Ridaa Murad

Co-Founder @TheBedrockGrp; CIO @BreakformVC @TopazCapital - “Personal opinions only, not investment advice.”

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

Three things I look for in any AI, defense tech, or robotics deal — operator filter, not allocator filter.

1. Cost of goods sold trajectory. Software businesses get cheaper to run as they scale. Hardware businesses don't, automatically. They only get cheaper if someone has driven the supply chain, the BOM, and the manufacturing process aggressively. Ask the founder which of those they've personally negotiated. If the answer is "our operations head handles that," keep looking.

2. Customer concentration that doesn't show in the cohort data. Defense tech especially. A $200 million ARR business with two contracts, one of which is up for re-bid in eighteen months, is not a $200 million ARR business. It's a $50 million business plus an option. Underwrite it as such.

3. Founder behavior on dilution. When the round is hot, ask the founder to walk you through their own position post-round. The ones who can do it without notes — and who actually know what their unvested grants look like under the new option pool — are the ones who will protect themselves and you over the long arc. The ones who can't will get washed out at the next down round.

None of these are allocator questions. They're operator questions. Use them.

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

I've been an operator at various companies and an allocator at four funds. Both seats teach you something the other can't.

The seat I'm sitting in this quarter — watching the AI, defense tech, and robotics deal flow that's coming through Domaine Capital and through the OPEN VC partnership — has me writing this essay because the gap between the allocator narrative and the operator reality has rarely been wider in any category I've covered.

The numbers first. Defense-tech equity funding in the U.S. nearly tripled to $14.2 billion in 2025. Anduril alone raised $2.5 billion at a reported valuation north of $30 billion, and recently announced a $6.5 billion raise at $65 billion. Helsing in Europe raised $695 million at a $12 billion mark. Skild AI raised $1.4 billion in January 2026 to build a "robot brain." Tulip and Mytra raised $120 million each for industrial robotics. The capital is flowing. The valuations are full.

Three things only operators see in this category.

The manufacturing tax. Defense tech valuations are pricing software-style margin profiles. The actual companies are increasingly hardware businesses with real factories, real supply chains, and real working-capital cycles. The PitchBook analyst who said "execution, not invention, will determine returns" in 2026 is right, and most allocator models don't capture how brutal hardware execution actually is. Anduril's mark assumes manufacturing scaling that hasn't happened yet, with a valuation greater than many of the primes. The next twelve months are about whether they can deliver.

The AI capex circular reference. You have NVIDIA selling chips to AI companies that are funded by capital that came from public-market enthusiasm about NVIDIA's chip sales. Apple licensed Gemini from Google in January 2026. Microsoft and OpenAI are restructuring their relationship for the third time. The question isn't whether AI is real. It's whether the capex required to maintain training-frontier positions can earn its cost of capital at current valuations. As an operator, I can tell you that capex circularity always ends the same way. Not in disaster — just in margin compression that surprises the people who weren't watching for it.

The dual-use myth. Half the defense-tech pitches I see frame themselves as dual-use to broaden the addressable market. Most aren't. The defense procurement cycle, the security clearance overhead, the export controls, the cultural mismatch between engineering for the DoD versus engineering for commercial — these don't go away because the deck says "dual-use." The companies that actually pull off both are rare. The companies that pretend to are common. We know this from having invested in, grown and taken EdgeTi public via Domaine Capital.

The category is real. Defense tech, AI, robotics — these are decade-long themes, not bubbles. But the way to participate in them is not by paying 2024 prices in 2026 with 2027 execution risk. The way is to find operators who actually know how to manufacture, sell, and scale the underlying businesses, and to back them with patient capital that can ride out the multiple compression that's coming.

The allocator's optimism is the operator's tax.

[Dear Men @Dear_Men_Life]

@Daily_MailUS @askyugesh >37
>Lorna Hajdini
>JP Morgan Executive
>Used her power to Abuse Jr Men
>Forces Married Men into Non Consensual Sex Acts
>She Drugged them and then force men for sex for money

This is what feminists women does when they get power.

Imagine the outcry if genders are reveresed.

[The Curious Tales @thecurioustales]

https://t.co/8RLOrnjy7Z

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@pekwat Dying;)

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@USVI_DA My puppy has its health card and vaccine and rabies.  She is 11 weeks old.  From Mainland (California).  Is she Ok to travel to St Thomas in the USVI?

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@elonmusk Little dig at Okla;)

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

I’m skipping the line for Polymarket. if you care about being early, use my link: https://t.co/JVgSiZMEzp

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇺🇸 ELON: DOGE IS STILL QUIETLY SAVING HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS

They're requiring 2 tiny fields on every federal payment:

1. A proper congressional authorization code
2. A comment field that actually says something

That's it.

