Quick Summary
• Collaboration between emerging technology enterprises and research universities is one of the most consistently winning tactics for any nation building (or rebuilding) an industrial ecosystem. It’s an especially constructive approach...
Additional Context
Collaboration between emerging technology enterprises and research universities is one of the most consistently winning tactics for any nation building (or rebuilding) an industrial ecosystem. It’s an especially constructive approach in a handful of nations, including the US, with the highest concentrations of both viable deep-tech startups and world-class academic institutions.
Fabric8Labs and the University of Illinois (UI) have just announced a textbook example of this kind of work, leveraging Fabric8Labs’ electrochemical additive manufacturing (ECAM) process to produce direct-to-chip (D2C) copper cold plates for data center thermal management. As we pointed out at AM Research in our 2025 report on AM for the data center market—a report which includes coverage of Fabric8Labs—the rising