Being relatively early to market with artificial intelligence has paid off once again for Ben Lamm, a serial entrepreneur who splits time between Austin, Dallas and other locales.
After selling Chaotic Moon Studios in 2015, he co-founded chatbot startup Conversable, which was acquired about four years later by LivePerson for an undisclosed amount. Conversable seemed to capitalize on being relatively early in its use of AI for big businesses such as McDonalds and Chick-fil-A.
In 2018, Lamm founded Hypergiant Industries LLC — to build AI interfaces for big industrial and military customers — with Will Womble and John Fremont. Now, that too is trading hands. Hypergiant announced Aug. 22 that it has been purchased by Dallas-based private equity firm Trive Capital for an undisclosed amount.
"It's great for the company. It's great for the investors. It's great for the employees," Lamm said.
Hypergiant, which is based in Austin and has offices in Dallas and several other cities, has about 200 employees, Lamm said. CEO Mike Betzer will remain with the company, which continues to hire about seven people per week for remote roles as well as jobs in Austin and Colorado.
Investors in the company had included Align Capital, GPG, Perot Jain, Beringer Capital and Capital Factory, as well as angel investors such as former Dell CFO Tom Meredith and former Austin mayor Steve Adler. Hypergiant did not disclose how much money it's raised in the past five years but a source close to the company said it brought in more than $10 million.
Lamm said Hypergiant was fielding acquisition offers since its early days. But it wasn't until Trive showed interest a couple months ago on the heels of Hypergiant's $61 million contract with the U.S. Air Force that it found a good match.
Trive, like Hypergiant, is already deeply intertwined in the defense sector. Its portfolio includes Forward Slope Inc., which makes surveillance technology.
David Stinnett, partner at Trive Capital, said Hypergiant’s geospatial data visualizations helped make it a leader in emerging military technologies.
"In an increasingly complex battlespace, Hypergiant is capable of rapidly delivering actionable insights to the warfighter," he stated. "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.”
Lamm declined to share specific revenue figures but he said Hypergiant is profitable.
While Lamm is departing from his role on Hypergiant's board, he's already a few chapters into his next startup. Lamm co-founded Colossal Biosciences Inc. in 2021 alongside famed geneticist George Church. While Colossal is focused on the bringing back to life the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger and dodo bird, the genetics company is also using AI.
Lamm said that his prior startup, Conversable, might have been too early with AI. But these day, he said AI is almost everywhere.
"I like to say that we missed conversational AI by five years and $40 billion," he joked, referencing the massive investments made into OpenAI over the past year or so. "Conversable was one of the first conversational AIs, so we were way ahead. ... It's funny, weird and sometimes even sad with billions of differences in dollars. But I think that a lot of these systems have made more people aware of how AI can touch all of our lives."
While the technology is in the headlines everyday, Lamm suggested that it's just the beginning.
"People that have been in the in the field have been talking about it for quite some time," he said. "I think what will happen is that there will be more persistent AI happening in the background, making decisions and making recommendations. And that will become more, more and more invisible to the user."
