There are rumors that Bambu Lab is about to receive a massive investment that might make them the biggest 3D printer company on the planet.
According to 36Kr, the Chinese equivalent of TechCrunch, they have been hearing of an investment brewing at the 3D printer manufacturer. They write:
“Recently, multiple investors and industry insiders in the 3D printing field told Yingke that Tuozhu is close to completing its latest round of financing, with Tencent participating. The company’s valuation may reach $10 billion.”
That is a staggeringly large number. To put that in perspective, that figure is almost the total value of all the publicly-traded 3D print companies we track in our weekly leaderboard. This would be more than Stratasys, Nano Dimension, 3D Systems, Xometry, Bright Laser, Farsoon, Materialise, Velo3D, Proto Labs and many others — combined!
The story also suggests that Shenzhen Tuozhu (Bambu Lab’s parent company) had annual revenue last year of close to US$840M with a profit of US$280M. If these figures are true, they show how gigantic the company has become. For example, a profit of US$280M is near half of Stratasys’ annual revenue.
If this investment occurs — and there’s some doubt of that, according to the story — then the landscape for 3D printer companies changes notably.
The key indicator is the presence of Tencent. That firm is a massive China-based conglomerate that has described as “China’s Meta + Amazon Web Services + PayPal + Activision all rolled into one.” They also invest heavily in startups and growing tech companies, with apparently some major 800 investments so far.
You might think that this could be another routine tech investment for Tencent, but it might not be. Recall that last week we learned that Elegoo apparently received a massive investment from DJI, another huge Chinese company.
Could it be that we have an investment race between the two Chinese 3D printer manufacturers? If these huge third parties are plowing major cash into two 3D printer manufacturers, then it’s likely something is up.
The investments will leave both companies with substantial cash for research and expansion, although Bambu Lab’s suspected profits already permit them near-infinite R&D capability when compared to their competitors.
Where does this leave other FFF 3D printer manufacturers? It’s hard to see how they could compete against these massively funded operations. It is even worse for anyone contemplating a startup developing a new FFF 3D printer: you would be up against a US$10B company, good luck with that.
These investments appear to be the initial steps of a slow and gradual reorganization of the players in the desktop 3D print space. It’s very likely that we will continue to see some companies drop off the map, and buying will consolidate on an ever decreasing set of 3D printer manufacturers.
Via 36Kr
