b2b-materials
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The Ski Bum Who Put NASA's Coldest Material Into Your Winter Boots
Michael Markesbery took $10,000 from an astronaut scholarship and a material NASA uses to insulate spacecraft, and spent a decade figuring out how to make it bend. Now Solarcore® sells that trick to boot brands, the Air Force, and battery makers.
Kintra Fibers
Kintra Fibers is a Brooklyn-based materials science company developing a bio-based, biodegradable alternative to conventional polyester. Built on polybutylene succinate (PBS) derived from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels, Kintra's yarn performs like standard polyester and runs on existing melt-spinning equipment, but composts in controlled conditions and sheds far less persistent microplastic. Founded in 2018 by Billy McCall and Alissa Baier-Lentz, the H&M Group-backed company has raised roughly $10M total and is piloting its fiber with brands including Inditex, BESTSELLER, Reformation and PANGAIA.
Novoloop
Novoloop is a California-based circular materials company that chemically upcycles hard-to-recycle plastic waste - the grocery bags, food films and mailers that mechanical recycling can't handle - into virgin-quality, high-performance polyols and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). Using its proprietary Accelerated Thermal Oxidative Decomposition (ATOD) process and Lifecycling platform, the company turns post-consumer polyethylene into materials used in footwear, electronics and automotive goods, with a substantially lower carbon footprint than fossil-based equivalents. Founded in 2015 by childhood friends Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao, Novoloop has raised over $50 million and counts On's Cloudprime sneaker among its first commercial showcases.