Carbon Arrow partners with founders and management teams building transformative companies across transportation, infrastructure, space, defense, energy, AI, and robotics.
We work with companies where the technology is really difficult and the stakes are genuinely high — the sectors reshaping the physical world.
01
Strategic Operations
We embed with management teams to build the organizational infrastructure that allows technical companies to scale — go-to-market architecture, revenue operations, talent strategy, and the financial frameworks that keep mission-critical companies on trajectory.
02
Finance Ops for Scale
High capex companies seeking to scale efficiently must develop early excellence in procurement, supply chain, inventory, and accounting systems. We create the controls and processes to allow for massive growth without burning your entire raise.
03
Sector Intelligence
Years of immersive work in deep tech sectors gives us pattern recognition that is difficult to replicate — procurement cycles, regulatory terrain, competitive dynamics, and the technical inflection points that determine outcomes.
04
Leadership Advisory
Deep tech companies need finance leaders who understand physical inventory, capital-intensive operations, and complex contracts — not just recurring revenue. We evaluate CFO and Head of Finance candidates against a domain-specific framework built from firsthand experience in the category. Not a recruiter — the operator who validates the finalist slate.
Sectors
Where We Operate
✈
Transportation
Autonomous · Urban Air · Logistics
⚡
Energy
Nuclear · Storage · Grid
🛰
Space
Launch · Satellites · Infrastructure
🛡
Defense
Neoprimes · Defense Tech · Dual-Use
🤖
Robotics
Industrial · Autonomous Systems
◈
AI & Data
Applied AI · Infrastructure · Edge
🏗
Infrastructure
Construction Tech · Smart Cities
🩺
Health
BCI · Digital Health · Biotech
Philosophy
The Discipline of Focused Action
Carbon Arrow draws on two of history's greatest frameworks for principled, high-performance action — the Bhagavad Gita and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations — as lenses for how we advise and operate.
"Shake off this faint-heartedness and arise."
Bhagavad Gita, II.3 — Krishna to Arjuna
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, V.20
Finance Leadership
Finding the Right CFO for Deep Tech
For the past 25 years, markets placed their highest multiples on SaaS companies. Finance talent evolved accordingly. But deep tech companies are the opposite of simple from an operational finance perspective — complex contracts with milestone billing, hundreds of vendors across a global supply chain, physical inventory to track and verify, and payroll spanning degreed engineers to hourly machinists. The finance leaders who thrive in this environment are rare, and a standard executive search process was not built to find them.
The Problem
Most CFO search processes test for communication polish and pedigree. Neither reveals whether a candidate can manage inventory as a cash lever, structure project finance for an infrastructure program, or close books across a multi-entity hardware business. The mismatch shows up six months after the hire — not before it.
The Carbon Arrow Role
We are not a recruiter. We do not source candidates or manage timelines. We evaluate the finalist slate that your network or retained firm has already identified — using a four-domain framework built from firsthand experience as a CFO in the category. The operator who can tell the difference between vocabulary and fluency.
What You Get
A structured screening conversation with each finalist. A written assessment against the four competency domains — deep operations, capital allocation, data infrastructure, and leadership. A ranked recommendation with specific rationale. Engagement typically covers three to five candidates.
The finance talent pipeline has been optimizing for SaaS for a generation. The operators who have managed a multi-vendor supply chain, tracked committed spend against a construction budget, and structured project finance for an infrastructure program — they are rare, and they are almost never found by a search process designed to fill a role at a traditional company.
THE FOUR DOMAINS
01 Deep Operations & Supply Chain
02 Complex Capital Allocation
03 Tech-Driven Strategic Vision
04 Leadership & Communication
WHO THIS IS FOR
Deep tech CEOs in a CFO or Head of Finance search
VC firms with physical world portfolio companies
Boards who want an independent domain opinion
Companies whose last finance hire didn't fit
Work With Us
Ready to Engage?
We work with a select number of companies at any given time — whether for operational advisory, a specific project, or a finance leadership evaluation.
About Carbon Arrow
Precision. Discipline. Conviction.
Carbon Arrow was founded on a simple premise: the companies doing the hardest, most consequential work in technology deserve advisors and capital partners who understand both the magnitude and the mechanics of what they are building.
Our Identity
A carbon arrow is agile, efficient, and precise.
