Foundry Lab Raises $8M To Quickly, Cheaply Create Metal Castings Using A Microwave
11/29/21, 6:00 PM
Money raised
$8 million
Remember Easy Bake Ovens? You’d mix up some colored powder and water until a dough or batter formed, put it in a mold, pop it in the oven, and before you knew it — ding! A disgusting treat. Foundry Lab, a New-Zealand based startup with backing from Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck, has figured out how to do something similar, except instead of chemicals and an “oven,” it’s metals and a microwave.
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The company, which emerged from stealth on Monday with an $8 million Series A raise, is using “literally a microwave, but on steroids” to cast metal parts much quicker than metal 3D printing, according to David Moodie, founder and CEO of Foundry.“It’s super easy for the user; they literally take the mold, throw in the cold metal powder or metal ingots, put it in the microwave, press the button and walk away,” Moodie told TechCrunch. The startup is currently working with zinc and aluminum, but has done some successful stainless steel trials and wants to move onto other metals like copper and brass in the future. The company only has a couple of its very large microwaves out for trial with potential customers at the moment, but it will use the Series A funding, which came from Australian VC Blackbird, to get production-ready by the end of 2023. The company has grown quickly over the past few months, up from six staffers when it first started fundraising to 17 full-time employees now.