Free Form founder on bringing SpaceX-speed manufacturing culture to AI-enabled metal 3D printing

point. When you do 20 interviews a week, uh you can you can create a market map pretty quickly. You can churn through. We are the market map. We are the market map. America is our market map. Well, let's bring him in. Eric, how you doing? Welcome to the stream. Doing great. Thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah, thanks for thanks for hopping on. Um, would you mind kicking us off with a little introduction on yourself and the company? Absolutely. Uh, so, uh, Eric Balich, CEO, founder of Free Form. Uh, we do, you know, really we're bringing AI to metal 3D printing. My background was early employee at SpaceX.

Worked there for over 10 years. I ran the Merlin engine program for Falcon 9 and the Raptor program for Starship and kind of saw the potential of 3D printing, metal 3D printing firsthand. Um, and then left to go and and and actually drive it into, you know, industrial commercial use. Yeah.

Uh so uh I'm assuming you were a key player in ma in in transitioning the sort of uh engine from this like you know crazy blob you know we'll try to pull the image up on the screen.

Uh was 3D I I imagine was was 3D printing you know part of of how you guys were were iterating or were you not able to leverage the tech that that you guys have now? Yeah.

No, it was I think the the thing that I saw was the enabling you know potential of 3D printing but how slow and crappy it was to be honest like we were doing things with Raptor that you know we were inventing we were we were you know innovating in the rocket space for the first time in decades truly people think rockets are super um complicated but really the technology hasn't changed much in a long time then this manufacturing technology comes along that allows you to control physics in a different Hey, I mean true true if you look at the way you make metal things um really there haven't been these new disruptive technologies in a really really long time.

So you know printing enabled Raptor which I would argue is the mo one of the most amazing um and high performant rocket engines ever in the history of humanity. Yeah. Can you talk about how metal 3D printing actually works?

I think I'm I'm familiar with uh like kind of consumer level 3D printing and that makes sense to me. You melt some filament and it's basically melted plastic through a metal nozzle. If you're melting metal, doesn't that melt the nozzle? How does this all work? So, we use lasers uh to melt metal powder layer by layer.

Okay. And so you think of it, you're just slowly building, you know, layer upon layer upon layer of uh you put a layer of metal powder out and use a laser to kind of selectively melt where you want and then do that again and again and again. Yep. Yep.

And then uh how do you think about the decision to uh manufacture a part using subtractive manufacturing versus additive manufacturing?

I'm sure, you know, you're obviously very bullish on 3D printing, but there must be limits and things that you say, "Hey, we're not just going to go 3D print a whole bunch of like rebar because we can just we can just mold that or something. " I don't know how it No, that that's exactly right.

I mean, I think one of the things that sets Free Form apart from um I I think really every other 3D printing metal printing company out there is we aren't developing the technology because we think it's cool. You know, we're not pushing for 3D printing because, you know, it's cool.

We don't print pencil holder, you know, bottle openers, pens and pencils. We just don't do that stuff because frankly like people don't care. The to get to your question specifically, it's like what is it actually good at? What is the value proposition of the technology?

And and it's truthfully today amazing for very complex geometries, very complicated things. Um, and we're very candid with customers about should you machine it, you know, subtractively make it or should you print it.

you know what we're doing is enabling um the the next you know the we've built the fastest highest volume metal printing platform on the planet. Um we have it here in Hawthorne. We're about a/4 mile from SpaceX.

Um you know I would then say we we you know our primary customers are some of the you know most exciting and innovative aerospace and defense companies out there without naming any specific ones name.

Um, and you know, we're right down the street and you know, our our take on it was to commercialize the technology, we need to be able to do high volume, you know, and then by doing high volume, then we can bring the price down, you know, um, and and that was the thesis actually was got to do a lot of volume and and bring the price down.

Can you talk about uh your business model? Are you selling the finished product or are you selling the machine? Uh, or are you thinking about that in in kind of different stages? Because I imagine in the future like a end customer would just have one of your devices and and they could operate it themselves.

