Saving a Fast-Scaling AI Team Hundreds of Hours By Integrating Grant Strategy and SR&ED Under One Roof

Overview

Ultimarii is revolutionizing the regulatory landscape with enterprise-grade AI tools. Their platform helps energy companies, utilities, and law firms automate the drafting of complex regulatory responses using decades of historical data. Scaling rapidly from two founders to a team of nearly 15, the company is in a sprint to capture market share in a high-stakes industry.

Challenge

Co-founder Josh Malate views a startup CEO’s time as a finite "pie chart." Ideally, the majority of that chart is dedicated to customers and team building. However, the complexity of funding—specifically the disconnect between securing grants and filing SR&ED claims—threatened to eat up that time. Josh found himself in the dreaded position of being the "middleman," shuttling technical data between different consultants. He needed a partner who could handle the entire non-dilutive capital lifecycle without him having to constantly translate between vendors.

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Solution

Ultimarii engaged the Funding Catalyst team on a subscription model to act as their unified non-dilutive capital department. 

• The "One-Stop" Integration: Thin Air’s Funding Catalyst team took over both the forward-looking Grant Strategy and the backward-looking SR&ED claims. Because they already understood the technical roadmap for the grants, corroborating the SR&ED claims became seamless, removing the founder from the middle.
• Foundational Assets: The FC team built their first formal business plan and financial projections, creating a reusable "source of truth" for all future applications.
• AI-Assisted Efficiency: The FC team utilized their own internal AI tools (supervised by expert eyes) to draft applications faster, mirroring the efficiency Ultimarii brings to their own clients.

Outcome

The integrated approach turned a logistical headache into a competitive advantage.

• Capital Secured: Secured $500,000+ to date, with an additional $4 million currently in the pipeline.
• Time Recaptured: By housing Grants and SR&ED together, they eliminated the coordination tax. Josh was able to reinvest this time into product development and customer acquisition.
• Speed to Value: The capital secured is being immediately stewarded into growing the technical team, allowing Ultimarii to iterate faster on their core product.

Client Testimonial

"What really attracted me... is the integrated nature of the government funding... As opposed to us as the company being in the middle of that and passing that between multiple consultants, it actually works a lot better to have that all housed within Thin Air Labs." — Josh Malate, Co-founder

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