Building the Intelligent Industrial Age

To the founders who want to build in the physical world,

You want to build a company that changes what the world can make, move, and power. You want to put your technical ability to work on problems with tangible consequences, in industries that people depend on.

You see what advances in artificial intelligence could make possible. What draws you in is turning that possibility into something useful and dependable: technology that helps a factory produce more reliably, gives people better tools, or changes how an entire industry operates.

That is an ambition worth making your life’s work.

The intelligent industrial age requires founders who can see what new technology makes possible and how industrial operations actually run. Making industry more productive, capable, and resilient is an enormous commercial opportunity. It is also a mission: strengthening the physical foundations of everyday life and the country’s ability to build.

The ambition is enormous. The work begins with getting close enough to understand a specific problem.

For a founder, that is often harder than it should be. The context you need lives inside operating businesses: in equipment and workflows, across legacy systems, and in the accumulated knowledge of people who keep production running. You need to understand what matters, what has already been tried, and what a solution would have to do for someone to depend on it.

That understanding is difficult to develop from outside the business. A customer introduction is a beginning, but it is not the same as working alongside the customer. A pilot can test a product, but it may never give you the context to question whether you are building the right thing.

Foundry was created by Atlas Holdings and a16z American Dynamism to give founders a different place to begin: inside industrial businesses operating at scale, alongside the people who run them, before the product and company need to exist.

You will work directly with leadership teams, engineers, operators, and business process owners across industries such as steel, metals and mining, automotive supply chain, paper and pulp, food, energy and power, and distribution and logistics. The starting point will be an operating problem that matters to the business and a technical opportunity that compels you. You will have people to learn from, an environment to build in, and a direct connection to the consequences of your decisions.

Sometimes, the most important thing you learn will come from the data. Sometimes, it will come from walking across the factory floor and asking someone why the work happens the way it does. Working with the people responsible for both the process and the business will help you understand not just what can be built, but what would make it valuable.

We will help you get that access. The understanding and trust will be yours to earn.

That calls for technical depth and the humility to learn. The people you work alongside bring knowledge that must become part of the product. Your contribution is the ability to see what new technology makes possible, challenge assumptions thoughtfully, and build with them toward a better outcome.

You will build, deploy, and learn in the environment where the product must perform. You will be expected to show that it works and creates measurable value. When the evidence challenges your original idea, you will need the judgment to change it. The purpose of getting close to the work is to let reality sharpen your conviction.

Your first deployment is a starting point, not the limit of your ambition.

A problem inside one business may reveal a need shared across many. You will look for those recurring needs, test what can travel beyond the first environment, and discover whether a useful solution can become the foundation of an enduring company.

That distinction matters. Solving an important problem is valuable in its own right. Building a company requires something more: a product that other customers need, that can work beyond its original setting, and that deserves a team committed to developing it over time. Foundry is designed to help you pursue that larger opportunity without losing contact with the work that revealed it.

Our role is to support you through that process. Foundry funds the embedded work and helps with the practical demands of building inside complex industrial businesses. As the opportunity develops, that support extends to recruiting, company formation, and financing. When the work demonstrates the potential for an enduring independent business, Atlas and a16z will support its creation, with you leading it as founder and CEO.

You do not need to arrive with a finished idea. You may have a technical thesis, a particular industry you cannot stop thinking about, or simply the determination to build a consequential company in the physical world. What matters is the depth of your ability, the seriousness of your ambition, and your willingness to do the work required to discover what is worth building.

We are building Foundry for a small number of founders prepared to make that commitment. The depth of the partnership matters more than the size of the program. Our responsibility is to help you get closer to important problems, put resources behind your work, and support your development of something that can stand on its own.

There is a great deal of the future left to build inside the industries already around us. Your company could help define what they become.

The conviction must be yours. The company will be yours to lead. Foundry is here to help you build it.