Is that where you're going? Yeah. Uh no. So that's a great question. The business model is we just provide turnkey parts. So we actually handle everything. Um we print them if it needs post machining, it needs holes reamed, it needs surfaces turned, we do all of that um inhouse.

all the metrology, you know, we'll do CMM inspections, high-res 3D scanning, anything the customer needs. We, you know, the whole thing, the industry is really complicated and fractured.

And so when we went out, you know, six, seven years ago and started figuring out, hey, what is the right business model in the space, I kept my my head, my brain kept going back to and and by the way, I worked directly with Elon for my entire career at SpaceX.

So this first principles kind of thinking that everybody says they do, I feel like I was indoctrinated in the actual school of it, you know, by him. Um, you know, but I kept thinking like, man, you know, we're melting stuff with a laser and it, you know, we care about single-digit microns of of precision.

This isn't, you know, traditional metal manufacturing. Like this isn't a CNC machine. So customers, you know, why are they so unhappy with the space? And and when they buy a machine, why are they disappointed? because they don't know how to use it.

It's so it's more akin to like semiconductor fabrication than like subtractive manu you know metal manufacturing. So we said we need to own all of it then and to to answer the question. Yeah, that makes sense.

Uh what what is uh you don't have to go into super explicit detail but I'm curious how you think about you know margins. A lot of uh V, you know, traditional software VCs have have sort of been chirping on X over the last couple years.

Hey, you're putting hundreds of millions of dollars into these manufacturing businesses, assuming they're going to have, you know, uh software margins and that that hasn't been the case historically.

Are you guys getting so efficient that that you can achieve kind of greater margin profiles or is it just about sort of scale? Absolutely. I mean, that's exactly where we're at today. Our margins are fantastic. Um and the technology is fundamentally new and enabling which means you know I get that question a lot.

It's like well even if you can charge higher margins now isn't this a race to the bottom? The answer is um you know that that is true over a long time scale for any industry right anything that gets commoditized over 50 or 100 years and highly optimized it it ultimately becomes a race to the bottom.

The question is how long and the technology that we've developed and the capabilities that we have um are enabling new products new they're enabling innovation in in industries that are you know we're providing the tools that people are truly like innovating uh on the design and and and and integration fronts.

So um and performance and so you know I think um uh as long as we continue to stay at the front of that and the techn is getting better every day. when I say, you know, I don't love to to use AI buzzwords, but we that is what we're doing.

We're we're bringing like AI to to to to 3D printing such that the next part coming off the platform is even better than the last one.

And and so, you know, because of that and the process is constantly getting better and we're coming up with new materials and new features and new functionality, then, you know, I think I can make the argument that the margins will stay high for a very long time.

Um and and especially when you start looking at the the places where, you know, we've developed technology that fundamentally unlocks the ability to develop new materials, you know.

So now we own the material, we have the the technology to actually leverage it and then it enables something important, you know, maybe in the semiconductor space or in the in, you know, the rocket space or even the automotive space. Yeah. Yeah. in that in that new materials.

I mean, I've I've talked to some people who do the subtractive manufacturing with CNC and there's like different types of aluminum, different alloys. Like, is that something you're already uh doing? And do you just handle that for your customer? Are you testing different uh like alloys?

Is that how you think about that or or what do you mean when you mean new materials? Yeah, our business model today is not yet de truly development of new materials. Okay. Um that it's we've done some of that.

We work with a another very large well-known customer that I would say is in the general broad family of customers that you know we won't mention specifically that um we've been working with them on development of some new alloys that enable you know I think um some pretty cool things for them and uh but that's like not that's more of a one-off today.

It's it's the the reason why they're interested in working with us on this is because we've developed the sensing and compute platform and have the the data sets and the the sensors to actually uh engineer and develop the materials at the metallergical level that no other printing company has.

