1. How are you funded?

Fiberforge is privately held and funded via earned revenue and equity finance from accredited investors.

2. Who are your investors?

Fiberforge investors include Rocky Mountain Institute, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Bill Joy.

3. What "Stage" are you?

Fiberforge received its first revenues in 2004 for product demonstrations and funded development work. In 2006 Fiberforge launched its first product family and is earning revenues from prototyping, niche production, equipment sales, and technology licensing.

4. Why advanced composites?

They represent the most logical alternative to steel and light metals for high volume manufactured structures. By taking advantage of advanced composites engineers can design parts that weigh half as much as they would in steel. While light metals, such as aluminum, offer weight savings, factors such as stiffness, corrosion resistance, and parts consolidation make advanced composites a better alternative to the incumbent in the industry, steel.

5. What is the volume your process is targeting?

The Fiberforge process was developed to tackle volumes higher than are possible with competing hand-made and automated processes. Typical applications are in the thousands per year. The process is scalable so volumes exceeding one hundred thousand per year will be possible in the near future.

6. Are you set up for high volume manufacturing?

Fiberforge has a 15,000 kg tailored blank capacity today and expects to add to this capacity over time either in-house or through manufacturing partnerships as the market need arises. Fiberforge can mold tailored blanks into finished parts in-house but is not set up for high volume manufacturing of this kind. Fiberforge's molding capacity is intended to support customer application development and short run needs.

7. What's your advantage over your competition?

• Immediate savings of materials via scrap reduction and increased part performance via tailored fiber alignment.

• Highly automated lay-up and potential for vertical integration (patent & TS protected) enables higher margins.