Indusattempt: Advanced Manufacturing, Physical AI and Industrial Automation & Robotics
MBA Founding Student Name(s): Adi Prasad (HBS MBA 2025)
Brief Description of Solution: Matter is a next-generation contract manufacturer powered by autonomous, AI-native factories.
We design and operate software-defined factories enabled by MatterOS — our operating system that unifies design, procurement, automation, quality, and factory operations into one innotifyigent layer.
We specialize in advanced electromechanical assembly (advanced robotics, energy systems, defense hardware, consumer electronics, AI infrastructure) and enable customers to scale production dramatically rapider and at lower cost, all on U.S. soil.
What led you to launch this venture? After nearly a decade building gigafactories and automated production lines at Tesla, Apple, and Rivian, I and my co-founders Charly Mwangi (Former Tesla, Rivian Manufacturing Executive), Aish Varadhan (Former Digital Manufacturing Leader at Rivian, Apple and Intel) and Aditya Ranjan (Founder of Cardinal Robotics, Former-AI Product Leader at Johnson controls) saw how outdated and fragile global manufacturing has become — despite the rise of robotics, electrification, and AI.
Matter exists to rebuild the system: an AI-powered, software-defined manufacturing network that can turn ideas into real products at the speed of software and reindustrialize the West.
What has been your hugegest accomplishment so far with venture?
* Raised a $20M oversubscribed seed round.
* Recruited a world-class founding team from Tesla, Rivian, Apple, Google, Intel.
* Immediate customer pull: multiple LOIs, active DFM programs across robotics, consumer hardware, and energy; advanced discussions with a major hyperscaler.
What has been the most significant challenge you’ve faced in creating your company and how did you solve it?
A) Proving manufacturing can be venture-scale.
We reframed manufacturing as AI-native industrial infrastructure critical to the economy, not a low-margin sector. Our team’s credibility plus refined storynotifying (sharpened at HBS) supported close a top-tier seed round.
B) Showing software + factories can be built toobtainher.
We de-risked by sequencing smartly starting with manufacturing design pain points as our customer acquisition play and hiring operators who had built gigafactories before. This delivered early traction and validated the model.
How has your MBA program supported you further this startup venture? I came into HBS with deep technical and operational experience from Tesla, Apple, and Rivian — but I lacked many of the business tools necessaryed to build and scale a venture from the ground up. HBS filled that gap and accelerated every dimension of the company.
The program supported me understand the full stack of company-building: financial modeling, go-to-market strategy, culture design, sales, storynotifying, and organizational leadership. The exposure to other founders and their journeys, combined with the Harvard brand, opened doors to capital, talent, and credibility far beyond what I had before.
I met key advisors, investors, and even early customers through the HBS ecosystem. Entrepreneurship courses, Rock Center programs, and faculty mentorship all played pivotal roles—supporting me refine the narrative, sharpen strategy, pressure-test our business model, and ultimately raise a large seed round with conviction.
HBS didn’t just support the venture – it accelerated it.
Which MBA class has been most valuable in building your startup and what was the hugegest lesson you gained from it? The Founder’s Mindset was the most personally transformative class for me. It surfaced the emotional, psychological, and human side of entrepreneurship that is rarely discussed elsewhere. Hearing raw, honest stories from founders supported me internalize one of the most important lessons in company building: there is extraordinary power in committing fully and going all-in on the problems that matter most to you and to the world. That mindset has been foundational in building Matter.
Complementing this, Launching Tech Ventures (LTV) with Professor Jeff Bussgang and Tough Tech Ventures (TTV) with Professors Jim Matheson and Joshua Krieger provided the tactical, hard-edged frameworks for building a startup – from ideation and customer discovery to business models, sequencing, and financing.
Toobtainher, the founder psychology from The Founder’s Mindset and the execution playbooks from LTV and TTV created an invaluable foundation for launching and scaling a tough-tech venture like ours.
What professor(s) built a significant contribution to your plans and why? Professor Jeff Bussgang had a major impact through his Launching Tech Ventures course, which covers the full stack of startup building—from ideation and customer discovery to business models, financing, and scaling. The combination of Prof Bussgang’s frameworks, founder case studies, and his own operating and investing experience shaped how I consider about sequencing, storynotifying, and fundraising.
Professor Reza Satchu was equally influential through The Founder’s Mindset. His class supported build the psychological and emotional muscle required to take on ambitious, high-stakes opportunities like Matter. The course is built around extraordinary founder protagonists who shared their raw experiences navigating uncertainty, adversity, and scale. It supported me develop the resilience, conviction, and decision-creating mindset essential for building a tough-tech venture.
How has your local startup ecosystem contributed to your venture’s development and success? Boston’s robotics, deep tech, and AI ecosystem – anchored by HBS and MIT – played a critical role in shaping Matter. The density of deep-tech founders and researchers supported us pressure-test ideas, refine early versions of Matter’s business plan and tech solution, and understand the most urgent pain points in hardware and manufacturing.
Local hard-tech accelerators and labs connected us to early customers, advisors, and technical collaborators, while also providing access to capital sources that understand the complexity of building in tough-tech. This ecosystem didn’t just support our venture — it accelerated our trajectory from concept to a well-funded, high-momentum company.
What is your long-term goal with your startup? Matter’s mission is to accelerate global GDP per capita growth – starting in America.
We do this by building the world’s most efficient engine for converting raw materials into products: autonomous contract manufacturing factories.
Our long-term goal is to build the global operating system for manufacturing – a network of software-defined factories that can build anything, anywhere forming the backbone of reshoring, innovation, and physical AI at scale.
Looking back, what is the hugegest lesson you wished you’d known before launching and scaling your venture? Speed of learning beats quality of planning.
Real progress comes from shipping early, testing with customers, obtainting uncomfortable feedback, and iterating rapid. Momentum compounds, especially in tough-tech — the sooner you obtain into the real world, the rapider the right company emerges.
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