Year Zero Ventures Group

Building the infrastructure behind scientific and industrial progress.

Year Zero partners with founders, researchers, and institutions developing the tools, systems, and technologies that expand what humanity can discover, build, and manufacture.

Meet the TeamContact Us

What We Believe

Progress begins upstream.

The technologies that reshape industries are often not consumer products. They are the tools, infrastructure, and enabling systems that make new discoveries and capabilities possible.

We focus on scientific and industrial infrastructure because improvements at the foundation create compounding effects throughout entire sectors.

Focus Areas

Where foundational improvement compounds.

  • Robotics and Hardware

    Physical automation, advanced hardware, and the machines that act on the world.

  • Bio-engineering and Human Enhancement

    Platforms that expand biological capability, human health, and performance.

  • Space Technology

    Systems enabling the next generation of space access, operations, and industrialization.

  • Industrial Technology

    Manufacturing, automation, logistics, and the production base beneath the economy.

  • Post-Hydrocarbon Energy Technology

    Abundant, resilient, and scalable energy beyond hydrocarbons.

  • Dual-use and Defense Technology

    Technologies that strengthen national capability and serve both civilian and defense needs.

  • Research and Development Tools for Scientific Discovery

    Instruments and platforms that accelerate experimentation, simulation, and discovery.

Research Commercialization

From Lab to Reality

Many of the most important technologies originate inside universities, national laboratories, and research institutions.

We maintain relationships across research ecosystems to better understand emerging technologies and the pathways required to transform scientific breakthroughs into real-world impact.

Institutions we source from include MIT, UC Berkeley, USC, Princeton, SLAC, Lawrence Berkeley, and many others where transformative, input-layer technologies originate. We see—and back—these breakthroughs long before they are seen at demo days.

Team

Operators and technologists.

Portrait of Garrett Temple

Garrett Temple

Co-Founder & General Partner

LinkedIn ↗
  • MedTech and hardware development operator experience at numerous startups
  • Frontier Tech venture partner at VU Venture Partners
  • Investments in Anthropic, OpenAI, Anduril, CacheDNA, and DarkSigma
  • Authored a research commercialization guide that served as the basis of the book From Lab To Market
  • Graduate studies in integrated design, business, and technology from the University of Southern California Iovine & Young Academy
  • Hardware founder and inventor with solo and joint USPTO filings covering epidemic prevention technology, anatomical support, consumer hardware, and patient monitoring systems
  • Forecasting and futures training from the IFTF
Portrait of Alex Velez-Arce

Alex Velez-Arce

Co-Founder & General Partner

LinkedIn ↗
  • MIT-trained technologist
  • Operator and research experience at Pinterest and Harvard Medical School
  • Operator experience across seed to Series A startups and top accelerators like the MIT Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship
  • Founder of ArcellAI and the creator of PyTDC
  • Product management training from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
  • Entrepreneurship training from the Antler Founder Residency, Actioner's House of the Residency of San Francisco, and PeachScore Data-Driven Accelerator
  • AI and emerging technology experience from the Deep Tech Research Incubator, calculus.house, part of The Residency San Francisco

Ecosystem

Built on relationships across the frontier.

We collaborate and engage with the communities and institutions where foundational work happens — learning alongside the people advancing the state of the art.

  • Universities
  • National laboratories
  • Research institutions
  • Accelerators
  • Technical communities
  • Industry experts