Inkbit's 3D printer uses a contactless material jetting process driven by vision-based feedback control and artificial intelligence.
Inkbit, a 3D printing start-up spun out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), has announced the closing of a 12 million USD equity financing round led by Stratasys and DSM Venturing.
With additional participation form Ocado, 3M and Saint Gobain, the capital will be used to industrialise Inkbit’s multi-material additive manufacturing system, expand its materials offering for medical, life sciences and robotics applications, and install first units. The company aims to release initial systems, which use a contactless material jetting process driven by vision-based feedback control and artificial intelligence, to select customers in 2021 and is already working with early access customers such as Johnson & Johnson to develop applications.
“We are excited to partner with such an extraordinary team of industry-leading players and impressed by their entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to innovation,” said Davide Marini, Inkbit cofounder and CEO. “The composition of this syndicate was chosen to maximise the speed of development and commercialisation of our platform, with each investor bringing to us their unique expertise in equipment manufacturing, high-performance materials and applications in robotics, medical devices and life sciences tools. Our value proposition to customers is simple: we are adding a layer of machine vision and machine learning to material jetting, increasing its accuracy, reliability and enabling its use with production-grade materials.”
The funding builds on Inkbit’s first round of 2.8 million USD back in 2017 led by IMA with support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation and MassVentures. This latest round will see Guy Menchik, VP of R&D at Stratasys, Luda Kopeikina, Director of DSM Venturing, Paul Clarke, Ocado’s CTO and Magnus René, CEO at Ovzon and formerly CEO at Arcam, join Inkbit’s Board of Directors.
Ronen Lebi, Vice President of Corporate Development at Stratasys, said: “As pioneers of jetting-based additive manufacturing solutions, we are excited to help Inkbit bring their technology to the factory floor. Vision-based feedback control and artificial intelligence will take additive manufacturing to a whole new level and will help to enable its widespread use for production.”
The news marks the third investment in the same number of weeks for DSM Venturing, which also recently led funding rounds in Additive Manufacturing Technologies and Voxel8.
Pieter Wolters, Managing Director of DSM Venturing, commented: "Materials always play a major role in industrialising breakthrough technologies and in additive manufacturing they become absolutely critical. We are delighted to have Inkbit in our investment portfolio and look forward to helping them develop the best materials for customers world-wide."
