The news is not all bad in the corporate world of 3D printing.
Recent days have seen significant events that paint a negative image of the technology. The most prominent, of course, is the fate of Desktop Metal, which last week was finally set to declare bankruptcy.
Desktop Metal raised an astounding amount of investment money, and yet here we are, only a few years later and all that cash is effectively gone. For the investors, the scenario most definitely showed them that 3D print technology is not worth the investment.
Because of the Desktop Metal situation and multiple others, investment has been scarce, and companies in the space have a hard time growing.
These days it is notable if there is an investment made in a 3D print company, although few seem to be taking place, and those that do are small in size. The days of US$500M investments seem to be over.
Yet there are a number of smaller players in the 3D print space that are indeed flourishing, and they could absolutely use investment to grow out their now proven business models.
One good example is Axtra3D, which today announced some very intriguing statistics about their operations.
They say that in the first half of the year they incurred a “sharp increase” in revenue and units sold, and claim they will double their 2024 revenue during the rest of this year. That’s significant growth.
They also say they’ve grown their reseller network by 40%, both in the US and internationally, and have a quarter of their customers buying more systems.
Then there’s this:
“Axtra3D also set a new company benchmark for reliability, receiving only six service visits across its entire fleet during the first half of 2025. This milestone underscores the printer’s robust design, exceptional reliability, and serviceability, engineered specifically for precise, high-throughput production environments.”
This is all very good news for Axtra3D, but they’re not the only ones. There are other smaller companies in the space that have successfully figured out a market niche in which they can thrive.
To those investors that now look down on the 3D print market, I say this: don’t let a few major failures cause a write-off of the entire industry. There are successes; you just have to look a bit deeper to find them.
Via Axtra3D
