Seattle-based laser-cutting hardware startup Glowforge introduced this morning that it has raised one other wholesome spherical. The $43 million Sequence E joins the roughly $70 million the corporate has raised since its 2015 founding.
It’s been just a few years because the agency has had a major increase, however the DFJ Development-led spherical will go towards accelerating R&D and commercialization for the corporate’s merchandise. The corporate has carved out a pleasant area of interest for itself over the previous 8 years, courtesy of its laser-cutting and engraving programs.
The corporate’s newest — the Glowforge Professional — is being positioned as a “3D laser printer.” At its coronary heart, the $7,000 system is a streamlined CNC machine with all the fashionable facilities, together with Wi-Fi connectivity and a digital camera for watching the venture unfold in actual time.
“We based Glowforge as a result of we believed in a world the place individuals created issues for themselves, at dwelling,” cofounder and CEO Dan Shapiro says in a launch. “With this fundraise, Glowforge has the sources to broaden our imaginative and prescient to empower the world to make magical issues.”
The hobbyist market tends to have its limitations — simply ask anybody who’s ever made a desktop 3D printer. The corporate did get off to a stable begin, elevating greater than $27 million in its first crowdfunding marketing campaign.
Training has, predictably, confirmed a stable progress marketplace for the corporate as effectively. That’s exactly the explanation 3D printing corporations shifted their focus to the classroom as they hit a really actual ceiling within the dwelling/fanatic market.
“The Glowforge printer serves as a creator’s private manufacturing facility,” DFJ associate, Barry Schuler, says within the launch. “Dan and his group are on a mission to democratize entry to professional-quality artistic capabilities by enabling creators to deliver their creativeness into the bodily world simply minutes out of the field.”
The corporate has so far carved out a distinct segment for itself, with well-designed, user-friendly programs with a proportionally excessive price ticket. And whereas competitors isn’t fairly as stiff because it was on the top of the 3D printing growth, questions nonetheless linger about how a lot addressable market there’s for such specialty units.
Leave a Reply