Cambium has announced the successful conclusion of its Series A funding round, securing $19 million in investment. Leading the round is 8VC, with participation from Veteran Ventures, GSBackers, Marlinspike, MVP Ventures, Gaingels, Kern Venture Fund, Jackson Moses (Founder, Silent Ventures), Vertical Capital, and select angel investors. DLA Piper played a key role as legal counsel for Cambium during this transaction.

This substantial funding injection reflects Cambium's dedication to addressing crucial capability and supply chain gaps, supporting high-performance hardware requirements across land, air, sea, and space applications. The innovations developed by Cambium extend beyond the defense sector, reaching into industries such as commercial aerospace and renewable energy.

The Series A funding will empower Cambium to expand its workforce and research and development efforts, expedite the transition from discovery to field demonstrations, and facilitate pilot-scale manufacturing. These initiatives are set to accelerate the development of Cambium's product pipeline, with a focus on advancing next-generation Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) designed for both defense technology and commercial applications.

Cambium's TPS solutions aim to enhance the protection of hardware against extreme conditions, including heat, fire, rapid-heating impacts, and severe aerodynamic heating and pressure loads experienced during flight. The current TPSs face challenges of slow production and supply constraints, prompting Cambium to develop alternative TPSs that offer similar high thermal stability and mechanical strength but with more efficient manufacturing processes and a stable domestic supply chain.

Beyond product development, Cambium is actively contributing to the transformation of the defense industrial base, transitioning from large, complex, manned platforms to autonomous, networked systems. This shift encompasses emerging platforms like UAVs and hypersonics, as well as the imperative for lightweighting and improved fuel consumption across various platforms. Cambium's material solutions aim to make product manufacturing easier, faster, and more cost-effective.

Cambium's contractual engagements include BioMADE, where it serves as a prime contractor, and collaboration with the bio-manufacturing arm of the Department of Defense (DoD). This partnership drives the transition of bio-for-defense (B4D) products from laboratory settings to defense and commercial markets. Additionally, Cambium collaborates with the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division and the U.S. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering to develop high-performance biomaterials for integration into a wide array of defense and aerospace performance systems.

"The continuous advancement of next-generation hardware for air, land, sea, and space applications also demands continuous improvements in advanced materials and associated supply chains used to fabricate and protect these hardware," says Cambium co-founder and CEO Simon Waddington in a press release. "Cambium has closely collaborated with multiple arms of the US defense community and commercial innovators to build solutions to meet their ongoing requirements. The benefits of our vertically-integrated development approach, from computational material discovery through to production of advanced composite solutions, is designed for rapid innovation, production and deployment." 

According to Joe Lonsdale, Managing Partner, 8VC, “The rise of autonomous and software-defined systems makes the development of advanced materials that much more urgent. Cambium is a force multiplier for defense innovation, and we are proud to have supported their mission from the beginning.”