Katie Rae

Ten years ago today, I walked into the Bank of America in my hometown of Middletown, Rhode Island, opened a business account, and deposited $100. Thus began Lilac. At the time, I was living in my mom’s basement, with my wife and first son, having just finished my PhD in lithium ceramics. I had struggled to find work in the battery industry, which barely existed in the US at that point. But I was obsessed with helping this industry be successful, deeply convinced that the world needed batteries at a massive scale to solve climate and defund rogue states like Iran and Russia. So, I decided to get to work on the one thing the battery industry would need most: lithium. I was a young inexperienced outsider chasing a holy grail that most industry experts at the time told me was impossible. At the start, I knew nothing about mining, my engineering experience was mostly limited to esoteric quantum calculations, and I didn’t know anyone in Silicon Valley. What I did have was a strong thesis that I could build a team to solve the materials durability problem plaguing ion exchange ceramics and that this could enable a category-defining company in lithium extraction. After moving to San Francisco, I was so fortunate to connect early on with people like Amos Indranada, Nick Goldberg, Alex Gershanov, Garrett Lau, Alysia Lukito, Matthew Nordan, Dave Danielson, Clay Dumas, and a whole ecosystem of amazingly talented people in the Bay Area and across South America. Amos was my first hire. He was 19 years old, an engineering genius, and ten years later he’s still running our lab and pushing the envelope of performance and cost. It’s been a wild ride. After countless iterations, we’ve now got the technology scaled up and performing beyond our wildest imaginations. Still, the biggest inflection point is yet to come: commercial production. Our lithium brine project at the Great Salt Lake in Utah is set to double current US production while protecting the local environment and beating traditional hard rock mining on production cost. And we’ve got a massive pipeline of customer projects ready to scale globally. Thank you to everyone who has supported our team over this past decade and shared our vision for bringing advanced technology to the battery supply chain. Photo: running x-ray diffraction to validate materials synthesis in 2017

Foundation Alloy is currently building two of the first American production facilities for new alloys and specialty steels in more than a generation. Today we're announcing a $22M Series A financing led by Voyager Ventures to bring a new generation of metals to market at a time when industry is demanding better materials, greater supply resilience, and faster innovation. This funding allows us to begin to prove that vision by bringing new engineering alloys out of pilots and into real-world use. The year ahead: ✅ 100x increase in manufacturing capacity, including a 36,000 sqft Massachusetts facility and a second factory in New Hampshire ✅ Qualification and production deployment of our initial refractory alloys, specialty steels and stainless steels, as well as product expansion into nickel superalloys  ✅ 2x headcount growth across production, engineering, and commercial teams Thank you to our customers, team, and partners for all the work to reach this point. A special thanks to new members of the team Voyager Ventures, Trust Ventures, Kanematsu Corporation, and Overlap Holdings, as well as existing investors Yamaha Motor Ventures, America's Frontier Fund, Material Impact, Engine Ventures and El Cap. We’re hiring. Come build the metals layer of modern American industry: https://lnkd.in/d7Cewgki See our TechCrunch Exclusive here: https://lnkd.in/dRJuyt8f See our Press Release here: https://lnkd.in/dxfbWd3n

Big news at Teradar! We’ve been named the Best Automotive & Mobility Solution in this year’s Best of Sensors Awards at Sensors Converge. Our Chief Architect and Co‑Founder, Nicholas Saiz, accepted the award on behalf of the team, recognizing the engineers, scientists, and partners who are building a new category of long‑range, all‑weather sensing for the next era of vehicle safety and autonomy. Proud of what we’re building, and even more excited for what’s next. Check out the full results below👇: https://lnkd.in/eUGDeEuz 

𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐦𝐲 𝐝𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐫.  𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝟒𝟎 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬, 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐫 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐫. I have worked every single day since I was 14. But when life forced me to slow down, I could set my priorities straight. My daughter is graduating from high school this year. In August, she leaves for college in Spain. And I realized something when that hit me fully. I have only three months left with her. Three months before she boards a plane, falls in love with a Spaniard from Madrid, and I see her maybe two weeks a year for the rest of my life. So I made a decision that surprised even me. I told my husband: For the next three months, I need to spend more time with her.  I don't care if the perfect career opportunity calls tomorrow. That can wait. My daughter should not. Because the truth nobody tells you when you are deep in your career is: ↪ The milestones don't pause for your availability.  ↪ The last summer at home doesn't reschedule.  ↪ The last few months of her being just down the hall, raiding the fridge, rolling her eyes at me, have an expiration date. And it is coming fast. I have spent my life being available for work. I can be available to her for three months. What I didn't expect was what this pause has given me. ↳ I go for a run every morning now. Just because I can.  ↳ I am doing my family things without a calendar pulling me somewhere else.  ↳ I am present in a way I honestly forgot was possible. Is it uncertain? Yes.  Is it uncomfortable for someone who has always had a plan? Absolutely. But I keep coming back to this. Maybe this is exactly what the universe intended. Maybe it cleared my calendar not to stress me out, but to hand me something I would have otherwise missed entirely. Three months with my daughter.  Unhurried. Undistracted. Fully there. She is going to leave. She is going to build a life so big and so beautiful that it won't fit inside mine anymore. But before she does, I get to be her mom.  Not the busy one. Not the one on a call. Not the one who will be there in five minutes. Just her mom. Fully. For three months. I have built a career I am proud of. I have made decisions under pressure that I stand behind. I have sat in difficult rooms and held my ground. But nothing I have ever done will matter more than this. The resume will go on. The next chapter will come.  She will only leave home once. And I refuse to miss it. #Motherhood #WomenInLeadership #CFOLeadership #Leadership #WomenInFinance #LifeAndCareer

Appreciate being included in Business Insider's Seed 40 alongside so many people I genuinely admire. Apparently I've been dubbed "the Kevin Bacon of tech"... I can only assume it's the footwork. 💃 😆 The truth is, the founders we get to work with give us far more than we ever give them. I'm just grateful to be along for the ride. And a massive thank you to the Underscore VC team, who make this world go round, and make the going-round a lot more fun. And to our LPs, who make this all possible. (Now please excuse me while I go figure out my Bacon number). Thank you Melia Russell! Leena Rao Ben Bergman Sydney Bradley Tom Carter  Rosalie Chan Shubhangi Goel Robert Scammell Geoff Weiss Charles Rollet

Commissioning is nearing completion at our ion exchange media (IXM) manufacturing facility in Fernley, Nevada. The IXM is the active material in our process that enables us to economically extract lithium from a wide range of brine resources. Following mechanical completion earlier this year (https://lnkd.in/dwbPZr53), the team is now bringing equipment online and methodically commissioning each step of the process. Systems are tested, tuned, and integrated to ensure they perform safely, reliably, and to quality specifications before moving into sustained production. This facility is one of the ways Lilac is actively building U.S. lithium supply chain infrastructure, bringing U.S.-designed technology and domestic manufacturing to support lithium production here and globally. None of this happens without a strong on-site team. The Lilac Fernley team has been doing an outstanding job operating new equipment, working through early challenges, and maintaining a strong focus on safety while pushing toward startup. 🙌

Today, Blue Energy and GE Vernova announced a 2.5 GW collaboration aimed at changing how large-scale power gets built and advancing the world’s first gas-plus-nuclear power plant. Pairing GE Vernova’s gas turbines and their BWRX-300 small modular reactor enables us to deliver near-term electricity while working toward baseload nuclear generation. This proven energy technology can help us bring power online sooner and create a path to clean, reliable energy for decades to come. This ambitious approach to infrastructure will be essential to meet the rising demand from AI, expand energy capacity, and deploy power at the scale America needs. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/gjevTHgt

Today, Meta put a stake in a new answer for energy supply: Space Meta and Overview Energy just signed a capacity reservation agreement for up to 1 GW delivered from space to the grid, for data centers on Earth. We collect sunlight in orbit and beam it to existing solar on the ground so it can keep generating power after dark, and where it’s needed most. That kind of flexibility matters now more than ever. It’s part of how American energy leadership gets stronger with new, resilient sources of power. Deeply appreciate Meta moving early on where this is going. Read more in: Bloomberg: https://lnkd.in/g7P8Q6mG TechCrunch: https://lnkd.in/e4AhqmMh

Made the front page today of MIT News with our new book, Priority Technologies, which came out this week! https://lnkd.in/ejt9h-Kv With contributions from MIT colleagues, it provides an accessible deep dive on six technology areas where the US must and can lead - critical minerals, semiconductors, biomanufacturing, quantum computing, drones and advanced manufacturing. The importance of the entire innovation lifecycle - from R&D to scale up to commercialization - and the connection between innovation and industrial ecosystems - is made apparent across the chapters. A wide range of policy tools are needed, including a strong commitment to the US science and technology engine. Thank you to contributors Simon Johnson (who wrote the foreword), Elsa Olivetti, Jesus A. del Alamo, J. Christopher Love, Will Oliver, Jonathan Ruane and Fiona Murray