It's been over six months since New Mexico Inno picked out 10 startups in the state that we thought were primed for big things in 2023. Since we're now over halfway through the year, New Mexico Inno wanted to follow up with those startups to see how things are going and if our January predictions were accurate.
Over the coming weeks, New Mexico Inno will roll out stories checking in with our 2023 Startups to Watch. Next up is Hoonify Technologies, which is growing thanks in part to a new partnership with an Albuquerque data center.
Click here to see the full list of New Mexico Inno's 2023 Startups to Watch.
After nearly tripling its revenue from 2022 so far this year, Hoonify Technologies Inc. landed a partnership with a large data center in Albuquerque, a move that points toward continued traction for the Albuquerque-based high-performance computing startup.
Hoonify announced its partnership with ADACEN Inc., an advanced data center company, on Wednesday. The partnership will allow customers to use high-performance computing software developed by Hoonify through ADACEN's hardware infrastructure.
Hoonify's supercomputing software can be used on different types of hardware equipment for various applications. It's a "horizontally enabling technology," Andrew Clark, the startup's cofounder and CEO, told Albuquerque Business First in February.
"It benefits oil, mining and gas. It benefits biotech, it benefits defense research institutions, automotive R&D, you name it," Clark said. "Supercomputing enables all of those for faster results."
For ADACEN, using Hoonify's software means more security and storage for customers' data. The company moved its headquarters from Silver Springs, Maryland to a center near the Albuquerque International Sunport in late 2021; it still has a data center in Silver Springs and a remote employee base spread across the country, its founder and Chief Technology Officer Bob Henley said.
Henley said the data center company is all about "data resilience." Its servers use an immersive cooling technology that conserves power and cuts costs, which boosts performance and efficiency. Henley compared ADACEN's server infrastructure to a car, where Hoonify's high-performance computing software is the driver.
"Hoonify's software allows us to — and this is the term they like to use — 'democratize' supercomputing capability on anybody's hardware," he said. "It just so happens that our hardware is faster than most, our infrastructure is more secure than most, so having secure, fast infrastructure with their software is a one-of-a-kind solution. We're able to do things much, much, much better in that regard."
"Hoonify made more computing power available in one day on ADACEN's infrastructure than what would have taken us one year to do," Henley said in a statement.
Henley said the two companies started discussing partnering about six months ago. ADACEN has seven employees in Albuquerque and could hire five more over the next 12 months, Henley said. He added both Hoonfiy and ADACEN customers can benefit from the partnership.
"Whoever brings the customer owns the customer, but we both work together to deliver the solution," Henley said. "So we're both selling for each other, we're both delivering for each other in a partnership, and either one can sell it and together, we deliver it."
Hoonify is working with about a dozen customers currently, Clark and Zivnuska said. Those customers span a range of industries, from engineering firms to defense contractors to academic institutions, and include two clients based in Texas, Laser Shot Simulations and DeliverFund, as well as several paid contracts with national laboratories.
The latter is a nonprofit aimed at helping law enforcement track down human trafficking networks. Clark and Zivnuska said DeliverFund has used Hoonify's software to handle more intensive data needed to train algorithms to recognize patterns. That pattern recognition assists the nonprofit in identifying trafficking cells more quickly.
The partnership with ADACEN is a step toward one of Hoonify's goals — boosting technology development in Albuquerque and New Mexico more broadly, Victor Kuhns, the startup's founder and chief technology officer, said.
"Not only will we be able to put the power of supercomputing in our clients' hands, but we'll also collaborate to provide customers a new level of security and data storage," he said in a statement. "Albuquerque has fallen behind in providing leading-edge computing solutions like high-performance computing, machine learning and [artificial intelligence], but this strategic partnership will incite change in the local and broader computing ecosystem."
Clark and Zivnuska said Hoonify is currently in talks with VCs about raising a seed round — an early funding round typically used to help promising startups scale. But the duo don't necessarily see Hoonify as a startup.
Instead, they see it as a "scale-up" — Hoonify's technology has already been made ready for market; now it's all about finding more customers and rolling out new, more advanced software and hardware products, Clark and Zivnuksa said. The two anticipate tripling Hoonify's revenue again in 2024 and plan to roll out a new desktop supercomputing product before the end of the year.
Hoonify spun out from Sandia National Laboratories, where each of its five co-founders — Clark, Zivnuska, Kuhns, Vice President of Software Development Connor Brown, Vice President of Hardware Development Blake Kinnan — worked before forming the startup last year. The labs' Entrepreneurial Separation to Transfer Technology program helped the five founders get the company off the ground.
