ATLANTA (AP) — Atlanta United is bringing back Gerardo “Tata” Martino as coach, signing him through the 2027 season.
Atlanta made the announcement on Thursday, re-hiring the man who led the team to the Major League Soccer title in 2018 and was named coach of the year.
“This moment is not about revisiting the past but about looking ahead and building a new foundation while embracing the continuing evolution of what it takes to contend in MLS on a regular basis,” team owner Arthur M. Blank said.
Martino left Inter Miami nearly a year ago, citing personal reasons after one season with the club. He has won 11 trophies on the club and international level in North America, South America and Europe.
Miami hired him in July 2023, right around the time that Lionel Messi debuted for the team. He coached Messi with Barcelona and Argentina’s national team before reuniting with him in South Florida.
Inter Miami was 26-9-12 in MLS regular-season matches in the Martino era, plus won the club's first two trophies: the Leagues Cup in 2023 and the Supporters Shield as the best MLS regular season team in 2024.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - Inter Miami head coach Gerardo "Tata" Martino waves as he arrives for an MLS playoff soccer match against Atlanta United, Oct. 25, 2024, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 13, 2026--
For decades, battery manufacturing has stood still despite advances in battery chemistry. Today, Material Hybrid Manufacturing Inc. (MATERIAL) announces it has raised $7.1 million in Seed funding, co-led by Outlander VC and Harpoon Ventures, with participation from GoAhead Ventures, Myelin VC, Demos Capital and Giant Step Capital, to break this stagnation and usher in a new era of energy design.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260112647458/en/
Dead space is dead
MATERIAL’s proprietary HYBRID3D™ technology prints energy directly into a component of any shape and size, removing the barriers between design intent and manufacturing reality. This category-defining method produces batteries which adopt the shape of the object rather than forcing the object to accommodate a rigid, cylindrical or pouch cell. The platform unites multiple advanced additive and semiconductor manufacturing techniques to print energy into the very structure of a device.
“The world doesn't need another breakthrough in battery chemistry; it needs a breakthrough in how we make energy storage,” said Gabe Elias, CEO of MATERIAL and 7-time Formula One World Champion design engineer. “We are building the tools to make electrical energy formless. Whether it’s filling the hollow profile of a fixed-wing drone or conforming to the body of a wearable device user, our platform allows electrical power to behave like a fuel design element. Our technology allows us to deploy anywhere and print exactly what the application demands.”
Validating the Mission: $1.25M Air Force Contract
Already demonstrating its value proposition, MATERIAL is currently partnering with the United States Air Force to execute a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award for a $1.25 million project.
As part of this project, MATERIAL is collaborating with PDW and other leading U.S. defense developers to integrate conformal batteries directly into Class I unmanned aerial systems (UAS). By eliminating the "dead space" inherent in standard cylindrical cell arrays, MATERIAL’s technology is projected to dramatically increase pack-level energy densities by over 50% and reduce module weight by more than 22 percent for this study.
“MATERIAL’s ability to tailor battery geometry to our airframe would allow us to push endurance and payload limits further,” said Darsan Patel, Director of Product Design at PDW. “Conformal energy technology bridges the gap between rapid prototyping and field-ready performance.”
This partnership is an initial step towards edge manufacturing and domestic supply chain stability, in which MATERIAL would be able to deploy containerized units to produce mission-critical power supplies on demand, breaking reliance on fragile global supply chains.
Giving investors a reason to believe
“MATERIAL is creating an entirely new paradigm for the battery industry,” said Jordan Kretchmer, Senior Partner at Outlander VC. “Gabe and his team aren’t competing with gigafactories; they are rendering them obsolete for high-performance applications by enabling batteries to be designed around any product structure, instead of the structure having to be designed around the battery. This is the category-defining shift Outlander lives to back.”
Harpoon Ventures, utilizing its "Freedom Stack" thesis, identifies MATERIAL as a critical node for national resilience. “We invest in companies that give the U.S. and its allies an unfair technological advantage,” said Larsen Jensen, Founder and General Partner at Harpoon Ventures. “Current defense platforms are strangled by the geometry of commercial batteries. MATERIAL eliminates that constraint. Their ability to decouple energy storage from rigid form factors is a game-changer for our national industrial base. This is what manufacturing sovereignty looks like.”
Unlimited power, unlimited commercial possibility
On the commercial side, MATERIAL is working with consumer electronics partners on next-generation products. Additional pilots are underway across mobility, robotics, and wearables.
About Material Hybrid Manufacturing Inc.
Material Hybrid Manufacturing Inc. is rewriting the rules of energy storage. Its core technology, HYBRID3D™, is a chemistry-agnostic platform that 3D prints full-stack batteries in custom geometries. By merging the precision of semiconductor manufacturing with the flexibility of additive techniques, MATERIAL enables the creation of conformal batteries that fit seamlessly into the structure of any device. Headquartered in Miami, FL, MATERIAL is teaching the world how to manufacture autonomy.
For more information, visit www.material.inc.
From left: Founders Miles Dotson, Gabe Elias and Christopher Reyes, PhD