I mean, you know, Free Form is uh really it's it's in the 3D printing space, you know, we're we're like SpaceX, you know, the the the the mindset of um of those organizations and talent of those organizations.

you know, the metal manufacturing market has generally been viewed as this kind of like stagnant I dimly lit, rusty, you know, oily machine shop.

Um, so we had to go out and find, you know, like rocket scientists to develop the technology, you know, to be able to do this, you know, and that's one of the reasons why like Nvidia made a a substantial investment in us recently is they saw what we were doing on the compute and data side and they want to be a part of it.

What are the different vectors of optimization in metallurgy?

I imagine cost and weight and strength are important in space but like is electrical conductivity important like what else is important uh to think about when you're thinking about the material either that you're selecting or eventually uh kind of building from first principles absolutely it depends on the application you know um it for for example like uh heat exchangers you know metal printing is very good today even at high cost if for a conventional like other shops or or if you're buying the conventional machine, um it's very good at very very complicated geometries that you either can't make any other way or they're, you know, prohibitively expensive or difficult to make any other way.

And those do generally fall in a couple categories. They're like fluid components or heat exchangers, things that you know, thermal uh devices. Um and so in in an application like that, you care a lot about, you know, the thermal performance of the material.

In other cases, you might be putting parts inside a gas turbine engine. This is another typical application for 3D printed parts. And in that case, you want something that's like strong when it gets hot, you know. Um, so there are it really does depend on, you know, the application.

And I think the the thing for us is we actually have the platform and the feedback and the analytics to be able to close the loop on whatever the particular, you know, uh, uh, feature of the material or application that you need. Yeah. You I mean you mentioned uh putting a 3D printed part in a gas turbine engine.

We've been hearing that uh China's been having a lot of trouble manufacturing planes to compete with Boeing specifically jet engines. Yeah. Why is a jet engine so hard? Can you just 3D print 3D print it at some point? I mean I imagine that like China is Why is it so hard, Eric?

Why did it take you 10 years to figure out how to do like can't you just like put the like scan the 747 and then print the 747? It's a It's a copy machine. That's what you're Exactly. Exactly. Someday. Yes.

That I mean, you know, the the vision for us at Free Form has always been um to take the you know, the complexity out of it and to provide a you know, a a lights out a truly everybody says automated factories, you know, to provide a lights out factory that is truly automated.

The unique thing about metal printing is this is actually possible. CNC machining and other subtractive methods that there's no way to do to truly do that. Um there's just there they're there just today there is not um printing we're already entirely digital.

It's like take a digital file the machine doesn't care what you're printing it just prints it you know and then automating the rest of that. And then you mentioned China. So obviously the joke about why are gas turbines hard you know I don't think gas turbines are hard. I think rocket engines are harder.

Um gas turbines you know are easier in a lot of ways.

Um but the the you know China is a good example where you know I get quite frustrated that you know we are we are a a manufacturing technology company that is developing capability that is not only going to affect and improve the lives of of people uh in general but also is critically important to our national security as a country.

Um and you know China is investing in the 3D printing space. um they are building you know huge factories full of these conventional machines. They don't have our technology. They don't have the ability to you know they can go make 100 laser whatever number laser machines. Those parts are still junk.

Um and you know we are developing this in the US for the US. Uh we obviously do quite a bit of defense work and it does get frustrating.

You mentioned China and it's like I had to put my plug in of you know it's frustrating that I do feel companies like ours there was a question earlier about software margins and businesses and VC stuff you know yeah we're not a software business but then the interesting thing about free form is it's where the bits and the atoms um are combined which I think makes us even more interesting you know you want your 5,000x 10,000x 20,000x company you get it at a company like this at at free form you know you're not going to get that can you talk about some of the stress of of working with space companies.

I imagine like, you know, you guys aren't doing launches yourselves anymore.

You're probably more relaxed than you were when you were at SpaceX, but at the same time, I'm sure you get, you know, a call or an email now and then being like, "Hey, we need this by, you know, uh, Sunday night at this, you know, specific time because we're going to space.

