Founder (CEO) - AI Catalyst Discovery Venture

ATUM Ventures is seeking a founding CEO for their AI Catalyst Discovery Venture in Singapore. The role involves shaping commercial strategy, fundraising, and building a company focused on revolutionizing catalyst discovery using AI. Candidates should have experience in the chemicals or energy sectors, strong sales skills, and a entrepreneurial mindset. This position offers equity and is backed by pre-seed funding, emphasizing a collaborative founding journey.
Who We Are
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.


The Venture
Catalysts sit at the heart of the chemical and energy economy, behind the fuels, materials, and chemicals the world runs on, yet they're still discovered the way they were decades ago: slow, expensive, trial-and-error lab work that can take years and millions to find a single new catalyst.


We're building the company to change that.


The core is an AI-driven catalyst discovery platform, developed at A*STAR, that combines computational simulation, machine learning, and automated experimental validation into a single closed loop, discovering and validating novel, high-performance catalysts in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional R&D.


The technology is real and proven on live industrial problems, backed by a proprietary experimental dataset and a rare combination of deep chemistry and AI expertise that a competitor cannot simply hire its way into. The first markets are in sustainable and green chemicals, converting CO2 into valuable products like methanol and fuels, and improving catalytic processes across the chemicals and energy industries.


This is a platform-led deep-tech company in a vast, defensible market at the centre of the energy transition. It's a long game with a real head start and a clear path to category leadership.


The Role
You'll be the founding CEO. You'll own commercial strategy, go-to-market, fundraising, and building the company from zero, alongside two strong technical co-founders, a dedicated ATUM venture team, and the inventors.


Together, we'll:



Validate the beachhead and convert early industry interest into commercial pilots and LOIs
Shape the business model and pricing
Raise pre-seed and seed capital, and build the founding team
Take the platform from validated technology to deployed, revenue-generating systems

This is not a job. It's a founding journey where you share the risk, the upside, and the impact.
Requirements
Who You Are

Industry insider: You have built, or sold, or scaled in chemicals, petrochemicals, specialty chemicals, or industrial energy. And you know how these buyers actually make decisions
Field-tested seller: You have sold complex, technical solutions into industrial customers across many accounts, not managed a single relationship from inside one company. You turn real-world process pain into commercial traction
Commercially sharp: You think in unit economics, sales cycles, and business models, and you can lead a technical team without deferring to them
A builder, not a passenger: You self-start, run at ambiguity, and own outcomes. You don't wait to be told what to do next
Resilient & ready: You have the runway to commit full-time, and you know building deep tech in a conservative industry takes grit and patience

Benefits
Why Build With Us
A validated starting point: Real technology, real industry pull, real expertise, not a blank page
Founder-led: You're the CEO, with meaningful founding equity
Funding-ready: ATUM backs the build with pre-seed capital and grant access, plus follow-on funding from our investor network
Hands-on partners: We're in the trenches with you on product, GTM, and fundraising, not just on the cap table
Domain access: Labs, technical experts, early adopters, and an ecosystem already engaged