I was looking through the latest list of investments made by Palantir and one company caught my eye – Fast Radius.
Below is its investor presentation
Basically a Holistic Manufacturing Solution At its core, Fast Radius’ Cloud Manufacturing Platform is an end-to-end solution that bridges a vast network of company-owned micro-factories and third-party suppliers around the world, using a cloud-based suite of design software and manufacturing applications. By integrating design and production with a digital infrastructure, the software manages and streamlines the manufacturing lifecycle, from concept and design to production. The Cloud Manufacturing Platform allows clients to optimize their designs and gain feedback, order custom parts online, create digital twins of specific products to be stored digitally, print parts for prototyping or mass production, and much more. Typically, the first step of the process is for the client to contact Fast Radius to express their desire in producing a part, be it for prototyping or mass production. The client will provide as much detail as they can about the part, including design specifications and function. The second step involves the client receiving a quote from Fast Radius, along with detailed feedback highlighting any flaws in the design.
Following steps one and two, the client can choose how to proceed with production, be it at a Fast Radius micro-factory or a third-party manufacturer. Regardless of which route they take, the product will be created locally—reducing transportation costs, curtailing material waste, and accelerating the design-to-delivery lifecycle for the client.
Like most other forms of cloud computing, the appeal of the Cloud Manufacturing Platform is its suite of various apps and services that cater to the unique demands and challenges of the manufacturing industry. As of now, the platform features four applications. The first application is the Virtual Warehouse, which is geared towards converting a customer’s products from a brick-and-mortar warehouse to a virtual warehouse (i.e., cloud). Put simply, Virtual Warehouse stores all information pertinent to producing a product—the geometries of its parts, how they’re put together, the materials used, the production methods employed—so that it can be produced when needed and at the right quantities. This way, customers not only circumvent warehouse storage expenses, but ensure standardized, on-demand part production. Moreover, these parts can be produced when needed, thereby omitting any transportation costs, wait times and other delays. Virtual Warehouse also ensures a flexible, readily available supply chain that is better equipped to deal with today’s ever-shifting market.
The second application is called Additive Launch. This app pairs customers looking to create new products with the latest additive manufacturing design tools and technologies. Such pairings help customers not only produce the parts, but allow them to test and revise their designs using the most suitable materials. For example, recently, Fast Radius collaborated with Rawlings to create a new baseball glove that incorporated lattices to augment performance. Rawlings had been searching for a scalable, customizable option for making gloves, and through their involvement with Fast Radius were able to use Carbon’s advanced additive manufacturing technologies to produce the gloves commercially.
The third application is called On-Demand Manufacturing, where Fast Radius will partner with customers through every step of the manufacturing process, from design to production. This ensures design feedback expediency and efficiency in production.
Finally, the fourth application is an extension of On-Demand Manufacturing, known as At-Scale Production. Here, Fast Radius produces the parts at their dedicated micro-factories or through their curated network of third-party suppliers. It also helps customers in standardizing the part so that it can be mass-produced if needed.
As a competitive player on the bleeding edge of technology, Fast Radius aims to become the world’s premiere $100 billion cloud manufacturing and digital supply chain company. Aside from being a trusted supplier for many Fortune 500 companies, Fast Radius has also been recognized by the World Economic Forum as having some of the most advanced factories in the world. As such, by 2025, it is estimated that the company’s revenue will be as high as $635 million—more than 25 times their estimated revenue this year ($25 million).
From the above, i could see that this company has potential to grow in the following :
- Industry Agnostic – similar to Palantir
- Scalable operations – they run on cloud
- Network effect – the more customers use them, the more designs they can store, the more templates they can make . you know what i mean
- institutional confidence (e.g. palantir is a recent investor, colgate palmolive is their customer )
Next, i looked at their management team
https://www.fastradius.com/leadership/
Lou Rassey
CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Lou has a 20-plus-year career driving innovation in the manufacturing sector, and is a recognized leader on matters related to manufacturing, industrial innovation and competitiveness. Prior to Fast Radius, Lou was a Partner at McKinsey & Company where he co-led the firm’s global research and advisory efforts on the “Future of Manufacturing.” Lou has helped Fortune 100 executives, start-ups and government leaders in developing and executing strategies to compete in the digital industrial age. He also founded TRG, an industrial-tech-focused advisory and investment firm, and spent the first chapter of his career in engineering and manufacturing in the auto industry. He has an MBA and MS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT where he was a LFM Fellow, a MS from Michigan-Dearborn, and BS from Notre Dame.
Pat McCusker
CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER
Pat leads commercial and financial operations. Prior to Fast Radius, Pat was President, North America at InnerWorkings (NASDAQ: INWK), a technology-enabled marketing services firm. Prior to InnerWorkings, Pat was an Associate Partner with McKinsey & Company, where he served technology clients across a wide range of functions. Before McKinsey, Pat held cross-functional leadership roles at multiple early-stage growth companies. Pat holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA from the University of Notre Dame.
Bill King
CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF SCIENTIST
Bill is Chief Scientist at Fast Radius. Outside of Fast Radius, Dr. King is Professor and Andersen Chair in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was the founding Chief Technology Officer at the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute, one of the first national manufacturing institutes in the United States. He has authored 225 journal articles and 20 patents. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
John Nanry
CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF MANUFACTURING OFFICER
John is a co-founder at Fast Radius, and currently leads the Operations and Engineering teams. He brings to Fast Radius deep expertise in designing, building and executing production systems leveraging the latest digital technologies. Prior to Fast Radius, John led the Digital Manufacturing Practice for McKinsey & Company, where he helped clients navigate their digital transformations. John holds his BSE and MSE from the University of Michigan, and his MBA from Northwestern.
very impressive credentials from the four co-founders especially Bill King – he holds 20 patents ! They all have established , deep and myriad experiences in the digital manufacturing sector which reflects well on the company. Also, almost all of them have a common link – McKinsey & Company. This indicates a strong bond and working partnership between the co-founders. I’m quite impressed with this management team.
Currently this company is in the process of merging with a SPAC – $ENNV
ENNV counts on some of the world’s famous investors and hedge funds – Goldman Sachs, Citadel Advisors LLC etc…
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/ennv/institutional-holdings
Most importantly, the SPAC is currently USD 10 dollars ! Also, the RSI indicates increasing demand for the SPAC so far.
So far, this company has tick my boxes and i have invested about 5% into the SPAC. why 5%? Well this is part of risk management 🙂 I think with the global supply issues the world is facing right now, this company could be in the right place at the right time 🙂
Were you convinced by the use cases and would you invest as well? do write your comments below !