Wood-backed VC group explores mobility with Walmart heirs

Billionaires and their sweet dreams of flying machines are converging on northwest Arkansas this week, where a Cathie Wood-backed venture capital group and heirs to the Walmart Inc. fortune are hosting a conference on the future of mobility.

The invitation-only UP.Summit brings together global investors, executives, startups and founders to discuss everything from battery-electric planes to drone technology, EV batteries and developments in autonomy. Organizers say more than $1 trillion of assets under management will be represented at the conference, drawing 250 attendees from 30 countries.

In his pitch for the event, Cyrus Sigari, co-founder of VC firm UP.Partners, lays out a vision of other venues where minds and money meet: “Think Sun Valley meets CES meets the Oshkosh Airshow meets Burning Man meets TED meets Davos.” Co-hosts include Walmart board member Steuart Walton, his brother Tom Walton and Ross Perot Jr.—all scions of families of vast wealth.

For UP.Summit, the 2022 gathering is a reboot following a hiatus during the pandemic. The conference started in 2017 and rotates annually between Bentonville and the Dallas-Fort Worth area. This year’s theme is “Transforming the Moving World,” with executives from Ford Motor Co., Joby Aviation Inc., Boeing Co. and Alaska Air Group Inc. scheduled to attend. 

A Bentonville air show sponsored by the summit on Sunday featured displays of drones, electric air taxis and electric cars, vans and trucks, as well as World War II-era fighter planes. The display included an electric aircraft from Beta Technologies Inc. that traveled some 1,400 miles to the summit. South Burlington, Vermont-based Beta is one of the companies in the UP.Partners portfolio. 

For private-market investors, startups that have something to do with moving people or goods have been hot properties. BloombergNEF calculates that more than $54 billion was invested across transport and mobility startups last year, a figure that includes connected-car businesses, autonomous-vehicle developers, car-and scooter-sharing services, and electric-vehicle makers.

But the glitzy group is gathering at a time of growing economic uncertainty and upheaval in public markets, where higher-multiple, pre-revenue mobility and transport companies have been among the worst hit in the sell-off. An economic downturn could create a mixed bag of challenges and opportunities for mobility startups, Pitchbook analysts said in a May 25 report.

“The pullback is likely to focus attention on startups with distinct technological advantages; marginal and me-too competitors are likely to find the environment challenging,” the Pitchbook analysts wrote. “Capital for growth at any cost will likely fade over the medium term, and startups will have to start operating with an eye toward margins and profitability.”

For the heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton, the conference is another way to promote their bucolic corner of Arkansas and Bentonville, the fast-growing headquarters city of the retailer that is the basis of their wealth. Walton’s three surviving children, Alice, Jim and Rob, plus daughter-in-law Christy and Christy’s son Lukas, had a combined net worth of about $206 billion as of June 2, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Steuart and Tom Walton—Sam’s grandsons, sons of Jim—have helped make Bentonville a center of mountain biking and are looking to bolster other amenities. Steuart is co-founder of the Runway Group, which invests in real estate, hospitality and other businesses in Northwest Arkansas. Tom is the managing principal of Ropeswing, a hospitality group that backs restaurants and cultural events. Their aunt Alice Walton, the driving force behind the city’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, is among the scheduled speakers.

The goal of holding the summit in Bentonville is to position the area as a leader in environmentally friendly transportation technology that brings jobs and innovation, Steuart Walton told attendees at Sunday’s air show—just before he climbed into the cockpit of his Goodyear F2G Corsair and performed aerial maneuvers with a Spitfire and a P-51 Mustang.

“How long is it until all of us can get up in one of these things? I think it might be a little while,” Walton said of the new technologies on display at UP.Summit. “But this is about a long-term vision.”