October 12th, 2026
In the Spotlight: Blake Martin and Jack Manzella of Sofab Inks
Happy Monday, friends. If you’re a UK football fan like myself, it’s a happy Monday, indeed…
Today is the fourth of our “Mission Critical Mondays,” and we're on location again, this time inside Sofab Inks' lab in Louisville.
This week, I sat down with Blake Martin, CEO, and Jack Manzella, COO, of Sofab Inks, at their lab in Louisville. Sofab makes the ink for one layer of next-generation perovskite solar cells, the layer that has kept them from lasting long enough to finance.
Everyone is asking where the power for AI is going to come from. A lot of solar's falling cost has come from getting more power out of every panel, and silicon, the material in nearly every panel today, is getting close to its limit. Perovskite can be coated in thin layers and stacked on top of a silicon cell to catch the spectrum of light that silicon misses. It’s already proven it can create massive efficiency gains. What it hasn't proven yet is that it can last 25 to 30 years outdoors, which is what lenders need to see before they'll finance a big solar field. Part of the problem is a single layer: most makers use a material called C60 to pull electricity out of the cell, and as Jack put it, “That material was never designed for perovskite solar.” Sofab's tin oxide ink was.
This is a Kentucky hard-tech story start to finish. Blake grew up in Lexington, went to Centre, and earned his PhD at UofL's Speed School, where the material started as a fix for a lab frustration. Jack read their business plan while he was UofL's entrepreneur-in-residence and left his job to join. This summer they closed a $6M seed round, and they're competing for customers around the world.
What We Discussed
Perovskite, explained - What it is, and why Sofab's tin oxide replaces a layer that was never designed for it.
The turning point - What a perovskite CEO told Jack during 100+ customer interviews, and why he left his job to join.
Raising big from Kentucky - Why they set an ambitious $6M target to compete internationally, and what it buys them.
The result they thought was an error - Ninety-nine recipes, then one test so good they assumed it was wrong.
What hard tech here still needs - Capital, instrumentation and research infrastructure, and where UofL and UK fit.
We hope you enjoy this episode! If you have any thoughts after listening, feel free to shoot me a message at [email protected]
Have a great week, friends!
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