R7 Partners is a Chicago- and New York-based venture capital fund that specializes in hardware-heavy industrial technology like autonomous cargo flights, robotic farms, and solid-oxide fuel cells, positioning itself as a "Hardtech VC" for founders building physical systems that need patient and technically literate capital. The fund operates on the thesis that "intelligence is coming into the physical world" through AI and robotics applied to atoms rather than bits, backing capex-heavy, long-horizon bets in hard-to-abate decarbonization sectors that many traditional early-stage funds avoid.