Augur VC Releases Flight Deck: An Open Source AI Infrastructure Model Accelerating the Watt-Bit Revolution
Ventures Edge is excited to share one of our co-founders, Michael Brown’s work for Augur VC.
Augur VC and the Watt-Bit Value Chain Thesis
Augur is a vertical venture fund investing across what they like to call the Watt-Bit value chain, the convergence of energy (watts) and artificial intelligence (bits). In practice, Augur backs innovations in both “AI for Energy” and “Energy for AI,” two transformative industries driving global economic growth.
This specialized approach gives Augur deep subject-matter expertise and an intimate understanding of customers in its niche. Such focus isn’t just marketing fluff – industry specialization lets a VC develop a solid network in a specific industry, gain better market knowledge, and more effectively address sector-specific challenges. A vertical fund like Augur can provide highly tailored support to its startups, from connecting them with energy industry partners to guiding technical strategy. Indeed, specialized VCs are much more disposed to assist their startups in targeted ways, such as introducing pilot customers or advisors with domain experience. Augur’s team and advisors, split between Calgary and San Francisco, leverage this domain focus to help portfolio founders tackle energy-specific hurdles while also pushing the frontier of AI applications in the field.
Augur’s Watt-Bit thesis resonates with broader trends in tech and climate. As a recent US national lab report highlighted, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 will require “an unprecedented deployment of clean energy technologies” and a “transformation of the … energy infrastructure.” It’s a daunting task, but “not impossible if we harness the transformative capabilities of artificial intelligence”. In other words, the future of energy depends on AI, and AI’s progress in turn hinges on energy innovation – exactly the premise Augur has bet on. By marrying watts and bits, Augur is positioning itself at the crux of what could be the most important industrial revolution of our time. Yet while watts and bits are the twin engines of our generation’s industrial boom, their full potential remains locked behind sector silos and misaligned expertise, a gap that constraints innovation and leaves enormous latent productivity untapped. Enter Augur’s Flight Deck model, which exists to close that gap, giving founders, financiers and operators a common instrument to navigate the complex trade-offs between power and compute, and in doing so, unlocking the latent productivity that will drive economic growth.
Introducing Flight Deck: Augur’s Open Source AI Infrastructure Model
On Monday, Augur made waves by unveiling Flight Deck, a new AI infrastructure financial model born from its Watt-Bit expertise. Flight Deck is a sophisticated scenario-driven toolset that Augur initially developed in-house to understand and tackle problems in the energy/AI industry – akin to a pilot’s dashboard for complex infrastructure decisions. In a move almost unheard-of in capital markets, Augur released Flight Deck open-source. The model is freely available for download via their Watt-Bit platform (visit watt-bit.com to access it). By open-sourcing Flight Deck, Augur signals that they’re not just a fund, but a platform, providing technology and insights to the entire ecosystem, not only to their portfolio companies.
At Ventures Edge, we believe this shift matters: in an era of AI-driven digital abundance, the traditional gatekeeping of quantitative models and software tools offers marginal value. Software itself is no longer a moat, interconnectivity is. In that world, open software is an order of magnitude more effective, accelerating adoption, collaboration, and ultimately progress across the Watt-Bit value chain.
So what exactly is Flight Deck? In essence, it’s an Excel “infrastructure brain” meant to help analyze, simulate, and optimize various facets of the Watt-Bit value chain (the interplay between power and compute, where a widening gap exists between the cost of electricity and the value of AI computation). Augur describes Flight Deck as an “AI Infra” model, meaning a user can model complex systems like BTM energy, grid-tied import, energy storage, and chip level term structures, among others to provide decision intelligence. Flight deck provides proprietary, industry-data-informed chip pricing which grants users full autonomy to map out their expected revenue forecasts. . This could range from forecasting chip pricing structures, server utilization, prepayments versus on-demand use, etc. By understanding the toughest industry constraints (e.g. power supply vs compute demand), Flight Deck acts as a guide for innovators.
Use Cases
Augur initially built Flight Deck to solve internal questions around AI infrastructure economics, and now it’s available for anyone to use. Key use cases include:
Unit Economics for AI Clusters: Building and comparing detailed unit economics for GPU clusters (across training and inference use cases). Flight Deck lets users model how different setups will perform financially – from a single rack to a full data center.
Deal Scenario “Stress-Testing”: Stress-testing investment or project deals before committing to power contracts, hardware purchases, or offtake agreements. By tweaking assumptions (power price, utilization, etc.), users can sensitize the model to see how compute economics really work.
Alignment of Stakeholders: Serving as a single source of economic truth that developers, operators, lenders, and offtakers can all reference. Flight Deck’s transparent models help various parties (from engineers to financiers) stay on the same page when evaluating AI infrastructure projects.
