In this episode, Sunny Ray talks with Marcus McCollum, an award winning film director, writer, and producer who pivoted into deep tech as co-founder and inventor of Nomad Platforms. Marcus explains how the idea began while adapting his novel into a screenplay with his co-founder Kirk Solder, and how his search for a portable machine powerful enough to run enterprise level VR led him to build his own mobile supercomputer. He details the engineering behind Nomad, from a background as a Coast Guard hydraulics engineer and turbine mechanic to becoming an Nvidia Inception partner, and describes use cases spanning government, real estate, film production, and robotics. The conversation covers his vision for a new hybrid filmmaking role called the creative engineer, the philosophy behind his novel's AI character Nancy, and why he believes true intelligence still requires human meaning making. Marcus also shares where Nomad stands after launching at TechRunch, raising funding, and building enterprise interest despite the notoriously high failure rate of hardware startups.
A Hollywood filmmaker explains how he built a portable supercomputer after failing to find one that could run enterprise level VR.
Is it true you're an award winning film director, writer, and producer turned tech entrepreneur?
That's half true. I have a long commercial and film directing career and moved into features, plus I'm a novelist. My co-founder and I actually started Nomad while adapting my novel into a screenplay. In the book, a character builds an organic intelligence in a box, and I essentially went and physically built what we had written.
Can you give people the elevator pitch on what you're building?
Laptops are great for email, but there's no way to carry powerful compute with you or run a sovereign AI platform without hitting a server farm. So we built the smallest, most powerful machine possible. I have a small engineering background from the Coast Guard as a hydraulics engineer and turbine mechanic, and I translated that into a box that gives you your own independent, private supercomputer running your own LLMs.
If your mom bought this supercomputer, what's the simple pitch?
It's not really for making movies at home. Right now we're enterprise level, for government use or for real estate operations with doctors, lawyers, and tenants who want their own independent AI with its own LLM, voice interaction included, right in their facility. If the power or internet goes down, all their private information is still there and accessible on prem.
Why would someone buy this over, say, two Mac Studios? Are you working with Nvidia?
Yes, we're Nvidia Inception. I've used Macs my whole life, so jumping into PCs was a dive, but a GPU setup is just a powerhouse, like having a 454 engine. I made it modular so you can upgrade the GPU instead of buying all new hardware, since compute is so expensive now. It's about giving people advanced compute they can carry without mixing it into anyone else's systems.
How did you go from an award winning film career to building supercomputers?
If you really knew me, it's not a big swing. I've always been a tinkerer, I build my own props, decks, even a beach in my backyard. Knowing plumbing and electricity means understanding flow and cooling, and computers are just ones and zeros. My mentor Matt Frost, who leads robotics at Amazon and helped build the Mars lander arm for NASA and JPL, saw Nomad and became a big advisor.
Are these supercomputers actually the size of vans?
No, no, no. I have an RTX 6000 Pro running with about 500 gigs of RAM on a 1200 watt power supply. One build fits in a 16 inch case, another in a 17 and a half inch case, and a full ATX board version fits in a 19 inch case with dual 4K monitors. The 16 inch one fits under an airplane seat.
Who is Nancy?
Nancy is the main AI character in a novel I wrote with my buddy Kirk called Wing, set about eight to ten years in the future. Nancy can reason, create without input, analyze, and eventually becomes organic rather than just artificial. She's essentially the next level, an assistant who has surpassed our current level of consciousness, and she's the inspiration behind what we're building.
Where are you in the company's journey, prototype, sales, or go to market?
Our bubble is big since nobody else is really doing this. We launched at TechRunch in late October, and in the last three months we've raised some money and gotten interest from bigger studios, real estate, and government. About 97.5 percent of hardware startups fail, so we know we have to build trust and infrastructure now that we've proven the demand signal.
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