This year’s young entrepreneurs are increasingly focused on their startups’ social and environmental impact.
By Amy Feldman, Alan Ohnsman and Elisabeth Brier
Between wildfires, extreme heat and unusual flooding, this year felt like a climate change turning point. At the same time, artificial intelligence and machine learning have dominated the news as companies in all industries push to incorporate these new technologies and the Biden Administration looks to regulate them.
These two trends dominate this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Manufacturing & Industry. Young founders are increasingly designing new materials and products that are more sustainable for the long term. And they’re also incorporating robotics and AI-powered software into operations in warehouses and on the factory floor.
Our featured entrepreneur, Mark Ang, cofounded Toronto-based GoBolt, a logistics firm with an eye on sustainability. The company is looking to build out its delivery and warehousing services for commercial customers like Ikea with an entirely electric fleet. With more than $200 million in funding, GoBolt’s revenue should top $100 million this year.
A different approach to sustainability comes from Karen Baert and Tristan Gilbert, who founded Ammobia to produce low-cost green ammonia. The world currently produces around 175 million tons of ammonia each year, mostly for use as fertilizer, and its energy-intensive production produces massive volumes of greenhouse gas. San Francisco-based Ammobia has raised $5 million for its cleaner version.
Ammobia founders Tristan Gilbert (left) and Karen Baert
Ammobia
Even mundane processes like the management and disposal of excavated soil can be ripe for new ways of doing things. Adam Matyja and Kevin Goldberg started SoilFlo to develop software that could help construction and environmental firms track that soil to operate more efficiently and sustainably.
Covariant cofounder Rocky Duan
Covariant
Katherine Mizrahi Rodriguez, a Venezuelan immigrant with a Ph.D. in materials science from MIT, cofounded Osmoses to use a high-precision membrane to purify gas mixtures containing hydrogen, helium, methane and other high-value molecules at low cost and with reduced environmental impact. And Emily Molstad and Caleb Ralphs launched software startup Valis to improve the processing of scrap metals and maximize the recovery of metals for future demand. They’re targeting revenue of $4.5 million in 2024.
As for the new technologies, Rocky Duan, a former research scientist at Open AI with a Ph.D. from University of California Berkeley, cofounded Covariant to apply cutting-edge research to the hard problem of picking goods at warehouses. Investors that include Index Ventures, Radical Ventures and Temasek have poured $220 million into the company.
Even aerospace and defense, tough areas for startups, are seeing newcomers this year. Oluseun Taiwo started Solideon (formerly Additive Space Technologies) to change aerospace manufacturing with machine learning, collaborative robots and 3-D welding. And Ethan Thornton, an MIT dropout and recipient of the Thiel Fellowship, started Mach Industries to create better defense systems for the U.S. and its allies, fueled by hydrogen. In October, Mach closed a $79 million funding round led by Bedrock Capital at a valuation of $335 million.
Young entrepreneurs will find opportunities anywhere, and Joshua Church (with his cousin Rob Church, who is over 30) started Edge Theory Labs, which makes a sturdy and inflatable ice bath used by professional athletes and trainers across the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and Olympic Games to reduce inflammation and heal injuries. The Church cousins expect the bootstrapped firm to approach $10 million in revenue this year.
Solideon founder Oluseun Taiwo
Solideon
Over the past 13 years, Forbes has highlighted entrepreneurs, inventors and industry leaders on our annual 30 Under 30 Manufacturing & Industry list. To be considered for this year’s list, all candidates had to be 29 or younger as of December 31, 2023, and never before named to a 30 Under 30 North America, Asia or Europe list.
To find the very best, Forbes reporters Alan Ohnsman, Elisabeth Brier and I (helped by Forbes summer intern Isabel Bekele) combed through hundreds of nominations submitted online or generated by our own reporting. We then sent the top candidates to our team of expert judges to help us choose the final 30.
This year our judges were Lior Susan, founding partner of Eclipse VC; Randy Altschuler, cofounder and CEO of Xometry; and Honghao Deng, cofounder and CEO of Butlr and an alum of the 2022 Under 30 list in Manufacturing & Industry.
For a link to our complete 2024 Under 30 Manufacturing & Industry list, click here, and for full 30 Under 30 coverage, click here.
