Bambu Lab anmnounced a new grant program for makers that could provide huge amounts of money for unusual projects.
The new “Let’s Make It Fund” is available to anyone with a competent proposal, and could award selected projects up to a huge US$300,000.
The program will choose “two to five” projects each quarter, and award them an amount Bambu Lab feels is appropriate for the work. They say it could be as low as a few thousand dollars, which could be quite useful for some projects.
In addition to the funding, Bambu Lab also pledges to provide technical and marketing assistance to the projects, the latter through their considerable presence online.
The project appears less self-interested than other funding projects: you don’t even have to own or use a Bambu Lab 3D printer, apparently. There seems to be few boundaries on the nature of the projects, as Bambu Lab intends on funding anything they find interesting.
Why is Bambu Lab doing this altruistic venture? They say it is a way of giving back based on their own experience in starting the company with its initial product, the X1. They explain:
“From the very beginning, Bambu Lab understood that the company’s growth was directly tied to this creative energy – and that at some point, the community could no longer be seen merely as a foundation but needed to be treated as a partner.”
Another factor could be the company’s own finances. While Shenzhen Tuozhu Company Ltd (the actual company behind Bambu Lab) is privately held, there are rumors of huge profitability. In addition, they also may have received significant investment from Chinese megacorp Tencent.
In other words, they may have a lot of money at their disposal, and the new fund could be one way to make use of a small amount of that cash.
Bambu Lab writes that this fund is “not a PR stunt”, and that seems to be true. However, by providing support to the maker community in this way they certainly will build up some goodwill.
I’m interested to see how this fund proceeds. They could select some rather interesting projects, and you can get an idea of what they’re looking for in their video above.
Via Bambu Lab
