Skuld LLC

What they do & why the LACI Cleantech Debt Fund invested

Named after a Norse goddess of the future, Skuld’s mission is to make metal parts in an environmentally friendly and efficient manner, in an effort to save time, money, and the planet. Co-founder and CEO Sarah Jordan grew up around manufacturing (her dad was a ceramics engineer), interning at steel mills and foundries in her youth.

Sarah and Co-founder and CTO Mark DeBruin are adapting 3D printing processes to make metal manufacturing quicker and cheaper.
Tooling—making components needed in production—can be expensive. To eliminate tooling, Skuld’s process improves on existing “lost foam casting” methods with a type of 3D printing called “additive manufacturing evaporative casting” (AMEC) that uses renewable printing materials.

“We basically make parts and tooling for different shapes and build equipment so others can use the process,” Sarah says.

Skuld works with diverse clients, including the aerospace and medical industries, the U.S. Marine Corps, as well as machine shops.

Skuld came to the LACI Cleantech Debt Fund through the BRITE Energy Innovators incubator program, which Sarah credits for helping Skuld win The Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network’s Mspire pitch competition in 2022. Managed by Mission Driven Finance, the LACI Cleantech Debt Fund invests in companies working on solving challenges related to climate change.

Capital from the Fund will enable Skuld to pay for the installation of furnaces capable of producing higher-temperature metals, such as iron, steel, and nickel.

Skuld has won the Small Business Administration’s Small Business Innovation Research grant awards and is also an alum of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Crossroads Innovation fellowship and the Spark Cleantech Accelerator at the University of Tennessee.