The 3D printing industry has seen ongoing merger and acquisition activity in 2017, while investments from private equity and venture capital firms has also been robust.
While record-breaking deals such as the 2016 GE acquisition of Concept Laser and Arcam were not seen, a quick count of investments in 2017 shows that funding activity is above half a billion dollars.
GE were involved in one of the major 3D printing deals of the year, as investors in Desktop Metal. That series D funding round granted unicorn status to the Burlington, Massachusetts based enterprise, valuing the company at over $1 billion.
This article takes a look at several newly announced deals with links to the 3D printing industry.
Fracktal Works Pvt. Ltd raises funding from Hyderabad Angels
Based in India, Fracktal Works has received an undisclosed amount of pre-Series A round from Hyderabad Angels.
The funding will be used to develop 3D printers, and launch an online service platform called Fractory. In an interview with VCCircle, Rohit Asil, co-founder, Fracktal, said, “Customers can choose to get their parts manufactured from various 3D printing and metal CNC technologies.”
CGTrader closes $2.3 million investment round
While not focused primarily on 3D printing, 3D model marketplace CGTrader has been active in the wider 3D content creation space since 2011.
Dalia Lasaite, CEO and co-founder of CGTrader explains, “3D is becoming the next wave of content towards interactivity and immersion.”
Lasaite’s company has just closed a $2.3 million investment round. Karma Ventures was lead investor and CGTrader’s current backers Intel Capital and Practica Capital also participated.
“Enabled by technologies such as spatial computing, augmented reality (ARKit, ARCore, AR Studio), virtual reality and WebGL, 3D is becoming the next wave of content towards interactivity and immersion – moving from text to images to video to 3D. By far, the biggest bottleneck in this market is the high cost of 3D content creation. CGTrader is playing a significant role in reducing the cost as well as empowering developers to create 3D applications much faster and more efficiently,” added Lasaite.
Shapr3D raises $1.3M to bring advanced CAD to mobile devices
In 2014, Budapest based Shapr3D began work on an app that would allow Siemens Parasolid software to run on hardware such as the iPad Pro.
Parasolid is the CAD engine that powers SOLIDWORKS and a number of other major design tools.
In a recent blog post, István Csanady, founder and CEO, comments, “Shapr3D 3.0 is here … This elevates the product to a new level, especially that it’s still just $150/year – not thousands of dollars, and still super easy to use.”
Financing this work is the latest funding round of $1.3 million.
The lead investor was InReach Ventures, with the participation of Lifeline Ventures, Kima Ventures, and other undisclosed angel investors.
Cincinnati Incorporated acquires New Valence Robotics
Turning to M&A activity, Cincinnati Incorporated (CI) has bought New Valence Robotics Corp. (NVBOTS).
In 2016, CI became a reseller of NVBOTS small-scale 3D printer and rebranded it as SAAM (Small Area Additive Manufacturing), to complement there Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) additive manfacturing systems.
Carey Chen, CI president, CEO, and vice chairman said, “Cincinnati Incorporated’s participation in additive manufacturing has been within the large scale arena with BAAM. NVBOTS naturally compliments CI’s capabilities with smaller scale additive manufacturing systems, the growing ability to print in a wide array of materials, and automated solutions including cloud based management software.”
AJ Perez, NVBOTS chairman and co-founder, commented, “This partnership represents an exciting opportunity to extend NVBOTS’ core mission to make 3D printing as easy as printing on paper, and to fulfill our long-term vision where anyone can 3D print any part, in any material, anytime, anywhere.”
Graphene 3D Lab awarded $500,000 grant from the State of New York
The final piece of funding news this week comes from Calverton, NY based Graphene 3D Lab Inc. The Long Island Regional Economic Development Council (LIREDC) has made a $500,000 grant to assist with financing and renovating a new facility at Ronkonkoma.
Graphene 3D Lab is focused on the “development, manufacturing, and marketing of proprietary composites and coatings based on graphene and other advanced materials.” Through their 3D printing division, BlackMagic, the company supplies filament.
Speaking about the Long Island economic development plan Governor Cuomo said, “These awards are critical to building the foundations for New York’s future and ensuring that our economic momentum continues. I congratulate each of the Councils on their awards and look forward to continuing to partner to keep our communities vibrant and thriving for years to come.”
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Featured image from Shapr3D 3.0: Think and Design in 3D via YouTube.
