Liquid Instruments

About

Liquid Instruments builds FPGA-based, software-reconfigurable Moku test and measurement hardware that consolidates multiple instruments into compact devices controllable via apps and APIs for education, research, and industrial labs.

Mission

Liquid Instruments develops the reconfigurable Moku platform, which integrates a suite of bench and advanced instruments—from oscilloscopes to lock-in amplifiers—on FPGA-based hardware for optics, photonics, aerospace, defense and other R&D applications. Its technology traces to decades of research at Australian universities, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Founded in Australia in 2014, the company serves hundreds of labs worldwide with compact, customizable test solutions that aim to speed research timelines and reduce cost. The company announced a new $12 million funding round that will enable expansion of manufacturing in Australia and scaling of global operations. Planned uses include onshoring existing manufacturing, building new production lines for a next‑generation device, opening a Melbourne office, and hiring dozens of engineers in AI, machine learning, computer science, and advanced manufacturing. Liquid Instruments also plans to expand its internship program with Victorian universities to provide hands‑on experience for undergraduate and graduate students. Liquid Instruments develops the Moku line — software-defined test and measurement hardware (Moku:Go, Moku:Lab, Moku:Pro) that uses FPGA-based architectures to replace multiple traditional instruments with reconfigurable software. Its devices run on Xilinx chips from AMD and combine analogue circuitry and digital processing to deliver smaller, faster, and lower-cost test equipment. Customers include NASA, Google, Qualcomm, Stanford, Duke and NIST, and the company serves research, education, government labs and industrial markets across aerospace, defense, semiconductors, lidar and quantum computing. Sales have grown four-fold over the past year. The company was founded in Australia and is now headquartered in San Francisco. Management plans to build more hardware models, develop additional software-based testing tools, enhance cloud integration and scale production of Moku:Go, with frequent over-the-air updates planned for new features. Liquid Instruments develops software-enabled hardware that leverages FPGA computation to create dynamically reconfigurable instruments for controlling experiments and acquiring and analyzing data. Its Moku product line (including Moku:Lab and the recently launched portable Moku:Go) packs multiple instruments into compact devices to serve education, R&D and industrial use cases. Moku:Go was created to support remote engineering education and combines eight testing instruments in one device. The company says Moku:Lab is used by hundreds of top R&D institutions worldwide. Liquid Instruments intends to deliver a portfolio of new products at scale and expand commercial growth into new markets and verticals. The firm has attracted experienced industry leaders to its leadership and advisory teams to support that expansion. Liquid Instruments develops Moku:Lab, a compact FPGA-based, software-reconfigurable hardware platform that integrates 12 precision test and measurement instruments for advanced digital signal processing. Moku:Lab is controlled through the company’s iPad app and via LabVIEW, Python and MATLAB APIs. Founded in 2014 by experimental physicists and engineers — including former researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — the company is led by Prof Daniel Shaddock, CEO. Liquid Instruments targets education, research and industrial measurement customers across the US, Europe and Asia. The company intends to use raised funds to accelerate product development and continue growth in those markets.

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