Company type | Public |
---|---|
NYSE: DM | |
Industry | Manufacturing |
Genre | Metal 3D printing |
Founded | October 2015Cambridge, Massachusetts | in
Founders | Ric Fulop, Jonah Myerberg, Ely Sachs, Rick Chin, Christopher Schuh, A. John Hart, Yet-Ming Chiang |
Headquarters | , |
Key people | Ric Fulop (CEO) Jonah Myerberg (CTO) |
Products | 3D printing systems |
Revenue | US$190 million (2023) |
Number of employees | 950 (2023) |
Website |
desktopmetal |
Footnotes / references [1] |
Desktop Metal, Inc. is a public American technology company that designs and markets 3D printing systems. [2] [3] Headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, [4] [5] the company has raised $438 million in venture funding since its founding [6] [7] from investors such as Google Ventures, BMW, [8] and Ford Motor Company. [7] Desktop Metal launched its first two products in April 2017: [9] the Studio System, a metal 3D printing system [10] catered to engineers and small production runs, [11] and the Production System, [9] [12] intended for manufacturers and large-scale printing. [13] In November 2019, the company launched two new printer systems: the Shop System for machine shops, [14] and the Fiber industrial-grade composites printer for automated fiber placement. [15] The World Economic Forum named Desktop Metal a Technology Pioneer in 2017. [16]
Desktop Metal was founded in October 2015 [17] in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a startup company focused on 3D metal printing. [18] Among the seven founders [8] were Ric Fulop [2] and Jonah Myerberg of A123 Systems, Rick Chin of SolidWorks, and Yet-Ming Chiang, Ely Sachs, Christopher Schuh, [18] and A. John Hart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). [8] Sachs was known for coining the term 3D printing years earlier. [13] At the time of its founding, the company was developing a process for metal 3D printing that would be fast and small enough for office settings. [19] Xconomy wrote that the company's intent was to create a metal 3D printer that would "churn out parts more quickly" and be "much cheaper, smaller, safer and easier to operate" than alternatives on the market. [12] To eliminate the need for trained personnel to operate the equipment, dangerous features such as lasers were not made a part of the design process. [19] By October 2015 the company had 11 employees, [18] with Ric Fulop as CEO. [19]
Initially the company raised around $14 million in startup funding, [19] with leading Series A funders including New Enterprise Associates, Kleiner Perkins, and Lux Capital. [3] [18] By the spring of 2016, the company was headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, and had developed functioning prototypes. [2] [20] After former investors injected an additional $34 million into Desktop Metal in April 2016, [2] [19] that summer the company raised funding from investors including GE Ventures and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures. [20] By February 2017, the company had moved its headquarters to Burlington, Massachusetts. [4] [5] [21] That month the company raised $45 million in a Series C round of venture funding [4] [17] led by GV [21] and including participation from BMW iVentures and Lowe's Ventures. [4] [5] [17] With total raised brought to $97 million, [4] [5] [17] the capital was used for research and development, with plans to begin selling the first product later that year [5] in a variety of industries. [4]
Desktop Metal was collaborating with Ford Motor Company's research and advanced engineering and manufacturing teams by 2017, refining its system to meet manufacturing requirements. [22] Desktop Metals was also working with BMW in Munich to explore eliminating the need to warehouse parts, [4] and companies such as Milwaukee Tools [23] and Jabil Circuit Inc. A U.S. were evaluating the printers for production use. [24] The company revealed two distinct metal 3D printing systems in late April 2017: a studio model and a production model. [9] The Studio System, safe for office settings [25] is designed for rapid printing and the production of small volumes, [11] while the latter is intended for high-speed production of parts. [25] Both systems include a printer, furnace, and cloud-based software to operate the machines, [12] with the ability to print several hundred alloy types. [9] Forbes described the pricing scheme of the products as "competitive," noting the systems cost "10 times less than what's on the market." [13]
Stratasys, an investor in Desktop Metal, [3] announced in May 2017 that its resellers would stock Desktop Metal's products. [26] The World Economic Forum named Desktop Metal to its 2017 Technology Pioneers list of 30 companies in June, [16] and also that month, MIT Technology Review named Desktop Metal among its 50 Smartest Companies in the World for the year. [27] Desktop Metal raised a total of $115 million [23] [28] [29] [30] in a Series D round of funding in July 2017, [29] [31] its largest round to that point. [32] [31] Funds went to R&D, its sales program, and international growth [30] [31] and brought the total raised since founding to $212 million. [30] [32] [33] The company began shipping the Studio System in December 2017 [22] as part of its "Pioneer" program. The first printer went to Google's Advanced Technology and Products Group [34] and among other early customers were the United States Navy, Built-Rite Tool & Die, and Lumenium. [35]
