Foundation Alloy - Seed Round

$7.5M Raised

Metal doesn’t forget, and Foundation Alloy is here to make sure it never needs to. This is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology born juggernaut out of Cambridge that’s been quietly torching the status quo of advanced manufacturing, atom by atom. Born in 2022 and built on brains, grit, and a powder-based process that’s got the materials science world buzzing, Foundation Alloy just locked in $7.5 million more heat, $6.5M in equity, $1M in debt, from a crew of real-deal backers: Alumni Ventures, America’s Frontier Fund, Engine Ventures, El Cap, Material Impact, and Yamaha Motor Ventures.

This isn’t just another Seed round. It’s a thesis-check on what happens when you combine four co-founders who don’t flinch, Jake Guglin (Lightmatter, Blue Origin, SpaceX), Jasper Lienhard (MIT lifer and R&D whisperer), Christopher Schuh (MIT professor, co-founder of Xtalic and Desktop Metal), and Tim Rupert (UC Irvine metallurgy heavyweight), with tech that bypasses melting metal altogether. Let that marinate. No melting. Just a proprietary solid-state system that transforms raw feedstock into finished parts with grain structures 100x finer than the old-school stuff. That’s like swapping out a paintbrush for a pixel-perfect stylus. The result? Alloys that aren’t just strong, they’re tailored, surgical, and way faster to make.

Foundation Alloy’s not selling theory. They're out here piloting next-gen materials with aerospace, defense, and energy players in the U.S., Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and Canada. Their molybdenum alloy? Triple the hardness of TZM. Production speed? Up to 4x faster. Energy use? Cut in half. They even pulled off full-density sintering without deformation, a feat that’ll make any binder jet engineer do a double take. This is where metallurgy meets performance art.

So why does it matter? Because for all the noise about reshoring and supply chains, Foundation Alloy’s cutting through it with one of the cleanest industrial plays on the map: faster timelines, lower emissions, tighter control, and end-to-end capability that doesn’t wait on geopolitical stability to deliver. They’re not waving flags, they’re building future-proof alloys for fission, fusion, hypersonics, and AI infrastructure that doesn’t blink under pressure.

And this isn’t just a lab experiment. They’re scaling. They’ve got Erin O'Brien, CFA, ICD.D (25+ years in metal manufacturing), Herbert Yu (Go-to-market sensei), and Nihan Tuncer pushing product where it counts. With new board muscle from Tom Witheford, ex-ATI, GKN, and Special Metals, they’re putting even more weight behind the vision: a vertically integrated powerhouse that makes American manufacturing sharp again.

Let’s connect and keep the momentum going across the tech ecosystem. Whether you’re a founder shaping the future, a leader driving change, a VC backing bold ideas, or an investor spotting the next big thing—together, we’re pushing boundaries. Proud to be building the future with you.

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