" uh you know what's it like kind of like working you know with with end customers around that type of business? No, that's also a great question. Uh the you know truthfully I'm probably more stressed now than I was when I was sitting face to face with Elon three times a week.

Um because because I feel like the the scope of what I focus on today is um I don't know actually I can't I don't the scope of what I focused on there was like I kind of knew you know where I was here it's like all over the you know top to bottom you know everything kind of ultimately falls on me uh in some capacity the but it is stressful we get this with exactly what you just said all the time you know we get a call from customer X that says, uh, hey, guess what?

We tried to get these somewhere else. This supplier let us down. You know, can you guys hook us up and get these done by Sunday? Um, that can definitely be stressful. I think also, you know, the nature of a startup, especially one with as many moving parts as we have.

You know, I think you'd be hardressed to find a company that's more vertically integrated than us truly and does as much as we do in house. Um, you know, with such a small number of people actually today still. Yeah, you know, we're building the plane while we're flying it.

So, you know, at the end of the day, um, we deliver on time and we've started to build a reputation and and, you know, if you will, like a brand with these important customers that they come to us when they want their problem solved. You know, they come to us with the hard stuff.

Um, and and when they they can rely on us and we do everything we can to make sure we deliver on, you know, before promise and better be, you know, exceed expectations. Yeah. Do you do you uh do you feel like you have an edge?

Uh I I imagine a lot of your competitors are, you know, family kind of multigenerational companies andor private equity owned and like I just feel like you're clearly in a very different you know mindset right of like you know uh to to to say the the meme but like founder mode like we need to overd deliver.

We need to constantly be faster like it's not enough to respond to a customer in two hours. We need to respond in 30 minutes max. Like that kind of thing.

is that um you know I think uh we've heard about uh uh from various uh founders on the show that you know when they email somebody in China even if it's 2 am for them they respond instantly in America they might get a response two weeks later and it's like fill out this form.

So talk about kind of like bringing that sort of like mentality that you have to um to this industry 100%. So I feel that we have an unfair advantage um for a bunch of reasons. I think I was raised in the school of SpaceX. You know 2005 um you know early on there were there were 50 people um 60 people.

I was there until there were 10,000 people. Um and you know I think that that the things that I learned that that are just second nature to me of immediate you know you do it now. Call people on the phone. This is something that's been lost. um you know over the last several years and I and I and I do see it.

You know we hire you know we're hiring we interview all the time. This has gotten lost. Um but that is something that we have that I don't think the rest of the 3D printing space you know the industry has. You know we don't advertise a lot.

In fact we very intentionally do not align ourselves with the traditional metal printing. You know I'm not trying to alienate anyone but you know we're just I don't even want to be compared because it's not even fair.

um we have done so much more and moved so much faster with so much less money than the rest of the whole industry and there there's just so much noise and I just don't I don't I don't play that game. Um I'm like come see it for yourself if you want to see us printing parts super fast.

You're welcome to come over and and actually see it. I'm not going to put put together some pretty marketing stuff and you know like just do it. So I I do think you're you're entirely right like the mentality is everything.

Culture of the company and and the way that you enforce that culture and reinforce that culture is is is very important. Can we zoom out a little bit and talk about the 3D printing industry broadly and where and where you think it's going even at a consumer level?

I feel like 10 years ago, uh, there was this sense or at least like, you know, 3D printing companies were promising, hey, like you're not even going to have to order that toy because you're just going to have a 3D printer in your home that just sort of like prints it on the fly. And I and that clearly hasn't happened.

Yep. Um, and it was a good fundraising narrative, but I'm I'm curious as somebody who's doing this all day long again in a specific niche, but I'm curious how you think uh about the industry evolving over time and and consumer use cases. Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think like I had plastic printers, too, you know.

