In addition to opening a 36,000-square-foot facility in Massachusetts, the company is standing up a modular production cell with Re:Build Manufacturing and has engaged Kanematsu Corporation as its commercial distribution partner for Japan and Southeast Asia.
BOSTON—Foundation Alloy describes itself as a “21st-century metals company building a new way to engineer alloys.” In mid-June, the company reported it raised $22 million in Series A financing to scale production on its MetalsFIRST™ platform—a fully integrated, solid-state metallurgy technology—to industrial volumes.
Hot forging punches made from Foundation Alloy’s MC-X are reported to outlast M2 tool steel under severe thermal conditions. (Photo courtesy Foundation Alloy)
In a release announcing the funding, the company said the round was led by Voyager Ventures, with participation from Trust Ventures, Yamaha Motor Ventures, America’s Frontier Fund, Overlap Holdings, Material Impact, Engine Ventures, and El Cap. An additional investment was made by Kanematsu Corporation, a global Japanese trading house, which signed a definitive distribution partnership and is bringing Foundation Alloy’s materials to major industrial customers across Japan and Southeast Asia.
“Foundation Alloy products, all manufactured in the United States, are being piloted by customers today across North America, Europe, and Japan,” the release stated.
Engineering alloys are the hidden enabler in every advanced industrial system on the planet, from jet engines, rockets, and energy infrastructure to precision components found in luxury goods like chef’s knives and watches. But the way they’re made hasn’t fundamentally changed since before the space race, the company said.
“Legacy melt-based methods are energy-intensive, slow, and bumping against a performance ceiling that the traditional process can no longer break through. In the military-industrial complex, specific metal components are running 900-day lead times, keeping aircraft on the ground and constraining the rebuilding of defense stockpiles,” the release stated. The bottlenecks for new technologies and systems are both performance and supply issues.”
The funding transitions Foundation Alloy into an industrial supplier. This summer, the company is opening a new 36,000-square-foot facility in Massachusetts. It is also standing up an additional modular production cell with Re:Build Manufacturing in southern New Hampshire, and doubling headcount across production, engineering, and commercial operations.
“Metals made through our platform are being used by customers today in commercial pilots with Japanese industrials, in production trials across North America and Europe, and in forging demonstrations with LIFT in Detroit,” said Jake Guglin, CEO of Foundation Alloy, in a statement. “This Series A funds the factory, not the lab. Our new Massachusetts facility and modular production cell are set to grow capacity from pilot-scale today to tons per week by 2027—a 100x increase, built on a modular equipment platform that deploys and scales 10 times faster than traditional metals manufacturing.”
Guglin added that the company is hiring across production, engineering, and commercial teams to help meet surging demand in defense, advanced manufacturing, and energy, where legacy materials and supply chains are failing, he said. “Our team is uniquely positioned to solve these challenges right now.”
Foundation Alloy described its MetalsFIRST approach as a fully integrated, solid-state platform encompassing composition design, mechanical alloying, shape forming, and sintering. It produces engineered alloys without ever entering the molten state. This process is reported to enable faster, simpler manufacturing cycles, capital-efficient industrial scale up, and access to alloy compositions and properties impossible to achieve with legacy melt processes.
The company said its specialty and stainless steels are engineered for the most demanding applications and require 80 percent to 90 percent fewer production steps. Its Molyclast® product line includes MC1200, a molybdenum alloy that reportedly delivers more than three times the strength of commercial alternatives. This combination of superior performance and manufacturability is said to unlock new capabilities for demanding applications across the industrial space.
Foundation Alloy also introduced Kanematsu Corporation as its commercial distribution partner for Japan and Southeast Asia, where demand for the company’s alloys is expected to be high going forward.
“Foundation Alloy’s platform addresses the most persistent challenges our customers face—productivity, equipment utilization, and supply-chain reliability—through a fundamentally different production approach,” said Kenyu Okawara, general manager at Kanematsu Corporation, in the release. “Client companies across our network are already evaluating Foundation Alloy’s materials for high-demand applications, and we look forward to delivering these next-generation alloys to manufacturers across Japan and Asia as part of our solution-oriented approach to the metals business. We see the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars of demand for these materials across Japan and Southeast Asia in the coming years.”
“Aerospace, defense, energy, and precision manufacturing need alloys that are stronger, cheaper, and faster to produce than anything available today,” said Sarah Sclarsic, founder and managing partner at Voyager Ventures, in the release. “Foundation Alloy delivers this leap forward with metals engineered at the atomic level through its MetalsFIRST platform. Voyager is proud to back this team as they redefine metals and manufacturing, all made in America.”
Foundation Alloy’s products are in industrial pilots today through its Molyclast family of molybdenum-based alloys, which are used across hot forging, die casting, and high-temperature applications. The company said it is already expanding into iron-based alloys, including stainless, tool and high-performance specialty steels with multiple customer pilot programs.
“The company’s near-term product expansion targets cutting tools and blades, with longer-term applications in aerospace components, defense systems, and next-generation energy technologies,” the release stated. “Customers can take MetalsFIRST output as fully finished parts, near finished parts, or in stock form.”
LIFT, the national advanced materials and manufacturing innovation institute, is an accelerator that connects advanced materials, manufacturing processes, systems engineering, and talent development to enhance America’s manufacturing competitiveness, national economy, and security.
“The Department of War Manufacturing Innovation Institutes’ core mission is to accelerate transformational technology into the U.S. industrial base and to support the successful scale up of those innovations,” said Nigel Francis, CEO and executive director of LIFT, in the release. “We are tremendously proud to see that vision realized with Foundation Alloy and this important Series A funding. Our testbed and pilot plant facility in Detroit played a pivotal role in testing and demonstrating Foundation Alloy’s novel technology, helping to lay the foundation for this next phase of growth—right here in the United States.”
Foundation Alloy described its MetalsFIRST platform as “a fully integrated, solid-state platform that ends the melt-based era of metals manufacturing.” New alloys are said to go from design to production in months, instead of years, and finished parts ship in days with advanced performance that legacy methods cannot match. The company has 17 granted patents on its underlying processes.