Gamma Alloys is a Santa Clarita, California advanced-materials company that reinforces aluminum with homogeneously distributed nano-ceramic particles to create metal matrix composites that are stiffer, stronger, more wear-resistant and stable across a wider temperature range than conventional aluminum. Its materials ship as wrought stock (bar, tube, plate), additive powders and additive wire for metal 3D printing, and are aimed at aerospace, defense, automotive, motorsports and even luxury goods. Founded in 2008 and led by CEO Mark Sommer, the company drew an investment from Boeing HorizonX Ventures in 2017 and partners with precision manufacturer Del West USA.
Nuovo Film Inc. is a Silicon Valley advanced-materials company that develops, manufactures, and markets silver nanowire (AgNW) materials under its patented Crystode brand. Its high-precision roll-to-roll coated transparent conductive films replace brittle, indium-based ITO with a flexible, low-resistance, high-transparency alternative used in touch screens, foldable displays, photovoltaics, energy storage, and electric vehicles. Backed by Intel Capital and holding more than 180 patents worldwide, Nuovo Film operates one of the largest silver nanowire production lines in the industry and supplies touch modules to global brands.
John Kawola is a 3D printing industry veteran who has spent nearly three decades turning niche additive-manufacturing technologies into real businesses. He led Z Corporation through the dawn of full-color 3D printing, ran a farm-and-warehouse robotics company, built Ultimaker's North American footprint, and then took the helm of Boston Micro Fabrication (BMF), the company making 3D printers that resolve features down to two microns - smaller than a human hair. In 2025 he handed off the CEO role at BMF to become a strategic advisor.
Kai Jiang is the CEO of Nuovo Film Inc., a Silicon Valley materials company that turns silver nanowires into the transparent conductive film behind touchscreens, foldable displays, and large-area interactive panels. Under his watch the company has shipped more than 2.3 million square meters of conductive film, holds 180+ patents worldwide, and claims roughly 60% of the global silver-nanowire market. A Stanford-educated operator with a McKinsey and semiconductor background, Jiang runs a business that is invisible by design: its product is the layer you touch but never see.
Mark Sommer is the founder and CEO of Gamma Alloys, a Santa Clarita-based materials company that 'decorates' metal powders with ceramic nanoparticles to make aluminum strong enough to 3D print into aerospace and automotive parts. He simultaneously leads Del West Engineering, the Formula 1 world's go-to maker of titanium valves and lightweight valvetrain components. Backed by Boeing HorizonX, his bet is that of the roughly 5,500 industrial alloys in use, only a few dozen work with 3D printers today, and Gamma's nano-ceramic process can unlock the rest.
Ophir Gaathon is the co-founder and CEO of DUST Identity, a Massachusetts deep-tech company that sprinkles microscopic, industrial diamond dust onto physical objects to give them an unclonable fingerprint. A Columbia-trained applied physicist who once chased the quantum properties of diamonds for computing, he turned that research into an identity layer for the physical world, used across defense, aerospace, automotive and luxury supply chains. Backed by Kleiner Perkins, Airbus Ventures, Lockheed Martin and Castle Island Ventures, his company has raised more than $50M and works on problems originally posed by DARPA.
Numat is a Chicago-based advanced-materials company and the first to commercialize metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) at industrial scale. Its molecularly engineered, programmable 'sponges' capture, store, and separate hazardous chemicals for semiconductor, defense, and energy customers, reducing the impact of chemical products and processes on human health and the environment.
Axoft is a Cambridge, Massachusetts neurotechnology company building implantable brain-computer interfaces (iBCIs) out of Fleuron, a proprietary material it claims is up to 10,000x softer than the polyimide used in conventional brain implants. By making electronics roughly as soft as brain tissue, Axoft aims to keep thousands of sensors in stable contact with single neurons for years instead of months - reducing scarring and signal loss - to diagnose and eventually treat disorders of consciousness, paralysis, and other neurological conditions. A Harvard spinout founded in 2021, it raised an oversubscribed $55M Series A in April 2026 and has run first-in-human studies in 11+ patients worldwide.
Rui Jing Jiang is the Founder and CEO of Avisi Technologies, a Redwood City-based clinical-stage medical device company developing VisiPlate, the world's thinnest freestanding ophthalmic implant for treating glaucoma. Built on University of Pennsylvania nanotechnology, VisiPlate is a multichannel aqueous shunt composed of alumina and Parylene-C that is 20 times thinner than a human hair. Rui Jing co-founded the company in 2017 as a junior at Penn's Wharton School, won the $100,000 President's Innovation Prize in 2018, secured FDA Investigational Device Exemption approval in October 2025 for the US SAPPHIRE trial, and closed a $10.7M Series A in February 2026 to advance pivotal clinical development.
Michael (Mike) J. McShane is a biomedical engineer who has spent close to 25 years trying to put readable chemistry under the skin. As James J. Cain Professor II and head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, he builds injectable, biomaterials-based optical biosensors - often called 'smart tattoos' - that glow in response to glucose, oxygen and other body chemistries so doctors can monitor patients continuously and minimally invasively. A Fellow of IEEE, SPIE, BMES and AIMBE, past president of the IEEE Sensors Council and founding chair of the IEEE BioSensors conference, he won the 2012 NIH Director's Transformative Research Award and the 2023 IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award.
Dr. Martin Devenney is the CEO of Nanosys, the world's leading quantum dot technology company now part of Shoei Chemical. A chemist-turned-manufacturer with a PhD from Queen's University Belfast and over 35 patents, he spent eight years scaling Nanosys's quantum dot production from lab curiosity to the backbone of more than 1,000 unique display products across 70 million consumer devices. Named CEO in May 2023, he then engineered the company's acquisition by Japanese chemical giant Shoei Chemical in September 2023, positioning Nanosys to lead the next generation of display technologies including NanoLED, QD-OLED, and automotive quantum dot applications.
Olgica Bakajin is the CEO and Founder of Porifera Inc., a San Leandro, California-based company pioneering forward osmosis membrane technology for the food, beverage, and industrial water sectors. A physicist by training - B.A. from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from Princeton - she spent nearly a decade at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory developing carbon nanotube membranes that move water 1,000x faster than conventional materials. Her 2006 Science paper on carbon nanotube desalination became the most-cited chemistry article in the journal. In 2009 she spun Porifera out of LLNL, and the company now serves 100+ customers across 20+ countries, helping breweries, coffee roasters, and winemakers concentrate their products without heat, preserving flavor, aroma, and nutrients while slashing energy use by up to 80%.
Steve Jurvetson is a legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist and co-founder of Future Ventures, best known for coining the term 'viral marketing,' backing Hotmail, SpaceX, and Tesla from their earliest days, and bringing a scientist's obsession to everything from model rockets to nanotechnology. After two decades at Draper Fisher Jurvetson managing over $6 billion, he launched Future Ventures in 2018 with a patient, 15-year fund structure focused on deep tech, AI, space, and synthetic biology. A triple Stanford alumnus who finished his EE degree in 2.5 years at the top of his class, Jurvetson is as likely to be found photographing rocket launches on his Flickr account as sitting on SpaceX's board.