E-round financing of 260 million US dollars, 3D printing unicorn Carbon has a total of more than 680 million US dollars in financing

Carbon brings together innovations in software, hardware, and materials science to unleash new business opportunities for mass customization…

Carbon financing territory.Source: 3D Science Valley

Accelerate the digital scale production process

Carbon, the world’s leading digital manufacturing platform, announced on June 25, 2019 (US time) that it has raised more than $260 million in funding jointly led by Madrone Capital Partners and Baillie Gifford.New investors Temasek and Arkema joined the round of financing, and Carbon’s previous investors chose to continue investing, including Sequoia Capital, Johnson & Johnson Innovation-JJDC, Fidelity, Adidas and JSR. This brings Carbon’s total fundraising to more than US$680 million (approximately RMB 4.6 billion).

Dr. Joseph DeSimone, Carbon’s founder and CEO, emphasized that with Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis™ patented technology (digital light polymerization technology) as the core competitiveness of Carbon’s digital manufacturing platform, it gets rid of the limitations of traditional plastic product manufacturing methods. An unprecedented breakthrough has been achieved in terms of volume.

Carbon plans to use this new financing to expand research and development efforts, build its first advanced development facility (ADF), and drive international growth and expansion in Europe and Asia. According to the understanding of 3D Science Valley, ADF will enable Carbon’s engineering team to improve work processes in an expanded manufacturing environment to better support its customers and partners.

These strategic investments will enable Carbon to continue to achieve its3D printingThe commitment to enter the field of large-scale production enables users in industries such as healthcare, automobiles and consumer goods to accelerate product innovation and create breakthrough products through large-scale digital production.

In addition, Carbon will use the funds to invest in the continuous development of its recyclable and biocompatible materials and accelerate the expansion of its software functions, including Carbon’s digital manufacturing cloud platform.

Among them, according to the understanding of 3D Science Valley, Carbon’s software goals will focus on two major parts, one is the automated design CAD modeling software for lattice structure generation algorithms; the other is MES software, which is used to improve the workflow of digital factories, including monitoring , Quality control and compliance information management. Carbon will continue to develop and improve automation, monitoring and analysis software to achieve mass production based on the Carbon platform.

Review

Now I am at3D printingThe three unicorn companies that have emerged in the industry, Carbon, Formlabs, and Desktop Metal, are all oriented to the manufacturing market rather than the prototype field. This is a major reason for these three companies to quickly obtain funding.Facing the vast market space for large-scale production, endorsement of users in the investor camp, unique patented technology in equipment, materials, and software, in the view of 3D Science Valley, Carbon is a success 3D printingThere is another leading factor for unicorn companies, and that is the exponential growth potential of digital manufacturing platforms.

Carbon has launched a fully integrated digital manufacturing platform for the dental market. Source: Carbon

As in3D printingAnd Industrial Manufacturing” mentioned in the book “3D printingThe value of the company lies in enabling the creation of added value in the manufacturing industry”, and the digital manufacturing platform provides a powerful “cornerstone” for the creation of added value, making it possible to automate modeling, extensible processes, reproducible quality, traceable quality, and personalized mass production.

Carbon’s six-step production. Source: Carbon

The digital manufacturing platform is like the steam train in the industrial revolution era, which makes communication possible. You can imagine that in the future you just have an idea. A platform can help you achieve personalized modeling, simulation, process settings,3D printingA series of operations, such as post-processing, quality control and tracking, certification, and delivery, make the manufacturing threshold to “flatten”. Everyone can become a manufacturer. From the perspective of manufacturing results, the digital manufacturing platform helps3D printingRealize the exponentialization from 1 to n to accelerate the development process.

Carbon’s digital manufacturing development is particularly evident this year:

-In January this year, Ford announced the production of replacement zeros for F-150, Ford Mustang and Ford Focus through Carbon equipment.

-In February, Carbon announced a partnership with Riddell to produce the first digital for the SpeedFlex Precision Diamond football helmetHelmet liner.

-In late February, Carbon launched the latest3D printingMachine L1. The build volume of L1 is 10 times that of its first-generation product, and it is designed for immediate mass production, allowing Carbon users to print multiple parts at the same time.

-In March, Carbon released the industry’s first fully integrated digital manufacturing platform for dental and orthodontic laboratories. Carbon also announced other partnerships to expand its FDA-approved dental material product portfolio.

Through the use of Adidas, Ford, Lamborghini, and Riddell, which are users of Carbon, Carbon has not only achieved impressive market share growth. While understanding the pain points of production, Carbon has gained some experience in solving the pain points, and launched an integrated digital manufacturing platform for mass production. All of this is expected to promote3D printingFrom niche to mainstream manufacturing technology, change the world.

(Editor in charge: admin)