phoenix-arizona
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Plywood Rots. Supersede Extrudes Its Replacement From the Plastic Nobody Wanted.
Sean Petterson sold his last hardware company after raising more than $60 million. Now he is in Phoenix extruding recycled polypropylene into a board that boatbuilders are bolting into 2026 hulls - and he wants a micro-factory in every city with a plastic problem.
The Easel That Brought Its Own Light
A one-product company from Phoenix bet that the problem with displaying anything was never the stand - it was the lighting. So they put the light in the easel.
The Grocery Chain That Bet Small Stores Could Win the Health Aisle
Founded by a fruit-stand family, Sprouts skips the premium-organic playbook - smaller stores, produce up front, and shelves sorted by diet instead of brand.
Crystal Sonic
Crystal Sonic is a Phoenix, Arizona deep-tech startup that uses sound to cut semiconductor costs. Its patented Sonic Lift-off (SLO) technology acts as an 'acoustic scalpel,' peeling thin device layers off expensive wafers so the underlying substrate can be reused instead of ground into dust. Legacy manufacturing wastes 90% or more of substrate material, and substrates can account for up to half of a device's cost - Crystal Sonic wants to reclaim that. Spun out of an Arizona State University lab in 2018, the company has won backing from NASA, the Department of Energy, the NSF, and Lam Capital.