By early 2018 the company had been granted two patents for separable support and an interface layer, with around 100 patents pending for around 200 inventions. [34] In February 2018 the company previewed Live Parts, [34] a software program for automatically generating printable designs. [36]
At CES 2018 Desktop Metal won an emerging tech award from Digital Trends. [36] In 2018 it also won a Gold [37] Edison Award. [34] In March 2018, Ford Motor Company led a $65 million investment round in Desktop Metal, with Ford's CTO joining Desktop Metal's board of directors. [38] With a $1.2 billion valuation, by May 2018 Desktop Metal had been named the fast growing "unicorn" in United States history, surpassing $1 billion after 21 months in operation. [39] Desktop Metal introduced an upgrade to its industrial scale systems at Formnext 2018, claiming the 50% printing speed increase made the model "the fastest metal printer in the world." [40] Cofounder Ric Fulop asserted that the system dropped the price per part significantly compared to other systems, in one case from $700 per kilo of parts to $50 a kilo. [41]
In January 2019, Desktop Metal raised an additional $160 million in funding, resulting in a valuation at $1.5 billion. [6] [42] [43] By May 2019, the company employed around 300 people, mostly engineers, with the machines made through contract manufacturing. It also had a sales channel distributing in 48 countries. [41] In June 2019, the company began shipping to Europe. [44] By 2019, the company had raised $437 million from investors, and was one of only three 3D printing unicorns. In November it introduced a system for metal job shops [14] and a system using fiber placement. [15]
In December 2020, the company started trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker DM. They did this via a reverse IPO merger with Trine Acquisition Corp. (NYSE:TRNE), a special-purpose acquisition company. [45]
In January 2021, Desktop Metal purchased EnvisionTEC, a German company that specializes in photopolymer printing. [46] On March 15, Desktop Metal announced its new line Desktop Health, specifically focused on healthcare products in the fields of dentistry, orthodontics, dermatology, orthopedics, cardiology, plastic surgery, and printed regenerative. [46] [47] Also in March, Michael Mazen Jafar came on board as CEO of the new line. [46] [47]
In May 2023, industrial 3D printer company Stratasys agreed to acquire Desktop Metal in an all-stock transaction valuing the combined company at $1.8 billion, in which existing Desktop Metal shareholders will own around 41 percent of the combined company. [48] Stratasys terminated the acquisition in September after its shareholders voted against the acquisition after two companies made unsolicited bids for Stratasys. [49]
Desktop Metal launched its first two products in April 2017: [9] the Studio System, a metal 3D printing system [10] designed for engineers and small production runs, [10] [11] and the Production System, [9] [12] intended for manufacturers and large-scale printing. [13] In 2019 the company introduced the Shop System, a metal binder jetting printing system designed for machine and metal job shops, [14] as well as Fiber, a continuous carbon fiber printer using automated fiber placement technology (AFP) to make parts. [15]
Both the Studio System and Production System include two key components: a printer that produces small objects out of metal powders, and a sintering furnace to densify the objects using [23] thermal processes. [13] The systems can print a variety of materials, [50] including steels, copper, [9] aluminum, [51] and alloys such as Inconel. Powders also used in the metal injection molding market [25] are housed in replaceable cartridges [13] made by various metallurgy companies and Desktop Metal. [9] As the process doesn't utilize high power lasers, [50] or hazardous materials, the Studio System can be housed inside office spaces [13] with standard wall outlets. [12]
The Studio System uses a proprietary technology called Bound Metal Deposition, [10] similar to fused deposition modeling (FDM) [50] where the printer "extrudes a mixture of metal powder and polymers to build up a shape, much as some plastic printers do." When the shape is complete, it is placed in a furnace which burns away the polymers and "compacts the metal particles by sintering them together at just below their melting point." [11] At that temperature the metal is fused without melting and losing its shape. [9] The sintering causes predictable shrinking, which the system's software compensates for by making items slightly larger during the printing step. [11] Beyond the printer and furnace, the Studio System also includes a debinder to remove part of the polymer binder before sintering. [31]
The Production System uses a printing method where droplets of a binding agent are "jetted" onto a metal powder in heated layers. [12] The method is called Single Pass Jetting, used for quickly producing metal parts. [25] According to the company, the system can process 8,200 cubic centimeters per hour, which is nearly 100 times faster than laser-based systems using powder bed fusion (PBF). [52] It can produce dozens of parts simultaneously. [53] The Production System was named by Popular Science as one of the top engineering innovations of 2017, in the magazine's annual Best of What's New issue. [54]
Desktop Metal developed Live Parts, [34] an AI software for users to automatically generate printable object designs. [36] The program allows users to input specifications for an object, then creates a computer model which can be printed [55] using any 3-D printing system. [34]