This startup’s super metals could soon be in military drones, luxury watches, and chef’s knives

instead of heating metals, Foundation Alloy beats them into submission. The startup has raised $22 million to scale up production of its alloys.

“We’re actually smashing metal powder particles together instead of melting them,” Jake Guglin, co-founder and CEO of Foundation Alloy, told TechCrunch. “We can create properties that other people can’t.” So far, the startup has been selling its bespoke metals in small batches, but Guglin said his company is “constrained by our ability to make stuff, not by the people that want to take it.”  Judging by the types of industries Foundation Alloy is selling into, it seems everyone wants better existing metals or entirely new ones. Guglin said that the startup is running pilots with companies in the automotive, aerospace, semiconductor, and defense industries, along with others that make chef’s knives and luxury watches.  “We can save them tons of money and tons of tons of waste,” he said. To scale up production to several tons per week by 2027, Foundation Alloy has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Voyager Ventures, the startup exclusive told TechCrunch. Also participating in the round were Trust Ventures, Yamaha Motors, America’s Frontier Fund, Overlap Holdings, Material Impact, Engine Ventures, El Cap, and Kanematsu Corporation, which will also distribute the startup’s metals in Japan and Southeast Asia. Foundation Alloy’s technology emerged from scientific research conducted over the last 20 years. Tim Rupert and Chris Schuh led efforts to understand what happened to metals at the nanometer scale, which formed the basis of Foundation Alloy’s technology. Schuh is no stranger to the startup game, having previously co-founded Desktop Metal and Xtalic.