Carbon has just ended a new funding round where the company has managed to raise over $260 million dollars. As the company expands its operations it has also acquired new investors in Temasek and Arkema. Most of the new capital will go towards a new facility and better R&D.
“Carbon’s business model is as innovative as its technology. Its “hybrid SaaS” business model is an industry first for manufacturing, enabling a high level of predictability and recurring revenue,” said Ellen Kullman, Lead Director of Carbon. “Having designed smart hardware from the ground up that is updatable via regular, over-the-air software upgrades, the team is ushering in a new era of high-tech manufacturing, one destined to unlock the full promise of Industry 4.0.”
The company announced the end of funding in a press release on June 25th. The company particularly gives credit to funding co-leaders Madrone Capital Partners and Baillie Gifford. Carbon’s other existing partners include Sequoia Capital, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Adidas Ventures, and JSR Corporation, with Arkema and Temasek just joining the club.
Funding Round & New Projects
Carbon states that they will employ the funding in building their new Advanced Development Facility (ADF), and to fuel international growth and expansion in Europe and Asia. With the ADF they hope to boost their engineering expertise while improving Carbon’s platform and workflows. Another purpose behind the funding is to better research recyclable and biocompatible materials.
Perhaps the biggest plans the company has are for its software and cloud applications. They want accelerate the expansion software capabilities, along with their Digital Manufacturing Cloud. Carbon want to emphasize automated design tools focused on algorithmic lattice generation, as well as improved digital factory workflow, including fleet monitoring, quality control and compliance information management. They are also improving the automation, monitoring and analytics software enabling large-scale production on the Carbon Platform.
Operating in 14 countries, the Carbon Platform has seen major successes recently. The platform achieved a 33x increase in print volumes in the past year and over a 5X increase in print hours. Carbon has also introduced 17 new third-party resins and three new first-party resins in the same period. From the outset, it looks like they’re going strong for the time being and the foreseeable future.
Featured image courtesy of Carbon.