These Super Founders Are Quietly Building a $125M Company - Now, You Can Invest in ‘The Most Influential Engagement Technology of the AI Era’ Starting At $500

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The internet wasn’t supposed to be a toll road.

And yet, somewhere along the way, brands lost the ability to speak directly to their own customers. Between them now stands a growing list of gatekeepers — search engines, social platforms, ad networks — each charging a fee for access. The result is an internet where businesses spend billions just to reach the customers they already know — a costly loop we’ve come to see as normal.

Vatom is breaking that loop by leading the next big leap in how the internet works — and how we’ll use it.

This shift is known as the Spatial Web: a digital layer that allows brands to communicate with people based on where they are in the physical world, not just what websites they visit. Instead of relying on cookies or social feeds, Vatom enables real-time, location-based engagement: offers, content, and experiences delivered in the moment, in the places that matter.

This is where the internet is going — and where the smartest technologists already are.

And the people behind it? They’ve done this before.

The Builders Beneath the Surface

Robert Frederick helped build the modern cloud. After selling his first company to Jeff Bezos, he joined Amazon and co-created AWS and Amazon Marketplace — the backbones of online commerce and storage as we know it.

Tom Szabo took on a different layer of complexity — the information itself. He founded GrayMeta, an AI company that helped giants like NBCUniversal, Netflix, and the Library of Congress organize and understand enormous archives of video, audio, and imagery. His technology didn’t just process data — it unlocked meaning.

Together, they’ve helped shape the hidden infrastructure of the digital age.

Now, with Vatom, they’re designing what comes next: the Spatial Web — and for the first time, they’re letting everyday investors in early.

Szabo and Frederick have raised millions from top-tier venture capital firms. They’ve built companies that have created billions in value. But this time, they’re doing something different.

They’re not just building the future — they’re opening the door for more people to own a piece of it.

“In our past ventures, the biggest gains went to a very small group — insiders, institutions, early-stage funds,” says Szabo.

“But over the last five years, retail investors have reshaped the financial world. They’ve created some of the most meaningful shareholder value in history.

If we’re building a more open, more intelligent internet, the way it’s financed should reflect that.

Letting individual investors in early isn’t just a nice idea — it’s where everything is going. The future shouldn’t just be built by everyone. It should be owned by everyone.”

For Szabo and Frederick, it’s about more than technology. It’s about trust, participation, and rewriting the rules — not just of the internet, but of who gets to share in its upside.

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