Strong by Form raises €5.8M to scale

Strong by Form has raised €5.8 million in a Series A funding round. The deeptech company, founded in Chile and headquartered in Madrid, is developing wood-based materials to compete with concrete in construction.

Concrete and steel are major sources of embodied carbon. Timber offers a sustainable alternative but has struggled to match the strength, span, and economics needed for large projects. Strong by Form's product, Woodflow-core, is a structural slab built to compete directly with concrete on strength and price, not only sustainability. The global market for concrete slabs is roughly $120 billion, while Cross-Laminated Timber captures less than $1.5 billion of that.

The Woodflow technology

Woodflow technology uses computational design to place wood fibres only where structural support is needed, mimicking how a tree grows. This biomimetic approach results in a slab that is lighter than concrete and uses up to 75 percent fewer trees than comparable mass-timber products. The company works with wood flakes, aligning and forming them into components, which allows it to use a wide variety of wood species and up to 90 percent of a tree.

CEO Andrés Mitnik explained the inefficiency of conventional timber. "Conventional structural timber also uses only around 40 per cent of a tree," he said, with the rest going to lower-value uses. Strong by Form's process can use very low-grade wood, including material with no current commercial value.

The company produces two main products:

A scalable business model

The company's ambition is scale. Mitnik stated the founding vision clearly. "If we want to have an impact, we need to build a huge company. Forget about this being a cool innovation project." The business model focuses on licensing the technology to existing manufacturers rather than becoming a producer itself. This allows mass-timber partners to access a much larger market while potentially improving their margins by up to 50 percent.

Mitnik attributes the current feasibility of the approach to advances in software and robotics that were not available decades ago. He also noted that construction does not require the extreme efficiency of other industries. "Fortunately, with construction, you don't need the same efficiency you need for a race car. You just need something better than concrete."

Identifying viable markets

The technology has applications in architecture, construction, mobility, and maritime sectors. The key is finding where it can compete on performance and price. In construction, the strategy is not to advocate for all-timber buildings but to replace specific components. "We're telling them: get rid of a single component, replace it with this one, and it will optimise your whole building," said Mitnik.

The company has worked with BMW on automotive components. However, the automotive industry is already highly efficient, and the technology is not yet cheaper. Rail has emerged as a more promising mobility application. A project with Deutsche Bahn led to an approach from Dutch operator NS. Mitnik says rail is well-suited because manufacturing involves more manual labour, lightweight parts save energy, and sustainability aligns with the sector's goals. "We might even be a little more expensive than what they currently use, but because we align with their KPIs, it works."

The new funding will support the company's goal of scaling its licensing model without becoming a manufacturer.