Founder (CEO) - AI Catalyst Discovery Venture

About ATUM Ventures

ATUM is a Singapore-based venture builder and investor focused on deep-tech. The firm creates companies around breakthrough research with strong intellectual property, combining capital, operational support, and access to partners across industry, venture capital, and government. It has already built and supported 15 ventures and backs deep-tech businesses with strong fundamentals.

About the Venture

The opportunity sits in catalyst discovery, a critical part of the chemical and energy value chain. Today, catalysts are still often identified through slow, costly, trial-and-error laboratory work that can take years and millions of dollars for a single new result.

This venture is being built to change that model. It is centered on an AI-enabled catalyst discovery platform originally developed at A*STAR. The platform brings together computational simulation, machine learning, and automated experimental validation in one closed-loop workflow to discover and verify novel, high-performance catalysts much faster and at much lower cost than traditional R&D.

The technology has already been validated on real industrial problems and is supported by proprietary experimental data plus a rare mix of expertise in chemistry and AI that is not easy for competitors to replicate. The first commercial focus areas include sustainable and green chemicals, such as converting CO2 into products like methanol and fuels, as well as improving catalytic processes across the chemicals and energy sectors.

This is a platform-led deep-tech business operating in a large, defensible market at the center of the energy transition. It is a long-term build with an early advantage and a strong opportunity to lead the category.

Role Overview

You will join as the founding CEO and take full ownership of commercial strategy, go-to-market execution, fundraising, and company building from the ground up. You will work closely with two strong technical co-founders, the ATUM venture team, and the inventors behind the technology.

What You Will Build

• Test the first market entry point and turn early interest from industry into paid pilots and letters of intent
• Define the business model and pricing approach
• Lead pre-seed and seed fundraising while helping assemble the founding team
• Move the platform from a validated concept into deployed systems that generate revenue

Who This Is For

This is a founding role, not a conventional salaried position. It is suited to someone willing to share both the risk and the upside of building a company with meaningful impact.

Requirements

• Deep industry familiarity in chemicals, petrochemicals, specialty chemicals, or industrial energy, with firsthand understanding of how buyers in these sectors evaluate and decide
• Track record of selling complex technical offerings into industrial accounts across multiple customers, rather than managing just one relationship internally
• Strong commercial judgment, including comfort with unit economics, sales cycles, and business model design, plus the ability to lead technical teams confidently
• Self-directed builder mindset with the ability to work through ambiguity and take full ownership of outcomes
• Availability to commit full-time, along with the resilience needed to build deep-tech in a conservative industry over a long time horizon

Benefits

• A strong launch pad with real technology, visible industry pull, and proven expertise already in place
• Founding CEO role with meaningful equity ownership
• Access to pre-seed capital, grant support, and potential follow-on funding through the investor network
• Hands-on support from the ATUM team across product, go-to-market, and fundraising
• Access to laboratories, technical experts, early customers, and an active ecosystem

Additional Information

The venture is based in Singapore, Singapore and the role is onsite. No vacancy count, start date, application deadline, salary figure, stipend amount, or explicit education requirement was provided.

The role is intended for a full-time founder who can commit immediately to the build. The opportunity is best suited to candidates with a serious long-term commitment to company creation in deep tech.