Fortify Closes $10M Series A Funding Led by Accel

Fortify, known for their next-generation composites and Digital Composite Technology (DCM), has just completed a $10M Series A funding led by Accel. The Boston-headquartered additive manufacturing startup also received funding from Neotribe, Prelude Ventures, and Mainspring Capital Partners. Following a previous seed round this year also, yielding $2.5M, this latest funding will support the Fortify’s Discovery Partner Program and further growth of the Fortify team as they continue to create technology to be used in applications like aerospace, manufacturing, and automotive—with end-use parts in electrical connectors, impellers, mixers, and specialty drones.

Fortify is known for their use of magnetics (Fluxprint technology) and digital light processing 3D printing, allowing them to fabricate parts made with composites, therefore imbued with high-performance mechanical properties. Composite research was performed at Northeastern University by Dr. Randall Erb and Dr. Joshua Martin. The company has already seen huge growth this year, with its staff doubling, and new office space required for its overall expansion.

“Now more than ever before, it’s vital that the U.S. economy has a strong manufacturing ecosystem,” said Eric Wolford, venture partner at Accel. “Fortify is uniquely positioned to help lead the resurgence of American manufacturing by using tech to produce best-in-class parts for the digital age. We’re thrilled to support the entire Fortify team as they continue to set a new standard in manufacturing.”

The Discovery Partner Program gives a select number of Fortify customers earlier access to DCM. Currently, Fortify has noted ‘dramatic improvements’ for users 3D printing with the DCM platform. Fortify says that users also report up 10-100x in improvements, when comparing to 3D prints of other types. Molds are being supplied for customers right now, with beta machines going out in early 2020. Their new Fortify Fiber Platform has just been rolled out also, as the company continues to work with companies like DSM and BASF.

“Material properties are the dominant factor driving adoption of Additive Manufacturing across industries,” said Ben Arnold, Fortify VP of Business Development. “Our open materials platform leverages the world’s leading polymer chemists as they continually innovate. We reinforce these base resin with fiber as we print to gain significantly higher levels of performance. It’s quite exciting that even in this early stage of the company, we have customers buying parts for use in production applications.”

“We’ve achieved so much since our founding, and we’re eager to expand on our platform capabilities,” said Josh Martin, CEO and founder of Fortify. “With the support of our investors, we will focus on innovation, bring our technology to new partners, and grow our product offerings.”

Notable new hires include industry veteran Ben Arnold as VP Business Development, most recently of Desktop Metal and Dave Colucci, formerly of Soft Robotics, as their new Embedded Systems Lead Engineer.

Researchers around the world are involved in the realm of 3D printing materials, from biomaterials to self-healing capsules, and even soft materials for robotics. What do you think of this news? Let us know your thoughts! Join the discussion of this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com.

[Source / Images: Fortify]