fluxworks powertrain update #005

Welcome back to the FluxWorks Powertrain, the story of our company which takes the work seriously, not ourselves, quantifies everything that matters, and asks the questions that keep the mission on track. If you missed Powertrain #004, that’s fine. This quarter moved fast.

what does fluxworks do again?

empowering progress, transforming motion.

FluxWorks exists to redefine how machines move. With our Celestial Gear™ we're delivering elegant, efficient, and contactless power transmission.

Celestial Gear™ anchors everything we build, and our focus in 2026 is penetrating the market with the flagship product line built on this technology, the CG- series.

From it, Lodestar™ (transparent torque sensing) and Kepler Control™ (impedance controller) were forged, elevating motion systems to become more transparent, precise, and intelligent. Learn more about our core technologies here. How we operate is driven by our ranked (from left to right) core values, shown below.

looking ahead to 2026

Short version: as our Director of Operations, Kyle, puts it, "make badass gears." A lot of them. Consistently.

Over the next 6 months, execution is everything. We already have ~50 gears on the build docket for the first half of the year. If the current pilots convert the way all parties expect, each account requires 100+ gears in late 2026 and thousands in 2027. That’s the scale moment we’re preparing for now.

In our last update, we outlined our core performance metrics around cost and specific torque. Here’s the update that matters most: torque per unit weight (Nm/kg) is now where it needs to be for meaningful Delta robot market adoption.

As a result, we’re intentionally narrowing focus to manufacturing throughput and delivery, temporarily pausing broader commercial expansion of Lodestar™ and Kepler Control™ until execution cadence is fully locked in.

In 2024, I learned I have a medical condition wherein I get IBS every time I hear about a new business "accelerator." That was until Praxis's for-profit business accelerator came along, which I first learned about through Praxis Fellow Sassie Duggleby,and within the first 2 months of the year-long formal program, it’s shaping how we think about building FluxWorks at its deepest levels and has led to substantial value-aligned capital topping off the round.

looking back at 2025

What started as a meme became metal. A rough render of our first gear, shared internally in February, turned into real hardware shipped to MDA Space and ultimately helped bring Scout on board. That original design (RIP MGC-100-S) is already obsolete, replaced by our CG-series built on patent-pending Celestial Gear™ designs. Our Director of Operations made a "2025 by the Numbers" 👇.

2025 also sharpened how I think about leadership. Isaiah 55:1-9 became a recurring anchor, while Numbers and 1st/2nd Samuel offered timely pictures of Godly leadership. Founder friendships with shared values mattered more than expected.

And for the personal log, hammering my loquaciously digressive writing style: Chloe and I confirmed we hate cruises. A moped escape in Cozumel was the lone bright spot; backcountry camping later in the year restored hope in travel again.

series seed round updates: fully subscribed

The Seed Round was raised with a single objective: penetrate the market.

Since the last update, closed the remainder of the Seed Round, adding aligned partners including Quantum Federated, JM Charitable Foundation, and Michigan Capital Network (one of 18 firms selected under a $4B U.S. Department of Defense initiative to invest in critical technologies).

2025 key metrics

CY25 close vs. CY24 close.

• YTD Revenue (All): $1.98M vs. $1.79M
• CY25 Gross Margin: 60% vs. 65%
• Net Burn Rate (Q4 avg.): $93k vs. $46k

Some other key 2025 metrics:

• COGS: rare-earth magnet cost down 35% YoY. Tariff who? We buy American.

2025 Awards & Recognition

• Featured in the U.S. Army FY24 SBIR|STTR Impact Report (p. 24) for our next product line (not the Celestial Gear™).
• Spoke on a space industry panelwith Axiom,Texas Space Commission, MassChallenge, andDeloitte in at DallasINNOVATEevent.
• Internal wins still matter: cookie bake-off champions crowned, GeoGuessr and Wiki-races titles fiercely defended.

learnings since last update

Two books, The Ideal Team Player and Radical Candor (thanks, Brad Jenkins and Al White), landed at exactly the right time. Together, they’ve sharpened how we hire, give feedback, and surface tension as the team scales. Fewer assumptions. Clearer ownership. Faster resolution.

I caught myself micromanaging things that didn’t need a founder’s fingerprints. Actively fixing that. The team’s faster when I get out of the way.

team

After loads of interviews and firming up our core-value based, three-stage interview process, FluxWorks is thrilled to welcome:

• Peyton Cook: Sales & Marketing Coordinator.
• Gennesis Cuevas: Mechanical Design Engineer.
• Preston Abadie: Research Engineer.

Culturally, momentum is strong. Core values are now part of daily language, onboarding is tighter, and FluxWorks University is live internally. The team’s aligned, moving faster, and clearly hungry (in Patrick Lencioni sense).

what makes me hype🔥

Ownership is showing up. Hayden stepped into a customer-facing Applications Engineer role and is thriving, a clear win for the leader-leader model.

