Saturday, December 2, 2023

"Material Impact announces $352m materials science fund"

Putting it simply, materials science is the future of stuff.

From AgFunderNews, November 16:

Material Impact announces $352m materials science fund: 
‘You can trace back disruptive innovation in almost any industry to an underlying advance in material science’
  • Boston-based venture firm Material Impact has announced Material Impact Fund III, a $352 million fund to back inception-stage companies developing products enabled by innovations in materials science.
  • The firm, which has $800 million in assets under management and 30 portfolio companies, has teamed up with new and existing LPs including university endowments, foundations, family offices, and fund-of-funds (pooled investment funds that invest in other types of funds) for Fund III.
  • From tackling the “consequences of extreme weather, supply chain vulnerabilities, increased demand on our energy and transportation infrastructure, or the globe’s shrinking clean water supply, Fund III will support the building of companies solving these problems,” says Material Impact.
Exclusive focus on materials science
In a post on the firm’s website announcing the new fund, cofounders Adam Sharkawy and Carmichael Roberts explain: “You can trace almost any major disruptive innovation in any market or industry back to an underlying innovation in material science.

“Whether it is what alloys have done for automotive, composite materials for aerospace, or what polymers and the element of silicon have done for almost every aspect of our lives, they all exist because of advances in materials.”

“We’re proud to be among the first firms that focused exclusively on material science as more firms are moving into this exciting and important space.”

Solving big problems
Sharkawy tells AgFunderNews: “From the outset when we raised Fund I in 2017, we’ve been focused on large-scale problems, on what we call Maslowian needs… like water scarcity, the food supply chain, sustainable manufacturing, mobility and energy, and under-represented healthcare.

“And over the last seven years we’ve come to appreciate that these topics will require an entire ecosystem of stakeholders spanning the consumer, governments, and large corporates, time, and a lot of capital. So we want to be able to go deeper with [our portfolio] companies and support them through not one or two rounds of financing, but all the way through their mission.”....

....MUCH MORE

 We've been pitching materials science since 2009's "What It Takes: Building a Materials Science Company for the 21st Century".

First off, 3D printing is not dead, it's not even resting. But like nanotechnology (remember nano?) it is becoming just another wrench in the toolbox. Here's how we were viewing nanotech in 2010:
...The reason for highlighting nano is two-fold.

1) Since Feynman coined the word there has been a misconception among investors that there would be a nano-technology "industry". This has proven not to be the case and won't be in the future. Rather nano is a tool, an approach toward problem solving.

There will be some breakthroughs that make their discoverers instantly (after 10 years of research) wealthy but the real beneficiaries will be companies like Kyocera and 3M and Siemens. They will use the technology to do what they are already doing, just better, faster, cheaper, more.

2) In spite of the fact that there will be few pure plays we are convinced that nano combined with advances in materials science and manufacturing technology is what will spur the next secular bull market....
When it becomes ubiquitous, the distinctions blur, the drive for creativity recedes, stasis, then death.
Wait what? Entropy! I meant to co-opt the physically precise  concept of entropy to metaphorically describe the trend. Not death.
No, death bad, Sand Hill Road good.

And today's story, from CB Insights...

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