In additive manufacturing, talk of “platforms,” “ecosystems,” and “open innovation” is easy to find. But when it comes to actual interoperability, materials freedom, software modularity, and hardware-agnostic toolchains, progress is unevenly distributed at best and marginal in many cases.
Inspired by a recent conversation with notable industry insiders, I hope this article prompts a broader discussion as to whether the 3D printing industry is trapped in a systemic coordination failure.
The Moat Mentality
Within the general exception of a few, most OEMs, whether desktop or industrial, have long viewed proprietary ecosystems as a competitive moat. Lock the customer into your slicer, your resin, your API, your service contract, and keep them there. That model may have been justifiable* a decade ago, when the field was nascent and workflows brittle. But in 2025, is the moat starting to look more like a trench? Are recent bankruptcies and insolvencies**, uncommercialized IP pivots, and a long tail of hardware vendors offering nearly indistinguishable products symptoms of an exhausted model? You can’t defend a castle when the drawbridge is rotting from within.
Nash, Not Niche
What we’re observing is a classic Nash*** equilibrium dilemma:
If everyone cooperates (interoperates), the market expands and value creation accelerates.
If everyone defects / builds moats (maintains closed systems), growth stalls, and fragmentation deepens.
If one cooperates while others defect, that player risks giving up their moat without compensation.
The dominant short-term strategy is to wait. The optimal long-term strategy is to move first.
Boiling Frogs and Buckets
Some vendors are starting to “take buckets from the moat,” to borrow a metaphor from the previously mentioned industry chat. Material freedom in FDM / FFF has quietly crept in. APIs are opening, grudgingly in some cases, enthusiastically in others, standards on interoperability are available. But no player has yet fully drained their moat.
And then there’s the wildcard: maybe the moat doesn’t drain. Maybe the frog grows legs. In other words, perhaps the next generation of AM solutions (AI-driven slicers, autonomous toolpath optimizers, direct-to-cloud manufacturing APIs) simply bypasses today’s architecture. If the incumbents won’t open the gates, the users may just build elsewhere.
The PC Parallel
Interoperability in 3D printing might find its IBM moment. In the PC era, it was IBM’s decision to open its architecture that legitimized the broader personal computing market. Intel and Microsoft became the dominant suppliers, but the entire ecosystem scaled.
Who in AM has the credibility to lead that shift? The likes of Stratasys, 3D Systems, EOS, HP, and other market leaders have the installed base. On the software side****, the segement is fragmented with a sequential nature, each step often requires a specialized tool, which can introduce data silos and interoperability challenges. Among the enterprises angling for workflow dominance are Dassault Systèmes, Siemens, PTC, and Materialise with specialist challengers like Authentise and Oqton also in the picture.
Crucially, IBM opened its PC architecture after losing control to the clone makers. Intel and Microsoft’s dominance came because they weren’t OEMs. A similar scenario in AM might not empower the legacy players, but displace them.
If one moves boldly toward a shared standard, whether for materials, interfaces, or design semantics, they may not lose their moat. They may become the moat.
Blind Spots in the Interoperability Argument
Even as I make the case for interoperability in additive manufacturing, I appreciate the strategic framing often lacks the rigor needed to compel real change. The following weaknesses in prevailing arguments deserve closer scrutiny.
The economic stakes are not quantified. The narrative assumes interoperability will “unlock value” without ever specifying how much is currently being lost. What is the opportunity cost of fragmented toolchains, incompatible APIs, and locked materials? Is there a €500 million delta between today’s Total Addressable Market (TAM) and a post-interoperability scenario, or €5 billion? In the words of my former mentor, “is this a big number?” Absent hard numbers, the urgency becomes philosophical rather than financial.
The fallacy of rational alignment. Interoperability presumes cooperation. But not all players can, or want to, collaborate. Some OEMs are structurally incapable of decoupling hardware from software without breaking their revenue model. Others are tethered to investor demands for short-term gross margin, making long-term ecosystem health a non-starter.
And then there’s institutional culture. Many firms still cling to vertical integration as a badge of engineering honor. The assumption that they’ll embrace modularity with the right argument ignores decades of organizational inertia.
I’ve mainly omitted regulatory and top-down levers. This article casts interoperability as a bottom-up decision by market actors. But there are dormant levers elsewhere:
Standards bodies (ISO/ASTM) could hard-code open interfaces. Defense primes and aerospace Tier 1s could mandate interoperability by procurement fiat*****. Public funding bodies, from Horizon Europe to the U.S. DoD via America Makes and MxD, could prioritize grants that enforce open standards. To treat interoperability as a voluntary industry consensus is to ignore where power actually sits.
Perhaps the greatest flaw here is my selective use of historical analogies. Citing IBM, or even USB, gives the illusion of inevitability. But many interoperability efforts fail quietly and permanently. VHS beat Betamax not because it was open, but because it was aggressively distributed. 3MF has existed for years with limited traction. So have “open” consortia. If anything, the historical record suggests that technical merit alone is insufficient. Politics, control, and timing matter far more.
Until these structural and economic dimensions are acknowledged head-on, calls for interoperability will remain appealing, whether for op-eds or group chats, but operationally weak.
Strategic Implications vs Laser Wars
The next phase of AM growth will not be driven by one more nozzle, laser, or acronym. It will be driven by the ability of systems to work together. I believe interoperability will come; let’s see who defines it. Returning to game theory and Nash, the winner isn’t the one who defends their territory the longest: it’s the one who changes the map.
Thanks to the ExComm members who prompted this write-up. What are your thoughts on this article, or the future op-eds you’d like 3DPI to tackle? Get in touch.
Notes and Caveats
*Rationale for this practice might include the significant R&D costs associated with pioneering technologies, and the challenges of developing the market.
**Business failures are a natural part of any industry. Beyond the familiar names that have shut up shop, there are smaller enterprises that quietly cease trading. A question I pose, is whether the total number of shuttered businesses in AM exceeds the average in other sectors? Eurostat’s most recent Business Demography Statistics, show approximately 8.7% of active enterprises ceased operations during that year. Applied to a lower level proxy figure for the number of companies in the 3D printing industry (approximately 700 enterprises capitalised sufficiency to attend major trade shows), this suggests 60 companies will cease trading in any year. In a high tech industry, 8.7% is likely an underestimate as is the 700 figure.
Broader numbers suggest 50% of new businesses fail within five years. Problematically, OECD data excludes enterprises with fewer than ten people, a category that includes 90% of businesses.
This should not diminish the very real impact on the employees, customers, and owners.
*** Let’s put aside Schumpeter, creative destruction, and bounded rationality for a moment. Here, we are not testing whether AM players are in actual Nash conditions (i.e., no player can improve their outcome unilaterally). I’m also ignoring mixed strategy outcomes and asymmetric power games. Some AM firms are ecosystem takers, not shapers.
**** Properly discussing the fragmentation and opportunities needs a separate article, maybe even a book.
***** Procurement fiat refers to a top-down purchasing mandate. When a company, government, or large organization dictates what vendors, platforms, or products must be used, rather than allowing decentralized choice.
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Prague Castle notably has a dry moat. Photo by Michael Petch.
