Anorak Ventures Confirms $35M Fund III for Defense Tech

TL;DR

Anorak Ventures, the Los Angeles and San Francisco seed firm Greg Castle founded in 2016, has publicly reintroduced itself with Fund III, sharpening its focus on aerospace and defense, critical infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing. The $35 million fund size is now confirmed two ways: an SEC Form D filing from October 2025 and the firm's own Fund III announcement materials, which lay out a clean four-vintage history from a $1.2 million Fund 0 in 2012 to today's $35 million vehicle. The more interesting detail is who's behind it: the LPs Castle has publicly thanked include three Oculus co-founders, Framework's founder, and institutional names like Goldman Sachs and Detroit Venture Partners, a lineup that reads like a reunion of Castle's own best outcomes rather than a cold LP pitch.

Key Takeaways

The $35 million figure is now confirmed from two independent sources. Anorak Ventures Fund III, L.P.'s SEC Form D filing (October 15, 2025) showed a $35 million target with $25.15 million already committed from 17 investors. The firm's own Fund III announcement graphic independently confirms $35 million as the fund size, alongside a full vintage history, which is as close to a primary-source confirmation as this kind of story gets.

The thesis has sharpened toward hard tech and defense. Anorak's earlier identity leaned on Castle's Oculus-adjacent network and a broader computer vision, robotics, and AR/VR mandate. Fund III's stated focus, aerospace and defense, critical infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing, is narrower and squarely in the hardtech-and-defense lane that's pulled a disproportionate share of 2026 venture dollars.

The fund-by-fund track record is unusually transparent, and it's real. Fund 0 (2012, $1.2 million) backed Oculus, Flexport, and Mux. Fund I (2017, $13.4 million) backed Anduril, Flock, and Onebrief. Fund II (2021, $24.5 million) backed Heaviside, Sesame, and Framework. That's a firm showing its work across four vintages rather than leaning on a single marquee logo, and the step-up from vintage to vintage, roughly 11x, then 2x, then 1.4x, reflects a fund that's scaling capital in rough proportion to its own improving track record rather than chasing AUM for its own sake.

The LP base spans individuals and institutions. Publicly named backers include Oculus co-founders Michael Antonov, Brendan Iribe, and Nate Mitchell, Framework founder Nirav Patel, and former Rocket Companies CEO Jay Farner, alongside institutional partners including Goldman Sachs, Screendoor, Detroit Venture Partners, Verdis, Mangrove, and Ronin. That combination, operator-investors who've lived the outcomes plus name-brand institutional capital, is a stronger signal of manager quality than either group alone.

Fund Overview

Fund Name: Anorak Ventures Fund III, L.P.
Fund Size: $35 million, confirmed by both an SEC Form D filing (October 2025) and the firm's own Fund III announcement materials
Stage: Seed and early-stage, concentrated bets
Check Size: $250,000-$1 million, with the ability to lead or follow
Geography: U.S.-based, Los Angeles and San Francisco offices
Focus: Aerospace and defense, critical infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing, alongside ambitious founders tackling frontier technology more broadly
Key LPs: Individual backers publicly acknowledged by the firm include Oculus co-founders Michael Antonov, Brendan Iribe, and Nate Mitchell, Framework founder Nirav Patel, Rocket Companies' former CEO Jay Farner, and OpenGov CEO Zachary Bookman; institutional partners named in the firm's own materials include Goldman Sachs, Screendoor, Detroit Venture Partners, Verdis, Mangrove, and Ronin, plus LinkedIn-disclosed LP Nimble Partners, LLC

Why This Fund Matters

Greg Castle's biography is unusually legible for a solo-founder-turned-GP: a marketer at Autodesk, Scaleform, and Glassdoor who started angel investing early enough to catch Oculus before Facebook paid roughly $2 billion for it, then built that credibility into a four-vintage fund family. The firm's own published history lays out the trajectory cleanly: Fund 0 in 2012 at $1.2 million, Fund I in 2017 at $13.4 million, Fund II in 2021 at $24.5 million, and now Fund III at $35 million. That's a firm that has grown roughly 29x in fund size over 14 years while staying at the same stage and check-size range, which is a very different shape than funds that balloon 5-10x in a single vintage chasing a hot cycle.

The sector pivot toward defense, critical infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing tracks the broader 2026 capital rotation, but Anorak's version of it is credible rather than opportunistic, because the firm's own vintage history already shows Anduril as a Fund I company from 2017, years before defense tech was a consensus category, and Heaviside as a Fund II company from the pre-2026 hardware resurgence. A firm that was early to defense tech through genuine conviction, not a recent thesis pivot chasing capital flows, has a different credibility with founders in that space than a generalist fund bolting on a "defense" tag to its website.

The step-up rate across vintages is itself informative. Fund 0 to Fund I was roughly an 11x jump (admittedly off a tiny base), Fund I to Fund II was roughly 2x, and Fund II to Fund III is a more modest 1.4x. That decelerating step-up curve is what disciplined fund-size scaling looks like: rapid growth while proving the model, then more measured increases once the fund is already working at a meaningful size. It's a more reassuring pattern for LPs than funds that keep multiplying in size vintage over vintage regardless of actual capacity to deploy that capital at the same quality bar.

