The Story of Geminus: Building the Future of Industrial AI Optimization

Sometimes the most transformative companies start with a childhood fascination. For Greg Fallon, founder of Geminus, it began on his grandfather’s sailboat. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Greg recalls: “I used to spend afternoons on the back deck of my grandfather’s sailboat, looking at the eddies coming off of the rudder and imagining that I could see the air swirling around us.”

This early fascination with visualizing the invisible forces shaping our world would eventually lead to a company transforming how industrial machines operate. But the path wasn’t direct.

From Academia to Innovation

Greg’s journey started in academia, pursuing a PhD in mechanical engineering. “I was actually in my PhD program and really fell in love with this concept of being able to accurately simulate the world around us,” he shares. This led him to join Fluent, an early pioneer in engineering simulation software.

The experience at Fluent, which grew into a leading player in what is now a $20 billion market, gave Greg firsthand experience in commercializing complex technical solutions. But he found himself increasingly frustrated with the industry’s limitations.

“We had the ability to create these really complex models that can predict the world around us, but they were very computationally intensive and time intensive,” Greg explains. “It could take you hours to weeks to answer a single question.”

The Entrepreneurial Journey

Greg’s path included several entrepreneurial ventures, including a near-miss with Fitbit competition that was derailed by the 2008 financial crisis. He then joined Autodesk, where he led innovative projects including the commercialization of Generative Design, an AI product launched in 2017.

But the dream of real-time simulation and optimization remained. The breakthrough came through a connection with Karthik Durasami at the University of Michigan, who was pioneering a new field called “AI augmented computational physics.”

The Geminus Vision

When Greg learned about Karthik’s research combining machine learning with computational physics, the decision to leave his comfortable position at Autodesk was immediate. “It was a two week was, I heard about this opportunity and jumped on it. And I was with Geminus within actually three weeks,” he recalls.

The opportunity was massive. As Greg explains: “Most machines are operated really far away from optimum, like 20, 40%. And so if you take a power plant, for example, some power plants are more efficient than 20 or 40% away, but they produce, they’re very expensive to run and they’re very complex to run.”

Geminus’s technology makes it possible to optimize these complex systems in real-time, something previously thought impossible. The impact could be enormous – Greg notes that “the UN most recent climate report said that if the machines that are out there just improved their efficiency to the best they had ever done, not the best they can do, you would reduce global greenhouse gases by, like, 12%.”

Looking to the Future

The vision for Geminus extends far beyond current applications. “My vision for the next three to five years is to have AI helping to optimize every machine, plant and system on the planet,” Greg shares. “I think in the three years, it’s most kind of very expensive assets. And I think as we get to five to ten years, it’s everything from your iPhone to your car to your battery in your car.”

This isn’t just about business growth – it’s about fundamentally changing how we interact with and optimize the mechanical world around us. Just as Greg once dreamed of visualizing air currents around a sailboat rudder, Geminus is working to make the invisible visible and the inefficient optimal across every industrial system on Earth.

Their journey shows how the convergence of lifelong passion, technical innovation, and perfect timing can create transformative companies. As industrial optimization evolves from manual tweaking to AI-powered precision, Geminus is positioning itself to lead this revolution in machine efficiency.