Yesterday we learned that Formlabs obtained an additional $15 million in funding from New Enterprise Associates making it estimated to be worth a billion dollars. We told you about that story and the immediate implications here , and now we have some analysis. This gives it coveted unicorn status […]

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What are the implications for our industry?

$100 million is the new $3 million. VC’s are now willing to sink over a $100 million in a third 3D printing company after Desktop metal and Carbon. This tells us a number of things. VCs really do believe in 3D printing which is nice. It also tells us that VCs believe that there will be one or two winners in the Additive Manufacturing market. Meanwhile, we see a chaotic open-source FDM 3D printer ecosystem with over 500 entrants. This implies that investors are expecting a mass die-off there of companies. Everyone I speak to expects the great majority of 3D printer companies to die off soon. It’s a near universally held truth, and you know when predicting the future these are almost never correct. What if we see more granular approaches to market and more companies filling more niches? What if specialization and systems integration into custom manufacturing solutions provides an alternative?

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