3Dnatives Lab: Testing Meshy, the AI 3D Model Generator, for 3D Printing

Meshy, the AI 3D model generator, did not start as a 3D printing tool. When Yuanming (Ethan) Hu launched Meshy-1 in 2023, the pitch was aimed at game developers and animators: characters, props and environments, generated in a minute and dropped into Unity or Unreal. Hu, a Tsinghua graduate who did his PhD at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, had already created Taichi, a programming language for graphics and physics simulation. At the time, generative 3D forced a choice between slow methods that lifted 2D image models into three dimensions and fast native 3D methods that produced blobs. Meshy set out to close that gap and put academic research in a browser, where an artist could actually use it.

Meshy has released seven major models in under three years. Meshy-2 arrived in February 2024 with polycount control, and Meshy-3 followed in April 2024 with a new image-to-3D pipeline and physically based rendering (PBR) textures. Meshy-4, released in August 2024, promised hard surfaces “free from the bumps and dents” of earlier versions. Meshy-5 added multi-view input in August 2025, and Meshy-6 brought multi-color 3MF export and a low-poly mode in January 2026. Meshy-7 came out in August 2026, tuned to match the input image more faithfully. Meshy-7.1 followed on September 10, 2026, with an “Ultra 4K” geometry mode, which the company says produces the richest surface detail of any generator on the market.

The money followed too. In July 2026, Meshy announced a Series B of nearly $400 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, which it describes as the largest round ever raised by a company built specifically for AI 3D. IDG Capital, Matrix Partners China and Monolith led the round, joined by existing backers including HongShan (formerly Sequoia China) and Source Code Capital. At the time, Meshy claimed more than 12 million registered users and over 100 million generated models.