Former Anduril engineer raises $42M for composite parts manufacturing

Zack Eakin tested his new startup idea with Palmer Luckey before pitching it to investors. Eakin left the defense company Anduril, founded by Luckey, in 2024 to launch a new composite materials venture called Layup Parts. Anduril founders Brian Schimpf and Matt Grimm provided advice on project strategy and storytelling. This short prep course paid off, reports Techcrunch.com reports .

Eakin, who raised an initial $9 million two years ago, announced on Tuesday that he had secured another $42 million in a Series A round. Led by Marlinspike, the round included participation from Cerberus Ventures, Pinegrove Venture Partners, as well as Founders Fund and Lux Capital. This is a significant amount for the Huntington Beach, California-based startup, which has only 60 employees.

The main goal of Layup Parts is to make the process of ordering custom carbon fiber or fiberglass parts as easy and fast as on the Amazon platform. Eakin has been working with composite materials for nearly two decades. He began his career at Chip Ganassi Racing and later became the first engineer at The Boring Company, founded by Elon Musk, in 2017.

While working at Anduril in 2021, Eakin noticed that industrial manufacturing was undergoing a revolution, but the composites sector was still lagging behind. Although startups like SendCutSend and Protolabs have drastically reduced lead times for prototypes, no such solution existed for complex composite parts. The new investments will be used to increase the startup's headcount and move to a larger production facility this year.