So a $4.4 million mansion in San Francisco gets hit by an armed robber, $11 million in crypto walks out the door, and suddenly everyone's talking about who owns the house instead of how slick the heist was. The homeowner? Lachy Groom. And yeah, the headlines immediately latched onto the whole "Sam Altman's ex-boyfriend" angle because that's what sells clicks. But honestly, if you stop there, you're missing one of the most insane success stories in tech.

Here's the thing—Lachy Groom's actual resume makes that robbery almost a footnote in a much wilder narrative. This 31-year-old Australian is a former Stripe executive, one of the company's 30th employees, a top-tier solo investor who's backed absolute monsters like Figma and Notion, and now he's co-founding Physical Intelligence, an AI robotics company that just hit a $5.6 billion valuation. That's the story worth telling.

Let's rewind. Lachy Groom was born in Perth and started coding at 10 when his grandfather taught him HTML and CSS. By high school, he'd already founded and sold three companies—PSDtoWP, PAGGStack, and iPadCaseFinder. Most kids were worried about exams. He was spotting business opportunities and cashing out. His dad used to say he'd walk dogs, run lemonade stands, always finding angles to make money.

But here's where it gets interesting. After graduating high school, Lachy Groom made a decision that changed everything. He skipped traditional university. Why? Because he figured out at 17 that Australia's startup scene couldn't compete with Silicon Valley, and more importantly, US valuations were way higher. So this teenager just packed up and moved to San Francisco.

Once there, he didn't immediately go the VC route. Instead, he joined Stripe when it was still growing. Seven years there—2012 to 2018—working on growth, then managing global expansion, leading the card issuing business. It was basically a paid MBA in how to build scalable B2B SaaS from zero to a hundred-billion-dollar company. That's where he built his network and got his ticket into what people call the "Stripe Mafia"—the crew of ex-Stripe folks who basically run half of Silicon Valley's VC scene now.

By 2018, Lachy Groom had enough capital and experience to go solo. He became a solo capitalist, but his investing style was completely different from the typical angel investor. Most angels spray money everywhere—$5,000 to 100 companies, hope something sticks. Lachy Groom? He's a sniper. When he sees something he believes in, he writes checks for $100,000 to $500,000 and moves fast. His thesis is simple: invest in tools people actually want to use, not software they're forced to use.

The hits speak for themselves. He backed Figma in its seed round when the valuation was $94 million. That company went public in 2025 and hit a $67.6 billion market cap on day one. Even at current valuations around $17.5 billion, that's roughly a 185x return. Notion? He led the round in 2019 at $800 million valuation. Two years later it was worth $10 billion. He got in early on Ramp, Lattice, and a bunch of other B2B tools that quietly became industry standards.

Then came the bigger play. A couple years ago, Lachy Groom started thinking about what happens when AI and hardware converge. That question led him to co-found Physical Intelligence in March 2024. The co-founding team reads like a Silicon Valley dream roster—former Google DeepMind scientists, Stanford professors, Tesla engineers, the whole crew. The mission: build a universal AI foundation model that acts as a "brain" for robots, so they're not just machines executing commands but intelligent agents that can adapt and learn.

Capital markets went nuts for this. Seed round in March 2024? $70 million led by Thrive Capital, with OpenAI and Sequoia in. Seven months later, another $400 million, this time with Jeff Bezos putting in serious money. Then just recently, another $600 million round led by Alphabet's CapitalG, bringing the total valuation to $5.6 billion.

So when you strip away the tabloid stuff about Sam Altman and robbery victims, what you're actually looking at is a guy who went from a small town in Australia to becoming one of the most connected and successful operators in tech. Lachy Groom's not famous because of who he dated. He's significant because he keeps finding the next wave before everyone else does. That's the real story.