Carbon, a Silicon Valley startup that is developing 3D printers to produce medical devices and car parts on demand, said on Thursday it had closed on $81 million in funding that brought the total it has raised to $222 million.
Founded in 2013, Carbon said the funding round was led by automaker BMW Group, industrial conglomerate General Electric Co, optics and imaging products company Nikon Corp and chemical manufacturer JSR Corp. They joined earlier investors Google Ventures and top tech venture capital firm Sequoia.
The company’s first commercial 3D printer, the M1, is available for a $40,000 annual subscription. It uses software that controls a photochemical process that balances the way ultraviolet light and oxygen react within a pool of polymer resin to print plastic objects.
Carbon has developed various resins to diversify what can be printed. It uses heat-resistant hard resins for exterior automotive parts and soft elastic biodegradable resins for medical devices like heart stents.
The company says it can print up to 100 times faster than rival 3D printing companies. That would be a selling point to the manufacturing industry, which until now used 3D printing primarily as a prototyping tool.
Reuters (15 Sept)
