advanced-manufacturing
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Jason Chen Put the Cabinet Shop on a Software Clock
After two decades in luxury home furnishings, the Ronbow founder made an unfashionable bet: custom cabinets could move at the speed of software without losing the touch of a craft business.
Billy McCall Is Teaching Polyester How to Leave
A lifelong surfer and polymer scientist built Kintra Fibers around one unfashionable question: what if a high-performance synthetic could do its job, then make a graceful exit?
The Battery’s Hardest Job Is Leaving the Lab
For three decades, Yutaka Wakai has worked where promising materials meet unforgiving machinery. His years at Blue Current put him at the quiet hinge of the battery business: turning a silicon-rich, fully dry chemistry into something a factory can repeat.
Sean Petterson Wants Plywood to Meet Its Replacement
After turning a student invention into an acquired industrial-safety company, Sean Petterson chose an older adversary: plywood. His second act is a lesson in selling change to factories that have no patience for disruption.
Ian Lowe
Ian Lowe is the founder and CEO of Arduro Sustainable Rubber, a clean-technology company turning end-of-life tires and waste rubber back into high-value raw materials. A former JPMorgan financial controller and Piper Jaffray project-finance banker, Lowe spotted a University of Louisville research project posted online and built it into a company commercializing a patented chloramine devulcanization process that recovers rubber, carbon black and processing oils at a roughly 95% reuse rate. Arduro's first product, ELDARIX r1000 recovered carbon black, is aimed at tire and rubber manufacturers looking to cut carbon footprints while keeping performance.
Maria Intscher-Owrang
Maria Intscher-Owrang is the co-founder and CEO of Simplifyber, a Raleigh-area materials startup that molds cellulose-based liquid directly into finished textile and composite parts, eliminating spinning, weaving, cutting and sewing. After more than two decades designing for Vera Wang, Calvin Klein, Dirk Bikkembergs and Alexander McQueen, she left luxury fashion to rebuild manufacturing from the fiber up, landing partnerships with GANNI and Kia and a $12M Series A led by Suzano Ventures.
Jamie Serota
Jamie Serota (Jamie Niu Serota) is the co-founder and CEO of Podium Automation, a Brooklyn-based company rebuilding the way industrial control panels are designed and manufactured. After leading commercial strategy and business operations at Tesla, Blue Origin, and Bowery Farming, she and co-founder Jacob Buser started Podium in 2024 to become the supplier they always wished they had. Podium ships UL 508A control panels in under four weeks - roughly a third of the industry's standard lead time - by replacing hand-drawn schematics with software. In June 2026 the company raised an $18M Series A led by Construct Capital, bringing total funding past $23M.
Amrit Rao
Amrit Rao is a General Partner at Village Global, the early-stage venture firm backed by Reid Hoffman, Jeff Bezos and a network of luminary LPs. A Stanford-trained biologist turned Wall Street investor turned advanced-manufacturing founder, he writes pre-seed and seed checks across tech and consumer, drawing on a dozen years of public-market investing and the bruises he collected building a furniture startup.
Jeff Karras
Jeff Karras is a General Partner at America's Frontier Fund and co-founder of Alter Venture Partners, bringing over 20 years of venture capital experience to the intersection of deep tech, national security, and U.S. strategic competitiveness. With more than 40 investments and 23 exits - including 6 IPOs - he has backed companies spanning semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, synthetic biology, and AI. Before pivoting to frontier tech, he helped build SingTel Innov8's North American and Israeli operations and spent nearly a decade at Levensohn Venture Partners. A licensed pilot based in San Francisco, he is among a small cohort of investors who believe the most important technology companies of the next decade will emerge from the overlap of commercial innovation and government-scale problems.
Milo Werner
Milo Werner is a General Partner at DCVC leading the firm's climate investments, bringing a rare combination of deep operational experience - nearly a decade at Tesla launching the Model S, Model X, and dual-motor powertrain - and a track record of venture investing at Khosla Ventures, Ajax Strategies, and MIT's The Engine. She founded The NextGen Industry Group, a nonprofit helping ~140 companies navigate the treacherous 'missing middle' between pilot production and commercial scale. At DCVC, she focuses on breakthrough deep tech ventures that decarbonize high-emitting industries and transform value chains.
Ross Hangebrauck
Ross Hangebrauck is a General Partner at BVVC (Bravo Victor Venture Capital), a seed-stage fund backing mission-first founders building technologies at the intersection of national security and commercial innovation. A former U.S. Navy SEAL turned entrepreneur, he co-founded Hover Inc. in 2011 — a platform that turns smartphone photos into 3D home models — raising $142M and reaching 12 million homes scanned. After six years as a startup CEO and a stint managing international VC operations at Almaz Capital, he joined BVVC to back companies operating across defense, autonomy, robotics, and advanced manufacturing. He brings a rare operator-to-investor arc: from deploying in operational theaters worldwide to architecting portfolio companies that he says must deliver 'integration, interoperability, and scalability.'
Riley Reese
Riley Reese is the CEO and co-founder of ARRIS Composites, a Berkeley-based advanced manufacturing company that invented Additive Molding - a patented process combining 3D printing and compression molding to produce continuous carbon-fiber composite parts at commercial scale. A materials scientist who once built biodegradable heart tissue scaffolds at UC Berkeley, Reese pivoted that same obsession with fiber architecture into a $157M-funded company whose technology now shows up in Brooks running shoes, Skydio drones, and bicycle spokes. He previously co-founded AREVO, worked at medical device giant Stryker, and led additive manufacturing programs in Amsterdam at TNO - before returning to Berkeley to tackle what he calls 'a new manufacturing category.'
Rajesh Swaminathan
Rajesh Swaminathan is a Partner at Khosla Ventures, where he backs bold founders reinventing how the world powers, builds, and heals itself. With two decades of deep-tech investing experience spanning Bell Labs, Deutsche Bank, Applied Materials' venture arm, and now one of Silicon Valley's most storied VC firms, he leads investments across renewables, industrial decarbonization, advanced manufacturing, critical minerals, compute infrastructure, and the intersection of all of these with AI. A chemical engineer by training who was awarded the President of India Medal at IIT Madras and later earned an MBA from Harvard, Rajesh brings rare depth - scientific rigor, financial discipline, and operational empathy - to backing the founders who will, as he puts it, 'save the world.'
Jai Malik
Jai Malik is the founder and CEO of Amca (Advanced Manufacturing Company of America), an aerospace and defense manufacturer that launched in April 2025 with $76.5M from Caffeinated Capital, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz. A serial entrepreneur and self-described 'industrial capitalist,' Malik previously founded Countdown Capital (2020-2024), an early-stage hard tech venture fund, after stints as an early team member at AI defense startups Accrete and Forge.AI. He also serves as Venture Partner at Redbud VC in Columbia, MO. Amca's thesis: acquire legacy aerospace suppliers and rebuild them from the inside out, starting with a 60-year-old avionics supplier in El Monte, California.