Former Anduril Engineer Raises $42 Million to Create a Marketplace for Composite Manufacturing

Before successfully pitching investors on his latest startup, Zack Eakin first tested his ideas on some of the people who helped shape one of the defence industry’s most prominent startups.

After leaving Anduril Industries in 2024 to launch a composites-focused company called Layup Parts, Eakin sought advice from Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey as well as fellow co-founders Brian Schimpf and Matt Grimm.

According to Eakin, each provided a different perspective. Grimm helped refine how the company should be presented to venture capital firms; Schimpf challenged him on strategic direction; and Luckey offered guidance on storytelling and fundraising.

The preparation appears to have paid off. After raising a $9 million seed round two years ago, Layup Parts announced Tuesday that it has secured an additional $42 million in Series A financing. The round was led by Marlinspike, a dual-use technology investment fund, with participation from new investors Cerberus Ventures and Pinegrove Venture Partners, as well as existing backers Founders Fund and Lux Capital.

The funding represents a substantial raise for the startup, which currently employs approximately 60 people and operates from Huntington Beach. Eakin said a significant portion of the new capital will be invested in expanding the workforce and moving the company into a larger facility later this year.

Layup Parts aims to simplify the process of ordering custom carbon fibre and fibreglass components, with Eakin envisioning a future where purchasing specialised composite parts is as straightforward as shopping on Amazon.

Eakin’s experience with composite materials stretches back nearly two decades. Before founding Layup Parts, he built a career working extensively with advanced materials in motorsports. He began his professional engineering career at Chip Ganassi Racing, where he worked on carbon-fibre structures and body panels, particularly for the team’s IndyCar programs and the unconventional DeltaWing prototype race car.

In 2017, Eakin briefly shifted industries, becoming the first engineer hired at The Boring Company, founded by Elon Musk. By 2021, however, he returned to the composites field when he joined Anduril.

It was during his time at Anduril that Eakin recognised a major gap in the manufacturing market. While sectors such as metal fabrication had been transformed by companies like SendCutSend and Protolabs, which significantly reduced the time and cost of prototyping and producing components, the composites industry had not experienced a similar evolution.

“It just kind of dawned on me that, like, all these other manufacturing verticals are getting better, [and] we are struggling to find people to make our composite parts for us,” Eakin said. “Why is there nobody trying to make this better?”

The answer, according to Eakin, lies in the complexity of composite manufacturing. Producing carbon-fibre and fibreglass components often requires substantial manual labour and specialised expertise. In addition, consolidation within the industry has left fewer companies willing to experiment with new technologies and business models.

Eakin also believes that many traditional composite manufacturers lack the software engineering capabilities needed to modernise their operations and automate large portions of their workflows.

“If we have stock materials and you have a good understanding of those materials, we can build software that has an order of magnitude reduction in the amount of clicking it takes for an engineer to produce those — and ultimately gets to zero clicks, where it just takes customer data and poops out shapes,” he said with a smile.

That realisation convinced Eakin that creating a completely new company was the best way to address the problem. He viewed the challenge as an opportunity not only to improve manufacturing but also to strengthen supply chains for companies like Anduril.

“I just decided this might be the best thing I can do for Anduril: to go fix this part of the supply chain, because I don’t think it’s just an Anduril problem,” he said.

Since its founding two years ago, Layup Parts has rapidly expanded its customer base. The company now prototypes and manufactures components for organisations across several industries, including motorsports teams, automotive design studios building show vehicles, and even pickleball paddle manufacturers.

According to Eakin, the company has already reduced the time required to move from receiving customer design data to producing finished parts from several weeks to just hours in certain cases.

The largest sources of demand currently come from the aerospace and defence industries. Those customers include both emerging startups and established defence contractors.

Investor interest reflects the opportunity the company is pursuing. Lead investor Marlinspike already backs Anduril and several manufacturing businesses serving defence markets. Meanwhile, Cerberus Ventures was founded in 2023 by Chris Darby, who previously spent nearly two decades leading the CIA-backed investment organisation In-Q-Tel.

Although Eakin credits Anduril and its leadership team with helping shape his entrepreneurial journey, he also points to lessons learned during his time at The Boring Company. Even though he was not working directly with composites there, he says many of the engineering principles still apply to startup building.

Working at The Boring Company exposed him to first-principles engineering, an approach he compares to the problem-solving methods commonly used in racing and motorsports.

“Elon has a very high sense of urgency, so as much as it was a new type of thing to make, it felt familiar with the crazy deadlines and just developing stuff as fast as you can,” Eakin said.

With fresh funding, a growing customer base, and plans to expand both its workforce and facilities, Layup Parts is positioning itself to modernise one of manufacturing’s most specialised sectors by making custom composite production faster, more scalable, and significantly easier to access.