For decades, the technology industry has celebrated founders who disrupted software. Build an app, scale in the cloud, hire engineers, repeat. Zane Hengsperger thinks the next generation of founders should build factories instead.
“America needs to build things,” he says. “If you want to build for a nation or a community, manufacturing is meaningful work that’s bigger than yourself.”
It’s a philosophy that sits at the heart of Nox Metals, the Detroit startup Hengsperger founded to modernize one of manufacturing’s oldest and most overlooked industries: metal procurement.
Backed by Y Combinator and fresh off an $11.5 million seed round led by Hyperion, Nox Metals combines AI, robotics, and vertically integrated manufacturing to help manufacturers order custom-cut metal in a fraction of the time required by traditional suppliers. But ask Hengsperger what business he’s really building, and the answer has surprisingly little to do with aluminum.
“I’d redesign culture,” he says. “Working in a factory is cool. How do we inspire the most talented people to go build things again?”
That ambition stretches far beyond his own company. He wants to help spark a new industrial renaissance.
Learning Manufacturing From the Ground Up
Long before raising venture capital, Hengsperger was learning manufacturing the old-fashioned way. He grew up working in his father’s machine shop, where his first responsibility wasn’t operating sophisticated equipment. It was scrubbing factory floors.
“I was really bad at it,” he laughs.
The lesson stuck with him.
“Even doing the simplest thing in the factory affects everything else.”
As he grew older, those early experiences took on a deeper meaning. Surrounded by skilled tradespeople who had spent decades building physical products, he began to appreciate the role manufacturing plays in shaping entire communities.
“I don’t think I realized it until I was probably 24 or 25 that what they were doing was really important.”
That perspective would eventually shape his career.
Choosing Factories Over SaaS
Like many ambitious graduates, Hengsperger initially found himself in technology. He worked at Uber and later built an advertising startup before moving into industrial manufacturing.
It was there that he began asking a simple question.
Why is buying metal still so difficult?
Every purchase involved phone calls, emails, delayed quotes, uncertain inventory, and manual processes that had changed little over decades.
“It wasn’t just one company,” he says. “It was everywhere.”
The inefficiencies reached far beyond inconvenience.
“If we can get metal here faster, we can make more rocket ships faster. We can make more F-35s faster.”
For Hengsperger, outdated procurement wasn’t merely slowing individual factories. It was limiting American manufacturing itself.
Rebuilding American Industry
Nox Metals arrives as manufacturing enjoys renewed attention across the United States. Supply chain disruptions, geopolitical uncertainty, reshoring initiatives, and rapid advances in automation have pushed industrial innovation back into the national conversation.
For Hengsperger, however, rebuilding manufacturing isn’t simply about economics. It’s about restoring opportunity. He speaks often about creating careers, strengthening communities, and ensuring future generations can build meaningful lives through physical industries.
“So many people care about their kids’ future,” he says. “Our investors don’t just believe this is a good investment. They believe America needs to reindustrialize.”
That shared mission has become one of the company’s biggest competitive advantages.
Rather than hiring employees looking for another startup, Nox Metals seeks what Hengsperger calls “missionaries,” people motivated by rebuilding American manufacturing itself.
Inspiring the Next Generation
Perhaps the most surprising answer during our conversation came when Hengsperger was asked what he would redesign if he could rebuild manufacturing from scratch. He didn’t mention supply chains or AI or robotics. He answered with one word. “Culture.”
For decades, software has attracted many of the country’s brightest engineers and entrepreneurs. Hengsperger believes manufacturing deserves that same energy. He wants students graduating from top engineering schools to see factories not as relics of the past, but as some of the most exciting places to innovate. The vision extends beyond Nox Metals itself.
“I want Nox Metals to inspire a hundred times more factories in America.”
His hope is that by making raw materials cheaper and faster to source, countless other manufacturers will become more competitive, enabling entirely new businesses to emerge. If software helped define the last generation of entrepreneurship, Hengsperger believes manufacturing may define the next.
And if he’s successful, Nox Metals won’t simply become another industrial supplier. It could become one of the companies that helped convince an entire generation that building physical infrastructure is once again one of the most ambitious things a founder can do.
