Portland, Maine, December 4th, 2025 - Ateklo Inc., a deep-tech venture-building corporation that identifies overlooked graduate student talent to build ventures that redefine how frontier science solves industries toughest problems, today announced the appointment of Kevin Compher as Chief Investment Officer (CIO).
Compher is an investor, technologist, and venture builder with more than thirty years of experience funding and scaling frontier-technology companies. Across his career, he has backed or advised hundreds of early-stage deep-tech founders / ventures working across national security, neurotech, AI, advanced computing, critical infrastructure, and space.
As CIO, Compher will lead Ateklo's overall investment strategy and play a central role in shaping how the company identifies talent, funds frontier research, and deploys resources to scale new ventures emerging from Ateklo. He will work closely with researchers, founders, and partners to solve the toughest challenges facing society.
Kevin is one of the rare people who has sat at every node of the deep-tech ecosystem at the highest levels of success - exited founder, government executive, and institutional investor at an A-list venture firm," said Justin Hafner, Founder and CEO of Ateklo. "He has spent decades turning frontier technologies into real companies and market leading outcomes; embodying our mantra of turning sci-fi into reality to create enduring value. His depth of experience and track record of recognizing outsized venture opportunities at the earliest of stages and operational discipline will elevate our ability to consistently build leading deep-tech ventures.
Ateklo is building the kind of platform I wish had existed earlier in my career," said Compher. "When you connect the real doers and align them with live industry demand, you collapse the distance between discovery and adoption. I am excited to build an investment system that is disciplined about risk and capital efficiency, and bold in the frontier problems we choose to take on.
Deep experience across venture, government, and industry
Before joining Ateklo, Compher has been managing his family office midcoast ventures and served as a Partner at Interwoven Ventures where he led investing in robotics and dual-use technologies, supported portfolio founders on technical and commercial strategy, and helped structure capital vehicles for early-stage companies. Prior to Interwoven he began his venture career at In-Q-Tel. During his 7yrs at In-Q-Tel he was a member of the executive team and was their senior technical lead, helping manage a portfolio of industry leading DeepTech companies across AI, data infrastructure, neurotech, space, and advanced computing.
Before getting into venture Compher spent more than a decade inside the U.S. national security, health, and financial-regulation ecosystems. During his time in government he served as the Managing Director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where he oversaw the Consolidated Audit Trail, which is one of the largest financial systems globally. Additionally he managed major market data, rulemaking, and widespread technology modernization. Prior to joining the SEC he served as a Managing Executive at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and was the Director of Operations at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Compher started his career as a successful founder and builder. He founded and served as CEO of OSP, a spatial-computing and geospatial analytics company focused on critical infrastructure, which he scaled over seven years and successfully exited in 2010. He also co-founded Foundation, an AI-first platform that transforms narrative signals into predictive insight on quality and safety risk in sectors such as automotive, industrial manufacturing, and defense.
Kevin's track record shows that at the intersection of disciplined investing, applied intelligence, and frontier science creates opportunity," added Justin Hafner. "The culmination of his experience creates a mindset and rare perspective that is exactly what we want helping drive Ateklo's investment thesis.
About Ateklo Inc.
Ateklo is a venture-building company that creates and scales deep-tech ventures. We identify overlooked graduate researchers and partner with them to transform frontier science across sensing, autonomy, and human-technology interfaces into companies designed to solve high-consequence challenges for industry and national security. By aligning technology commercialization, strategic customers, and long-term capital, Ateklo de-risks venture creation and bridges the gap between higher education and industry, building a portfolio of companies that address society's toughest problems.
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