Brenden Prins-McKinney

Brenden Prins-McKinney is the co-founder and CEO of Duranium (YC S25), an Alameda, California company working to bring critical light metal production - titanium, magnesium, aluminum, zirconium and hafnium - back to American soil. A Stanford Law graduate and Knight-Hennessy Scholar with a research background at McKinsey and a stint as a Goldman Sachs banker, he advised the Department of Defense on reshoring critical chemical production before deciding to build the supply chain himself. He pairs a policy-and-finance brain with chemistry borrowed from the 1950s, modernized so the U.S. can make metals it currently buys almost entirely from China and Russia.