# Bain's AI strategy centers on robotics and AI-native services

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/bains-ai-strategy-centers-on-robotics-and-ai-native-services/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Matthew Harris](https://realalpha.app/people/matthew-harris/) · Matthew Harris is a Partner at Bain Capital Ventures focused on financial services and technology.
- Host: [David Weisburd](https://realalpha.app/people/david-weisburd/)
- Show: How I Invest
- Episode: [Anthropic at $2 Trillion? The AI Bubble, and Why the Best Startups Always Look Overvalued](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/), Oct 26, 2026
- Moment: 11:53 to 17:57 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/bains-ai-strategy-centers-on-robotics-and-ai-native-services/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=713

## Quote

> “And when we incubate companies, **we don't take any common stock**. We just put money in. We recruit a founder and then we give them all the common stock.”
> — [Matthew Harris](https://realalpha.app/people/matthew-harris/) at [16:51](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=1011) · How I Invest

## Takeaways

1. Physical-world AI and AI-native services account for 75% of recent investing.
2. Reserve was on track for over $100 million in year-two revenue.
3. Incubations give recruited founders all common stock.

## About this segment

Two themes explain 75% of the firm's investing over the past 18 months: physical-world AI and AI-native services. Its incubated claims company Reserve was on track for over $100 million in revenue in year two.

From “Anthropic at $2 Trillion? The AI Bubble, and Why the Best Startups Always Look Overvalued”, Oct 26, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/)

## Transcript

From the transcript How I Invest publishes with the episode.

[12:06](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=726) The way we frame it, perhaps not unique to us, is in every one of our investments, stipulating that AGI is here or will be. That, in fact, AI is no longer a project or a premise or even a tool or an ingredient, but rather that in in various ways, they'll become obvious over time. Superintelligence will be here. Abundant superintelligence will be here. And so the question is, what wins under those conditions?

[12:42](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=762) What are the types of companies you want to back under those conditions? Not under the conditions that AI exhibited two years ago, where it was still, I think, question about not about the direction of travel, but about the speed of that travel and most importantly, whether it would plateau. This has been a really ongoing part of the narrative about AI is slightly less now. But if you go back and look through time, if you just take the New York Times as an example, you could find on different days of the same week articles that said AI is plateauing, is laughable, is a, you know, stochastic parrot, and clearly is not any good.

[13:27](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=807) And then the next day, A. I. Is dooming our civilization and will ultimately take over everything. And it's sort of like, well, which one of those do you really have conviction in? Or are you just being like sort of negative? And so this first category of critique, which has waned but persists, is the AI is a joke. It's a chatbot only. I mean, it's really harder and harder to argue that it's not an important technology, but there are still people seeking to relegate it to quite marginal status in terms of its importance.

[14:04](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=844) Our view and the view of most venture firms is is quite the opposite of that, that actually, if if every observer knew what was happening at the frontier, they would take the view that superintelligence is perhaps not comprehensively imminent, but is certainly inevitable. And in the next one to three years. So that that is our view. And so as we develop this perspective, call it eighteen months ago, we asked ourselves the question you just asked me, which is, Okay, so then what?

[14:35](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=875) And I'd say there are two themes that emerge that explain 75% of our investing in the past eighteen months. One is the physical world. So we've always invested heavily in robotics. We, twenty years ago, invested in Kiva Systems, which was the first sort of warehouse robotics company that Amazon bought for over $1,000,000,000 and consistently throughout in manufacturing and distribution robotics. And here in the past eighteen months, just another kind of Cambrian explosion of amazing robotics companies, including household robots and all sorts of really kind of unprecedented advances.

[15:17](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=917) And so that's, you know, maybe a third of what we do. And then we've made 20 investments starting in late twenty twenty two in what people now call AI native services companies. This whole question of like, if you can actually compete in a major industry instead of just selling technology to that industry, depending on what the industry is, it's just a massive TAM expander and allows you to have a more defensible business, you know, relative to the labs themselves.

[15:46](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=946) We worry about the Foundation Model Labs and the pressure they will face to build application layer functionality, horizontal and vertical. And one element of defensibility is to move out of application layer applied AI and into actually doing the work. And so we our first version of this is a company called Reserve, which was actually a fun exercise that's still worth doing. I think we, you know, I'm a financial services investor, so we mapped all the financial services and all the business models.

[16:19](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=979) We And asked ourselves, if you had a machine that could magically read and write, what are the activities within financial services that would be most vulnerable to this machine? And the answer in our mind was insurance claims, which is really just a human swivel chair multi screen. You get a notice of loss on a policy. You have a policy. You have to read those things. You have to synthesize them into a loss adjustment.

[16:46](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=1006) It is like what version one generative AI, if you remember, that was what it was born to do. And so we started incubating this with a with a customer, a design partner customer and AI native insurance claims business that ended up being called Reserve. And when we incubate companies, we don't take any common stock. We just put money in. We recruit a founder and then we give them all the common stock.

[17:10](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=1030) And so they really are the founder. And that company is they'll do well over 100,000,000 in this year in revenue and their second full year of life. And it's been an extraordinary growth curve. So we were heartened by that. And we went on, as I said, we've done 20 more of these, including two law firms and automated earthmoving company and a home health agency and six or seven more insurance related native services companies.

[17:36](https://realalpha.app/v/K2OC5yKrbaM/?t=1056) And so we think those companies and actually so far, it's been very clear that they've benefited from advances made by the Foundation Model Labs, and we want to be levered to that,