Former SpaceX Engineers Secure $14 Million for Metal AM Company Freeform

In 2019, former SpaceX engineers created Freeform, a metal 3D printing company that combines artificial intelligence, hardware-accelerated computing, and autonomous factory architecture to produce high-quality metal parts. This week, the Los Angeles-based company announced that it received a major investment from NVIDIA’s NVentures and AE Ventures. According to TechCrunch, the investment comes out to $14 million—a game-changer for the company. With these funds, Freeform will supercharge its metal additive manufacturing with AI.

Freeform’s press release states that its solutions address a specific pain point in the manufacturing industry: a lack of intelligent process control in traditional 3D metal printing. AI implementation can address this issue, preventing inconsistencies by learning continuously from each print. Machine learning has been incorporated into additive manufacturing for several years now, creating intelligent designs and helping with quality assurance, but Freeform plans to take this technology further.

As a part of the investment, Freeform will join NVIDIA Inception, a program that supports startups. Then, NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform will support Freeform’s existing AI-driven platform. What is the benefit to using AI? Freeform’s AI technology predicts outcomes in real-time and adjusts accordingly. This ensures each part is delivered with precision and digital verification. The platform’s predictive control over the physics of the metal 3D printing allows the company to produce advanced metal parts faster and more accurately than ever.