Nox Metals

About Nox Metals

Nox Metals is a Detroit company founded in 2025 by CEO Zane Hengsperger that is building AI-run, vertically integrated metal factories to speed up and reshore the supply of metals for North American manufacturing and defence. It began by using proprietary software to automate quoting, cut planning, inventory selection, scheduling and quality assurance for custom-cut aluminium plate and bar for CNC machining, cutting lead times from days to near-instant quotes, and supplies roughly 100 customers from machine shops to defence contractors including Anduril and SpaceX. Nox is revitalising a 30,000 sq ft WWII-era facility in Southwest Detroit where it plans to staff so-called techno-industrialists — robotics engineers, AI specialists and metallurgists — to automate production steps from smelting and casting through cutting and quality control. After participating in Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch, Nox raised an $11.5 million seed round in August 2026 led by Hyperion, with Palmer Luckey, Y Combinator, Jared Friedman, RoboStrategy, Operator Collective, DTX Ventures and Alumni Ventures; the founder expects the round to reach about $14 million. Sources: Crain's Detroit Business; Zero G Talent 19 Aug 2026; Daily Detroit; noxmetals.co.