Formlabs Will Scale 3D Printing Operations Worldwide With Series C Investment Funding

Formlabs, headquartered in Boston with offices in Germany and Asia, has had a busy year so far – the company provided attendees at SOLIDWORKS World 2018 with free custom 3D prints, introduced two new resins and multiple mass customization solutions at CES 2018, and hosted its Roadshow in sunny Los Angeles.

Formlabs, founded in 2011 by designers and engineers from MIT and known for being the first company to introduce affordable desktop SLA 3D printing, is a veritable giant in the 3D printing world, with many dedicated users. The company creates and builds accessible but powerful 3D printers for both SLA and SLS technologies that are put to use in a variety of industries around the world, owns a popular 3D model marketplace, developed special post-processing equipment, and even has its own suite of high-performance 3D printing materials.

But all of that innovation doesn’t come for free, and as so many companies do, Formlabs requires investments to keep on creating and improving upon its technologies.

The company just announced that it has raised $30 million in a round of Series C funding, led by venture capital firm Tyche Partners with participation from existing investors DFJ, Pitango, and Foundry Group, and new investors UpNorth Investment Limited and Shenzhen Capital Group.

“We’re thrilled with this latest round of funding to support as we continue to grow our domestic and global footprints,” Luke Winston, Global Head of Sales and Services for Formlabs, told 3DPrint.com. “Next month we’ll be opening a new office space as part of our Somerville campus and look forward to continued growth for our Europe, Japan and China teams, as well.”

This investment round of Series C funding will be put to good use scaling the company’s operations to meet increasing customer demand around the world, but with particular focus on China and Asia, as Formlabs already has a fairly strong, established presence in the European and US markets. The company employs over 300 people in the US and 100 in Europe, but fewer in Japan and China, so this continued growth, funded by recent investments, will, as the company puts it, “accelerate maturation in those markets.”

Max Lobovsky, Formlabs Co-Founder and CEO

“We continue to push the boundaries of professional 3D printing and it has resulted in significant growth for the company. For many years, China has been catching up in manufacturing capabilities to the U.S. and Europe, but recently it has matched or surpassed in many areas,” said Max Lobovsky, Co-Founder and CEO of Formlabs. “Chinese manufacturers will be critical to figuring out how to adopt 3D printing into higher volume manufacturing applications.”

Formlabs has been experiencing excellent year-over-year growth, and its 3D printers, which are shipped to six different continents through the company’s 100 channel partners and resellers, are number one in the SLA world. This recent round of investment funding has brought the company’s total investments to date up to $85 million, and in addition to scaling operations, will also be used to broaden Formlabs’ already extensive 3D printing product portfolio.

Weijie Yun, founding partner of Tyche Partners, said, “Formlabs is leading the transformation of the 3D printing industry and is dominating the desktop SLA market with the largest market share worldwide. We’re excited to invest and participate in the growth of the company’s future as their product portfolio expands from SLA to SLS and penetrates the industrial 3D printer market.”

This investment announcement comes right ahead of the company’s ongoing headquarters expansion in Somerville, Massachusetts – to add to its growing campus headquarters, Formlabs will soon open the doors to its new 18,000-square-foot facility.

Discuss this recent business investment and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts in the Facebook comments below. 

[Images: Formlabs]