Critical Mission Studio and Fund Launches

Focus on accelerating AI, open innovation and venture development at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds

We are pleased to annouce the launch of Critical Mission Studio (CMS), a new venture studio and investment fund created to support entrepreneurs and incumbent businesses tackling digital modernization in mission critical domains. The studio and fund are designed to bring together new and existing players in the industrial software, enterprise systems and automation space to accelerate adoption of critical solutions.

SUMMARY

• Venture studio and investment fund focused on co-creating new ventures with incumbent businesses and entrepreneurs to accelerate operational technology (OT) modernization in the industrial and mission critical domains.

• Collaboration through available technology portfolio and IP pool of open-source software and AI tools to accelerate open innovation and adoption of AI-enabled solutions.

• Partnership with Fathym, Inc. announced including the funding of three ventures: Open Industrial, Open Biotech and Open Buildings to accelerate adoption of AI and open-source software solutions, powered by Fathym’s OpenX developer platform.

The launch of Critical Mission Studio is led by founding partners Matthew Smith and Glen Allmendinger, both founders themselves, respectively, of Fathym, Inc. a developer of open-source software tools and AI solutions, and Harbor Research, Inc., a growth strategy and technology research firm focused on Smart Adaptive Systems, AI and IoT growth opportunities. Based on their mutual work and collaboration in the IoT and AI spaces, they realized there was a pressing need to modernize industrial software.

Critical Mission focuses on operational technologies (OT) that support essential infrastructure in manufacturing, electrical grids, transportation hubs, supply chains and natural resources. These domains are at a critical crossroads.

Rising operational complexity, aging systems and technologies and a global shortage of skilled labor threaten their stability and efficiency. There is an urgent need to bring data-driven capabilities, AI-enabled solutions and effective cybersecurity to mission critical domains.

“Our planet and our economies are all dependent on “mission critical” systems and preservation of scarce resources. Yet developers struggle to build new innovations on top of legacy infrastructure and systems that cannot support the scale, performance and flexibility required to collaborate and solve big societal and business challenges.” said Matt Smith, Founding Partner, Critical Mission Studio. "We built Critical Mission to increase catalytic funding for experienced and diverse founders who are transforming critical systems. We are providing a new path to help founders tackle enormous challenges, while providing investors access to one of the world's biggest growth opportunities."

Diverse industrial companies want to integrate AI tools to drive optimized processes and predictive systems. However, while most organizations recognize the importance of embracing new AI capabilities and software tools, they are still wrestling with how to address AI across their organizations—not just from a technology perspective, but also from a skills and people perspective. Advanced technologies require domain-fluent solution providers with a deep understanding how industrial organizations navigate new technology adoption.

"Critical Mission is unique because of our team's deep experience working alongside industrial and infrastructure ventures as they are deploying technology. We have a strong sense of what has commercial traction and the ability to quickly drive impact. This enables us to invest in both established software and systems companies as well as early-stage ventures and support their efforts by plugging into our venture studio and network of customers, investors, and OEMs," said Glen Allmendinger, Founding Partner, Critical Mission Studio.

Unlike many venture studios and investment funds today, Critical Mission brings a portfolio of open-source software, AI tools and domain-focused intellectual property (IP pool). The studio has partnered with Fathym whose OpenX platform helps reduce the complexity developers face and reduce the time to market for innovative open solutions.

“The idea of “you build it, you run it” has empowered software development teams over the last several years, but the rapidly rising complexity of developer tool chains has placed tremendous strain on software developers. Fathym’s OpenX Platform is redefining and simplifying enterprise software and systems development providing preconfigured application reference designs that ensure every resource created through the platform is well-architected and secure. We are driving collaborative innovation with domain-fluent incumbents and new ventures by providing a self-serve “one-stop shop” with interchangeable components that provide flexibility to suit both simple and complex (multi-cloud or hybrid) architectures and serves as the glue between existing tools and applications and new solution design choices”

“Industrial and mission critical domains are, in our opinion, under-invested, under-ventured, vast in scale, behind the tech curve and badly in need of modernizing their software technology. Ventures in these domains have higher profitability, higher probability of success in a shorter time frame and are not well understood by today’s consumer and commercial-obsessed investment community.” said Matt Smith, Founding Partner, Critical Mission Studio.

ABOUT FATHYM

Fathym empowers enterprises to deliver future-proof, adaptable and innovative software solutions that address mission-critical challenges and maximize return on investment. At Fathym's core is "Everything as Code" (EaC), a unified configuration model and system of record that transforms the way software is built, orchestrated and delivered. EaC provides a unified method to configure and define every component of a software solution, from code and data to pipelines, resources, services, apps and agents without sacrificing control and ownership.  

This approach enables Fathym to deliver a range of specialized and adaptable solutions such as OpenBiotech, an intuitive cloud interface for biosensing, and OpenIndustrial, a cloud-native integration hub for industrial automation. By unifying and orchestrating infrastructure, data, applications and AI, Fathym empowers organizations to consolidate, standardize and boost the efficiency and innovation of their software initiatives.

Fathym’s collaborative work with enterprise developers across numerous mission critical domains has lead to an acute understanding of best practices, design principles and reference architectures that became the blueprint for a best-in-class developer platform.

ABOUT CRITICAL MISSION STUDIO

Critical Mission Studio (CMS) is a venture studio and investment fund created to support entrepreneurs and incumbent technology businesses tackling digital modernization in mission critical domains. CMS partners with large industrial organizations and entrepreneurs to co-create ventures that leverage software, AI and open innovation to enable a new generation of Smart Adaptive Systems. Critical Mission’s venture studio provides access to skills, resources, and a diverse community of entrepreneurs, developers, strategists, and customers to support scaling new businesses.