The additive manufacturing industry grew 10.9% last year to reach $24.2 billion in global revenues, but the headline figure tells only part of the story.
Beneath it sits a market that is changing shape in ways that matter more than the topline growth rate. The findings come from the Wohlers Report 2026 executive summary, published by market intelligence firm Wohlers Associates and ASTM International, and what they show is an industry that has largely stopped growing through hardware sales and started growing through services.
“Additive manufacturing is no longer advancing on a single, uniform growth curve,” said Dr. Mahdi Jamshid, Director of Market Intelligence at Wohlers Associates. As per the report, the “industry [is] adjusting to tighter capital conditions, more selective investment, and higher expectations for utilization and return. Growth continues, but it is more uneven, more regional, and more closely tied to real production outcomes.”
The Uneven Reality Behind 10.9%
The divergence is stark in the numbers. Printing services, the largest segment at $11.7 billion, expanded 15.5% in 2025 and now account for nearly half of all AM revenue. By contrast, printer sales and servicing reached $6.2 billion, growing just 3.6%. Additionally, materials generated $4.9 billion and software $1.4 billion. The data points to a growing installed base, with the key question shifting toward how effectively that capacity is being used.
End-use part production now accounts for 39.8% of AM applications among end users, the largest single category, a figure that reflects how far the technology has moved from its prototyping roots. Yet the returns remain uneven. Only 39% of end users surveyed said they consistently achieve positive returns from their AM operations, with another 36% reporting returns only on select projects.
Part of the difficulty lies in where costs accumulate. Post-processing accounts for 18% of total polymer part costs and 24% in metal parts costs. Whereas, material qualification remains the most commonly cited adoption barrier, flagged by 61% of respondents, and cost constraints covering capital expenditure, operating costs, and cost of goods were cited by 53% as a current and 47% as near-future concern. These are not new problems, which is itself telling.
While Western producers contend with these frictions, China is moving in a different direction entirely. The country exported an estimated $1.84 billion worth of AM systems and components in 2025, roughly three times its nearest competitor, and recorded 61 investment deals during the year, outpacing every other country by a significant margin.
Monthly export volumes climbed steadily through the year, and the regional growth gap is widening: Asia-Pacific companies reported average revenue growth of 19.8%, against 12.6% in the Americas and 6.5% across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Against that backdrop, M&A activity ran at a steady pace through 2025, peaking at 16 transactions in December. China led regional investment with 61 deals, far ahead of all other countries. The full report addresses capital allocation patterns in greater depth, but the data available points to an industry where investment activity and regional growth are becoming increasingly concentrated.
Where Value Is Being Defended
The move from hardware to services as the primary growth engine of additive manufacturing has not gone unnoticed at the policy level. A 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) report drawing on input from over 400 industry, government, and executive sources explicitly names AM among the technologies governments should incentivize to build supply chain resilience.
Crucially, the report frames AM adoption not as a technology upgrade decision but as an economic risk management one, favoring production models that reduce exposure to idle capacity and allow investment to track demand more closely. In that framing, the growth of printing services over hardware sales is not a market anomaly. It is the logical response to an environment where utilization risk has become as important as unit economics.
The hardware side of that picture is becoming harder to ignore. Data from market intelligence firm CONTEXT covering the first and third quarters of 2025 shows a consistent pattern: total hardware revenues grew modestly in both periods, but that headline masks a structural hollowing out of the middle. In Q1, midrange shipments fell 16% Y/Y and the industrial segment declined 14%.
By Q3, midrange shipments were still down 13% while industrial systems returned to modest growth, driven almost entirely by Chinese suppliers and metal systems. Entry-level systems below $2,500 surged in both quarters. The pattern across both quarters points to a market where growth is concentrating at the extremes while the middle continues to contract.
The underlying economic logic is worth stating plainly. Service revenue is recurring and scales with utilization; hardware is a one-time sale facing accelerating margin pressure from lower-cost Chinese competitors. As the installed base matures, the companies best positioned to defend value are those controlling workflow, materials, and post-processing, not those selling machines.
3D Printing Industry is inviting speakers for its 2026 Additive Manufacturing Applications (AMA) series, covering Energy, Healthcare, Automotive and Mobility, Aerospace, Space and Defense, and Software. Each online event focuses on real production deployments, qualification, and supply chain integration. Practitioners interested in contributing can complete the call for speakers form here.
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Featured image shows global additive manufacturing revenue reached $24.2 billion in 2025, with services accounting for the largest share. Image via Wohlers Associates / ASTM International.
