Our Investment in Unlimited Industries
AI-powered infrastructure design and construction
The energy transition is colliding with the harsh reality of time. We don’t have the infrastructure or the systems in place to build fast enough. From clean power plants to advanced manufacturing facilities, deploying next-generation technologies requires an unprecedented buildout of physical infrastructure.
But there’s a catch. The engineering and construction industry isn’t designed for this type of speed or innovation. Traditional Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) firms are structured for predictability, safety, and large-scale, repeatable projects. They require detailed project scopes up front, and they bill by the hour. All of this makes them a poor fit for startups and scale-ups deploying first-of-a-kind (FOAK) technologies, where iteration is part of the process.
Unlimited Industries is changing that. The company is addressing the gap between today’s infrastructure demands and the outdated tools and workflows of traditional EPC firms, with an AI-native platform to automate project design.
At MCJ, we believe the energy and industrial transition won’t happen without a rethinking of how things get built. That’s why we’re excited to participate in Unlimited Industries’ $12M Seed Round, alongside CIV, Andreessen Horowitz, and other early supporters.
What is Unlimited Industries?
Unlimited is rebuilding the infrastructure development stack from first principles. Instead of forcing startups to work with legacy EPCs, Unlimited’s Project Development Platform enables continuous, AI-powered design iteration, optimizing everything from equipment selection to site layout in real time.
Where traditional firms might model 3-5 design options before locking in a plan, Unlimited’s platform can model thousands of permutations across cost, performance, and risk factors. This approach minimizes capital waste, avoids suboptimal builds, and aligns engineering services with startup-style iteration cycles.
On a recent industrial project, Unlimited reduced the time required for pre-construction engineering from six months to just a few weeks, allowing work to begin far earlier while improving design certainty. In another, its AI platform explored tens of thousands of potential configurations and identified an optimal design that reduced projected capital costs by over 50%.
While their goal is to automate all construction projects, the company is starting with what’s most needed now: rapidly building power in the US for data centers, critical minerals, and advanced manufacturing projects. They currently work with a wide range of customers in this space, from 100 year old public companies to cutting edge energy startups.
In short: Unlimited is bringing software speed and flexibility to hardware-scale projects. We believe this is a critical unlock for delivering the energy transition on the timeline we need.
Why Did We Invest?
Compelling Founder-Market Fit
Alex Modon serves as Unlimited’s Co-founder and CEO. He’s a multidisciplinary engineer and exited entrepreneur who spent the last two years working alongside founders, the Department of Energy, and research institutions to commercialize deep tech innovations. His background gives him direct experience with the challenges early-stage climate and industrial tech companies face when trying to scale from prototype to infrastructure deployment.
Jordan Stern, Co-founder, was the founding engineer at Rupa Health, where he led product, design, and AI from inception through a successful nine-figure exit. His expertise in building scalable, AI-driven platforms is critical to Unlimited’s strategy of automating and optimizing engineering and construction workflows, a sector historically underserved by modern software tools.
And finally, Tara Viswanathan, Co-founder, was the CEO and Co-founder of Rupa Health, leading the company through rapid growth and a nine-figure acquisition in 2024. She brings extensive experience in startup operations, go-to-market strategy, and scaling service-tech business models.
Unlimited’s core team beyond its founders include:
James Betts, Head of Projects, is a chartered mechanical engineer with 15+ years delivering infrastructure across oil & gas, hydrogen, mining, and transmission. James has led multi-million and billion-dollar projects at BP, PwC, and Anglo American/First Mode, where he ran their EPC team.
Russ Higgins brings over a decade of multidisciplinary engineering and management experience. His work spans the full product lifecycle, from concept design to operations, for both vehicle product and infrastructure projects. Russ specializes in model-based and optimization-focused approaches to complex problems that have unlocked tens of millions in savings and guided hundred-million-dollar projects.
Multiple Catalysts Converging
This investment in Unlimited Industries aligns with MCJ’s New Industrialism thesis, as multiple catalysts are converging to create a rare opportunity to modernize how infrastructure is built. A wave of well-capitalized climate tech companies is moving from pilot to commercial deployment, creating unprecedented demand for new plants and facilities. At the same time, bipartisan infrastructure policies are accelerating project timelines, while AI capabilities have reached a maturity level that makes complex engineering workflows faster, cheaper, and smarter. Legacy EPC firms are not designed for this moment for all of the reasons we listed above. Meanwhile, an aging EPC workforce is creating critical knowledge gaps that technology must fill. Unlimited’s AI-driven platform directly addresses these challenges, bringing startup-style speed, automation, and aligned incentives to industrial development. By backing Unlimited, MCJ is supporting a new class of infrastructure partner to meet the scale and urgency of the energy transition.
Additional Resources
This approach to engineering and construction is absolutley timely. You're spot on that traditional EPCs aren't built for FOAK projects where iteration is constant. What's fascinating is how Unlimited's platform collapses the design space exploration problem into somethng tractable, running thousands of simulations that would normally take months. The 50% capital cost reduction is the kind of non-obvious win that only surfaces when you let the algorithm exlore the full optmization landscape. It reminds me of how much inefficiency is locked into 'best practices' that were never actually optimized.