Explaining Carbon3D

Why the startup has raised so much money; why we should care about expiring patents; and why Carbon3D still has a long way to go before they revolutionize manufacturing

It’s not often that a startup announces its presence in the way that Carbon3D has in the last four weeks. It added to that story today, announcing a $10 million investment from Autodesk’s Spark Investment Fund.

In addition to this latest announcement, Carbon3D’s emergence into the public consciousness over the last month has included:

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The Week in Advanced Manufacturing Funding – March 6, 2015

Japanese bioprinting firm, Cyfuse Biomedical, raises $11.7 million Series B; The intelligent money is on 3D printing of electronics

On 2 March, Cyfuse Biomedical K.K. announced they had completed a 1.4 billion JPY (approximately $11.7 million USD) Series B funding round, with participation from 12 investors, including venture capital funds and corporate investors as well as government support. The Japanese BioPrinting firm has now raised a total of 1.98 billion JPY, which includes a 422 million JPY (approximately $4.77 million USD) Series A back in January 2013.

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The Week in Advanced Manufacturing Funding – February 6, 2015

Stratasys to invest in the future; Bolt raises new fund, expands and partners

Up and down news from the advanced manufacturing funding realm this week: Stratasys came out with a press release regarding its preliminary FY 2014 financial results indicating an impairment of $100-110 million on MakerBot while making plans for future investment across a number of areas. Meanwhile, Bolt – an early-stage venture capital firm specializing in startups at the hardware/software interface – announced a new $25 million fund (Fund II) and expansion to a second facility in San Francisco. As if that wasn’t enough, a few days later, Bolt and well-known seed accelerator Y Combinator jointly announced a partnership that will see Bolt’s partners and engineering staff added to Y Combinator’s already impressive list of mentors, while offering access to Bolt’s workshop facility to YC hardware startups.

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Analyzing Autodesk’s acquisition of Lagoa

Although the recent acquisition of cloud-based 3D design and publishing startup, Lagoa, has yet to generate significant headlines (neither company have officially announced the deal on their respective websites), La Presse.ca and Techvibes are reporting that the US CAD giant has paid $60-62 million for the young, Montreal-based Lagoa.

The deal represents another notable acquisition-exit for an advanced manufacturing service/software company. Although the details of the deal and the previous venture-backed investment rounds are not available, I’ve gone through the exercise running some conservative estimates to better understand how the venture capital community should regard the transaction:

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