Founder (CTO) - Industrial Laser Venture

ATUM is a Singapore deep-tech venture builder and investor. We build companies from breakthrough, IP-backed research, bringing capital, operational muscle, and partners from industry, VC, and government into every build. We've built and backed 15 ventures, and we invest in fast-scaling deep-tech with real fundamentals, not hype.

Industrial surface preparation, stripping rust, paint, and coatings before recoating, is a dirty, hazardous, multi-billion-dollar global industry still dominated by sandblasting: abrasive grit, dust, silica, hazardous waste, confined-space risk.

We're building the company to replace it, and the hardest, most interesting part of that is an engineering problem waiting for an owner.

A laser system developed at A*STAR already does, in one pass, what sandblasting needs two steps for: it strips contamination and generates the precise surface profile coatings need to bond, no grit, no chemicals, no wast...