For fifty years, semiconductors have gotten faster, cheaper, and smaller on a reliable, predictable curve. But the magnetic components that sit beside them in every converter, inverter, and power supply have not. Magnetic materials have remained one of the least modernized parts of the power stack, even as AI data centers and dynamic grids demand transformers and inductors that run hotter, more efficiently, and at higher voltages than legacy designs allow. “Power has traditionally flowed linearly from large power plants to predictable demand sources,” says Sam Kernion, CEO of CorePower Magnetics. “Now we have all these new types of loads and generation, which power electronics give us a huge opportunity to control. Magnetics are at the heart of the systems that make that possible.”
CorePower Magnetics, a startup with roots in Prof. Michael McHenry’s former materials science lab at Carnegie Mellon University, is engineering a new generation of magnetic components that replace the legacy materials that have constrained the industry for decades. Working across the value chain, CorePower develops the magnetic steels themselves, designs the cores and components built from them, and scales the manufacturing process that produces them. “CorePower's technology closes that generational gap in magnetic components which would otherwise serve as the critical bottleneck, enabling smaller, lighter, and more efficient power conversion systems,” says Paul Ohodnicki, co-founder and CTO. “CorePower sits at a critical and under-appreciated layer in the power stack," adds Reed Sturtevant, General Partner at Engine Ventures. "Their readiness to scale will help us meet the moment for data centers and the grid.”
CorePower’s foundational technology is a class of nanocrystalline alloys that Ohodnicki and Kernion began developing together as researchers at Carnegie Mellon, and continued at the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. Nanocrystalline alloys had been around for decades, but they carried a persistent flaw: they were brittle, prone to shattering “like a potato chip,” and couldn’t operate at the 200 degree temperature that industrial applications demand. Rebalancing the ratio of soft magnetic elements created a formulation that imparted unprecedented ductility and could withstand higher temperatures without losing the magnetic performance that made nanocrystalline alloys valuable in the first place. Manufacturing that reformulated alloy at commercial scale required new methods of casting and annealing. CorePower’s process combines rapid solidification with the use of a second advanced furnace for continuous reel-to-reel annealing. The soft magnetic ribbon passes through under controlled tension, resulting in a tuned alloy ready for integration into high performance magnetic products. “It’s really an incredible process when you think about what we are achieving with this continuous, scalable, and high throughput manufacturing technology,” explains Ohodnicki. “It’s only hot for a few seconds, but it results in an unprecedented level of tunability.”
That process opens up CorePower’s alloy for use in an expanded catalog of finished components. Following the commercialization playbook established by the wide bandgap semiconductor industry, CorePower is standardizing product families in the way that chipmakers have standardized silicon systems. The approach allows their innovative magnetics to be the foundation and the springboard for a suite of inductors, transformers, and motors capable of meeting new attributes of size, frequency, voltage, and efficiency. “Adapting existing materials and components to today’s applications is not enough,” says Kernion. “We’ve been driving around in cars, and now we’re trying to fly a jet. The operating conditions are different, and the magnetics at the heart of those systems need to be different.”
CorePower’s next step is scale. The company is building out a production line in the Pittsburgh region, initially oriented towards the market for conventional line-frequency distribution transformers, which have suffered from shortages for years. In addition to meeting a critical national need, doing so also derisks the large-scale manufacturing of new transformer and inductor product families. While data centers are the most visible market, the same magnetic components turn up in the motor drive of an HVAC chiller, in EV power electronics, and at nearly every conversion point across the grid. “Pittsburgh helped build the foundation of the grid and the industrial economy," Kernion says. "We're applying that same innovation and manufacturing mindset to one of the most important challenges in modern electrification.
"The next generation of power electronics required to meet the needs for broad electrification across sectors won't be enabled by semiconductors alone," Ohodnicki says. "Magnetics have to evolve as well, and that's the gap we are closing with our technology and capabilities."
