A Post-Mortem on Commodity Cycles
The Analog #126
Another engineers and founders dinner is coming up, this time in Seattle, WA on May 15th. Applications are open with limited seats (~30) – hardware engineers, leaders, founders, and investors are all welcome!
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Interesting Links 🏭
An interesting case study and post-mortem from Bedrock Materials, a Stanford spin-out that aimed to commercialize sodium-ion batteries. The pitch was simple: sodium is cheap and abundant, and the world needed a domestic alternative to lithium-ion batteries. Lithium prices spiked 10x in 2023, but it turns out it’s hard to build any business on a macro-economic trend that collapses in twelve months. The market flipped with lithium supply ramping faster than expected, EV demand cooling, and prices collapsing by 90%. While Bedrock shut down, some startups like Peak Energy are still betting that sodium-ion can carve out a niche in grid storage.
From Bedrock’s CEO: “LFP prices have now crashed down to the point where it would almost be a viable business to extract the lithium from them and sell it on the open market. The active material producers are running single-digit margins. And so when that happened, it just became clear that the economic case for sodium had collapsed.”
Before there was Office or Windows 95 or Xbox or AI, there was Altair BASIC. Bill Gates just released the source code for Microsoft’s first product: a 4KB assembly-language interpreter for the Altair 8800, a hobbyist computer kit from a small company called MITS. The accompanying article is a narrative walkthrough of how he and Paul Allen saw the Altair and realized that writing software for it could turn personal computing from a niche experiment into the industry that exists today. A fascinating look at how early software was built, and how constrained those early systems really were.
This is the complete list (and nearly comprehensive explanation) of all the tools that Adam Savage keeps in his toolbox. If you’re looking for a new book (or audiobook, he narrates it himself!), Every Tool’s a Hammer is a personal favorite. It’s packed with lessons on prototyping and practical engineering, all told through stories that tie back to his career working as a fabricator, carpenter, and eventually as the host of Mythbusters. One idea he returns to often is the first order retrievability: tools you use every day shouldn’t live in drawers. They should be out, visible, and ready with no lids to lift and nothing to move out of the way.
The next police chase you see might be lit by a drone. Cinema lighting systems using drones like Freefly’s Flying Sun 1000 are making their way into real-world use. Their drones can push up to 300,000 lumens and light up construction sites, emergency scenes, or film sets. It runs tethered to a 5kW generator for unlimited power, or untethered on battery for up to twenty minutes. It’s a rare example of a US-based drone company building a niche product and manufacturing domestically. We noted in issue #93 why the US fell behind in drone tech; the short summary is that DJI still dominates the small-drone market thanks to Shenzhen-scale supply chains and cost advantages.
Most lasers heat things up, but Sandia National Laboratories and a few partners are trying to do the opposite: use laser-based photonic cooling to cool computer chips. Unlike typical laser applications that generate heat, this method uses precise light frequencies to cool tiny, pure gallium arsenide layers in a photonic cold plate, targeting hot spots on chips as small as hundreds of microns. If successful, it could reduce thermal resistance at the chip level and cut into the 30–40% of data center power currently spent on cooling.
If you’re looking for a primer on systems engineering, The Agile Systems Engineering Handbook from Flow Engineering is worth a read. It walks through the mechanics of defining system boundaries, writing requirements that are actually testable, and includes a case study comparing how SpaceX and Boeing approach product development (hint: it’s not too favorable for Boeing).
Sponsored: The Product Development Expo (PDX) on October 21-22 is open for early-bird registration. Sign up here for hands-on training in advanced CAD, GD&T, DFM, and metrology!
Startup News 🚀
Base Power, a Texas startup building a distributed energy network from residential batteries, raised $200M in Series B funding. The company currently deploys residential and commercial batteries to cut energy costs, stabilize the grid, and put electricity control back in customers’ hands. The company has scaled to 70+ municipalities, is expanding with a new Texas factory, and is rapidly growing partnerships with utilities and homebuilders to stabilize the grid and lower energy costs. The round was led by Addition, a16z, Lightspeed, and Valor.
Jeff Bezos is backing Slate Auto, a stealth Michigan startup building a $25,000 two-seat electric pickup truck. Founded inside Re:Build Manufacturing by former Amazon executives, Slate quietly raised $111M in a 2023 Series A with a larger Series B authorized late last year. Slate is targeting affordable volume sales and building a high-margin accessories business, pulling from the Harley-Davidson and Stellantis playbook. The company plans to start production by late 2026 near Indianapolis.
Arena has raised $30M in Series B funding to expand Atlas, an AI assistant for hardware testing and optimization. The company’s core tech. ingests design files, test data, and lab measurements to automate test plan generation, diagnose failures, and optimize performance across industries like semiconductors, aerospace, and defense. Investors include Initialized, Founders Fund, and Peter Thiel.
Venture capital funding is going straight to the source in aerospace manufacturing: Advanced Manufacturing Company of America (AMCA) raised $76M to acquire and modernize legacy suppliers, starting with Electro-Mech Components, a family-run shop founded in 1963. AMCA plans at least five more acquisitions in the next few years, aiming to rebuild the industrial base for new aerospace systems. Backers include Caffeinated Capital, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and a16z.
Maverick Metals, a startup specializing in minerals extraction, raised $19M in seed funding to advance its copper processing capabilities. Their new copper extraction tech. extracts significantly more copper from ore and waste materials without extreme heat or large amounts of harsh acid, addressing challenges like declining ore grades and rising costs. The funding will support integration with major mining companies to boost recovery rates, cut costs, and reduce environmental impact across critical metals production. The round was led by Olive Tree Capital.
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Open Jobs 💼
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Sponsored:
Pascal, a seed-stage startup reinventing cooling with solid-state refrigerants, is hiring a Test Engineer in Cambridge, MA
Early Career:
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Mid-Level:
Remedy Scientific is looking for a Mechanical Engineer in Alameda, CA
Senior to Staff:
Lockheed Martin is looking for a Computational Design Engineer in Grand Prairie, TX
Also is looking for a Battery Pack Design Engineer in Palo Alto, CA
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