Quick Take
With an injection of $1 million, the Westside's SwellCycle aims to pivot from a focus on selling boards directly to consumers to instead working with surfboard shapers and licensing its technology to “micro-factories” to produce the surfboards.
Santa Cruz-based SwellCycle started with a focus on creating more sustainable surfboards, but now the company is looking to take its technology to new applications thanks to $1 million in new funding.
SwellCycle’s founders developed a method of using 3D printers to make surfboard components from ground-up recycled plastic waste. Last year, the company began testing its prototype boards with surfers and launched its pre-order process.
Founded nearly two years ago by Patricio Guerrero, Nathan Jackrazi and Pol Riera, and the company currently operates out of the Old Wrigley Building on the Westside of Santa Cruz. With help from the new funding from New York City-based Third Sphere, SwellCycle plans to pivot from selling boards directly to consumers to working with other surfboard shapers and licensing its technology to “micro-factories” to produce the surfboards.
CEO and co-founder Guerrero said they’re already working with four California surfboard shapers and are looking for more partners.
Third Sphere, which specializes in investing in companies that are climate and environmentally friendly, is also an investor in Santa Cruz-based Onewheel. The money for SwellCycle is what’s known as a pre-seed funding round, which is the foundational investment round that helps a company turn its initial concept into a viable business, through research and development. It’s typically the first funding round a company gets.
The investment will help the SwellCycle team further refine its technology and manufacturing processes, with a goal of bringing these processes to different industries to produce custom, high-performance objects. In fact, the potential versatility of SwellCycle’s methodology was what drew Third Sphere’s interest.
“While surfboards provide an ideal entry point, the technology can be applied to furniture, marine craft, art installations and countless other products that traditionally rely on wasteful manufacturing methods,” Shaun Abrahamson, managing partner for Third Sphere, wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.
SwellCycle’s team recently applied its 3D printing expertise to help the UC Santa Cruz Seymour Marine Discovery Center restore its beloved 87-foot whale skeleton by printing replacement “bones.” The skeleton, known as Ms. Blue, had to be disassembled in late 2023 due to degradation of both the skeleton and the structure that held it up.
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