AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Trive Capital, a Dallas-based private equity firm, announces the acquisition of artificial intelligence (AI) defense platform and solutions company, Hypergiant Industries, to complement its current portfolio company, Forward Slope. The acquisition is a natural partnership for the two organizations, who believe in the future of next-generation, AI-enabled technology solutions to secure America’s defenses across all military domains and critical infrastructure. Mike Betzer, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hypergiant, will continue leading the company into its next phase of accelerated growth. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Over the past five years, Hypergiant has emerged as a leader in AI-enabled, cloud-based command-and-control technologies and deployed solutions. The company created a world-class core geospatial data visualization and actions platform, CommandCenter. In addition to ingesting large amounts of information, the platform applies real-time threat analysis, makes AI-generated recommendations, and delivers intelligent insights and actions across all domains. Hypergiant has won numerous innovation awards for its AI-enabled defense solutions and is now focused on scaling this joint all-domain spatial intelligence and actionable CommandCenter software package.
David Stinnett, Partner at Trive Capital, commented, “Hypergiant’s unique geospatial data visualization capability has positioned the company at the leading edge of C5ISR technologies that address mission-critical defense priorities. In an increasingly complex battlespace, Hypergiant is capable of rapidly delivering actionable insights to the warfighter. We are thrilled to partner with Mike and the Hypergiant team to support the company in its next chapter of growth and to formalize a longer-term partnership with our current portfolio company, Forward Slope.”
Hypergiant has also garnered strong market recognition for its futuristic inventions, including AI-enabled projects such as the Hypergiant Eos Bioreactor, Hypergiant Project Orion, the Hypergiant Disaster Mapping System, the Hypergiant Chameleon prototype constellation, and Project ARGUS. These various innovations expand the company's capabilities and add to its common operating platform – including projects like autonomous vehicles, mobile command centers, and various heads-up display implementations.
Included among the company’s select customers are the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Space Force, the Department of Homeland Security, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Army, the National Reconnaissance Office, Boeing, and Booz Allen Hamilton.
“Space, defense, and American critical infrastructure all face similar challenges and need AI-enabled common operating pictures for quick and informed decision making. Our approach is to take government-funded projects, where we are building highly performant and secure, battle-ready solutions, and bring that technology to the private sector with mission-specific customization,” said Hypergiant CEO Mike Betzer. “We are excited to partner with Trive as a long-term partner who truly understands the sector and can help accelerate adoption of our platform and offerings to an even broader set of private and public sector clients.”
“Mike Betzer has shown great integrity in his leadership and has continued to deliver on the company’s long-term vision of bringing next-gen AI-assisted insights to the core groups that preserve and enable our way of life,” shared Hypergiant founder, serial technology entrepreneur and now-CEO of Colossal Biosciences, Ben Lamm. “I am excited to see the company continue to scale its technologies that enable superiority on the battlefield through the Trive acquisition and Mike’s leadership.”
Hypergiant was founded by Lamm in 2018, with a goal to bring an AI-enabled approach to an advanced visual multimodal to help organizations across space, defense and critical infrastructure. Hypergiant now has over 150 employees and contractors, and its investors include lead investor Align Capital, along with GPG, Perot Jain, Beringer Capital, and Capital Factory. This acquisition comes on the heels of Hypergiant’s most recent expanded $60M+ contract award from the U.S. Air Force, around its command-and-control platform offering.
“Hypergiant is helping to shift the dynamics of war fighting capabilities, from data-starved and uninformed to data-rich and AI-enabled,” said Dr. Rob Slaughter, U.S. Air Force Major (Ret.) and co-founder and former Director of the U.S. Air Force’s Platform One. “We are in a values competition with our adversaries, and we need a digital advantage. Hypergiant and the growing partnerships that the company is forming help accelerate mission values at this urgent time in our history.”
Hypergiant is building the Common Battle Management Interface for Cloud-Based Command and Control (CBC2). The platform will leverage Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and edge computing hardware to deliver insights and enhance situational awareness for warfighters and decision-makers.
“Hypergiant is building new AI-powered solutions to solve some very complex industry challenges,” said Clint Crosier, director of Aerospace and Satellite Solutions at AWS. “Flexible, scalable, and secure cloud-based tools are a must for satisfying government customer requirements well into the future, and we are committed to supporting Hypergiant’s efforts.”
About Trive Capital
Trive Capital is a Dallas, Texas based private equity firm with more than $4 billion of regulatory assets under management. Trive focuses on investing equity and debt in what it sees as strategically viable middle-market companies with the potential for transformational upside through operational improvement. We seek to maximize returns through a hands-on partnership that calls for identifying and implementing value creation ideas.
The Trive team is comprised of seasoned investment professionals who have been involved in over 100 middle-market transactions representing in excess of $6 billion in revenue across Trive's targeted industry sectors and situations.
About Hypergiant Industries
Established in 2018, Hypergiant Industries is at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, delivering trusted decision-making software for the space, defense, and critical infrastructure sectors. Our powerful data visualization products empower customers with a comprehensive understanding of specific environments and provide actionable intelligence that enables rapid decision-making on emerging issues. Drawing on our legacy of developing cutting-edge technologies for the world’s most innovative brands, we’re not just envisioning the future – we’re building it, harnessing the potential of AI to ensure the world remains a safe, secure, and thriving place. For more information, visit http://www.hypergiant.com.
