3D Hubs, the automated manufacturing platform, today announced its $18M Series C round led by Endeit Capital. The company’s largest round brings its total funding to $30M and includes participation from Hearst Ventures, EQT Ventures, Balderton Capital, Arthur Kosten (founder of Booking.com) and Erik de Bruijn (founder of Ultimaker). Funds will be used to advance the company’s automation of key features for the manufacturing process, including quoting, design validation and smart order routing to its global network of suppliers.
The 3D Hubs platform gives users the opportunity to directly upload CAD files for an instant quote and lead time before automatically sourcing a supplier on the back end, completing a process that usually takes several weeks in just a few minutes. By doing production at unparalleled speeds with suppliers across four continents, the 3D Hubs platform allows companies across industries such as aerospace, aviation, energy, healthcare and robotics to reliably and efficiently outsource manufacturing processes with reduced risk.
The platform started as the world’s largest 3D printing community and marketplace, and over the past two years 3D Hubs successfully shifted its focus to professional engineers and procurers. This includes adding CNC machining and Injection Molding to its service offerings, as well as improving the ease of use, standardization and reliability of the 3D Hubs platform. Offering the most automated software solution for outsourced manufacturing, 3D Hubs is dedicated to building the best product tailored to their customers’ needs.
Explaining about the 3D Hubs algorithms, Bram de Zwart Co-founder and CEO of 3D Hubs said, “3D Hubs is committed to being a radical innovator in the $13 trillion manufacturing industry – building pricing and manufacturability algorithms that are said to have the same potential as Google’s search algorithms. Thanks to our algorithms, 93% of manufacturing orders are fully automated, allowing us to get parts into our customers’ hands twice as fast on average. This latest funding round will give us the power to make manufacturing outsourcing even smarter and simpler, and we couldn’t be more excited.”
Speaking about 3D Hubs, Ilan Goudsmit, Investment Manager at Endeit Capital said, “The combination of 3D Hubs’ proprietary software, high-quality network of vetted suppliers spread across four continents and most visited website among engineers makes it a unique company with tremendous global potential. 3D Hubs’ software instantly automates all steps of the quoting to sourcing process – based on datasets from millions of parts made – positioning the company to further scale and disrupt the manufacturing market. We are delighted to be supporting 3D Hubs in its global ambition and are looking forward to working together with its highly motivated and effective team of industry experts.”
With over 20,000 businesses now using 3D Hubs, the company’s net revenue tripled in 2018 alone. 3D Hubs works with over 250 trusted suppliers and has produced more than two million customized, high-precision parts to date. Since 2015, 27% of Fortune 100 companies have ordered with 3D Hubs. The Series C round will be used to open a new office in the United States to continue growing the company’s US team and to further develop the automation of its manufacturing platform and integrate it more deeply into both customer and supplier workflows.
Happy with the position of the company, Ken Bronfin, Senior Managing Director of Hearst Ventures said, “3D Hubs is dramatically changing the way companies approach product development and production. The 3D Hubs platform has become a one-stop shop that provides engineers with sophisticated design tools together with a broad range of state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities at the push of a button. The company is well-positioned to become a very large driver in the evolution of the manufacturing supply chain.”
Ted Persson, Operating Partner and Investment Advisor at EQT Ventures, one of the investors in 3D Hubs said, “As a designer turned investor, I’ve experienced the pain points 3D Hubs is solving first hand. 3D Hubs enables designers and engineers to put better products in the hands of people by enabling them to test out more prototypes before deciding on the final designs. I am even more excited about the fact that 3D Hubs now also supports a wide range of manufacturing techniques, cutting lead times from weeks to minutes.”
Lastly, according to James Wise, Partner at Balderton Capital, “3D Hubs is tackling one of the biggest challenges we face as a planet – how we continue to manufacture things in a global marketplace, but in a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable way. By combining the latest technical advances in manufacturing with their proprietary software and global network, 3D Hubs helps makers of all shapes and sizes tackle some of those questions, giving global brands and first-time designers access to instant, high-quality manufacturing services anywhere in the world.”
About 3D Hubs: Founded in 2013, 3D Hubs makes manufacturing easy from prototyping to production. The online platform provides readily available production capacity for the fastest lead times and most price-competitive parts.
About Endeit Capital: Endeit Capital was founded in 2006 and has invested growth capital in approximately 30 European Internet scale-ups. The focus is on companies in the areas of B2B/B2C SaaS and Marketplaces. Endeit Capital actively supports its portfolio companies to become market leaders.
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