A Canberra company was founded by a physicist who worked on detecting gravitational waves, the ripples in spacetime from two black holes colliding. That work was recognised with the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. Now his company sells to Nvidia, Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin.
The founder
Daniel Shaddock is a former ANU physics professor and was a Director’s Fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is the CEO and co-founder of Liquid Instruments, an ANU spin-out.
The product
The company makes Moku, a range of devices that each reconfigure themselves into multiple pieces of lab test equipment. Instead of a bench full of separate boxes, one instrument switches between jobs in software. A whole lab in a single device.
The reach
Customers include Nvidia, Lockheed Martin, Blue Origin, PsiQuantum, BYD and Intel. More than 90% of revenue comes from overseas, with thousands of users across 30 countries.
The raise
Liquid Instruments raised A$70M in a Series C co-led by NYSE listed Keysight Technologies and the National Reconstruction Fund Corporation, which put in A$28.45M. The company designs and manufactures in Australia, with facilities in Melbourne, and stays headquartered in Canberra.
My read
The tools that helped measure ripples in spacetime are now built in Australia and shipped to the world’s biggest tech companies. World class science does not have to retire into a journal. Sometimes it becomes a company.