Desktop Metal

Desktop Metal was founded in October 2015[19] in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a startup company focused on 3D metal printing.[20] Among the seven founders[10] were Ric Fulop[4] and Jonah Myerberg of A123 Systems, Rick Chin of SolidWorks, and Yet-Ming Chiang, Ely Sachs, Chris Schuh,[20] and A. John Hart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[10] Sachs was known for coining the term 3D printing years earlier.[15] 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.[21] 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.[14] 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.[21] By October 2015 the company had 11 employees,[20] with Ric Fulop as CEO.[21]

Initially the company raised around $14 million in startup funding,[21] with leading Series A funders including New Enterprise Associates, Kleiner Perkins, and Lux Capital.[5][20] By the spring of 2016, the company was headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, and had developed functioning prototypes.[4][22] After former investors injected an additional $34 million into Desktop Metal in April 2016,[4][21] that summer the company raised funding from investors including GE Ventures and Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures.[22] By February 2017, the company had moved its headquarters to Burlington, Massachusetts.[6][7][23] That month the company raised $45 million in a Series C round of venture funding[6][19] led by GV[23] and including participation from BMW iVentures and Lowe's Ventures.[6][7][19] With total raised brought to $97 million,[6][7][19] the capital was used for research and development, with plans to begin selling the first product later that year[7] in a variety of industries.[6]

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.[24] Desktop Metals was also working with BMW in Munich to explore eliminating the need to warehouse parts,[6] and companies such as Milwaukee Tools[25] and Jabil Circuit Inc. A U.S. were evaluating the printers for production use.[26] The company revealed two distinct metal 3D printing systems in late April 2017: a studio model and a production model.[11] The Studio System, safe for office settings[27] is designed for rapid printing and the production of small volumes,[13] while the latter is intended for high-speed production of parts.[27] Both systems include a printer, furnace, and cloud-based software to operate the machines,[14] with the ability to print several hundred alloy types.[11] Forbes described the pricing scheme of the products as "competitive," noting the systems cost "10 times less than what's on the market."[15]

Stratasys, an investor in Desktop Metal,[5] announced in May 2017 that its resellers would stock Desktop Metal's products.[28] The World Economic Forum named Desktop Metal to its 2017 Technology Pioneers list of 30 companies in June,[18] and also that month, MIT Technology Review named Desktop Metal among its 50 Smartest Companies in the World for the year.[29] Desktop Metal raised a total of $115 million[25][30][31][32] in a Series D round of funding in July 2017,[31][33] its largest round to that point.[34][33] Funds went to R&D, its sales program, and international growth[32][33] and brought the total raised since founding to $212 million.[32][34][35] The company began shipping the Studio System in December 2017[24] as part of its "Pioneer" program. The first printer went to Google's Advanced Technology and Products Group[2] and among other early customers were the United States Navy, Built-Rite Tool & Die, and Lumenium.[36]

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.[2] In February 2018 the company previewed Live Parts,[2] a software program for automatically generating printable designs.[37]

At CES 2018 Desktop Metal won an emerging tech award from Digital Trends.[37] In 2018 it also won a Gold[38] Edison Award.[2] 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.[39] 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.[40] 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."[41] 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.[1]

In January 2019, Desktop Metal raised an additional $160 million in funding, resulting in a valuation at $1.5 billion.[8][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.[1] 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[16] and a system using fiber placement.[17]

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:[11] the Studio System, a metal 3D printing system[12] designed for engineers and small production runs,[12][13] and the Production System,[11][14] intended for manufacturers and large-scale printing.[15] In 2019 the company introduced the Shop System, a metal binder jetting printing system designed for machine and metal job shops,[16] as well as Fiber, a continuous carbon fiber printer using automated fiber placement technology (AFP) to make parts.[17]

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[25] thermal processes.[15] The systems can print a variety of materials,[50] including steels, copper,[11] aluminum,[51] and alloys such as Inconel. Powders also used in the metal injection molding market[27] are housed in replaceable cartridges[15] made by various metallurgy companies and Desktop Metal.[11] As the process doesn't utilize high power lasers,[50] or hazardous materials, the Studio System can be housed inside office spaces[15] with standard wall outlets.[14]

The Studio System uses a proprietary technology called Bound Metal Deposition,[12] 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."[13] At that temperature the metal is fused without melting and losing its shape.[11] The sintering causes predictable shrinking, which the system's software compensates for by making items slightly larger during the printing step.[13] Beyond the printer and furnace, the Studio System also includes a debinder to remove part of the polymer binder before sintering.[33]

The Production System uses a printing method where droplets of a binding agent are "jetted" onto a metal powder in heated layers.[14] The method is called Single Pass Jetting, used for quickly producing metal parts.[27] 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,[2] an AI software for users to automatically generate printable object designs.[37] 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.[2]