# Parallel Works

> Parallel Works is a Chicago-based software company, spun out of Argonne National Laboratory in 2015, that builds ACTIVATE - a hybrid multi-cloud control plane for high-performance computing and AI. The platform gives researchers, engineers and defense teams a single interface to provision, orchestrate and share compute across on-premises clusters and the major clouds (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle), with built-in cost governance, role-based access and security controls. In 2025 ACTIVATE's High Security Platform became the first hybrid multi-cloud solution to earn a U.S. Department of Defense IL5 Authority to Operate.

- **Founded:** 2015
- **Headquarters:** Chicago, Illinois, United States
- **Founders:** Matthew Shaxted (Co-Founder & CEO), Michael Wilde (Co-Founder), Michela Wilde (Co-Founder), Mihael Hategan-Marandiuc (Co-Founder / Core Engineer)
- **Team size:** ~22 employees
- **Products:** ACTIVATE, ACTIVATE High Security Platform (HSP), ACTIVATE AI
- **Notable:** ACTIVATE HSP became the first hybrid multi-cloud computing solution to receive a DoD IL5 Authority to Operate (2025)., Awarded a U.S. DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) contract to unify on-prem and cloud compute for defense researchers., Naval Research Laboratory adopted the platform for weather forecasting workloads.

## Products & services

- **ACTIVATE** — The core hybrid multi-cloud computing control plane. Provides cluster provisioning, Kubernetes support, workflow orchestration, interactive applications, storage management, GPU utilization optimization, and cost control/budgeting across on-prem and cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle) - all through one interface and API.
- **ACTIVATE High Security Platform (HSP)** — The mission-critical variant for defense and regulated environments. The first hybrid multi-cloud computing solution to receive a DoD IL5 Authority to Operate (ATO), with CUI/ITAR compliance and DISA provisional authorization for secure, federated cloud access.
- **ACTIVATE AI** — A configuration tailored to AI and GPU-intensive workloads, including support for emerging neocloud GPU providers and next-generation model training and inference.

## Achievements

- ACTIVATE HSP became the first hybrid multi-cloud computing solution to receive a DoD IL5 Authority to Operate (2025).
- Awarded a U.S. DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) contract to unify on-prem and cloud compute for defense researchers.
- Naval Research Laboratory adopted the platform for weather forecasting workloads.
- Selected by NOAA to manage cloud HPC across AWS, GCP and Azure.
- Won the Federal Laboratory Consortium's highest honor for excellence in technology transfer, jointly with Argonne National Laboratory.
- Launched an early 'app store' for HPC workflows (2017), an unusual concept for the HPC market at the time.

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Awarded a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense's High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) to provide a unified interface across on-prem and cloud compute.
- **2025-11** — Showcased its unified multi-cloud platform for HPC, AI and mission-critical computing at SC25 in St. Louis, with AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft joint presentations.
- **2025-09** — DoD granted ACTIVATE HSP an Authority to Operate (ATO) at IL5 - the first for a hybrid multi-cloud HPC platform.
- **2026-03** — Matthew Shaxted featured in Authority Magazine on pushing the boundaries of AI.

## Links

- Website: https://parallelworks.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/parallel-works

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Last updated: 2026-07-03