About
A founder-led engineering studio in Richmond, Virginia
Farad Labs is small by design. You work directly with Luke, who leads the circuit, the firmware and the cloud it connects to, not with layers of account managers and contractors.
Where code meets electrons
Farad Labs is Luke Libraro’s engineering studio, built on 15+ years of hands-on engineering and product leadership. That work has spanned production ML models, AI agent systems, connected products and cloud infrastructure at scale.
It includes co-founding Rocket Wagon and eight years as its CTO, building connected products for Fortune 500 clients; serving as CTO of Frost Solutions from launch and designing and building the hardware for road weather stations deployed across 37 states and 7 Canadian provinces; hardware team lead on VisiPill’s smart pill dispenser; and, at Rocket Wagon, hardware lead on Light for Hope, a philanthropic solar lantern project with SC Johnson, BBDO and ChildFund.
Today we work with hardware startups and growing businesses: prototypes, firmware and production for connected products, and practical AI for teams that want it to do real work. When a project needs a web app, we build the first version and bring in partner teams to scale it.
The same goes for the physical product. We design enclosures in-house or bring in expert mechanical engineering and industrial design partners, or work alongside the client’s own team, so the product is beautiful, functional and built to work in the field.
Principles
How the work gets done
- 01
First principles
Understand the physics, the protocol and the failure mode before choosing the tool.
- 02
Precision over speed
Measured, deliberate and correct, because hardware mistakes are expensive to undo.
- 03
End-to-end ownership
Concept through completion under one lead: circuit, firmware, cloud and the seams between them.
Why “Farad”?
The farad is the unit of capacitance: a capacitor’s ability to store energy and release it with precision. Like a capacitor in a circuit, the studio stores deep expertise and deploys it exactly when a project needs it most.
Founder-led
Hands-on, start to finish.
Every project is led by Luke Libraro, hands-on from the first schematic to the factory floor to the fleet dashboard.
Luke brings 15+ years of engineering and product leadership across hardware, firmware, cloud and AI. No account managers: the person who scopes your project leads the work. We build the first web experience, from dashboards to companion web apps, alongside the device, and bring in partner teams when an app needs to scale.
Based in Richmond, working nationwide
We’re based in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond-area teams get in-person working sessions and bench time; for startups elsewhere in the US, we work remotely and travel for kickoffs, builds and field tests.
Tell us what you’re building.
A short call is usually enough to know whether we’re the right fit, and what the first phase should prove.
hello@farad.dev