In practice, Flight Deck provides a shared, auditable view of an AI infrastructure project’s finances. A developer designing a new AI data center, for example, can use Flight Deck to quickly iterate on configurations and immediately see how engineering choices (like selecting a certain GPU, or adding on-site solar power) translate into cash flows, returns, and risk metrics. For project finance teams or lenders, the model offers a lender-ready analysis of coverage ratios and return on investment, helping them evaluate viability with confidence. This broad applicability – from tech operators to bankers – underscores Augur’s goal of unifying technical and financial perspectives in one toolkit.
Breaking Gatekeeping in Venture Capital
Augur’s release of Flight Deck stands out because it challenges a long-standing norm in venture capital: gatekeeping. Traditionally, VC firms have acted as gatekeepers to resources that can make or break startup dreams, controlling access to capital, networks, and knowledge. The industry often thrives on exclusivity – proprietary research, closed-door advisories, and tools kept in-house for portfolio use only. In that context, a venture fund openly sharing an AI model it developed is a radical departure. It flips the script from scarcity to abundance of knowledge.
By open-sourcing a valuable tool, Augur is essentially saying that the rising tide lifts all boats. This move erodes the traditional gatekeeping model: rather than only Augur’s chosen startups benefiting from its “secret sauce” (like the Flight Deck analytics or data), anyone in the ecosystem can now benefit. This could have a flywheel effect – startups outside Augur’s portfolio might use Flight Deck to improve their tech or reveal new opportunities, which in turn drives the whole Watt-Bit sector forward. It’s a form of ecosystem-building that goes beyond writing checks; it’s thought leadership through tearing down walls.
In our opinion, Augur’s approach highlights what more venture funds should consider doing. Instead of guarding insights, VCs can differentiate by offering platforms and support to the community. We’ve seen glimmers of this in firms that publish extensive research or playbooks for founders, but Augur is taking it further by sharing actual functional IP. This kind of openness can democratize innovation: when a fund’s expertise is made broadly accessible, it lowers barriers for the next generation of entrepreneurs. It also positions the fund as a genuine partner to industry, not just an investor seeking returns. Augur is effectively investing in human capital and ideas at large, not only in its portfolio. In an era of rapid technological advancement, this philosophy could catalyze breakthroughs faster by allowing more minds to build on cutting-edge tools.
Ventures Edge Founder’s Note – A Student Perspective
As a co-founder of Ventures Edge, a member of Augur’s team who helped build the Flight Deck Model, and a current student at the University of Toronto, I find Augur’s open-platform approach particularly inspiring. In an industry often characterized by exclusivity, seeing a venture fund release a tool like Flight Deck to the public feels refreshing and optimistic. Why? Because it means that students and newcomers to VC like myself suddenly have access to detailed, high-quality information and resources that typically would be out of reach. Instead of learning about cutting-edge AI-for-energy concepts only through case studies or paid programs, we can now experiment hands-on with a model born from a top-tier fund’s research. This democratization of knowledge can create a flywheel effect in our ecosystem: as more students and aspiring entrepreneurs gain understanding and build projects using tools like Flight Deck, the overall talent and idea pool in the energy-AI space grows. In turn, that enhanced human capital leads to more startups, research, and innovation – some of which will circle back to forward-looking investors like Augur.
From my perspective, this is also a lesson in how venture capital should evolve. Education has always been a cornerstone of progress, and by openly sharing expertise, VCs can act as educators and enablers, not just financiers. When I see Augur branding itself as a platform and not just a fund, it resonates deeply: it means they’re willing to invest in people who aren’t even their investees. For a student, that’s incredibly motivating – it lowers the intimidation factor of breaking into a complex industry. I can tinker with Flight Deck, learn from it, maybe spot a problem no one’s solved yet, and even approach a firm like Augur with more than just raw enthusiasm – I’ll have informed ideas backed by analysis.
In closing, Augur’s Flight Deck release is more than a one-off model drop; it represents a cultural shift towards openness in venture capital. I strongly believe that if more funds adopted this ethos – sharing knowledge, tools, and access – we’d see a more vibrant and inclusive innovation landscape. The next generation of founders (my peers and classmates) would be better equipped to tackle big problems, having learned from the best early on. Ultimately, that means more breakthroughs, more startups, and more impact. As someone at the starting line of my career, I’m excited and hopeful to see gatekeepers turn into gate-openers. Kudos to Augur for leading by example – here’s to hoping it sparks a trend across the venture ecosystem.
– Michael Brown, Co-Founder, Ventures Edge