Drilling deep into the earth is not trivial. It requires drill bits that are extraordinarily hard, tough, and resistant to wear and corrosion if they are to withstand the extreme conditions encountered in down-hole drilling and mining. Drill bits inevitably break and have to be replaced, and the effort required to remove a bit from a deep hole involves costly downtime in ground operations. 

The machining industry faces a similar challenge regarding carbide tools — the workhorse of modern machine shops — which enable the production of everything from jet-engine components to medical devices. When an expensive machining tool breaks or wears out, it, too, can lead to costly downtime. Making longer-lasting drill bits and machining tools would enable more cost-effective operations, but the carbide materials used in both mining and machining have seen limited innovation over the past one hundred years. Leeta Materials, a Goleta-based startup founded by two UC Santa Barbara alumni — CEO Kira Wyckoff and CTO Linus Kautzsch, both of whom have PhDs in materials science from UCSB — is focused on pursuing such innovations to develop improved, next-generation boride materials.

Founded in 2023, Leeta began initial operations in the UCSB Technology Incubator, which has helped to launch some forty startups. Working in the incubator, Wyckoff says, “was hugely advantageous, as it gave us access to functional laboratory space to develop and test our first proof-of-concept technology, providing a seamless transition to first results in a best-in-class laboratory.”

Wyckoff comes from the San Francisco Bay Area and earned a bachelor’s in chemical engineering, a master’s in materials science, a certificate in the Technology Management (TM) program (before it became a department in 2022), and a PhD in materials science. Working with her advisor, Ram Seshadri, a distinguished professor in Chemistry and Materials and director of the Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) at UCSB, she focused her doctoral work on solid-state chemistry in the interest of developing ultra-fast charging materials for Li-ion batteries.

Kautzsch, who grew up in Germany and earned both his bachelor’s and master's degrees in chemistry from the Dresden University of Technology, initially came to UCSB for a research internship with Seshadri before extending his stay and, eventually, moving to the PhD track, being co-advised by Seshadri and materials professor Stephen Wilson. In his doctoral work, Kautzsch developed an ultra-high-pressure laser floating zone furnace in which to grow single-crystal quantum-computing materials. 

The Start of a Startup

Discovering a shared passion for entrepreneurship and advanced materials while working on separate research in the MRL, Wyckoff and Kautzsch eventually started the company and then won UCSB’s New Venture Competition (NVC) in 2023. During the year-long NVC program, Wyckoff says, “We were learning how to conceptualize a framework for a company, centered on a hypothesis-driven approach to identifying problems and discovering customers.” With the guidance of TM’s entrepreneurship director, David Ardornetto, she adds, “We learned to thoughtfully listen to the market, and we continue to do so today, paying attention to the critical industries we serve to ensure that we can provide the best solutions to their most pressing needs.”

Leeta’s base technology centers on a significantly improved manufacturing approach to producing industrial ceramic materials. In the early days, the company's efforts were focused on efficient manufacturing of high-quality battery materials, but Kautzsch and Wyckoff realized that the battery industry is a difficult place for a startup to be successful, because, Wyckoff says, “of enormous capital requirements, large scales, and huge price competition.” They were able to refocus their development efforts when they identified a “pressing need for higher-performance materials in the mining and machining industries.”

Wyckoff explains that materials ultimately dictate the performance of the tools and products in those industries, but that the carbide materials they depend on have stagnated. “By developing much higher-performance boride materials,” she says, “we are positioning Leeta as one of the most innovative material manufacturers in the world.” The company’s materials are now being incorporated globally into products made by several large companies.

To support Leeta’s rapid boride-material development, senior scientist Nicole Schauser, who also earned her PhD in materials from UCSB, developed the “LUNA” software system to handle the company’s enormous data needs. “Our data is beyond extensive,” she says. “Every single data point from every single production run in every single material is digitized in a way that allows for a seamless interface with the tools we are developing. LUNA is the backbone of how we organize data.”

“Speaking as a former doctoral student,” says Leeta’s director of formulation research, Gregg Kent, “the sophistication we have as a company in the area of data is well beyond what any laboratory or materials company typically deals with. We track everything that can be tracked in an effort to accelerate our development timelines as much as possible. That is critical to our company.” Leeta’s formulation development cycle is twenty-four to forty-eight hours, compared to typical week- or month-long timelines.

“Our approach to development is based on first-principles science,” notes Kautzsch. “A lot of approaches in the hard-material industry have centered on incremental improvements to decades-old processes instead of redesigning them from ground-up. We often ask ourselves, Why is it done in a certain way?”

“We don't cut corners,” Wyckoff notes. “We work methodically with clear goals and execute toward them.”
 
The UCSB Connection

One indispensable component supporting Leeta’s success is having ongoing access to the UCSB Materials Department’s superb equipment. “Materials science requires a lot of sophisticated equipment that, for a startup, it doesn’t make sense to purchase and maintain,” says Schauser. “Leveraging exceptional facilities and equipment allows Leeta to have a fundamentally better understanding of our materials and mechanisms.”

“This access is mission-critical for the type of development we do and for how quickly we are able to do it,” Wyckoff adds. “Time is an important metric for a startup, and one that we decided from day one would be a company priority.”

With its deep well of talented graduates, UCSB has figured prominently in hiring at Leeta. “We look for people who are good at communicating and problem-solving and have a strong work ethic, who are willing to go all-in and contribute to a positive culture,” Kent says. “Everybody at the company understands the whole process, and this combination of critical thinking and teamwork allows for unparalleled efficiency and progress. UCSB is a phenomenal talent pool for that kind of person.” 

By design, the university ensures that the “pool” of such talent is full. “When we were at UCSB, we were trained in an environment that intentionally prioritizes collaboration,” Kent explains. “By growing up as a scientist in this culture, you understand the benefits first-hand and think, Why would we stop doing that in our company? We are happy to be able to continue to collaborate with professors and researchers on campus to this day. Having access to a world-class support network has translated to the ethos of our company; we are highly interdisciplinary and collaborative."

“My background was all in energy,” says Schauser,“but working here has made me realize that I can have an impact in other fields, so it’s important, especially for graduates seeking jobs, not to pigeon-hole themselves into thinking that they want to work only at a battery company, or only at a materials company. When you’re excited about innovation and science and are surrounded by smart, motivated people, you’ll have a great time and find so many opportunities to have an impact.”