A startup co-founded by a University of New Mexico graduate, with offices in New Mexico and Colorado, recently raised more than $5 million to spur the development of a technology that aims to help scientists and engineers spend less time acquiring data and more time examining and learning from it.
Exum Instruments is a scientific equipment company that developed a tool to measure what solid materials are made of in four minutes.
The startup closed its $6.2 million Series A round in December and filed a $10.3 million Form D with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions in late March. The $10.3 million filing included Exum's Series A and notes that converted from previous rounds, Jeff Williams, founder, CEO and chief technical officer at Exum, told Colorado Inno, a sister publication to New Mexico Inno.
Exum's device, called the Massbox, can take any solid object and tell users what the item is made of. It can also pinpoint where each element from the periodic table is located on the object.
Traditionally, identifying elements and materials that make up a solid object was difficult, Williams said. Scientists would take a little piece off the object, adjust it in acid and run it through a million-dollar machine run by two Ph.D. chemists, he said.
"By contrast, with our machine, you can take this whole [object], put it in there and four minutes later, we'll tell you the whole periodic table — so basically, every part of the supply chain, from the raw materials to the finished products," Williams said. "We can do quality control, process control, material development and really understand what's there."
The Massbox also puts the chemistry of an object in context and shows users where each element is located.
The device doesn't have to be used in a lab, either. It can be used in a manufacturing facility or other industry floor and can be operated by a technician, engineer or other employee, rather than a chemist, Williams said.
In the three months since it closed its Series A, Exum has doubled the size of its team. The startup now employs 23 full-time workers and five contractors.
The majority of its employees — 13 people, including its mechanical engineering, applications, executive and product teams — are based in Colorado at the company's headquarters in Lakewood, a southwest suburb of Denver. Its other workers, such as software and electrical engineers, are based in Albuquerque.
Williams started Exum in 2017 while in school at the University of New Mexico, where he completed a master's degree in geochemistry. Exum was co-founded by Williams, Oleg Maltsev and others who have since left the company.
When it came time to raise funding, Williams thought it would be easier to secure capital in Colorado or a coastal city.
"New Mexico is not really known to be a place to raise money," he said. "… So, I decided to take a chance and move up to here and move part of the company up here and start raising money."
Exum has raised about $11 million to date, including a seed round and non-dilutive capital from a Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade grant and the federal Small Business Innovation Research program.
Exum kept a presence and office in Albuquerque due to the city's lower cost of living, as compared to Denver, and the talent in the area. Williams said Albuquerque is an "untapped" tech market.
"There are really talented people coming out of the universities down there and the national labs, as well as a lot of industry that's still down there," Williams said.
With its Series A capital, Exum plans to scale its marketing and sales efforts and continue hiring for its applications and sales teams. The startup also plans to increase its manufacturing and launch new products later this year.
Exum's valuation has grown by five times since raising its seed round in 2019, according to Williams.
Williams said Exum will begin raising a Series B round in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2025.