Um, before I even I was never a a guy, you know, I saw the potential of printing when I was designing and architecting like Raptor and Starship and, you know, there were three of us sitting talking to Elon about how we're going to colonize Mars and I'm like, we're going to have to make, you know, we're not going to carry like bar stock and machine it on Mars.

You know, we're going to have to use what's there and turn it into, you know, the minimum material we need and then make it.

So the conceptually the idea of of additive manufacturing, which I don't even like that name, but um I is is seems legit, you know, like use what you need and just make the shapes you need and you can grow it organically like nature. Nature is usually a good model for things. Um that all makes sense to me.

The the I do agree like the overhype by others in the space. In hindsight, you look back and you're like, "Yeah, of course that wasn't going to be what happened. " You know, plastic printer prices dropped. People started buying them with this promise that they were going to be able to print all these things.

You bought the thing, you built it, you printed a pencil holder that you downloaded off the internet, you realize, I don't know how to do CAD or have access to CAD tools, so I'm downloading models from others. It's just a novelty space, you know, um, and I think has been for a while.

metal printing at least had its roots in something more real um that I think there was potential there, but we were clearly so far away from, you know, where we needed to be because the the the the behind the scenes customers are buying these million-dollar machines and then having to hire PhDs to operate them to get maybe one out of every five parts over the course of a month.

That might be good. You know, it's just so far away. Um, and one of one of the reasons for that, by the way, I do believe is because they tried to monetize on the machine itself. They were like, "We need to make this million dollar box and then sell this to customers.

" And I think that was one of the mistakes was that's why we rewound and said, "Hey, if I can unwrap the box, if I don't have to sell a box to a customer, as dumb as this sounds, if I don't have to sell them this self-contained box, now what can I do? I can rethink how the process is done.

I don't have to have put my powder on in a little spot in the corner anymore. I could use half the room if I need to. You know, what is the right first principles way to do what I'm trying to do as efficient and fast as possible and then let's engineer a solution for that.

So, you know, yeah, such a better uh B2B experience is just paying for the end state uh versus, you know, trying to but I'm curious to push you a little bit further.

Do you think that end state of you know like just like people today might have a printer in their home you know every home in America has a 3D printer you think that's a reality 10 15 years from now uh I can imagine AI you can now generate a a CAD uh file that that or or is it just kind of like still going to be unnecessary and inefficient you know that's a great question uh part of me wants to feel you know the future is these are always interesting things to think about, you know.

Um I my gut tells me that um we should we should uh centralize and and it's a service. I feel like the world is going to you know the direction is you own less and less. Look at like tur your cars. It's like you got people now that literally don't own cars anymore and they just like rent the service. Why?

Because it's easier. It's it's not because they don't know how to drive. They It's just easier, you know? So ultimately if you make it easier and you make it cheaper and and you can take advantage of economies of scale I think that that probably makes more more sense.

And then you know to to be clear like we the vision for free form was always to be more than just a metal printing company. You know, I think the the the concept at least at the beginning in in my head was let's dominate the enabling manufacturing technology.

Then let's let's solve the how do I go from the printed part to the end to the end use part that can just be plugged in via make the printing process better post machine it you know heat treat whatever let's solve that problem end to end and then let's vertically integrate on some products um because at the end of the day why would I you know there are there are some some specific areas that we're starting to um do some things in that are quite interesting that our technology, our approach uniquely enables that.

I think you know ultimately that's where the money is to be made um up and down the stack but the progression kind of makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense.

Uh last question on my side, have you seen any interesting upticks in demand or interest from the tariff uh the the the trade war or just given the nature of your existing customer base focusing on aerospace and defense?

I can imagine a lot of your customers just aren't too impacted given they were already focused on sort of having US supply chains. Yeah. No, we actually have seen quite a bit of uptick um since the tariff stuff is happening there.