And suddenly, hundreds of billions in pure fraud and waste just... stops.

Before DOGE, massive payments were flying out the door with both fields completely blank, making real audits literally impossible.

That's why the Pentagon has failed every single audit for decades: the data doesn't even exist.

Elon: "Fraudsters don't confess. They scream that you're hurting children in Africa."

Then DOGE asks for the wiring instructions.

"Oh it's going to Deloitte & Touche in Washington DC... Okay, cool, can we just talk to the actual kids in Africa?"

Crickets.

The best part? When you block the scam, the grifters instantly spin up sob stories and accuse you of being heartless.

This isn't complicated rocket science.

It's basic financial hygiene that any normal company does on day one.

Yet the federal government never did it... until Elon and DOGE showed up.

The swamp is absolutely seething.

Source: @nikhilkamathcio, @elonmusk

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Elon Musk: “Anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect”

Elon is asked for his advice for entrepreneurs, to which he responds:

“I’m a big fan of anyone who wants to build. Anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect. That’s the main thing you should aim for: to make more than you take and be a net contributor to society.”

He compares it to the pursuit of happiness:

“If you want to create something valuable financially, you don’t pursue that. It’s best to pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, money will come as a natural consequence of that rather than pursuing money directly. You can’t pursue happiness directly. You pursue things that lead to happiness — fulfilling work, study, friends, loved ones.”

Elon continues:

“It sounds very obvious, but generally if somebody is trying to make a company work, they should expect to grind super hard and accept that there’s a meaningful chance of failure. Then just focus on having the output be worth more than the input. Are you a value creator? That’s what really matters: making more than you take.”

Video source: @nikhilkamathcio (2025)

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@sweatystartup Failures teach you more so fail but fail fast!!

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

Check out my latest article: The Great Dislocation: Capital Allocation Strategy in the Age of Autonomous Defense, Demographic Inversion, and the Deflation of Intellectual Labor https://t.co/mG4K9dZKX7 via @LinkedIn

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@NUCLRGOLF @golfnjokes 4

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

I am raising funds for Access Youth Academy, a nonprofit which supports and empowers Los Angeles youth so they can achieve their full potential. They provide access to game-changing opportunities for young people in Southern California. Please consider donating to my team, TEAM PAUL, as we have an ambitious goal of raising $35,000 for the organization! Click here to give: https://t.co/xBVvrFDtJt

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

Random Thought Of The Day: Everywhere I look, people are using AI as a way to evaluate, price, structure, resolve, suggest next steps....All this is doing is what happened with ETF's and Indexing in the public markets...creating a median bound that will essentially drive all pricing, direction and flows for transactions...this is when staying away from the herd and being away from the herd will start making a huge difference in the times of dislocation and divergence...

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

Bye bye old stodgy pics and hello new action vids @elonmusk

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Upload any photos from your phone or take a picture of an old photo and turn it into a video in 20 seconds with the Grok app!

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@elonmusk Better lucky than good @elonmusk ;)

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@AmericanAir How is the feedback going to address the challenges that were already faced and costs already burdened???

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@americanair at MIA Gate D44 when asked “if any other airline is flying out right now?” your agent Hector Luis just stated “we are American this is our hub and if we aren’t leaving nobody else is” and in front of a hundred of us and right behind him two flights just took off…AeroMexico and Gol and just watching two others taxiing! Bunch of crooks and liars is that your corporate hiring strategy as well???

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

Still doing the same thing @AmericanAir literally you’re a joke!

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@AmericanAir what a cop out! I don’t need shares I want resolutions!!

[americanair @AmericanAir]

@redmurad We understand your frustration, and we're sorry. We've shared your feedback internally.

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

@AmericanAir ⬆️⬆️

[Ridaa Murad @redmurad]

Please DM me and I’m happy to provide in depth but here’s a start:

1) Don’t have Managers at Gates LIE about aircraft and maintenance deficiencies to blame “weather” NOT to have to pay customer for their inconvenience due to your incompetence including a) Hotel vouchers, b) Taxi and shuttle services, c) Food Vouchers and d) Rebooked with confirmation of when they can actually get to their destination and if you can’t rebook to an airline that can (I can name a few airlines that have gone into the same destination for multiple flights while you still claim BS)

2) Make up your mind on the story you tell people…at least if you lie make it consistent

3) Get the gates right and not make people move ten times over across terminals!

4) Don’t have the airplane crew including the captain and Pilot go around to the awaiting fliers (some who have been stuck for two days including with children and cancer patients!) and tell them the “flight is definitely leaving” but not follow through!!

5) Reimbursed all of us ASAP

How’s that for a start!

[americanair @AmericanAir]

@redmurad We can take a look at any changes you'd like to make. Please provide more details, and we'll get back to you via DM.