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Physical AI Venture Studio

We Help Physical AI Teams Ship.

Manifold Stack provides fractional CTO leadership and edge AI architecture for startups shipping autonomous systems, robotics, and spatial computing. We also selectively back the teams we believe in.

15 Years in Physical AI
CMU Robotics Apple SPG/TDG Rivian Self-Driving
Strategic AI Leadership

Fractional CTO and hands-on edge AI deployment for startups shipping real-world AI products.

Edge AI Deployment

We deploy Vision-Language Models on your edge hardware in 8-12 weeks. Run inference on-device without cloud round-trips. From distillation to production.

  • VLM distillation & optimization for edge platforms
  • Digital twin for physical operations
Scoped over 8-16 weeks
Our Ventures
Products We're Building

We invest our own capital and engineering into early-stage Physical AI products.

Vertical AI SaaS

Internal Venture

AI-native SaaS products for industrial verticals that legacy software ignores.

In Development

Currently in stealth development.

Ontology for Physical AI

Internal Venture

A structured knowledge layer for robots that need to reason about the physical world.

In Development

Currently in stealth development.

How We Work
Advisory Track

For Teams Hiring a Fractional CTO

01

Discovery

We audit your stack, understand your roadmap, and identify where AI delivers the highest ROI.

02

Architecture

Model selection, data pipelines, inference strategy, edge deployment plan. A blueprint your team can build on.

03

Ship It

We embed with your team to implement, optimize, and deploy. Prototype to production.

Venture Track

For Founders Seeking a Technical Partner

01

Evaluate

We assess the technical thesis, team composition, and market opportunity in Physical AI.

02

Commit

If it's a fit, we invest capital and embed as a technical co-founder, not a passive check-writer.

03

Build Together

Architecture reviews, hiring support, and hands-on engineering until the product ships.

Building in Physical AI?

Whether you need a technical co-founder or an architecture partner, let's talk.

Book a Strategy Call
Vinay Palakkode, Managing Partner at Manifold Stack

Vinay Palakkode

Managing Partner

15 years shipping self-driving perception and AR/VR systems at CMU Robotics, Apple SPG, and Rivian. Now leading Manifold Stack's advisory practice and venture portfolio, helping Physical AI startups go from research to production through hands-on technical leadership and early-stage investment.

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Capital + Code for Physical AI

We selectively invest in early-stage companies building AI for the physical world: autonomous systems, industrial robotics, and spatial computing. We bring more than capital: architecture reviews, hands-on engineering, and a network built across CMU Robotics, Apple, and Rivian.

Capital

Angel checks into pre-seed and seed Physical AI companies.

Code

Sweat equity through architecture design, prototyping, and technical hiring.

Own Products

We build internal ventures in verticals where we see gaps legacy software can't fill.

Currently investing from our own balance sheet. No external portfolio yet: we're building our first two products internally before deploying capital externally.

Tell us what you're building.

Describe your project. We respond within 24 hours.

Free 30-min strategy call
Talk architecture with the founder directly.
connect@manifoldstack.ai
Manifold Stack Ventures LLC
#1030, 2570 N First St, 2nd Floor
San Jose, CA 95131, United States
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Early Access

Vertical AI SaaS

Be the first to know when we launch. We'll reach out personally when onboarding opens.