I2BF

Ilya Golubovich, the founder and managing partner, leads investment decisions. Golubovich has a background in energy finance and private equity, and he has steered the firm's deep-tech thesis since its launch. Day-to-day deal execution is handled by a lean investment team operating from the New York headquarters.

I2BF's nearly 25-year presence in space and energy investing has built a network of relationships at NASA spinouts, national laboratories, and university engineering programs. Its early bets on space companies gave it repeat-founder access as portfolio alumni launched second ventures. The firm also maintains ties to defense and government procurement communities, where dual-use technology demand surfaces early-stage opportunities.

I2BF operates as an institutional asset manager with family-office origins. It manages commingled venture capital funds open to external limited partners, not exclusively family capital. Its fund structure, sector focus, and institutional LP base place it in the venture capital manager category rather than the single-family office category.

I2BF primarily executes direct venture investments in private companies, typically entering at Seed through Series B stages. It has also made limited partner commitments to other venture funds in adjacent deep-tech sectors, though the majority of its deployment volume is direct equity.

The firm targets early-stage companies, with a preference for Seed, Series A, and Series B rounds. It will occasionally participate in later-stage expansion rounds for existing portfolio companies, particularly those nearing commercial scale in capital-intensive industries such as satellite manufacturing or advanced materials.

I2BF does not invest in consumer internet, enterprise SaaS lacking a hardware or physical-infrastructure component, or biotech therapeutics. It has maintained a consistent public posture of avoiding sectors where capital efficiency metrics dominate the investment thesis rather than engineering benchmarks or regulatory milestones.

North America — particularly the United States — forms the core of the portfolio, concentrated in aerospace and energy corridors in California, Colorado, and Texas. I2BF also deploys capital in the United Kingdom and Japan, with notable past exposure to Astroscale's orbital servicing technologies and select European clean-energy startups.