In what could be one of the biggest corporate moves in 3D printing this year, DJI has apparently invested in Elegoo.
DJI is hands down the biggest and best provider of drone technology on the planet. Their unique mix of affordability and ease of use long ago made them a leader in the industry. They have around 14,000 employees, annual revenue of something close to US$4B and an estimated private valuation of about US15B.
DJI Investment in Elegoo
Multiple reports from Chinese corporate news sites confirm that DJI has invested a large amount of money into Elegoo’s company, Shenzhen Zhinengpai Technology Co., Ltd. (Elegoo is their brand name that most people are familiar with, and is owned by the operating subsidiary Shenzhen Elegoo Technology Co., Ltd.)
How much was the investment? It has not been officially announced, but multiple sources suggest something between US$25-75M. That’s a very significant amount of cash.
So far DJI has only termed the deal as “aligned” and has “growth potential”, so it’s plausible they may get more deeply involved than just being a quiet investor. This could possibly include access to distribution channels, synergy with manufacturing/brand, or co-development of future products. But we won’t know for certain until they say exactly how this will play out.
Elegoo Benefits From DJI
Why is this important? There are multiple reasons:
DJI is a massive company with plenty of financial resources. A smaller 3D print company could easily leverage DJI’s financial backing to more rapidly develop new products.
DJI has a huge development team with a proven track record. Unlike most Chinese manufacturers, DJI has considerable expertise in building proper and easy to use interfaces for their otherwise complex drone products. That’s a major reason for their success.
In the 3D print world most of the desktop equipment manufacturers treat the interface as a second-class aspect of their products. Ignoring the user experience has been extremely detrimental to the growth of most Chinese 3D printer manufacturers, with the big exception being Bambu Lab.
That’s one of the reasons Bambu Lab is so successful. In fact, the founders of Bambu Lab were themselves originally from DJI. They have brought that expertise with them, and that’s been the strategy at Bambu Lab since the beginning.
It’s possible that DJI could bring some of that same UX mojo to Elegoo, and that could transform Elegoo products to a much higher level of usability. It is now entirely appropriate to anticipate future Elegoo equipment could have ease of use features as good as — or greater than — Bambu Lab’s.
DJI is a major manufacturer with countless sales and distribution operations across the globe. It is quite possible that Elegoo’s products could be knitted into that vast network, which could supercharge Elegoo’s sales.
Bambu Lab Competition
This could put Elegoo in a position to catch up to rapidly growing Bambu Lab. However, Sina Finance writes (translated):
“Recently, Tao Ye, founder of Topzhu Technology [Bambu Lab], posted a lengthy message on his WeChat Moments, stating that ‘my former employer invested in a 3D printing company, and the agreement specifically included clauses related to Topzhu.’ IT Home noted that Tao Ye previously served as the head of DJI’s consumer drone business unit. He led his team to found Topzhu Technology in 2020, focusing on bringing industrial-grade 3D printing technology to the consumer market.”
It’s unclear what the mysterious clauses might say. Could it be some type of non compete clause? An option to buy the company? We have no idea.
DJI Challenges
This sounds like incredibly good news for Elegoo, but there are some caveats.
The main concern is that DJI is currently locked out of sales in the US due to trade wars. Their recent advanced products are simply not available in the US, while the rest of the world continues to purchase low cost, high capability drones.
It is quite possible that at some point the US administration will undertake similar actions against Chinese 3D printer manufacturers — it’s basically the same scenario, just with a different technology.
In fact, this might already be happening: Bambu Lab continues to be unable to launch its new P2S and H2C systems in the US, apparently due to “FCC hangups”. To me, that is a secret code for “we’re going to use whatever rules we have in place to stop you from selling products.”
Once US authorities discover that Elegoo is associated with DJI, a company they are already messing with, they could impose similar constraints on the company.
But that’s speculation. For now we have one of the competing desktop 3D printer companies gaining a massive boost over their rivals. It should be very interesting to see how this develops over the next year.
Via Sina Finance (Chinese)
