Photo Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesFormer Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is returning to the the dealmaking world, months after exiting the public sphere.Driving the news: Youngkin is joining venture studio Red Cell Partners as a partner, chairman and board member, he tells Axios exclusively.Youngkin stepped down as Carlyle co-CEO in 2020 to run for governor,Zoom in: Youngkin, who considered running for president in 2024, is expected to have a broad swath of responsibilities.He will help with LP relationships, government relations, and business partnership relationships. Youngkin notes that Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and Amazon announced investments in Virginia during his gubernatorial administration.Youngkin sees similarities between Red Cell's current trajectory, and his his experience with Carlyle's growth. He joined Carlyle in 1995, some eight years after its founding. "When I joined Carlyle, Carlyle was not a big firm and was growing rapidly," he says.The big picture: Youngkin has previously said that he has no plans to run for president in 2028, and this step back into the private sector is a sign that he hasn't changed his mind.The Red Cell role is expected to take up 1-2 days a week, says Youngkin — which I point out leaves him five days a week to other projects.But he tells Axios: "The bottom line is, I don't have a team. I'm not organizing a big campaign. I am really focused on on some of these commitments that I've made."Red Cell invests in defense, healthcare, and cyber. It's named after the CIA's post 9/11 Red Cell unit, which evaluated potential national security threats from a non-traditional point of view.It's in the process of raising a second fund. Red Cell's first fund raised $91.2 million, and Axios has learned the new fund has already surpassed that total. It also has a separate $150 million in a holding company that it uses to incubate companies, a source says. Part of the funding in the holding company has already been deployed.Its investments include Trase, an AI operating system which shares a CEO with Red Cell, and Claros, a startup minimizing energy waste at data centers.