A Berkeley startup is using non-metal materials to design lightweight, high-performance products for an array of industries from footwear to aerospace, and the company has fresh funding to ramp up production and new product lines.
Arris Composites uses materials like carbon fiber, glass fiber and flax fiber in conjunction with various types of polymers to design sustainable composite materials that can be manufactured at scale but don't compromise on quality.
CEO Riley Reese co-founded Arris Composites with Erick Davidson and Ethan Escowitz in 2017. Reese studied materials science at UC Berkeley and had initially considered working in the medical industry but the regulations were onerous.
Before founding Arris, Reese worked with 3D-printed composite materials at Arevo, a startup he co-founded in 2013, and then worked briefly at TNO, a Dutch company where he led a 3D printing team.
The Arris team started out by researching materials for consumer electronics and wearables, and over the past several years, it has expanded its research into other industries including footwear, bicycles, aerospace and automotive.
"Our mission is to deliver stronger, lighter and more sustainable products across industries. Composites have been relegated to aerospace and high-end sporting goods," Reese told me. "We're bringing it into the mainstream, and we're doing it in a in a much more sustainable way than others have tried in the past."
The company calls its process "additive molding," a type of additive manufacturing which uses molds and aligns fibers along stress lines to create strong, lightweight products.
And it says its products can mimic the look and feel of metal while outperforming it.
"We have ways in which you can get metal-like finishes," Reese said, but due to their manufacturing process, "you can actually see the fibers and the way that they're oriented, and it gives you this more natural look. And the stiffness or the feel of it is stronger than metal."
In 2020, Arris opened a wholly owned manufacturing facility in Taiwan, which is producing products for footwear, consumer electronics and bicycles.
The company also has a combined office and manufacturing facility in Berkeley, and will add additional domestic facilities in the future so it can expand into defense contracting.
Arris also partnered with footwear brand Brooks in 2021 to design a carbon fiber foot plate for its running shoes, which have been tested by marathon runners. That shoe will commercially launch in the first half of 2024, and Arris is developing more footwear products for other activities including trail running, soccer, basketball, golf and athleisure.
Arris has raised around $159 million, including a fresh $30 million in a Series C extension which will fuel its manufacturing capabilities and allow the company to deploy full scale production. The new funding round hasn't close, though, and the final amount could increase, the company said.
Investors in the most recent round include XN, Zebra Technologies, Standard Industries, Taiwania, MVP and NEA, the company confirmed to Bay Area Inno.
Arris declined to confirm the company's headcount and how long it will take the company to reach profitability.
