MateriaX · Senior technology leadership for materials-driven companies
Materials. Products.
AI. Connected.
I'm Dr. Yakov Kutsovsky, former CTO of Cabot Corporation, co-founder of Group1, and Expert-in-Residence at Harvard. I help companies get new materials from lab breakthroughs to profitable production and new applications.
Deep enough to understand the technical work. Experienced enough to see how product, process, and company choices affect one another. Close enough to the work to help the company act.
Judgment built at industrial scale. Applied with startup speed and agency.
Long-term advisor · Board director or advisory-board member · Fractional CTO or CSO
The decisions are connected. The work should be too.
In tires, batteries, coatings, and other performance products, the material is only one part of the system. Multiple materials, interfaces, components, and processes must work together. Improving one can shift performance, manufacturability, cost, or qualification somewhere else. I help companies resolve those tradeoffs across the full system.
At Cabot, my work spanned materials, process, manufacturing, product performance, and customer requirements. At Group1, I worked across cathode materials, electrodes, and cells, while scaling cathode production from laboratory synthesis to pilot scale. Different scale. The same connected judgment.
Where I most often help.
Which product and application should we pursue first?
A strong material can fit several markets, but the first application shapes product design, qualification, partners, capital, and time to revenue. Choose where the customer problem, performance gain, willingness to pay, and path to adoption justify the focus.
What else has to work in the complete product?
A material advantage has to survive in the complete product, not only in a material test. I help teams identify which interaction is limiting performance and what to change next.
What will change at scale and during customer qualification?
At larger scale, mixing, heat and mass transfer, equipment, yield, consistency, safety, and cost can all change. Customer qualification tests the product in conditions the laboratory may not reproduce. Either can send the team back to the material, process, or product design.
What must we own or control, and where do we need partners?
Decide which materials, processes, data, product know-how, capabilities, and rights are strategic. Preserve control through the right mix of patents, trade secrets, licenses, field-of-use rights, and development agreements. Bring in partners where they add capability or speed.
What do we need to prove next, and where can materials informatics and AI accelerate development?
Before the next major commitment, identify what must be true and what evidence is good enough to act. Use materials informatics and AI with experiments, process data, application testing, and engineering models to compare options and direct the next work. The goal is faster learning grounded in physical testing, manufacturing reality, and customer requirements.
A change in any one can reopen the other four. Teams revisit them as the product, the evidence, and the company evolve.
AI and materials informatics in materials development
Materials. Processes. Product architectures. What could work.
Applications. Customers. Economics. What creates value.
AI and materials informatics let me examine more evidence, compare more alternatives, and focus the next experiments. I use them alongside technical, IP, financial, and computational engineering models to test materials, processes, applications, and scale-up paths. I led the design of Cabot's global materials-informatics system, made the capability part of Group1's development platform from the beginning, and now serve as Senior Advisor to Uncountable. These tools broaden the What if? Experience and judgment decide what matters in the product, plant, IP position, and company. That is the X in MateriaX.
Where I have the highest impact.
Materials and hardtech startups need scale experience without corporate drag. Established companies need startup speed and agency without losing rigor. Boards need independent technical judgment when technology shapes growth, risk, and capital. Advisory and fractional roles can serve either operating situation. Board work carries a different duty.
Materials & hardtech startups
For founders moving from a technical result to a product, production path, and company that can scale. I help the team choose the application, define the customer proof, build the materials and process path, and decide what the company must own or secure next.
How I work →Mid-sized materials and advanced-product companies
For specialty-materials companies and manufacturers of batteries, cells, coatings, and other advanced products making a consequential technology move. I work with the CEO and technology team on the product and application proof, R&D priorities, manufacturing path, IP, partnerships, and investment required.
How I work →Boards overseeing technology-led growth
I help the board test the technical and operating assumptions behind growth and capital decisions: product credibility, manufacturing readiness, partner dependence, organization, and whether the company can execute. This includes where AI and materials informatics can accelerate development of new products and process technology, and what must still be proven in the physical product and plant.
Board service →
florrent
Modern Hydrogen
Across these companies, the work has involved first commercial launches, first-of-a-kind materials and cells, federal awards, and manufacturing-scale decisions. I also advise private chemical & specialty-formulations companies under NDA.
Three ways I work. Different responsibilities.
