Zack Eakin, a former lead engineer at the defence technology firm Anduril, has secured $42 million in Series A funding for his startup, Layup Parts, to digitise the production of composite materials. The Huntington Beach-based company announced the investment on Tuesday, 2 June 2026, with the round led by Marlinspike and supported by Cerberus Ventures, Pinegrove Venture Partners, and existing backers Founders Fund and Lux Capital.
The capital injection brings the startup’s total funding to $51 million, following a $9 million seed round raised two years ago. Layup Parts intends to use the fresh funds to increase its headcount from approximately 60 employees and move into a larger facility later this year. While the seed stage focused on capital expenditures, the Series A will primarily fund the recruitment of technical talent to scale the company’s software platform.
Zack Eakin founded the company in 2024 after identifying a significant bottleneck in the global supply chain for carbon fibre and fiberglass components. While industrial fabrication for other materials has been transformed by digital platforms, the composites sector remains fragmented and reliant on manual processes. Layup Parts aims to streamline this by creating a “zero-click” solution for ordering custom industrial parts.
Software-driven efficiency in composite manufacturing
Composite materials like carbon fibre are notoriously difficult to manufacture because the process requires high levels of manual intervention and precise curing cycles. Zack Eakin noted that larger, established firms often lack the software expertise to innovate, choosing instead to protect reliable but outdated revenue streams. This has left engineers struggling to source high-quality parts without weeks of delay.
Layup Parts addresses this through proprietary software that translates customer data directly into manufacturing shapes. By automating the design-to-production pipeline, the company has successfully reduced lead times from several weeks to just a few hours in some cases. This level of industrial connectivity allows for a more responsive supply chain tailored to fast-moving sectors.
The startup operates as a marketplace, matching design files with appropriate materials and manufacturing partners through its technical infrastructure. This model ensures uniform production standards across a global network. It mirrors wider efforts where AI systems are solving scarcity by optimising resource allocation and reducing human-induced errors in high-precision engineering.
Zack Eakin applies lessons from The Boring Company and Anduril
The development of Layup Parts is grounded in Zack Eakin’s two decades of experience with advanced materials. He began his professional career at Chip Ganassi Racing, where he worked on carbon-fibre structures for IndyCar and the DeltaWing prototype. In 2017, he became the first engineer at Elon Musk’s The Boring Company, an experience he says instilled a high sense of urgency and first-principles engineering.
By 2021, Zack Eakin joined Anduril, where he returned to composite fabrication for defence applications. It was during his time digging tunnels and building drones that he realised the manufacturing sector was failing to provide a streamlined solution for high-performance materials. He left Anduril in 2024 to solve what he describes as an industry-wide supply chain crisis.
Before approaching venture capitalists, Zack Eakin workshopped his pitch with Anduril’s leadership, including Palmer Luckey, CEO Brian Schimpf, and Matt Grimm. This mentorship helped focus the company’s dual-use strategy. The involvements of Marlinspike and Cerberus Ventures—the latter founded by former In-Q-Tel head Chris Darby—underscore the startup’s strategic role in national security and aerospace industries.
Expanding output beyond the defence sector
While aerospace and defence are the company’s largest business lines, Layup Parts already services a diverse range of industries. Its current client list includes motorsports teams, design studios producing show cars, and even companies manufacturing pickleball paddles. The software-first approach allows the Huntington Beach facility to handle both unique prototypes and wider production runs with equal efficiency.
The move to a larger facility in 2026 will allow the team to refine its quality control and data management systems. Zack Eakin remains focused on the goal of making custom composite ordering as simple as a transaction on Amazon. He views the startup not just as a commercial venture, but as a necessary infrastructure fix for any firm building hardware at scale.
As industrial clusters in Africa and other emerging markets look to upgrade their manufacturing capabilities, the shift towards software-defined production offers a clear blueprint. By digitising the most complex parts of the fabrication process, companies like Layup Parts are lowering the barrier to entry for high-stakes engineering projects globally.
