From Code-Obsessed Kid to Venture Powerhouse: The Lachy Groom Phenomenon

The name Lachy Groom might not immediately ring bells like some other Silicon Valley titans, yet this 31-year-old Australian entrepreneur has quietly assembled a resume that reads like a greatest-hits album of the tech world. Beyond the occasional tabloid coverage linking him to famous figures, Lachy Groom has carved out a distinctly impressive path—from self-taught programmer in Perth to the inner circle of startup royalty, from hands-on operator to sought-after investor, and now to the cutting edge of AI robotics.

While a high-profile robbery at his San Francisco residence in 2024 briefly thrust Lachy Groom into headlines—when thieves disguised as delivery workers stole approximately $11 million in cryptocurrency from his roommate—the incident merely scratched the surface of who this talent actually is. Strip away the sensationalism, and Lachy Groom emerges as a masterclass in unconventional ambition, strategic thinking, and the art of identifying tomorrow’s category-defining companies today.

A Perth Kid With Code in His DNA

Lachy Groom’s story begins not in Silicon Valley but in Perth, Australia—a place notably far removed from the global epicenter of tech entrepreneurship. Yet his trajectory suggests that geography matters far less than hunger and clarity of purpose.

According to reports from The West Australian and SmartCompany, the Australian media landscape was already tracking Lachy Groom’s remarkable trajectory by 2012. His father, Geoff Groom, described a child who embodied pure entrepreneurial instinct—earning pocket money by walking dogs, setting up lemonade stands, and constantly seeking the next angle.

But Lachy Groom’s real superpower emerged early: coding. At age 10, his grandfather introduced him to HTML and CSS. That spark ignited something fundamental. By his teenage years, Lachy Groom had moved from casual dabbling to serious building. Between ages 13 and 17, he founded and successfully exited three companies: PSDtoWP, a WordPress theme conversion service; PAGGStack.com, a web development platform; and iPadCaseFinder.com, a marketplace for iPad accessories. His fourth venture, Cardnap, created an elegant solution for gift card hunting and resale—a surprisingly prescient grasp of consumer behavior for a teenager.

What distinguished Lachy Groom from thousands of other tech-savvy teenagers was his intellectual honesty about the world around him. He looked at Australia’s startup ecosystem and saw its limitations clearly. He examined the valuations commanded by U.S. startups versus Australian ones and recognized an asymmetry that couldn’t be ignored. His conclusion was radical for a 17-year-old: pursue formal university education in Perth, or make a move that would reshape his entire future.

Lachy Groom chose the latter. He made his way to San Francisco with nothing but conviction that this was where his story should unfold.

Inside the Stripe Machine: Where Lachy Groom Found His MBA

Upon arriving in the United States, Lachy Groom didn’t immediately launch into venture capital or founding mode. Instead, he joined a company that was steadily gaining momentum within tech circles: Stripe, the payments infrastructure pioneer.

This decision—joining Stripe rather than going solo—proved to be transformational. Lachy Groom’s LinkedIn profile reveals he became Stripe’s 30th employee, arriving at precisely the moment when the company was transitioning from scrappy startup to infrastructure juggernaut. His initial role in growth evolved significantly; over seven years (2012–2018), Lachy Groom expanded into managing global business development, overseeing operations teams, and ultimately leading Stripe’s card issuing business vertical. He was instrumental in Stripe’s expansion across Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand—building operations from the ground up in markets where localization and regulatory expertise were essential.

What Lachy Groom accumulated during this tenure went far beyond a paycheck and equity. He gained what might be called a comprehensive, hands-on education in the mechanics of B2B SaaS scaling. He witnessed firsthand how a company progresses from product-market fit to sustainable unit economics, how it recruits and retains world-class talent, and how it navigates the transition from private company to potential public entity.

Equally important: Lachy Groom was building relationships that would matter for decades. The “Stripe Mafia”—a term coined for the network of high-performing Stripe alumni who went on to found companies, lead investments, and shape Silicon Valley’s venture ecosystem—would become extraordinarily influential. Lachy Groom’s early membership in this network positioned him at the center of future opportunity.

By 2018, when Lachy Groom decided to leave Stripe, he carried three critical assets: financial resources accumulated through equity appreciation, operational expertise that few people possessed, and entrée into one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful informal networks.

The Solo Capitalist: How Lachy Groom Became a Venture Sniper

In 2018, Lachy Groom made a counterintuitive move. Rather than joining an established venture firm or raising a traditional fund, he adopted what venture observers call the “solo capitalist” model—functioning as a full-time angel investor with complete discretion over capital allocation and investment thesis.

This approach distinguished Lachy Groom sharply from conventional angel investors. While most angels employ a “spray and pray” strategy—deploying small checks of $5,000 to $25,000 across 50 or 100 startups in hopes that a few compound into significant returns—Lachy Groom’s playbook was entirely different. He wrote substantial checks ranging from $100,000 to $500,000, invested in carefully selected opportunities, and moved with exceptional speed.

His investment philosophy, as documented by venture analysis platforms like PitchBook, reflected a singular focus: backing tools that users or developers would adopt organically because they solved genuine problems—not software imposed through vendor lock-in or forced adoption. This manifested in a specific preference for bottom-up adoption models, products that fundamentally improved workflows, and founders who demonstrated both technical credibility and ambition.

