Just five months after its founding, hard technology startup Layup Parts has secured $9 million in a Founders Fund-led funding round to transform composites manufacturing. Lux Capital and Haystack also participated.
This breakneck pace is more than a subtle sign that investors' appetite for technology-centric solutions to the woes of the U.S. industrial base continues unabated. But Layup's ability to close such a large funding round so quickly can be attributed, at least in part, to its founder's own deep experience with the issues plaguing domestic manufacturing.
Layup was founded by Zack Eakin, Hanno Kappen, and Elisa Suarez. The trio met while working at The Boring Company, Elon Musk's singular initiative to transform transportation using tunnels. Kappen worked at robotic pizza shop Stella Pizza, and Suarez worked at Rivian and renewable energy company Heliogen.
Eakin, CEO of Layup, moved to Anduril in 2021 as Director of Mechanical Engineering. He directed the mechanical design of the company's range of flying drone products, including the Roadrunner, which is truly a “Palmer product.” [Luckey] That was the idea when I started,” he said in a recent interview.
Without the idea of founding Layup, Eakin would still be at Anduril, he says. “It was born out of a need that we had at Anduril. A need that the world had was something that was acutely felt during my time at Anduril,” he said.
During Eakin's career, most areas of manufacturing have changed, with the exception of composites, he said. Companies like Protolabs, Xometry, and Fictiv have innovated processes such as CNC machining, sheet metal cutting, and injection molding. These companies (and many others) have developed a frictionless, almost Amazon-like experience for rapidly manufacturing hardware that has left a permanent mark on the industry.
However, there is no comparable innovation in the manufacturing of composite parts. Eakin said there are several reasons for this. The first is that existing composites manufacturers are underutilized in developing the software tools needed to do it well. Another is that composite materials are more artisanal and certain steps of the process are not easy to automate. Therefore, it is inherently more difficult to reduce the number of humans involved in the manufacturing loop to zero.
Roadrunner is a good example. Roadrunner includes many composite components, which are time-consuming and expensive to obtain. It is normal for an engineer to have to wait up to two weeks to receive a quote from a manufacturer (versus a service like Protolabs that takes him 10 minutes). After placing the purchase order with the supplier, it can take him 1-2 weeks for small and simple parts and up to 4-5 months for more complex or larger parts.
Instead, Layup aims to return small parts within three days and large parts within two weeks. All of this can be done at a lower cost to the customer. “I think we can get 10x the speed, and in terms of tooling and upfront costs, I think it would be half the cost of what you typically pay today,” he estimates.
In general, Eakin didn't seem to care much about competition. He said many of the top composites companies are owned by PE firms, which tend to focus on winning larger, long-term contracts rather than fast-track development programs.
“We believe that tomorrow's long-term, high-value contracts are currently in development,” he said. “The more we can work with our development guys, understand their needs, and provide them with quality parts, the better we can serve them and focus on things that might be less profitable. You'll be in a position to win contracts and get a feel for the board's focus on development and speed.”
Much of the company's future efforts will be in the software area where it has the strongest differentiation, but it will likely be several years before Layup can accept any CAD model from a customer and offer a portion of its product. Dew. It's just a matter of a few days. But that doesn't mean the company isn't moving quickly. With the new funding, Layup aims to have a factory online making parts for customers by the end of the third quarter of this year.
That means the $9 million will be used primarily for capital expenditures such as larger buildings and equipment additions, as well as software and the hiring of factory floor technicians.
There are many, often passionate, voices in Silicon Valley about the many woes facing America's industrial base, including an aging workforce and an overreliance on tribal knowledge. But Eakin said what really motivates him is thinking about all the engineering students itching to build but who face high barriers to entry due to outdated processes. . Layup is trying to change that.
“The idea of taking that to young students and empowering them to realize what they want to make is what really excites me about what we're doing. It's happening in other manufacturing fields as well. I think composites are being left behind, and that's great, whether it's fixing supply chains or aging demographics. That's great, too. What excites me is that we can offer great composite parts and make them available to everyone.”