Hadrian founder and CEO Chris Power has raised $180 million to manufacture metal parts at warp speeds at his California factory. Now he wants to build dozens more across the country to make more parts better, faster and cheaper.
Power’s vision is somewhat different from other startups building tech to make other companies’ warehouses more efficient: He’s developed proprietary software to run Hadrian’s own factory, which allows it to churn out all types of precision metal parts for aerospace, space and defense companies faster, more efficiently and with fewer people.
Now he wants to build out a network of cookie-cutter, high-tech machine shops across the country to shake up a giant and fragmented industry. That’s a difficult and capital-intensive project, but one that Power argues is crucial for America’s industrial base. Investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Lux Capital, have bet $180 million on it, and the company is now worth roughly $500 million.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2024/08/15/this-high-tech-factory-makes-parts-for-rockets-and-fighter-jets-10-times-faster-hadrian-chris-power/
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Power’s vision is somewhat different from other startups building tech to make other companies’ warehouses more efficient: He’s developed proprietary software to run Hadrian’s own factory, which allows it to churn out all types of precision metal parts for aerospace, space and defense companies faster, more efficiently and with fewer people.
Now he wants to build out a network of cookie-cutter, high-tech machine shops across the country to shake up a giant and fragmented industry. That’s a difficult and capital-intensive project, but one that Power argues is crucial for America’s industrial base. Investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Lux Capital, have bet $180 million on it, and the company is now worth roughly $500 million.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2024/08/15/this-high-tech-factory-makes-parts-for-rockets-and-fighter-jets-10-times-faster-hadrian-chris-power/
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00If you look at the shape of the last 30 years geopolitically, it's pretty obvious that what
00:09happens in the rise and fall of great nations is that step one is great success, step two
00:14is hard industrial power, step three is outsource all the hard industrial power to lower cost
00:18countries and then step four is because you did that you lost what made the country powerful
00:24and strong in the first place and eventually that comes home to roost.
00:32You probably followed the stats that American manufacturing has actually declined in the
00:36past few years, it's actually stagnated and I think that's because they just hit a wall.
00:41There is no real productivity leap.
00:48There is no supercharged fuel underneath that will allow them to continue to grow.
00:53The old processes that were invented in the 1900s, the mid-1900s, just are done.
01:00You know, they just don't work.
01:02They've gotten out all they can get out of and now they've started to slide backwards.
01:09Los Angeles-based Hadrian has raised $180 million in venture funding to build out software-enabled
01:15factories for high-precision machine parts for aerospace and defense companies.
01:22It was a real like cultural paradigm shift that we realized was it's not about automating
01:28something because manufacturing people don't know what they're doing, it's just how do
01:31you get the knowledge out of their heads, systemize it, get it in software automation.
01:35That's really the trick.
01:44Hadrian's founder is Chris Power, he's a 33-year-old Australian immigrant.
01:49Australia's the best place to grow up or retire.
01:52Very rarely does anything big happen there, so personally it always felt like sitting
01:55at the kids' table at Christmas.
01:58It was pretty obvious that the U.S. is kind of the last great democratic experiment.
02:05In the next 50 years, it will be decided whether the CCP rules the world or it continues to
02:10be like a Western-led American order.
02:16Hadrian's big idea was to build its own software-enabled facilities, rather than selling software to
02:21existing ones.
02:23We're a company full of slightly insane people that believe in something slightly greater
02:29than themselves.
02:30We work with basically startups who are trying to develop new technology, either for space,
02:35the DoD, or deep tech in general.
02:38Neo-primes where they're starting to become these massive companies and need a lot of
02:42manufacturing support.
02:44So our job is to basically accelerate the new entrants while helping the legacy or massive
02:49entrants that are the pillars of this country's manufacturing base transform their operations
02:53with technology and services very, very, very quickly.
03:09Most automation is built around a very defined product, and automotive is probably the best
03:13parallel.
03:14So you have a production line making X type of cars or variations of cars, and you build
03:22automation in the highly repeatable task of where you're going to do the same thing over
03:26and over and over again.
03:30It works really well, even in a machining environment, when you're going to make a small
03:35subset of parts at a high rate.
03:39Where it tends to break is in introducing a mass amount of variability, and that's what
03:44our system was designed to go ingest.
03:47And so both with how we set up our process as well as how the automation is built is
03:53to try and take mass ambiguity and break it down into a set of standardized functions
03:59or tasks to make it digestible, to make it effective, and to really kind of give us a
04:06lot more of that variability management that you would typically struggle with.
04:13Chris Power first approached SpaceX employee Chris Baker back in 2021 with what seemed
04:19like a crazy idea.
04:22Chris originally reached out when I was managing the machine shops at SpaceX and had this wild
04:27idea that he wanted to automate the work I was doing in that factory.
04:31At the time it was an extremely chaotic environment and was proof to me that what he was trying
04:38to push was not going to work.
04:41I think you lose a lot of faith in the fact that this can be automated when you've been
04:46surrounded by the type of hardware that we have to manufacture and the amount of different
04:50variables both like human and just physics-based problems that the space is surrounded with.
04:57And you lose a lot of trust that you can really get down into each and every variable, standardize
05:03it and build a system that can be replicated without a ton of human intervention.
05:14Despite his original skepticism, Baker decided to join Power at his startup, named after
05:19the Roman emperor.
05:21Power, who is both relentless and charming, soon convinced investors to back his idea, too.