According to PitchBook data, Lachy Groom has deployed capital across 204 investments spanning 122 companies, all managed through multiple fund vehicles. Notably, his track record exhibits extremely high hit rates, with a preponderance of winning positions in B2B SaaS and developer-focused tools.

His investment thesis played out most visibly through several landmark positions:

Figma, the design and prototyping platform, received Lachy Groom’s early backing during its seed round in 2018 at a $94 million valuation. The company’s subsequent trajectory vindicated his conviction dramatically. When Adobe announced plans to acquire Figma for approximately $20 billion in 2022, the deal ultimately terminated in 2023. Instead, Figma pursued a public listing, debuting on the NYSE on July 31, 2025, with an opening market capitalization of $67.6 billion. Based on current valuations hovering around $17.5 billion, Lachy Groom’s seed-stage investment has generated a roughly 185x return—a return profile that most venture investors chase but few achieve.

Notion, the productivity and knowledge management platform, saw Lachy Groom co-lead a funding round in 2019 at an $800 million valuation. Notion’s trajectory proved equally impressive: within two years, by 2021, the company’s valuation had appreciated to $10 billion. As of September 2025, Notion’s annualized revenue had surpassed $500 million—demonstrating the substantial revenue generation capacity of the platform.

Beyond these marquee names, Lachy Groom participated in seed funding for Ramp, the cross-border fintech platform, and made early-stage bets on Lattice, the talent management system, during the period when the company was still validating product-market fit. His early conviction in these tools proved prescient; both subsequently achieved substantial scale and market positions.

The unifying theme across Lachy Groom’s most successful investments was straightforward: he identified founders and products that would reshape how knowledge workers operate. His ability to recognize this category shift—before it became obvious—became his most distinctive edge.

Physical Intelligence: Lachy Groom’s Next Frontier

By 2024, having built substantial wealth and proven investment acumen through software, Lachy Groom began contemplating an even more ambitious question: Where would the next internet-scale innovation emerge if the boundaries between artificial intelligence and physical hardware dissolved?

His answer: bringing artificial intelligence into the physical world through robotics.

In March 2024, Lachy Groom co-founded Physical Intelligence (Pi) alongside a constellation of legendary AI researchers. The team assembled for this venture reads like a roster of distinguished talent: Karol Hausman, a former senior research scientist at Google DeepMind who also holds an adjunct faculty position at Stanford University; Chelsea Finn, who previously contributed to Google Brain’s research efforts and currently serves as an assistant professor in Stanford’s Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments; Adnan Esmail, who spent four years at Tesla in senior engineering roles and previously directed architecture and engineering at defense technology firm Anduril Industries; and Brian Ichter, who conducted research at both Google DeepMind and Google Brain.

The company’s mission represents a significant technological ambition: developing a universal foundational model that would serve as the “brain” enabling robots to function as genuinely intelligent agents. Rather than machines executing predetermined routines or simple responses to direct commands, Physical Intelligence envisions robots capable of learning, adapting, and handling complex environments with human-like flexibility.

Lachy Groom has articulated the company’s distinctive competitive positioning as the capacity to build software designed to operate across diverse robotic hardware platforms—creating an abstraction layer that accelerates development timelines and reduces the capital intensity typically required to build robotics companies.

Capital markets have responded with extraordinary enthusiasm. In March 2024, Physical Intelligence’s founding month, the company secured a $70 million seed round led by Thrive Capital, with participation from Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, OpenAI, and Sequoia Capital—suggesting that even at its earliest stage, the venture attracted validation from Silicon Valley’s most selective investors.

Seven months later, in November 2024, Physical Intelligence raised an additional $400 million series A round, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos alongside Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, with additional participation from OpenAI, Redpoint Ventures, and Bond. The involvement of Bezos—who has become increasingly focused on advanced robotics and physical world AI applications—signals credibility in the company’s technical direction.

Most recently, in November 2024, Physical Intelligence closed another $600 million funding round, raising the company’s valuation to $5.6 billion. This round, led by CapitalG (Alphabet’s independent growth fund), featured returning support from Lux Capital, Thrive Capital, and Jeff Bezos—indicating that major capital allocators continue increasing their positions in the company.

Beyond the Tabloid Narrative: Understanding Lachy Groom’s Actual Impact

The public fascination with Lachy Groom has often centered on superficial connections—his former relationship with a celebrity tech executive, the unfortunate robbery incident that temporarily splashed his name across headlines. These narratives are seductive precisely because they’re simple and require no technical understanding to comprehend.

But they obscure the actual substance of Lachy Groom’s contribution to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. His actual impact emerges through the investments he’s made, the founders he’s backed, and the companies he’s co-created—not through who he’s dated or what misfortunes have befallen him.

Lachy Groom’s arc—from a Perth teenager convinced that Australia’s startup ecosystem couldn’t match Silicon Valley’s opportunities, to a 30th employee at a company that would reshape global commerce, to a venture investor whose bets have generated returns in the 100x+ range, to a co-founder of an artificial intelligence robotics company attracting billions in capital—represents something more instructive than tabloid fodder.

It represents what becomes possible when someone combines fundamental technical skill, operational discipline gained through hands-on scaling experience, pattern recognition cultivated through exposure to countless founders and startups, and the conviction to make bold bets on nascent technologies before broader market validation arrives.

Lachy Groom’s life story matters not because of who he’s connected to, but because of what he’s built and backed.