Atomic Alchemy, Exa AI, Parallel Bio, Twosense, Brooklyn Investment Group, Ventaris Surgical, Lonestar Data Holdings, Duro Labs) are all US-based companies.
Sources
Firm's own site (atypical.com — home, /why, /proof, /manifesto), the firm's Ghost-hosted essay blog (atypical-ventures.ghost.io), and third-party coverage of specific deals (PR Newswire, The Wealth Advisor, Nuveen investor communications, Oklo newsroom, DataCenterDynamics) and team members (LinkedIn, NFX Signal, Infinite Frontiers podcast).