Engine Ventures is a venture capital fund that originated as "The Engine built by MIT" to commercialize Tough Tech from MIT and similar institutions, now scaled to more than $1B AUM with a unique dual-entity model where they operate as an independent for-profit VC tightly coupled to The Engine nonprofit incubator that provides labs, fabrication space, and ecosystem support. Their portfolio focuses heavily on physical, grid-scale, and industrial technologies like fusion power, multi-day grid storage, and superconducting transmission, with a track record of backing companies that achieve global firsts in flagship infrastructure deployments rather than incremental pilots.