05:29Investing in Chris Power was a wonderful experience because he's one of those founders who's
05:35a true visionary.
05:37And he lights up, you know, not just a room but a whole market.
05:42He explains the need in terms of the supply going down, the demand going way up in such
05:50a way that if you didn't know you needed it, now you know you need it.
05:56Chris's very first principles will challenge every aspect of anything you're saying cannot
06:01happen and really gets you to question kind of your underlying philosophy of why am I
06:07against this?
06:08What is holding me back?
06:11And so I think it's an extremely aggressively helpful way of approaching what we're going
06:17and building and what we're going and doing.
06:19Because if you don't know at its core why it can't work, then you sure as hell better
06:25go figure it out.
06:32It's long been hard for manufacturers to find people who want to work there.
06:36You've got millions and millions of high skilled labor shortage that is going to get worse
06:41because people are retiring.
06:42So we could train 10,000, 100,000 people over the next couple of years.
06:48We can't train millions.
06:49So it's like, how are they 10x more effective with software and robotics?
06:53And then where is the pool of people that we can make manufacturing exciting for, give
06:57them a great career?
07:00One of our core mission statements is to make meaningful jobs for the American workforce.
07:05And I think it's one of the things we've done the strongest at.
07:08I think the majority of the tour and interview process is held out on the floor around equipment.
07:13And a core element is seeing how they engage, what type of questions they ask, how interested
07:18they are in the specifics versus it just being a job or something to collect a paycheck.
07:24It's really, where are the pools of people that have similar skills that we can draw
07:28from and bring them into this industry, whether it is high talent density, and that's retail
07:33hospitality, oil and gas, ex-military, nurses, really, really anybody who wants to, who is
07:41like able and willing to do.
07:46So we are down to a point where we can train and onboard anybody in like 30 days.
07:53And the first part of that is using software and robotics to make it a lot less complicated.
08:00And the other part is training and workforce development to enable the new people coming
08:04in to be successful and grow as fast as they can grow.
08:13The variety of people we have here is really cool.
08:15We have really like super smart people and equally smart people without the experience,
08:21people who, you know, this might be their first job.
08:24Some of us have that context and have a little bit of mechanical engineering and manufacturing
08:28background.
08:30Most people really don't.
08:31And so when we try to bring them in here, we're like, we kind of tell them like, hey,
08:34we're going to teach you all that.
08:35The thing that you need is to be interested.
08:38When I joined manufacturing, it was this dated thing that nobody wanted to be a part of.
08:45And I think we're building something that can change that dynamic.
08:48And so the entire kind of strength of the U.S. economy, the U.S. defense program is
08:54built on the ability to go build things internal to the U.S.
08:57And I think we have the ability to go scale that and we have the ability to get more people
09:01familiar and exposed in this environment and make them effective quickly.
09:11Hadrian's revenue reached an estimated $3 million last year, its first year of commercial
09:16operations.
09:17This year, Power figures it will grow tenfold to at least $30 million.
09:22After that, he has big plans to open additional factories around the country.
09:28So we invested in the summer of 2021 and the product was just being built at that time.
09:35So it has really gone from zero to exponential growth in that timeline.
09:40They've, you know, not only brought their product to life, they've built a factory around
09:45it now, put those CNC machines on their software platform and now have a wonderful set of customers,
09:51many of which are, of course, confidential, but are growing, growing really, really well
09:56and have supercharged demand in that space.
10:01In terms of where we were two years ago, what we thought could have possibly happened is
10:06we brought our expectations out of the water and the proof is really in what customers
10:10think and also like just how efficiently we're operating.
10:14We are 300 to 400% more efficient on how we utilize our capital equipment.
10:21Usually machines run 20% of the time, we are running at 79%, 80% so we can get more with
10:27less.
10:28Secondly, we are about 6 to 10x more efficient on a like workforce productivity basis.
10:35It's been four years since Chris and I really started talking and again, I started in this
10:42very, I can't believe you're trying to do that, good luck state.
10:46Today we're about 100,000 square feet.
10:48It's a relative size of where we'll build our next factory.
10:52As we bolt on different capabilities or really look to grow the size of the hardware we support,
10:57this is kind of the playbook we're trying to go build out and define for those future
11:02factories.
11:03But the ambition of the company is truly going to scale with us and so the amount of processes
11:09we support, what we're trying to do to really be a single source is really going to stress
11:14what that playbook looks like as we grow.
11:23The long-term vision is that we will do everything for everybody in core manufacturing for the
11:27US.
11:28Every six months or so we roll out one of those new product lines to customers to expand
11:32the capability of what we can do.
11:34So ultimately we will have 50 or so very large facilities specialized in each of those
11:41areas so customers can tap into any one of those services depending on what they're making.
11:46What all leaders should aspire to do is make yourself obsolete.
11:50I think the interesting thing about Hadrian is I have no line of sight or vision to being
11:55able to do that based on the ambition of scale and growth, how we develop the workforce,
12:01the amount of challenges in front of us both technically with people with just like infrastructure
12:06in the country is so impactful and large that I really don't know where the road ends.
12:15I think if we can look back in a decade, yes we're financially successful, but the test
12:21that I want to see is like a guy or a girl is like 17, they're deciding on what to do
12:25and they're like bragging to their friend at a bar that they got a job in manufacturing
12:30and they're really excited about it opposed to you know a software engineering job and
12:33a finance job.
12:34If we can make that cultural shift, that is the biggest thing because everything is downstream
12:39from that.