Making a bet on the Phl

Three young Filipino-Americans, who are making a bold move to start up an AI-native defense technology and robotics hardware company that designs and builds motors and actuators for drones, robots and other autonomous machines in the United States, have established manufacturing operations here in the Philippines that will be part of its global operations.

Led by Christian Mochen, Tom Baron and Carlo Dela Rosa, their company — Atlas Motion Systems — has invested an initial $300,000 to establish a PEZA-registered manufacturing plant at the Laguna Technopark in Biñan, Laguna.

As of this month, their 1,500-square-meter Laguna factory is already producing 10,000 motors with its initial workforce of about 15 workers. They, however, already project to ramp up their manufacturing capacity in Laguna to 40,000 motors by the end of this year.

They have also secured additional funding of $11.5 million from other US investors that include venture capital firms Greycroft and Also Capital.

They are likewise negotiating additional debt financing for future manufacturing plants in the US as they grow their company and establish a global supply chain.

Atlas Motion Systems plans to establish US-based factories that will focus more on technical and sophisticated automation, software platforms and tooling orchestration across their production processes.

The US-based factories, they explained, are specifically for customers that need to procure from the US.

The company’s three founders aim to be a globally relevant business. They are not just targeting the US market.

What is interesting about the three co-founders of Atlas Motion Systems is their employment background and how their Filipino ethnicity brought them together to co-found their company in their prime years.

Christian Mochen, 28, is the chief executive officer. He started his career as a supplier quality engineer at Toyota working on low-voltage electronics. He eventually moved to Elon Musk’s Tesla, where he served as lead quality engineer overseeing production quality for the Model Y and the Cybertruck at Tesla’s Austin, Texas gigafactory. He is 1/4 Filipino from his mother’s side, whose roots can be traced to Mindanao.

From Tesla, Christian moved on to Shield AI, a defense technology company, as a staff engineer, and it was there that he met co-founder Carlo, 31, who is the chief operating officer of Atlas Motion Systems and now runs their factory in Laguna.

Carlo was born and raised in the Philippines before his entire family migrated to the US. His father once worked with Smart. Carlo has previously worked for Braincorp, Astura and BAE Systems, building a background in technical program management, cost control and manufacturing quality across a wide range of industries.

The third co-founder of Atlas Motion Systems — half French and half Filipino Tom Baron — is the chief growth officer of their company. Tom is the youngest at 26 and is awaiting the birth of his first child. At 16 years old, Tom had already started writing computer software.

Tom first met Christian when they both worked with defense firm Mach Industries, where Christian had moved after his stint at Shield AI. Tom at that point was the vice president of strategic initiatives of Mach Industries.

Their combined expertise and knowledge in technology, AI, defense and production, plus their common Filipino lineage, helped them form a bond and a business idea that they are now pursuing and hope to grow in the next 20 to 30 years.

For Christian, the idea for Atlas Motion Systems came from his frustration in building defense hardware. He experienced that at every company he worked for, there were always delays in sourcing motors and other critical components due to over-reliance on Chinese suppliers.

His frustration, thus, spurred him to establish Atlas Motion Systems together with Tom and Carlo.

For Tom, the decision to establish Atlas Motion Systems was to build manufacturing capacity in Southeast Asia “alongside all of the best manufacturers in the world.” He moved to Manila this year to help put up the company’s Philippine operation. He is basically behind the development of the company’s AI software design platform to manage the production lines.

They said their Philippine manufacturing plant would serve as their anchor point, even as they plan to further set up smaller facilities in other locations, such as Germany, Italy, Estonia, Denmark, Nigeria, Taiwan and Korea, to serve customers in those areas. They are actually conducting a roadshow and hope to sign big deals with companies in all the countries they are visiting.

They were also candid enough to acknowledge that producing in the Philippines also poses certain difficulties in terms of cost and labor. However, they still believe that “the Philippines has, in our mind, the perfect culture and process knowledge to manufacture exactly what we want, kind of in the same way that Taiwan dominates semiconductors.”

“We would like for the Philippines to be that, but for actuators. Like, that’s the dream. And maybe some Filipinos have a hard time seeing that right now. But that’s why it takes, like, a 20-year plan, right? Like, there’s more to it than just what’s happening right now. So, that’s, like, hopefully that makes a little more sense,” they explained.

Meeting Christian, Tom and Carlo, I admit, impressed me, especially at their peak prime age — already with years of technical knowledge and experience, and on their way to make their mark in the most challenging area of defense and AI-driven technology.

So totally impressive, especially compared to a lot of similarly aged Filipinos in their 30s here who are still more interested in living a carefree life because their parents continue to shelter and protect them.