What makes this announcement land differently than a typical fund-close post is the LP list itself, now confirmed across two sources. Public fund announcements rarely name individual LPs, let alone institutional ones. Having Oculus's founding trio as individual LPs and Goldman Sachs and Detroit Venture Partners as institutional partners in the same cap table is about as strong a combined signal as exists in a $35 million seed fund: the people who watched Castle work up close came back with their own capital, and institutions with real underwriting capacity signed off too.

The Team

Greg Castle is Anorak's founder and Managing Partner, and has held that role since the firm's founding, with investing activity tracing back to Fund 0 in 2012. Charlie Leggate joined Anorak in 2024 as a Venture Partner, not a General Partner, by his own description of the role when he joined; the Fund III announcement names him alongside Castle as a point of contact for founders, which reflects his active role sourcing and evaluating deals rather than a change in his formal title. Anorak's own team materials also list Amal Dorai as part of the investing team with a focus on AR/VR, computer vision, and robotics, though we were not able to independently confirm his current title or level of involvement in Fund III specifically from primary sources, so founders should confirm directly who on the team is evaluating their deal.

Early Portfolio

Anorak's own Fund III materials break down its track record by vintage. Fund 0 (2012) backed Oculus, acquired by Facebook for roughly $2 billion, along with Flexport and Mux. Fund I (2017) backed Anduril, Flock, and Onebrief. Fund II (2021) backed Heaviside Industries, Sesame, and Framework. Separately, the firm's own site cites Rec Room alongside Oculus, Flexport, and Anduril among its unicorn-outcome investments across more than 120 seed-stage bets, with an aggregate portfolio market capitalization the firm puts at $125 billion. Portfolio company Heaviside Industries closed a $60 million Series B led by Felicis in 2026, a recent proof point that Anorak's Fund II-era hardware bets continue to attract downstream capital.

What This Means for Founders

If you're building in aerospace, defense, critical infrastructure, or advanced manufacturing, and especially if your company has the kind of technically demanding, physical-world risk profile that scares off software-only seed funds, Anorak's $250K-$1M check with lead-or-follow flexibility is a genuinely useful instrument, and its Oculus-and-Anduril-adjacent network, now reinforced by institutional partners like Goldman Sachs and Detroit Venture Partners, is a real door-opener for recruiting, downstream fundraising, and government or prime-contractor relationships in defense specifically.

Founders outside those three focus areas shouldn't assume they're excluded. Castle's own framing, backing "a 1% chance of making a dent in the universe," suggests the firm still has room for ambitious, technically ambitious bets that don't fit neatly into the three named categories, but founders in that position should lead with the technical risk and ambition of the idea rather than trying to force-fit a defense or manufacturing narrative that isn't really there.

Fund Momentum Take

We'd rather see a fund grow in a decelerating, disciplined curve, 11x, then 2x, then 1.4x, across four vintages than triple in size chasing a hot sector in one jump, and Anorak's own published history confirms that's exactly the shape here. The firm's actual portfolio evidence, Anduril as a 2017 Fund I company years before defense tech was consensus, Oculus as a 2012 Fund 0 bet before VR was a category, backs up the sector call better than most funds making similar claims right now.

Our remaining uncertainty is about team depth rather than fund economics. A $35 million fund run effectively by a Managing Partner and a Venture Partner, with an unclear third team member's current involvement, is a lean operation, and lean works well at this fund size but will be worth watching if Anorak scales further. With the fund size now confirmed by both SEC filings and Anorak's own materials, that's no longer the open question here; team bandwidth and deal-flow capacity at $35 million are.

The clearest signal in this whole story is still the LP list, and it got stronger with the firm's own disclosure of institutional partners. Three Oculus co-founders and a bench of institutional names like Goldman Sachs re-upping with a GP who backed their own or similar companies at the seed stage is the kind of reference check money can't buy, and it's a more useful data point for other LPs evaluating Anorak than anything in a pitch deck.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is Anorak Ventures Fund III?
$35 million, confirmed both by an SEC Form D filing from October 2025 (which showed $25.15 million already committed from 17 investors at that time) and by the firm's own Fund III announcement materials.

How has Anorak's fund size grown over time?
Per the firm's own disclosed history: Fund 0 (2012) was $1.2 million, Fund I (2017) was $13.4 million, Fund II (2021) was $24.5 million, and Fund III (2026) is $35 million.

What does Anorak Ventures invest in?
Fund III's publicly stated focus areas are aerospace and defense, critical infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing, continuing a broader mandate of backing technically ambitious founders in disruptive technology.

What check sizes does Anorak write?
Historically and per the Fund III announcement, $250,000 to $1 million, with the flexibility to lead or follow a round.

Who are the General Partners at Anorak Ventures, and who are its LPs?
Greg Castle is the founder and Managing Partner; Charlie Leggate joined in 2024 as a Venture Partner and is a named point of contact for Fund III but is not a General Partner. Disclosed LPs include Oculus co-founders Michael Antonov, Brendan Iribe, and Nate Mitchell, Framework founder Nirav Patel, and institutional partners Goldman Sachs, Screendoor, Detroit Venture Partners, Verdis, Mangrove, and Ronin.

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