Atlas Holdings Launches Foundry Management

Foundry Management Launches to Back Technical Founders Building AI for Industrial Businesses

Company creation platform co-founded by Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism practice and Atlas Holdings will fund and embed founders inside enterprise-scale industrial operations

NEW YORK, OCTOBER 1, 2026 — Foundry Management today launched as a company creation platform for exceptional technical founders who want to build consequential artificial intelligence companies in the industrial world. Co-founded by Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism practice and Atlas Holdings, Foundry gives founders direct access to scaled industrial businesses, the people who run them, and the operational context required to build products that work on the factory floor.

For founders building for the industrial world, the hardest constraint is not the technology. It is getting close enough to mission-critical work to understand what should be built. Over the last several years, several companies have been founded around the idea of bringing the forward deployed engineer (FDE) model to industrial customers. Traditional forward deployment begins with a company and a product and sends engineers to the customer. Foundry applies that proximity one step earlier, embedding the founder before the product and the company exist, with access to the critical context, problems, and people first.

That access is hard to come by. New companies in these markets often are limited to small and midsize customers, whose scale can’t support a forward deployed approach, or they get stuck in innovation pilots with enterprise customers and are unable to deploy more broadly. The constraint is especially acute in industrial environments, where much of the work happens in the physical world. The critical context lives in operating workflows, equipment, data, legacy systems, and the tacit knowledge of the people accountable for the outcomes. Trust with the customer and access to scaled industrial environments are what unlock it, and Foundry is built to provide both.

WHY INDUSTRIALS, AND WHY NOW
America’s industrial base – its mills and factories and supply chains – has been served last by every major software wave, and it is where much of the unrealized value of AI now sits. Making those businesses faster, safer, and more productive is both a commercial opportunity and a matter of national competitiveness.

Andreessen Horowitz launched the American Dynamism practice to back founders building companies that support the national interest, including manufacturing, industrials, supply chain, energy, aerospace and defense. Foundry extends that work to the founder formation stage, putting technical talent inside the industrial economy before a company exists rather than waiting for one to find its way in.

“Making AI work in the industrial world requires a tight feedback loop between the developers building technology and the people making it happen,” said David Ulevitch, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Foundry starts founders inside real operations, alongside the people accountable for the outcome, before there is a product or a company. The industrial economy is where a great deal of American strength actually lives, and it deserves the same caliber of founder the software economy has attracted for 20-plus years.”

HOW FOUNDRY WORKS
Foundry is recruiting a small, select group of top technologists, engineers and founders and gives them unfettered access to the Atlas Holdings portfolio, including its leadership teams, engineers, operators, workflows and relevant operating context.

These are enduring, enterprise-scale industrial businesses spanning steel, metals and mining, automotive supply chain, paper and pulp, food, energy and power, and distribution and logistics. Founders join with buy-in from company management and embed directly within these operations.

When ready, founders can form an independent company backed and financed by Andreessen Horowitz and Atlas Holdings, with established relationships to scaled industrial customers already in place – all designed to enable founders to build and scale at speed uncommon in the industrial world.

WHO FOUNDRY IS FOR
Foundry is for exceptional technical founders who want to build in the physical world and are willing to embed alongside operators, work through messy operational systems and build against real outcomes. They do not need an idea. They may have a technical thesis, a domain they want to work in, or simply the determination to build a consequential company in the physical industries.

Foundry plans to select about 10 Embedded Founders initially, selected individually rather than as a cohort or class, reflecting the platform’s high bar for talent and the depth of support behind each founder. Atlas Holdings and Andreessen Horowitz both have significant funding platforms to scale Foundry over time.

“Foundry is for the founder who wants to build in the physical world and is willing to embed alongside operators, sit with legacy systems and build against real outcomes,” said Arye Barnehama, CEO of Foundry Management. “They do not need an idea. They need access, and that is what Atlas and a16z can provide at a scale that is very hard to find anywhere else.” Barnehama, an experienced venture-backed industrial AI founder, is a Principal and head of Innovate at Atlas Holdings.

Atlas Holdings brings operating scale to the platform: $26 billion in annual revenue across more than 30 portfolio companies, employing approximately 75,000 people across over 300 facilities. Atlas focuses on acquiring, improving and operating underperforming companies across a range of industrial sectors.

“The purpose of Foundry is consistent with Atlas’s guiding principles: to make world-class talent, in this case applied technology talent, available to our companies in a practical, operationally focused way,” said Sam Astor, Managing Partner of Atlas Holdings. “We believe the most effective solutions are designed on the factory floor, in response to clearly defined problems and in close partnership with the business process owners who understand those challenges best.

Foundry will back founders building technology rather than searching for applications for predesigned solutions, and we believe that will drive differentiated success. Arye’s exceptional track record both at Atlas and prior to joining the firm gives us great confidence in his ability to lead this effort.”

Interested founders can learn more at foundrymgt.com or reach out to the team at talent@foundrymgt.com.