Equity options, aligned with Scout, are reinforcing commitment that already existed, not creating it.

New hires are raising the bar. Q1 is about investing in them; late Q2 is about being ready when the pipeline turns back on post pilot success.

Personal side notes, briefly:

• Another half marathon ✔️ Signed up for full in 2027 already.
• Surprisingly competent harmonica player. Two performances last year.

We’re also seeing early inbound on manufacturing partnerships and state incentives conversations starting as we plan for higher-volume production ahead of 2027.

what keeps me up at night

Big picture: demand is strong, pilots are real, and momentum is there, the next six months are about execution, tooling, and timing.

Customers are ready and pilots are underway, but the constraint isn’t interest; it’s consistently building high-quality gears at scale. These early pilots are doing double duty: delivering value while generating the data we need to lock acceptance tests, yields, and release criteria. That learning curve is expected, but it means the factory is being built in parallel with shipping product.

The biggest swing factor is tooling. If our rotor tooling performs as designed, we unlock repeatability, cost reduction, and on-time delivery. If it doesn’t, tooling, not sales, becomes the bottleneck. The 2026 plan is achievable; the real risk is timing, gears failing over a silly thing, such as poor manufacturing quality. Glue hole below.

On the government side, momentum with the Army nearly broke after PM-created misaligned requirements crept into a program intended to transition our technology onto a BAE Systems platform. There’s renewed optimism: our original Army champion re-engaged, got the PM's eyes back on BAE Systems and the CATALYST fund-matching contract vehicle, and BAE brought the program back to still-aggressive-yet-rational specs. Remaining risk is administrative. Shutdowns, the SBIR→FUZE reorg, and slow reauthorization closed the FY25 CATALYST path. Funding clocks are running while paperwork lags, and if the FY26 CATALYST RFP and corresponding IDIQ slip too far, matched funding and integrator momentum could pass us by. In summary, hope is restored programmatically, and there is still hope contractually, as we're so thankful everyone (Army and BAE included) who is working double time to play catch-up against forces beyond their control.

what we need help with

We’re hiring a Manufacturing Engineer Lead to own DFM/DFA, process development, and production readiness as we move from pilots to repeatable CG-series builds. This role is central to scaling cleanly and taking day-to-day manufacturing leadership off my plate. Fully in-person, Conroe, TX.

We’re also selectively exploring manufacturing partners to increase throughput without bloating the team. Warm intros are especially helpful for:

• Overmolding (CF-PEEK composites)
• Halbach array rotor sub-assembly
• Lamination die cutting
• Precision cam / lobe machining

If you know teams that excel at low volume now and scale with confidence later, we’d love an intro. We have started interviewing already so intros now welcome!

gratitude (to those who made the year possible)

No fundraise closure victory laps without credit where it’s due:

• Michigan Capital Network: for backing us early. Especially Sapna Patel & Paul D'Amato for your championing of the deal and efficient due diligence.
• The Praxis Team,especiallyBen Bohannon, Ariel Eide, Santiago Frank, Sam Miller,andJosh Springer: for running an amazing gathering event in San Francisco, and for the community, language, and values-aligned capital that helped close the round.
• Seed Round Capitalfor being rediculously supportive (God bless investors that were also founders) as FluxWorks' needs have evolved.
• Praxis Gathering Mentors,especiallyJosh To, Terry Looper, Victor Ho, Matt Gore,Andy Crouch, Cammie Dunaway, George Hu, Beto Pallares:from operational advice, to leadership, culture, stewardship, insane (in a loving way) marketing and onboarding ideas. s/o Matt Gore for your inspirationally jingoistic-Texan energy and Tequila Uber Eats'd to the event.
• Chloe Praslicka: for the in-progress mural and for making our space reflect the momentum we feel. Further s/o on the cash-efficient design: <$500 paint.

• Praxis Fellows, especially Anderson Petergeorge, Glenn Bean, Austin Browning, and Birgitt Boschitsch:for your companionship, note-sharing, book-buying, shared-vocational friendship.
• Praxis Network Redemptive Investors,especiallyAndy Munich.
• Al White and Brad Jenkins: for more book recommendations (Radical Candor) and mentoring that continue to rewired how we lead and delegate.

FluxWorks exists because people believed early, spoke honestly, and showed up consistently. Handwritten notes, warm intros, hard questions: it all compounds.

with gratitude, momentum, and Oxford commas,
Bryton Praslicka
Founder & CEO, FluxWorks, Inc.

FluxWorks, 1026 Outpost Dr, Ste B1, Conroe, Texas 77304, United States, 979.431.0990

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