Each role has a different mandate, authority, and duty. All depend on continuity, trust, and sustained attention.
Long-term advisorIndependent judgment without executive authority
Board director or advisory-board memberTwo formal roles with different duties
Fractional CTO / CSOEmbedded executive technology leadership
A conflict check begins the first conversation. Sensitive work begins under a mutual NDA, and I keep information separated by client. We agree which outside tools, including AI systems, may handle company information. Board appointments follow the company's governance and confidentiality requirements.
It starts as a conversation,
not a contract.
We begin with the company, not a service package. We talk about the technology, the team, the ambition, and what the company is trying to resolve. Those conversations show where my judgment is useful. I can also share specific examples of relevant work in the first conversation.
If I am not the right person, I will say so and point you elsewhere. If we continue, I learn how the company got here, meet the team, and identify the key assumptions.
The right role becomes clear through these conversations.
Judgment comes from experience.
This is where mine was built.
I'm Yakov Kutsovsky. I've spent thirty-five years taking new materials from grams in a lab to tens of thousands of tons across commercial sites, while building the teams, IP positions, and businesses around them.
Built at global scale
At Cabot Corporation, I served as CTO and Chief Scientific Officer for fifteen years and led a 350-person R&D organization across five global technology centers. My work spanned tires, batteries, displays, inkjet printing, coatings, adhesives, sealants, and plastic composites. I built global collaboration programs with leading customers and partners that led to new products and technology licensing. I also identified and executed multiple M&A opportunities that expanded Cabot's technology portfolio. I led the design and implementation of a global materials-informatics system that brought experimental, process, and application data together across the R&D organization.
My team increased business impact from products and process improvements developed in the prior five years to more than $150M. I built and led the team that produced a validated strategic-opportunity pipeline of more than $250M and led IP licensing agreements with more than $100M in aggregate value. As President of Applied Nanostructured Solutions, I also held responsibility for operations and capital projects. We tripled capacity and expanded the opportunity pipeline fivefold.
Startup speed and agency
I co-founded Group1 and served for five years as Chief Scientific Officer, leading materials and battery development, process scale-up, and IP strategy. From the beginning, we made materials informatics and AI part of the development platform, linking cathode synthesis, electrode and cell testing, and process scale-up.
Group1 began with the idea and first KPW paper from Professor John Goodenough's laboratory at UT Austin, where co-founder Leigang Xue invented the cathode. We secured exclusive technology rights, moved KPW production from laboratory synthesis to pilot scale, and developed what Group1 announced as the world's first 18650-format potassium-ion cell, using graphite as the anode. We also secured $1.5M in NSF STTR and SBIR funding. Building Group1 and advising more than 10 other startups taught me that strategy has to become action. Two companies I advised received more than $34M in ARPA-E SCALEUP awards.
Current work
As an Expert-in-Residence at Harvard, my research with Zhigang Suo's group has produced seven publications from 2023 through 2026, including work in Nature, Nature Sustainability, Nature Communications, and PNAS. Through MateriaX, I advise founders and CEOs over the long term, serve on boards and advisory boards, and work as a fractional CTO inside private chemical and specialty-formulations companies. These roles carry different responsibilities. Each keeps me close enough to the work to test assumptions, work through disagreement, and see how one choice changes the others.
Work you can inspect.
Public evidence of how I work: company presentations, practical frameworks, and research I coauthor.
The Moat & the Bridge
How startups work with corporate partners without giving away their future. Partnership structure, proof-of-concept design, and NDA/JDA terms determine who owns what comes next. Taught at Greentown Labs and used in client work.
View the deck (PDF) →
Industrializing performance materials
Application requirements, product-by-process design, computational modeling, scale, formulation, safety, and cost are treated as one commercialization problem. The deck shows how this comprehensive approach worked across carbon black, fumed oxides, inkjet colorants, aerogels, battery materials, and advanced composites.
View the Cabot deck (PDF) →Harvard SEAS · The PNAS tire-composite work (2026)
Harvard SEAS · The Nature fatigue-resistance work (2023)
Essays land on LinkedIn first. Follow me there → · Public record: publications & patents →
Tell me what you're trying to build or decide.
A short note is enough. Tell me what you're building, the consequential decision ahead, and why it matters now. I read everything myself. I take on a small number of engagements. Fit matters more than speed.