Carbon 3D receive $200M Investment to bring Adidas Futurecraft 4D Worldwide

You may remember Carbon 3D from their TED Talk about “What if 3D printing could be 100 times faster?” Carbon 3D are known for designing super-fast 3D printers for use in design and manufacturing, and have announced a $200M funding round. The $200M was made up of investments from Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management, Archina Capital, amongst other companies including GE Ventures. Another round of investors are expected to be announced in 2018.

The Adidas Futurecraft 4D trainer.

Carbon 3D & Adidas

In an interview with TechCrunch, CEO Joseph DeSimone stated, “what’s quite clear is we have momentum with a lot of customers. We’re making millions of pairs of shoes with Adidas, and as we do that, we’re learning a lot about what it takes to manufacture.” This presents a company full of confidence and optimism, ready to take on traditional manufacturing techniques in the trainer industry.

Currently, Carbon are most well-known for their partnership with Adidas to produce their 3D printed Futurecraft trainers. Though the first run of their Futurecraft 4D shoes will be just 5,000 pairs, the company is confident they can scale effectively. Carbon believe they have far more scalability than normal 3D printing technologies, such as FDM.