BROOKLYN, NY—Nanotronics, a science technology company, last week celebrated the opening of its flagship manufacturing center here, located in the Navy Yard's historic Building 20, a 150-year-old former shipbuilding factory. Nanotronics specializes in combining AI, automation and sophisticated imaging to manufacture hardware and software capable of working on a nanometer scale.

Designed by Rogers Partners Architects + Urban Designers, the factory will house many aspects of the company’s business, from research and development to production and design, while ensuring quality and safety through its proprietary platform, Intelligent Factory Control (IFC). Nanotronics' artificial intelligence researchers, computer scientists, chemists and physicists will be able to work directly with skilled machinists on the manufacturing floor, developing innovations that will lead partner industries to a smaller factory footprint, less waste and a faster route from R&D to production.

The project was primarily funded through $3.25 million from the City of New York and a $2.25 million Regional Economic Development Council capital grant through ESD in exchange for a commitment of 190 jobs. Nanotronics will use the new 45,000-square-foot building as its headquarters.

The company will also be able to recruit top talent locally through New York institutions including the Navy Yard's Employment Center and STEAM Center (the Yard’s on-site vocational high school), the City University of New York (CUNY), Cornell Tech, New York University and Columbia University. Nanotronics has partnered with CUNY Medgar Evers College to host nearly 30 interns in the last three years as part of Empire State Development’s STARTUP-NY program.

“We wanted to create a modern-day Edison Lab,” says Matthew Putman, CEO and co-founder of Nanotronics. “That vision of building in a way that was never done before, with the same hope and possibilities of better jobs, local products, and leading the world in invention seemed like a real possibility in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We are thrilled to advance manufacturing with the perspective of seeing our past, looking out of our windows at the city where so much of our present is on view, and build an intelligent factory where robotics, AI, and humans can work together to create a sustainable future.”