Inkbit Secures Financing For New AM System that Revolutionizes 3D Printing
Inkbit, the company that built the first 3D printing system driven by vision-based feedback control, has announced the closing of $30M in its Series B round of financing. The new funding, led by Phoenix Venture Partners LLC (PVP), will boost production of the company’s additive manufacturing system, Inkbit Vista, and grow the commercial team to support expansion into the APAC and EMEA regions.
PVP’s Managing General Partner, John T. Chen, stated, “As the leading investor in materials science enabled technologies, PVP sees the technology Inkbit has commercialized as a total game changer to the additive manufacturing industry because it solves the key bottlenecks preventing 3D printing from being adopted for mass manufacturing of high-quality finished goods. We are pleased to help Inkbit in its scaleup phase and welcome it as the newest member of the PVP portfolio.”
“Inkbit is currently experiencing significant growth and we are excited to have the opportunity to continue to build our talented team and scale the company to meet customer demand,” said Davide Marini, CEO and co-founder of Inkbit. “The opportunities for additive manufacturing are growing as adoption of 3D printing for full-scale production increases. We look forward to using our raised capital to continue evolving and innovating within this dynamic industry.”
Launched in February 2021, Inkbit Vista unlocks the potential of additive manufacturing at scale for Inkbit’s partners and customers.
Vision-Controlled Jetting (VCJ) takes additive manufacturing to production by enabling real-time, in-process voxel-level control to meet the reliability and performance demands of volume manufacturing. This technology converges advanced computational techniques with a scalable hardware architecture and materials chemistries inaccessible to incumbents.
VCJ makes it possible to develop end-use products with high-performance polymers by:
Optimizing in real-time for accurate and reliable prints. Inkbit’s proprietary vision system allows the system to capture voxel-by-voxel 3D scan data of the print process at high-speed, modifying each layer in real-time to ensure a perfect print.
Simplifying and automating the full workflow. Vision-Controlled Jetting enables simple, fast, and non-hazardous post-processing of parts and reduces costs associated with lost materials, labor, and equipment. Inkbit’s technology can also integrate directly into existing manufacturing systems; with fully automated production, manufacturers can significantly reduce cost-per-part and more efficiently scale production.
Combining resin 3D printing precision with production-grade materials to move beyond prototyping. Until now, the most precise 3D printing technologies have all required the use of certain undesirable materials which make parts brittle and weak over time. Inkbit’s technology allows these materials, called acrylates and methacrylates, to be completely removed, opening up a new field of high quality and long-lasting parts.
“We are excited to continue our journey with Inkbit and its unique jetting technology powered by machine vision and AI,” said Guy Menchik, CTO of Stratasys. “We believe Inkbit’s novel approach enables expansion to new applications for end-use polymer part production, opening up new manufacturing use cases across multiple verticals.”
Inkbit Vista features a patented Vision-Controlled jetting technology that enables real-time, in-process voxel-level control to meet the reliability and performance demands of volume manufacturing. Coupled with the system’s multi-material printing capabilities, the Inkbit Vista unleashes design freedom and enables manufacturers to bring 3D printing of entire assemblies into a full-scale production environment.
Since spinning out of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT in 2017, Inkbit has raised a total of $45M in equity investments from investors such as Stratasys, DSM Venturing, Ocado, 3M, IMA and Saint-Gobain. The closing of this Series B funding round comes on the heels of major milestones, such as Inkbit’s recent award from the United States Airforce to build Inkbit systems for use at USAF bases across the country, and builds upon work funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to develop Inkbit’s proprietary vision system.
For more information: www.inkbit3d.com
