SUPERWOOD is the brainchild of Maryland’s InventWood, a startup that’s cooking up an engineered wood so tough it’s up to 10 times stronger than steel and 12 times beefier than your average oak. This isn’t just a cool lab trick—it’s set to flip construction, manufacturing, and maybe even your next furniture run on its head.
Way back in 2018, Liangbing Hu, a materials whiz at the University of Maryland, started messing around with wood to make it more than just a pretty tabletop. Wood’s already got a neat natural setup, as its cellulose fibers are pretty much nature’s version of a skyscraper’s steel beams. But Hu knew it could be so much more. What if you could ditch the fragile parts and crank up the strength to superhero levels?
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Now, in 2025, InventWood, the company spun out of Hu’s lab, has nailed it. They’ve snagged $15 million in Series A funding to ramp up production, with a massive 90,000-square-foot factory in Frederick, Maryland, ready to churn out SUPERWOOD by Q3 2025. Their mission? Craft a material that’s not only insanely strong but also eco-friendly, light, and flexible enough to swap out steel and concrete in everything from high-rises to car frames.
Here’s how it works: InventWood takes everyday wood—like basswood from fast-growing, sustainable US forests—and gives it a chemical bath to strip out lignin, the gluey stuff that holds wood together but makes it brittle. What’s left is a bendy, cellulose-packed frame that’s still wood but way more pliable.
Next, they crank up the heat and pressure in a process called densification, squishing those cellulose fibers into a super-tight, ultra-strong structure—like turning a fluffy pancake stack into one mega-tough flapjack. The result? A material that’s up to 80% cellulose (way more than the 50% in regular wood) with barely any weak points.
Then, they treat this beefed-up wood to fend off fire, water, rot, and pesky bugs. Unlike steel, which rusts like nobody’s business, or concrete, which cracks under pressure, SUPERWOOD laughs off the elements while still looking like the wood you’d see in a cozy cabin.
So, how does this stuff outmuscle steel? It’s all about the setup. Steel’s a heavy, crystalline metal that’s tough but rust-prone. Wood, though, is like nature’s composite, with cellulose fibers acting as mini-reinforcements. By tossing the lignin and packing those fibers tight, InventWood turns SUPERWOOD into a lean, mean, strength machine.
With that $15 million in the bank and over $50 million total in funding, InventWood’s just getting started. They’re prepping to roll out SUPERWOOD in late 2025, starting with construction, where it could replace steel beams or concrete panels in green buildings. But don’t sleep on this stuff—it’s got big dreams beyond the job site.
SUPERWOOD demonstrates what’s possible when we combine nature’s most highly evolved structure with revolutionary science, This funding enables us to scale production of a material that will fundamentally change how we build, creating structures that are stronger and lighter than steel while retaining all the biogenic qualities people have treasured in wood for millennia,” said Alex Lau, CEO of InventWood.
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