GrayMatter begins 2023 with a merger and cautious optimism in the midst of a possible recession

Warrendale-based tech and consulting firm GrayMatter began the new year by announcing a new strategic merger with Ohio-based Phantom Technical Services, Inc., an automation systems developer. James Gillespie, GrayMatter CEO and cofounder, told Technical.ly that the merger comes out of a desire for Phantom Technical Services, Inc. to assist in expanding and meeting the increased demand from GrayMatter’s customers. Furthermore, Gillespie said GrayMatter approached them about the merger because he believed that the two companies would complement each other.

“We [the companies’ owners] have known each other through the marketplace and we’ve done a lot of business with shared customers, so we kind of knew of each other pretty well by reputation at least,” Gillespie said. “Then we hit it off pretty well and sort of decided amongst the group that one plus one can equal three.”

This is GrayMatter’s fourth merger of this kind with the company having previously merged with HTSE Inc. in August 2022 and prior to that acquired companies such as E-Merge Systems, another industrial automation solutions provider. With Phantom Technical Services in the fold, the company’s team has now grown to a total of 200 employees and likely more to come in the future.

“In addition to the office we now have in Ohio, we need to increase the staff in Pittsburgh to support the extra team members,” Gillespie said. “We’re continuing to add finance, HR and engineering capability here in Pittsburgh as well.”

Other projects coming around the bend for GrayMatter include increasing growth through its automation offerings by continuing to help the company’s clients in data analysis and protecting critical infrastructure systems from cyber attacks, Gillespie said.

“People like Dr. Pepper and Kellogg’s are sort of emerging analytics clients for us and we do a ton of stuff for municipalities and the midstream oil and gas market,” Gillespie said. “And local companies like PPG are 30-year clients of ours. There’s a lot of things we’re expecting to do together with them this year.”

Over the next year the company plans to keep growing and concerns over a possible recession aren’t a deterrent to that, Gillespie said, although he hasn’t seen economic indicators that a recession will happen yet. Still, if a recession does happen, he feels that the necessity of cybersecurity combined with GrayMatter’s money saving practices put the company in a good position to be able to weather any potential economic downturn.

“We like to say saving money never goes out of style,” Gillespie said. “So, some of the projects might not get justified, but we will have plenty of our projects meet the threshold and we’re expecting to expand even through the recession.”