We know the best startups move fast, but not all of them make major customer progress, raise their first VC round, double their team, and plan a 3x facility expansion — all in one year. Yet that’s exactly what Perseus Materials has achieved since JEC World 2025.
As you may recall, this U.S. startup won the Startup Booster competition in the Process, Manufacturing & Equipment category. The recognition validated the commercial potential of its technology, which is particularly well suited for manufacturing large parts.
We caught up with its CEO, Dan Lee, for a laydown of the key milestones the startup reached in the last few months, and where they’re headed next.
Sesamers: How would you briefly describe what your technology does?
Dan Lee: The synthetic nature of the resins we use in composite materials is a key, but underutilized lever. With advanced polymer chemistry, we manipulate resin curing behavior to unlock new concepts in composite manufacturing that seem unthinkable today.
Sesamers: Can you share a concrete example of how it can be used?
DL: We’re developing a whole suite of Continuous Sweep Additive Forming processes that are enabled by our resin chemistry. The first one is akin to continuous molding in which we take fabric wetted with resins and pull it through a plane of actuators that shape and cure the part simultaneously. We’ve been working on it for years but seeing it is still magical to us — imagine pulling a sword out of a hat, but infinitely long, sideways, and >1 meter wide.
We’re in the process of developing our first customer contract; stay tuned!
Sesamers: How did winning the JEC Startup Booster change your business?
DL: Everyone in our industry knows JEC, and the credibility from winning the Startup Booster accelerates every conversation from skepticism to interest. But more than that, it helps our team push forward and push fast.
As founders, we live in our own reality distortion field; and winning JEC Startup Booster felt like validation of the problem we’re solving and our mission. We grind every day to make our solutions better. Though not every day is easy, the vote of confidence from industry leaders sustains us.
Sesamers: What are the most significant milestones you’ve hit since winning? Any surprises?
DL: We hit critical milestones in developing customer contracts, raised our first round of venture capital, grew the team from 3 to 6, and are planning to move from our 400 sq meter R&D facility to a 1,400 sq meter production facility!
Sesamers: What’s your top priority for 2026?
DL: To deliver on our first customer contract!
Sesamers: What’s the one thing you wish you’d known about the composites industry before starting?
DL: There’s an incredible body of work on everything from resin chemistry to micromechanics and failure analysis, from residual stress modeling to impermeable coatings. All these perspectives on composites make it a fascinating but difficult-to-penetrate industry. You have to learn how each different player searches, contributes to, and speaks about problems and solutions. Not only does that help you align better with your ultimate customer, it also informs how your business model should be developed.
Note: This article is part of a commercial collaboration between JEC and Sesamers. Our team retained full editorial control over the questions and final content.