Divergent Technologies has announced the closing of a Series C funding totalling $160 million.
The company says the financing will help to industrialise its fully-integrated platform that comprises generative design, additive manufacturing and automated assembly, while also expanding its operations to meet growing demand amongst automotive OEMs. In previous rounds, Divergent raised roughly $200m, with investments coming from the likes of Horizon Ventures and Altran Technologies.
While renowned for its hypercar endeavours, Divergent Technologies is also a Tier 1 supplier to the automotive industry and is currently in development with eight initial OEM brands on vehicle structure programmes with production volumes ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of vehicles across the models’ production life. Divergent is planning a scale-up of its advanced manufacturing facilities, with future deployments of its Divergent Adaptive Production System (DAPS) factories planned for Europe and the USA starting in 2024.
Through its supply to the automotive space, Divergent is leveraging additive manufacturing technology in a bid to make the vehicle manufacturing process more efficient and less wasteful. The DAPS is used to replace conventional structure design and production processes with an end-to-end system for vehicle design and engineering, volume manufacturing and assembly. Supporting the technology that underpins the DAPS is a team of more than 180 engineers and scientists that work across Structures, Software, Additive Manufacturing and Automation.
“This funding represents a sterling affirmation of how disruptive we are in the auto manufacturing industry, one that really hasn’t experience such revolution since Henry Ford developed the assembly line more than 100 years ago,” Divergent founder and CEO Kevin Czinger said. “Of great importance, given the global focus on sustainability, DAPS is planet-saving manufacturing in that it radically reduced lifecycle environmental impact by optimising total vehicle ‘cradle-to-cradle efficiency.”
Alongside the announcement of the new capital, Divergent has also added John L/ Thornton – former President of Goldman Sachs, Executive Chairman of Barrick Gold, and Board Member of Ford Motor Company – to its Board of Directors.
Thornton, who invested in the Series C round, as well as earlier financing rounds, added: “Seeing Divergent in action is seeing the future of automotive manufacturing now. This system will become the norm in the industry. The transformation in manufacturing which Divergent will lead will be good for the US, good for jobs, good for efficiency, for productivity and for climate.”