It seems like there were a lot more companies out there, you know, relatively bigname ones that were doing a lot of business with China specifically more than I was aware.

um you know given some of the recent they try to advertise that you know they're not yelling from a rooftop they don't yes which is interesting uh but yeah to answer your question directly we have definitely seen an uptick um and and I think it's it's also as word has started to get out about us in the space I think you know because we've have kind of flown under the radar for quite a while um you know I think people are now starting to hear about us and you know and I feel like they should be worried you know about what we're doing and and our pace and like ability to disrupt.

They should be so good. I I have a couple more questions. Um yeah, but first uh 3D printing for a long time had this stigma around it as uh it's great for prototypes. Uh but at a certain point, you're going to want to switch to a different manufacturing strategy.

Um, are you seeing customers come in and say, "Hey, we just want to work with you for a little bit on the manu on the prototyping side and then maybe we'll do something different and then do you have to kind of walk them through the vision or is it very clear upfront that hey, this is about scale.

The the the the part that we're making for your rocket or your plane uh in 20 years, it's still going to be coming off of a free form machine because that's the business model. " Yeah. Abs. Absolutely. Um so we do also um we our business is not exclusively aerospace and defense.

It's a large portion of it but we do do automotive work. We work with semic several semiconductor companies. There's some other kind of energy um you know I'll put in the energy sector kind of companies we work with that are interesting. Um and and yeah so I guess the uh I just completely blanked on the question.

So, so the question is is uh is prototyping versus scaled manufacturing. I imagine at a certain point like automotive. Uh if I would, you know, if I'm a car manufacturer, I'd love to come to you and say, "Hey, let's prototype a bunch of parts.

" But then once I get it dialed in, I'm I like the the historical example would be, oh, then I'm going to go get it, you know, subtractive machine or cast, right?

Uh, but at a certain point it sounds like, hey, I want to make a th 100,000 cars this year and you're going to say, yeah, I'm along for the ride and I'm going to be cost competitive. But have you had to is that the right thesis? And have you had to uh walk customers through that? Yep. Exactly. Yes.

So, we generally turn down today, depending on the company and the potential, we turn down a lot of the prototyping stuff. That makes sense.

um because it it just doesn't make sense for us to to to focus on that unless it's coming from a huge company that there's a something interesting that could come after real project. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. We generally turn that stuff down.

Um we have the upfront talk with customers about the scale and that's the target. Um you know that's what we're interested in. That's that's how we're going to get you know uh economies of scale and the costs and down to where everybody needs it to be.

And ultimately, you know, I think one of the interesting things about the space, so I will say like from my time at SpaceX, I always liked solving these extremely complex interdisciplinary system level problems, you know, and these very very, you know, how do we colonize Mars?

And it's like a lot of people's brains will short circuit. I don't even know where to start.

And weirdly enough, like I was always like, well, I'm just not smart enough to figure this out, so I'm just going to like assume that doesn't matter and assume that doesn't matter until I get to something that I'm I'm like, well, I can calculate this, so I'm going to start here, you know, and then just go from there.

Um the the interesting thing about printing as as we've started we have started to demonstrate the the the feasibility of truly scaling it up is that it starts to you start to think about the disruption of um even the product life cycles.

Like a lot of the product life cycle stuff today is centered around these very long manufacturing timelines.

So meaning like you know it's just and I don't have a conclusion here other than you know how much more often would products get updated or customized um if you didn't have to wind up a 12 months of tooling in uh in a in a in a casting facility, right? Um yeah.

Well, speaking of that product update, I imagine that you're you're building the machine and then you're also uh scaling up the machine and once you have a really solid contract, I imagine that then it's like, okay, well, we're going to want to like this machine is capable of doing this part and we want to do that at volume.

Uh so what is your product release cycle on the actual machine side? Uh because are you are you freezing and then doing a v2 v3 or are you upgrading the machines iteratively? What does that look like? We do a little bit of both actually.

Um we do we do some level of upgrading on the the so there's a road map that was like the first thing we ever built was just uh can we put a bunch of lasers on a thing and melt stuff pretty fast. You know it was it was not designed to be a throughput maximizer or it was small. The platform wasn't big.