A modern carbon arrow is an engineering marvel — extraordinarily light yet structurally rigid, capable of traveling at velocity with minimal drag and deviation from its intended path. It is the product of refined materials science, precision manufacturing, and expert calibration. Once released, it does not waver.
This is the operating philosophy of Carbon Arrow: to act with velocity and precision in service of a clear objective. We do not generalize. We do not scatter resources across dozens of mandates. We identify the trajectory, and we commit.
Based in Austin, Texas, Carbon Arrow has supported the growth of numerous technology businesses since 2015 — from early-stage fundraising to operational transformation to strategic exits. Our sector expertise is concentrated in the industries reshaping the physical world: transportation, infrastructure, space, defense, energy, AI, robotics, and health.
Philosophical Foundations
The Traditions That Sharpen Our Thinking
Two ancient texts have profoundly shaped how we think about high-performance action, decision-making under uncertainty, and principled leadership. Both center on the figure of the disciplined warrior — and both have remarkable applicability to the modern work of building and leading transformative companies.
Arjuna · Kurukshetra
अर्जुन
India · c. 200 BCE – 200 CE
The Bhagavad Gita
The Archer Arjuna & the Call to Rise
On the eve of the Battle of Kurukshetra, Arjuna — the greatest archer of his age — lowers his bow. Paralyzed not by cowardice but by the sheer weight of complexity, he questions whether action itself is justified. Krishna's first command is not philosophy. It is a directive to move.
"Do not yield to unmanliness, O son of Pritha. Shake off this base faint-heartedness and arise, O scorcher of enemies."
Bhagavad Gita · Chapter II, Verse 3
The Gita's teaching on nishkama karma — disciplined action without attachment to outcome — is the operating framework for consequential work. Bring full capability to the mission. The arrow is released with precision and conviction.
Legio · Danubius Frontier
SPQR
Rome · 161 – 180 CE
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius & the Roman Legion
Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations not for an audience, but as private dispatches to himself from the field. He was Emperor and military commander simultaneously — managing the largest organization in the Western world while prosecuting a grinding defensive campaign on the Danube frontier.
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, Book V
His Stoicism was operational, not academic. The Roman Legion under Marcus Aurelius was the apex of disciplined, adaptive execution — trained to hold structure and advance under maximum adversity.
For Carbon Arrow, this is the model: when a company faces a hard market, a regulatory block, a capital drought — those are not interruptions to the mission. They are the mission.
Leadership
Arun Prakash
Founder & Managing Director
Arun is Founder and Managing Director of Carbon Arrow. Most recently, Arun was Chief Financial Officer of The Boring Company, Elon Musk's tunneling and transportation venture, leading everything from human resources, business development, inventory management, and facilities, as well as primarily building a finance and accounting machine that supported taking the company from a small-cap startup to a large-cap global enterprise.
Previously, he was CFO at Cerebri AI, a pioneer in data analytics and machine learning for enterprises. Before that he was a Partner with Virgo Capital, a private equity firm focused on software and technology services investments. At Virgo Capital, Arun led numerous strategic, financial, and operational initiatives for the firm and its portfolio companies, including serving as CFO and COO of multiple investments, transforming all aspects of operations, and leading the acquisition and sale of businesses across the technology sector. Prior to Virgo Capital, Arun was at Boston Consulting Group and co-founded Terrafugia, one of the first companies to build and test fly a "flying car" for the mass market, which was acquired by Geely Holdings, the owners of Volvo and Lotus. Arun started his career leading the design and development of attitude control system software algorithms for various communications and reconnaissance satellites for Boeing's Space and Defense business.
His broad experience spans building and operating companies solving some of the hardest technological problems for the world, including geostationary satellites, flying cars, enterprise AI software, and underground transportation systems.
Arun holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, an MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University, and a BS in Aerospace Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology.
The Boring Company — CFOCerebri AI — CFOVirgo Capital — PartnerSatellites · Flying Cars · AI · TunnelingMBA — MIT SloanMS Aero/Astro — StanfordBS Aerospace — Illinois Tech
Contact
Let's Have a Direct Conversation
We work with a select number of companies at any given time. If you have a hard problem in deep technology, we want to hear about it.
Get in Touch
Location
Austin, Texas
Nature of Inquiry
→ Advisory Services
→ Portfolio Partnership
→ General Inquiry
Note
If you have a substantive engagement in mind, please provide enough context to have a productive first conversation. We will respond if we think we can be helpful.
