Turning IP Into Impact
Starting Tandem was a response to a simple observation: the world is full of extraordinary research, but almost none of it reaches the people, industries, or systems it could transform. University labs produce breakthroughs that sit inside filing cabinets, grant reports, and patent portfolios. Companies say they want cutting-edge innovation, but rarely have the capability or patience to sift through the noise, work with academic teams, or commercialize IP responsibly. And researchers, for all their brilliance, are not set up to negotiate corporate deals, raise capital, or build distribution.
Tandem was built to close this gap.
Before Tandem, I spent five years inside Fortune One working on advanced concepts in AI and robotics, and even earlier at my own design studios building products in those fields and more for companies across every major industry. Across all of that work, I saw the same pattern repeat: brilliant ideas existed inside universities, and nearly all of it went unused, undiscovered, or misunderstood by the private sector. Even when companies wanted access, the path into academia was unclear and the friction was high. At the same time, researchers were doing world-changing work with almost no commercial infrastructure behind them.
Tandem emerged as the connective tissue.
We fund labs that sit on the edge of the future. We help researchers secure resources, expand their ambitions, and build long-term programs that corporate dollars rarely enable. And once that research produces defensible IP, we represent it. We commercialize it. We build the business structures, licensing models, partnerships, and go-to-market machines that help that IP survive outside the academic environment.
Our initial idea was actually narrower: an agentic solution for patent discovery. We wanted to make it easier for anyone to see the landscape of existing knowledge and uncover the work that already solved the problems they were trying to solve. That idea eventually became a small piece of what Tandem is today. As we dug deeper, it became obvious that discovery was only one step in a much larger system that needed to change. What the world needed wasn’t another search tool. It needed a bridge between the people making the future and the people trying to deploy it.
Tandem is that bridge.
We operate through two complementary structures. Tandem Commons, our 501c3 (pending), identifies and funds the labs that are pushing civilization forward. Tandem Solutions takes that emerging IP and commercialize it with rigor, clarity, and full alignment with the researchers who created it. We work across industries because most breakthrough university IP is inherently horizontal: computer vision can serve retail and aerospace; materials science can power consumer electronics and defense; robotics can reshape manufacturing and logistics.
Our job is to take the friction out of that system.
We make it simple for universities to commercialize. We make it simple for companies to adopt. And we make it possible for researchers to see their work make impact in the world rather than disappear into archives.
This is why Tandem exists.
To give the world access to the breakthrough ideas already out there.
To give researchers a direct path to scale.
To give companies a partner that can translate science into real advantage.
Tandem is the place where those three groups finally meet, align, and build together.
If the world is going to move forward, this is the path.
Take a look at what we’re doing and keep up to date at Tandem and Tandem Commons