It was just like can I put a bunch of lasers in a small area and and melt stuff quickly.

Um the second thing was then can I take that and scale it up to something that's actually useful in size and start to demonstrate this uh some of the architectural elements of the system that enable the lights out factory like uh how do I you know unpack and get the parts out and get them off the plate and get them ready for you know the next steps or whatever it needs to do.

The third step of that is has been to go even bigger and that's what we're building actually right now.

Um so we went from you know I I don't remember the exact number of throughput capability from gen one to two it was something like 20x from 1 to two and then two to three or I I I came from SpaceX so everything starts at zero so zero to one you know one to two what we're building now is basically the third uh generation of the technology and this is the one that is um the platform is quite large um like the size of this of this platform is is is is is for what it can do.

It's tiny um compared to the industry, but it's it's pretty large. They make these huge parts and it's like 10 to 20x higher throughput than even the system we're using for production today. Um so, you know, we've basically taken these huge steps um every every generation.

And then there's the the the inter in incremental improvements which are predominantly around software generally um because we're implementing better models, faster compute, faster sensors and we're rolling those out in real time.

Luckily I came from the aerospace industry, you know, I led certification of Falcon 9 and Merlin uh um uh for for the Air Force and NASA. It's like I you know so I can talk to the aerospace folks. I can talk to the defense folks.

I know what they're looking for in terms of product release, you know, that that uh uh uh uh you know, hardware in the loop testing and then releasing software versions, locking certain things down for production and having control of that.

Um so that that's been helpful, too, to kind of you know, grease the wheels of that with customers that are like, "Oh, wait. You're changing stuff all the time. " Like, no, not not exactly. Um but yeah. Uh last question, I'll let you go. I don't know if Jordy you have anything. Are you good? I'm good.

Um, I I'd love to know um a few pieces of advice or lessons that you took away from working with Elon that folks might be able to apply even if they don't have, you know, a decade of experience at an actual Elon company. What do you think is actually actionable? Oh man. Um, boy, there's a there's quite a bit.

Um, surround yourself with the smartest, most most accomplished people you can in general and then listen to them. Um secondly, there's no problem that we can't solve together. Um you you you know people are their biggest u you know this is easy to say too, right?

And hard to put into practice, but you know, you're your biggest enemy. If you think you can't do it, you definitely can't do it. Um and then question everything. Question everything. Um you know, Elon is an extremely smart man.

I feel obviously like very fortunate um to have had the opportunity to work at SpaceX for so long and sit in the room and see how he makes decisions and you know and and the good and the bad you know I mean all of it I I just I had a good experience at SpaceX um and and learned a lot and and a lot of you know even Free Form today there are a bunch of current and former execs at SpaceX that are investors um in Free Form and uh among obviously Founders Fund and you know 8V VC and Valor and a bunch of, you know, top tier um um investment firms, Threshold and Two Sigma.

They'll all get mad at me if I don't list them all out. Just keep the credit. I got to say, Eric, uh you make me believe in onoring manufacturing. Yes. When I talk to you, I believe that it's possible. It's easy to to to be blackpilled and say, "No, we're never going to make it in America.

" But I feel like if we just give you like another 20 years, we'll be able to make anything. It sounds chaotic dayto day when you read the headlines, but when you actually talk to someone who's working on this and who's clearly going to be working on it for decades more, it feels tractable. Yeah. Yes.

It's totally tractable. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh thank you so much for stopping by. This is fantastic. We have to have you back. Uh that this is this is really really enjoyable. Thank you. Would be a pleasure, guys. Absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Cheers.

Sounds good. Uh, and if you're trying to sell some 3D printed metal parts all across the United States, you got to get on numeral. Numeral HQ, sales tax on autopilot. And I have some breaking news. Breaking news. My company, Lucy, is now on Numeral. Let's go. Double kill. One hand washes the other.

They pay me, I pay them. What the the money goes into my pocket and back into Numel's pocket.