1) The short version
Most strategic technology investors choose one market. We chose three: the United States, India and Japan. Each brings something the others need. Together they describe where much of the next decade’s strategic technology will be designed, built and bought.
This is not a statement about where companies are incorporated. It is a view about where the ingredients of a durable strategic technology company now sit: the engineers, the manufacturers, the first serious buyer, and the capital to connect them.
2) What each market brings
The United States brings the buyer and the capital. It is the deepest market for dual-use technology, with the world’s largest defense budget, a public sector that has spent years building routes for commercial technology to reach it, and venture markets that can finance a company from its first prototype to scale. A company that earns a serious American customer carries validation that travels.
India brings the builders. It has one of the world’s largest pools of engineering talent and a software industry that has served global customers for a generation. It now treats semiconductors, space and defense manufacturing as national priorities; the India Semiconductor Mission, launched in 2021, is one marker of that shift. Indian founders increasingly build hardware and deep technology, not only services.
Japan brings the makers. Its strengths in manufacturing, materials, precision components and robotics are the strengths that matter at the step where many promising technologies fail: making a difficult thing reliably, at volume. Its security posture also changed decisively with the 2022 National Security Strategy, which committed the country to a substantial increase in defense spending.
3) Why the three belong together
The supply chains behind chips, batteries, critical minerals and communications are being rebuilt around trusted partners. The three countries are tied together in ways that make that practical: the United States and Japan are treaty allies, the United States and India launched their initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology in 2023, and all three sit with Australia in the Quad.
Strategic technology increasingly crosses these borders by design. An algorithm developed in Bengaluru, a component qualified in Japan and a first customer in the United States is no longer an unusual company. It is becoming a typical one.
For an early-stage investor this matters in two ways. Many of the strongest companies will span two of the three markets from the start. And the hardest problems a young company faces, from manufacturing at scale to qualified supply to a first demanding buyer, are often solved by a partner in another of the three.
4) What it means for founders
Three questions deserve an answer early, because they shape the company as much as the technology does:
- Who is the first buyer, and where? A first customer sets the specification, the certification path and the reference that every later sale relies on. Choose it deliberately.
- Where can the technology be sold? Export controls and procurement rules shape a strategic market as much as demand does. Understand how the technology is likely to be classified before the financing plan depends on a market it cannot reach.
- Which partner will the company need next? If the constraint is manufacturing, materials or qualified supply, the right partner may sit in another of the three countries. Plan for it rather than discovering it.
5) How we assess geography
We invest in companies in the United States, India and Japan, and we assess each in the context of the markets it intends to serve. Where a company is registered matters less than where its talent, its supply chain and its first customers are, and whether the path between them is open.
The same four questions apply wherever a company is based: what the capital must prove, what makes the technology hard to replace, who will adopt it and pay for it, and whether this team can deliver in practice. Geography changes the evidence we look for, not the standard.
