Dragonfly Advanced Materials, a Northumberland-based Newcastle University spinout, has raised £1M, made up of £500,000 of equity from Northstar Ventures and a £500,000 grant from Innovate UK's investor partnership programme.

Aerogels are among the lightest solid materials made, and they insulate well and resist fire and water. Cost and production complexity have kept them out of wider use. Conventional manufacturing relies on either specialist pressurised equipment or expensive drying solvents, which are both costly and hard on the environment.

Dragonfly makes silica aerogels using a patented process designed to be simpler and easier to scale, with less reliance on those solvents. The approach also lets the company adjust the material's properties and add other materials, so formulations can be tailored for customers in coatings, energy, construction, transport and industrial manufacturing. The method traces back to Newcastle research published in 2018 in the journal Advanced Materials, led by Dr Xiao Han, now Dragonfly's chief technology officer, and Dr Lidija Šiller. It took its cue from the way dragonfly wings dry, and the team estimated at the time that it could cut production costs from around $100 to $4 per kilogram.

Dragonfly spun out of Newcastle University in 2020 and now holds three patents. It is in the final stages of commissioning a new Northumberland manufacturing facility, which will let it supply larger volumes of material to customers for validation and development. Northstar previously led an earlier round of roughly £935,000 in 2024, according to CB Insights. CEO John Baines said the company's focus is now on customer adoption, commercialisation and licensing, with "the majority of our scale-up infrastructure now in place".

Northstar invested from the North East Spinout Inspire Fund, a £22.5M fund backed by the universities of Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside, together with the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority. Dragonfly will use the new money to increase production capacity, expand its sales and development team, and continue joint development work with industrial partners, with future licensing agreements in view.

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