A startup lab that builds other startups has secured $100 million in funding from Silversmith Capital Partners and is pivoting toward what it calls a "proprietary M&A pipeline," according to a September 18, 2026 report from TechCrunch. The firm, now called Vantora, launched four years ago as UP.Labs with a model that didn't fit neatly into the traditional incubator, accelerator, or venture capital categories. Instead of funding external founders, Vantora creates startups from scratch designed to tackle specific challenges for corporate clients like Alaska Airlines, Porsche, J.B. Hunt, Wabash, and TDG, the company that owns Ashley Furniture.
The firm's new approach represents a fundamental change in who owns the startups it creates. Under the previous model, Vantora would build ventures for corporate partners who invested in them and became their first customers, but the startups remained independent entities that could serve the broader market. Now, those corporate partners can absorb the startups directly into their core operations and keep the technology exclusively for themselves. The $100 million investment from Silversmith marks the company's first outside capital, and the firm has also rebranded from UP.Labs to Vantora. While it still shares office space with California venture firm Up.Partners, the two entities have no financial ties and operate independently.
The shift toward proprietary deals has pushed Vantora to concentrate heavily on physical AI startups, according to founder and CEO John Kuolt. Under the old model, the firm would abandon ideas that were strategically important to corporate partners but too sensitive to commercialize publicly. "We were missing on the biggest value problems, which had the biggest upside because of that," Kuolt said. He explained that Fortune 100 industrial companies needing to retrofit hardware and machinery for autonomous operation require sovereign control over that intelligence layer and won't allow a third party to sell the same technology to competitors. The proprietary approach has unlocked projects that were previously impossible, including one with J.B. Hunt that the trucking company refused to let Vantora take to the wider market.
The report indicates this model addresses a core tension in corporate innovation: how large companies can access startup-style development speed without creating competitive threats. Vantora's corporate clients now work with new partners in industrial manufacturing and oil and gas, sectors where proprietary technology often determines competitive advantage. By allowing companies to internalize the startups, Vantora can tackle what Kuolt describes as the highest-value challenges that were previously off-limits. The firm's portfolio includes several ventures built for Porsche, which became its first corporate partner when it launched in 2022. The combination of guaranteed first customers, corporate investment, and the option for full acquisition creates what Vantora positions as a lower-risk path for both the startup lab and its enterprise clients. For companies unable or unwilling to build internal innovation teams at startup velocity, this model offers a middle ground between traditional venture bets and in-house development. The proprietary M&A pipeline essentially turns Vantora into a dedicated innovation engine that corporations can tap without the overhead of building those capabilities internally or the risk of funding competitors.