#250 Hyliion CEO Thomas Healy: "We don't have a product without additive manufacturing."

Thomas, welcome to the Additive Insight podcast.

We'll be talking today about how additive manufacturing is being used in your mission to deliver more efficient power generation technologies.

But first, I was wondering if you could take us back to the start.

So Helium was founded over a decade ago.

Can you tell us the story of how and why the company was established?

Absolutely.

So this is your stereotypical startup journey of it's been a roller coaster.

It's been a lot of fun, exciting, but it's come with twists and turns as well.

But just to level set, we're now a company focused on power generation space for any of your viewers.

So we're really using additive manufacturing to enable a really new type of power gen.

So how the company started back when I was in college at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, I had this wild idea of let's go electrify semi-trucks, bring these big 18 wheelers, move them off of diesel, move them onto electric.

And that was the origin of the company.

We took it public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020 on that premise.

And then fast forward to 2021, GE approached us with this really new innovative tech they had.

It's called the Carno Power Module.

And as I was just mentioning, it's like a new form of power gen, a new way to make electricity.

So fast forward a year later, we actually ended up acquiring that whole division out of GE, brought it under Hyliion.

And then in 2023, we saw that the EV space was not heading in a good direction, right? There were a lot of our peers that were going bankrupt.

It was tough to raise capital.

Pace of which fleets were adopting new electric vehicles was slowing down.

The costs were higher.

The mandates were, uh, were softening.

So it was just this perfect storm that, uh, we decided let's get out of the EV space and why don't we go all in on power gen? And that has been a fantastic decision.

As you look at the amount of power data centers need the, uh, military itself, you know, we're working on various different programs.

They need a significant amount of power with unique attributes.

Thomas, welcome to the Additive Insight podcast.

We'll be talking today about how additive manufacturing is being used in your mission to deliver more efficient power generation technologies.

But first, I was wondering if you could take us back to the start.

So Helium was founded over a decade ago.

Can you tell us the story of how and why the company was established?

Absolutely.

So this is your stereotypical startup journey of it's been a roller coaster.

It's been a lot of fun, exciting, but it's come with twists and turns as well.

But just to level set, we're now a company focused on power generation space for any of your viewers.

So we're really using additive manufacturing to enable a really new type of power gen.

So how the company started back when I was in college at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, I had this wild idea of let's go electrify semi-trucks, bring these big 18 wheelers, move them off of diesel, move them onto electric.

And that was the origin of the company.

We took it public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020 on that premise.

And then fast forward to 2021, GE approached us with this really new innovative tech they had.

It's called the Carno Power Module.

And as I was just mentioning, it's like a new form of power gen, a new way to make electricity.

So fast forward a year later, we actually ended up acquiring that whole division out of GE, brought it under Hyliion.

And then in 2023, we saw that the EV space was not heading in a good direction, right? There were a lot of our peers that were going bankrupt.

It was tough to raise capital.

Pace of which fleets were adopting new electric vehicles was slowing down.

The costs were higher.

The mandates were, uh, were softening.

So it was just this perfect storm that, uh, we decided let's get out of the EV space and why don't we go all in on power gen? And that has been a fantastic decision.

As you look at the amount of power data centers need the, uh, military itself, you know, we're working on various different programs.

They need a significant amount of power with unique attributes.