Chalk one up for Austin's tech and music scenes.
Those were two of the primary factors that convinced New Jersey-based software engineering firm Ascendion to open an artificial intelligence studio here.
"We're very optimistic about Austin," Ascendion's CEO Karthik Krishnamurthy said. "We're going to lean in pretty heavily into the local Austin community. I love the city. I love walking the city. It's one of the most beautiful places to walk. Many of us have sort of this personal connection with the city. ... You'll find me in one of those piano bars listening to awesome music."
The company's 4,000-square-foot studio will be right in the heart of Austin's tech and music culture at 301 Congress downtown, which has been home to RetailMeNot, FloSports and NinjaOne. The studio will open in July, with a ribbon cutting in August.
"Clients love traveling to Austin," Krishnamurthy said. "We actually spoke to our clients, and we asked them to tell us where would they feel comfortable. We've got clients all across the country, so geographically, it's very well situated ... and clients love the vibe. Clients love to come and spend an evening. And they just feel like they're at their creative best when they come to the city like Austin with the vibe that we have."
The company worked with Studio 1200 in Short Hills, New Jersey, to help create its brand standard and office design. Directed Online customized furniture and installation. Nobletec led its technology procurement and installation.
Ascendion spun off from Collabera Holdings in 2022. It works with a wide variety of clients but many fall into the financial services, health care, life sciences and high-tech fields.
The new Austin AI studio will be a hub where many of its clients' teams will come to brainstorm on developing internal-facing and customer-facing AI tools. For some, that might mean coming to the Austin studio for a day or two. Others might stay a week or more as they hash out product ideas before turning them over to Ascendion's development teams that are spread across about 20 offices in North America.
Ascendion already has about 70 Austin employees, and it plans to double that in the next 12 months. The majority of its local employees are on the engineering side of the business, with others working in sales and customer service.
Krishnamurthy said the company generally will be looking for two types of people for its team. On one hand, they want to find high level AI engineers who produce new models and write sophisticated algorithms. On the other, they want to find AI savvy consumers, such as experts in marketing or finance who are interested in AI.
"People still do not know for sure what they want to do in AI," he said. "It requires conversation. It requires collaboration. It requires a lot of forwards and backwards and sideways movements and ... failing fast and so on. So I wanted to have this environment where our clients could come together, discuss the art of the possible and find new ways by which we could leverage artificial intelligence to drive better results for our clients."
